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Here's How Much You'd Have If You Invested $1000 in KLA a Decade Ago
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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 $12.16 billion in fiscal 2025. Product revenues accounted for 78% 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
Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For KLA, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in May 2016 would be worth $27,967.05, or a gain of 2,696.70%, as of May 27, 2026, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500's gained 259.75% and the price of gold went up 253.91% over the same time frame.
Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for KLAC.
KLA continues to benefit from AI-driven spending in leading-edge foundry/logic, high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging, supporting market share gains in process control and steady services growth that helps anchor cash generation. Management expects its advanced packaging portfolio revenue to rise to about $1 billion in 2026 and sees wafer equipment demand strengthening into 2027, with June quarter guidance calling for another step up in revenue. A high free cash flow profile supports ongoing dividends and repurchases, including a higher quarterly dividend and a new $7 billion authorization. However, KLAC's prospects remains balanced for now given export control and tariff uncertainty, customer concentration, and gross margin sensitivity to elevated DRAM-related system costs expected to persist through at least 2026.
The stock has jumped 11.19% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 10 higher, for fiscal 2026; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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Here's How Much You'd Have If You Invested $1000 in KLA a Decade Ago
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 $12.16 billion in fiscal 2025. Product revenues accounted for 78% 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
Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For KLA, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in May 2016 would be worth $27,967.05, or a gain of 2,696.70%, as of May 27, 2026, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500's gained 259.75% and the price of gold went up 253.91% over the same time frame.
Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for KLAC.
KLA continues to benefit from AI-driven spending in leading-edge foundry/logic, high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging, supporting market share gains in process control and steady services growth that helps anchor cash generation. Management expects its advanced packaging portfolio revenue to rise to about $1 billion in 2026 and sees wafer equipment demand strengthening into 2027, with June quarter guidance calling for another step up in revenue. A high free cash flow profile supports ongoing dividends and repurchases, including a higher quarterly dividend and a new $7 billion authorization. However, KLAC's prospects remains balanced for now given export control and tariff uncertainty, customer concentration, and gross margin sensitivity to elevated DRAM-related system costs expected to persist through at least 2026.
The stock has jumped 11.19% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 10 higher, for fiscal 2026; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.