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Here's How Much a $1000 Investment in KLA Made 10 Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

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How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.

Another factor that can influence investors is FOMO, or the fear of missing out, especially with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in KLA (KLAC - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to KLAC for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

KLA's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at KLA's main business drivers.

San Jose, CA-based KLA Corporation is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of process diagnostics and control (PDC) equipment and yield management solutions required for the fabrication of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) or chips. The company has a comprehensive portfolio of products addressing each major PDC subsegment—photomask (reticle) inspection, wafer inspection/defect review and metrology.

Reticle production is vital to the semiconductor device formation process. Reticles are used to control the precise deposition of materials onto the wafer, which ultimately change its chemical characteristics, imparting specific functionalities to the ICs thus created. Inspection and metrology tools measure the quality of the reticles, helping to improve reticle production yields. As a result of the broader applicability of semiconductors, shrinking form factors and increasing functionalities of individual chips, reticle design and production are growing in importance. Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor were the largest customers in the last three years, accounting for more than 10% of total sales in each year.

KLA reported revenues of $10.496 billion in fiscal 2023. Product revenues accounted for 79.8% while the rest came from Service segment.

KLA’s two main product lines are defect inspection and metrology. The company’s defect inspection tools have very broad application in chip, wafer, reticle, storage, compound semiconductor and MEMS manufacturing. Metrology tools are used to gather critical dimension measurements of the wafer and process dimensions such as film thickness, lithography overlay and surface profiling. The company’s metrology products are used in chip, wafer, reticle and solar device manufacturing. KLA also offers other products and services.

In addition to new tools, KLA also offers a comprehensive portfolio of refurbished tools that upgrade and improve yields of existing equipment under the KT-Certified program. Refurbished tools are currently sold to IC, reticle, substrate, MEMS and data storage manufacturers.  

Although KLA is a major player in each of its served markets, it faces competition from other large equipment suppliers such as Applied Materials and Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation.

Bottom Line

Anyone can invest, but building a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of a few things: research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in KLA a decade ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in November 2013 would be worth $8,262.94, or a gain of 726.29%, as of November 14, 2023, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.

In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 147.56% and the price of gold went up 45.26% over the same time frame.

Analysts are forecasting more upside for KLAC too.

KLA reported disappointing first-quarter fiscal 2024 with both earnings and revenues declining year over year. The top-line decline was attributed to softness in the Semiconductor Process Control, Specialty Semiconductor Process, and PCB, Display and Component Inspection segments. However, KLA is benefiting from strong performance of the wafer inspection business owing to rising demand for advanced wafer inspection applications in leading-edge technology development remains a tailwind. Additionally, growing investments across multiple nodes, and rising capital intensity in Foundry & Logic are driving the top-line growth. However, weakness in the PCB, Display and Component Inspection remains a headwind. Also, the new U.S. export regulations, supply-chain disruptions and mounting expenses remain overhangs.

The stock is up 7.54% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 8 higher, for fiscal 2023. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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