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If You Invested $1000 in KLA a Decade Ago, This is How Much It'd Be Worth Now
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How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
The fear of missing out, or FOMO, also plays a factor in investing, especially with particular tech giants, as well as 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 requires research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in KLA ten years ago, you're likely feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in December 2013 would be worth $9,222.86, or a gain of 822.29%, as of December 27, 2023, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 159.21% and the price of gold went up 65.13% over the same time frame.
Analysts are forecasting more upside for KLAC too.
KLA is benefiting from the strong performance of the wafer inspection business owing to rising demand for advanced wafer inspection applications in leading-edge technology development. Growing investments across multiple nodes and rising capital intensity in Foundry & Logic are driving the top-line growth. KLA's emphasis on the integration of artificial intelligence into its solutions has driven its outperformance in the semiconductor market. Its ability to generate strong free cash flow enabled KLA to raise share repurchase and increase dividend payout. However, weakness in the PCB, Display and Component Inspection is a headwind. Softness in memory and leading-edge, logic and foundry investments have been a concern. Also, the new U.S. export regulations, supply-chain disruptions and mounting expenses remain overhangs.
The stock has jumped 8.08% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 1 higher, for fiscal 2023; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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If You Invested $1000 in KLA a Decade Ago, This is How Much It'd Be Worth Now
How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
The fear of missing out, or FOMO, also plays a factor in investing, especially with particular tech giants, as well as 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 requires research, patience, and a little bit of risk. So, if you had invested in KLA ten years ago, you're likely feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in December 2013 would be worth $9,222.86, or a gain of 822.29%, as of December 27, 2023, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 159.21% and the price of gold went up 65.13% over the same time frame.
Analysts are forecasting more upside for KLAC too.
KLA is benefiting from the strong performance of the wafer inspection business owing to rising demand for advanced wafer inspection applications in leading-edge technology development. Growing investments across multiple nodes and rising capital intensity in Foundry & Logic are driving the top-line growth. KLA's emphasis on the integration of artificial intelligence into its solutions has driven its outperformance in the semiconductor market. Its ability to generate strong free cash flow enabled KLA to raise share repurchase and increase dividend payout. However, weakness in the PCB, Display and Component Inspection is a headwind. Softness in memory and leading-edge, logic and foundry investments have been a concern. Also, the new U.S. export regulations, supply-chain disruptions and mounting expenses remain overhangs.
The stock has jumped 8.08% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 1 higher, for fiscal 2023; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.