ACM Research, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACMR)

ACM Research, Inc., with ticker symbol ACMR, is a prominent name in the global semiconductor industry, providing advanced capital equipment designed to enhance the production process of integrated circuits. The company's offerings include wet-cleaning and other front-end processing tools, which are utilized by foundry, logic, and memory chip manufacturers during the initial stages of the chip fabrication process. ACM Research's products focus on improving product yield, particularly during the phase where individual devices are patterned on a wafer prior to interconnection.

The company's primary revenue generation stems from the sale of single-wafer cleaning equipment, ECP (front-end packaging), furnace, and other technologies. Its flagship products encompass single-wafer wet-cleaning tools, such as the Ultra C SAPS II and Ultra C SAPS V, aimed at eliminating random defects from wafer surfaces and interconnects during chip fabrication. Additionally, ACM Research provides advanced packaging tools, including coaters, developers, photoresist strippers, scrubbers, wet etchers, and copper-plating tools.

ACM Research's strategic positioning within the industry is fortified by its proprietary SAPS and TEBO technologies. SAPS delivers megasonic energy uniformly across an entire wafer, proving more effective than conventional megasonic and jet spray cleaning methods in removing random defects. TEBO, on the other hand, utilizes rapid pressure changes to force bubbles in liquid to oscillate at controlled sizes, shapes, and temperatures, effectively eliminating random defects without damaging patterned features.

The company's ECP technology, employed in advanced metal plating, enhances the uniformity of metal layers at the notch area of wafers before packaging. The Ultra ECP ap and Ultra ECP map technologies are specifically designed to improve gap-filling performance for ultra-thin seed layer applications, critical for advanced nodes at 28nm, 14nm, and beyond. Furthermore, ACM Research's Tahoe technology provides high cleaning performance while consuming significantly less sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide than conventional high-temperature single-wafer cleaning tools, offering cost savings and environmental regulation compliance.

ACM Research's customer base includes leading foundry, logic, and memory chip makers, with a strong presence in the Asian market, where chip manufacturers demand equipment tailored to their specific technical requirements. The company's product portfolio addresses approximately $16 billion of the 2023 global wafer fab equipment market, with revenue from single-wafer cleaning equipment totaling $403.9 million in 2023 and revenue from ECP (front-end packaging), furnace, and other technologies amounting to $103.4 million in 2023.

Among ACM Research's customers are Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Corporation, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, SK Hynix Inc., Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd., ChangXin Memory Technologies, and SiEn. The company's revenue from these customers includes 45.5% from three customers: SMIC, SiEn, and CXMT.