PDF Solutions (PDFS) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

DATE

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• President and Chief Executive Officer - John Kibarian
• Chief Financial Officer - Adnan Raza

TAKEAWAYS

• Total Revenue -- $68.3 million, representing 20% growth year over year and 11% growth compared to the prior quarter.
• Non-GAAP Gross Margin -- 77%, expanding from 73% in the prior quarter due to reduced eProbe-related costs and controlled personnel expansion.
• Non-GAAP Operating Margin -- 28%, an improvement from 22% in the second quarter while supporting increased spending in research and development.
• Non-GAAP EPS -- $0.40, up 60% year over year from $0.25 in the same quarter of the prior year.
• Platform Revenue -- $58.3 million, increasing 22% year over year driven by leading-edge customer engagements.
• Volume-based Revenue -- $10.0 million, reflecting a 10% increase year over year driven by higher Cimetrix runtime licenses.
• Ending Backlog -- $247.2 million, a decrease from $270.7 million at the end of the second quarter due to the timing of large contract closures.
• Annual Revenue Guidance -- 20% growth, which management reaffirmed for the full year 2026.
• Operating Cash Flow -- $13.8 million for the quarter, bringing the nine-month total to $31.8 million.
• Capital Expenditures -- $15.1 million, primarily utilized to support tool equipment builds for future shipments.
• Cash and Equivalents -- $107.1 million as of Sept. 30, 2026, including benefits from a May equity offering.
• Equipment Business Revenue -- approximately 20% of total revenue, comprising the Cimetrix and secureWISE product lines.
• Significant Contracts -- an eight-figure deal for an eProbe machine and Characterization Vehicle test chip, plus multiple seven-figure contracts for Exensio.
• GAAP Financials -- $0.16 diluted EPS on $6.8 million in net income, with a 73% GAAP gross margin.
• Cloud Migration ARR -- twofold to threefold increase, reflecting the historical uplift when transitioning customers from on-premise systems to cloud-based solutions.
• WFE Correlation -- runtime licenses, which track with wafer fabrication equipment shipments, typically growing at rates similar to the 30% to 40% range seen in the broader industry.
• Long-term Targets -- 77% gross margin and 27% operating margin, which management reaffirmed as part of its financial model.
• GAAP Net Income -- $6.8 million, compared to $1.3 million in the third quarter of 2025.
• Nine-Month EPS -- $0.99, representing a 55% increase over the $0.64 reported for the first nine months of the prior year.

Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email pr@fool.com

RISKS

• Kibarian noted that "sometimes they slip from one quarter to the next," referring to the impact of large contract timing and potential fragmentation on quarterly backlog figures.

SUMMARY

PDF Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:PDFS) reported record quarterly revenue and expanded its margins through growth in its equipment business and leading-edge platform engagements. Management reaffirmed its full-year growth target and highlighted the launch of an AI-native analytics architecture. The company reported increased activity among equipment vendors and signed a significant contract for its electron-beam inspection technology. Financial performance was supported by a diversified customer base and the integration of recent acquisitions into a unified data platform.

• Management introduced Exensio Aurora, an AI-native architecture designed to process wide data sets that can include 5 million to 10 million tests per chiplet product.
• The company is expanding eProbe applications into flash technology while accelerating development for DRAM and logic in both research and production environments.
• Kibarian stated, "The equipment business is now about 20% of the total business," noting it has been growing at rates in the high teens.
• The Cimetrix business achieved a record quarter for tool connectivity software as customers increased shipments of manufacturing tools.
• Kibarian indicated that geographic revenue diversification is expected as countries reshore semiconductor manufacturing, specifically citing activity in Japan, the U.S., and India.
• Kibarian noted that cloud migration historically resulted in a "twofold to threefold" increase in annual recurring revenue as customers leveraged cloud-based non-relational databases.
• The expansion of the industry has spread "from primarily on the leading edge to more broadly across many technologies," according to Kibarian.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Exensio: A platform providing manufacturing analytics, process control, and test operations data collection for semiconductor production.
• eProbe: A noncontact electron-beam (e-beam) tool used for on-chip measurement and yield challenge detection.
• Cimetrix: Software products that provide industry-standard interfaces for semiconductor equipment manufacturers to enable tool connectivity.
• Characterization Vehicle (CV): A system consisting of test chips and specialized software used to measure and analyze semiconductor manufacturing process yield.
• secureWISE: A connectivity solution enabling secure remote access and data communication between fabrication plants and equipment vendors.
• WFE: Wafer Fabrication Equipment, referring to the machinery used to manufacture integrated circuits.
• DirectScan: A system using electron-beam technology for on-chip instrumentation and inspection.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the PDF Solutions Inc. conference call to discuss its financial results for the third quarter conference call ending Wednesday, September 30, 2026. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have not yet received a copy of the corresponding press release, it has been posted to PDF's website at www.pdf.com.

Some of the statements that will be made in the course of this conference are forward-looking, including statements regarding PDF's future financial results and performance, growth rates, and demand for its solutions. PDF's actual results could differ materially. You should refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors" on page 16 through 30 of PDF's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, and similar disclosures in subsequent SEC filings. The forward-looking statements and risks stated in this conference call are based on information available to PDF today. PDF assumes no obligation to update them. Now I'd like to introduce John Kibarian, PDF's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Adnan Raza, PDF's Chief Financial Officer. Mr.

Kibarian, please go ahead.

John Kibarian: Thank you for joining us on today's call. If you have not already seen our earnings press release and management report for the third quarter, please go to the Investors section of our website, where each has been posted. For today's call, I will provide a summary of the past quarter, a brief recap of our recent customer event, PDF Solutions CONNECT, provide a perspective on the environment, and conclude with our outlook for the remainder of the year. The third quarter was another busy quarter in terms of customer activity and product development. With respect to customers, we continue to see very strong business with equipment vendors.

For our Cimetrix tool connectivity and control software, sold primarily to equipment vendors, we achieved another record quarter as our customers increased tool shipments, and as a result, runtime licenses of our software increased. Our secureWISE product, which enables communications, remote access, and connectivity between the fabs and equipment vendors, also achieved strong revenue in the quarter as new contracts began. In addition, we had strong bookings of our Characterization Vehicle Infrastructure and DirectScan Systems. In the third quarter, we signed a contract to deliver an eProbe Machine, as well as a Characterization Vehicle test chip optimized for e-beam-based measurements to an existing customer.

By optimizing the CV test chip for the eProbe's unique e-beam capabilities, we can give our customer faster cycles of learning and greater detectability of yield challenges. Besides this large eight-figure contract, there were other seven-figure contracts for Characterization Vehicle Infrastructure and also for Exensio. For the eProbe, we are beginning an evaluation on flash technology, as well as accelerating development of applications and recipes for DRAM and Logic, both in R&D and manufacturing. At our PDF Solutions CONNECT conference, we were grateful for our customer Samsung's presentation about their application of the eProbe on advanced nodes for bring-up and control.

The eval and applications development, coupled with the eProbe commitment as part of the contract with an existing customer this past quarter, gives us confidence in our ability to expand the eProbe business. In October, we hosted our PDF Solutions CONNECT conference in San Francisco. In addition to the Samsung presentation that I just mentioned, we had presentations from a number of customers about their use of PDF Solutions products. We are honored that our customers are applying our solution in areas as diverse as silicon photonics, robotization of test, enterprise analytics, process control, and advanced packaging. It speaks to the benefit of our platform-based approach to semiconductor manufacturing analytics and AI.

At our event, there were hundreds of attendees that came from over 150 customers, representing equipment companies, foundries, IDMs, fabless, system companies, and hyperscalers. They were able to see the unveiling of Exensio Aurora, our AI-native new architecture that we announced in September. Starting a few years ago, we completely reimagined analytics for the era of AI, leveraging our 30-plus years of experience in semiconductors. To us, this means being able to operate on the types of wide datasets that are common when producing AI chips.

It means being able to combine data from multiple sources, and it means being able to put algorithms online across different manufacturing and test setups, irrespective of where the test or production takes place geographically. AI and analytics need to be able to give you repeatable, predictable results without hallucinations, so you can take advantage of the insights AI is bringing to your manufacturing and test in real time. The reception Exensio Aurora received at the event was very strong, and we engage now with our lead customers. PDF Solutions CONNECT energized our company and hopefully our customers. We are excited to bring our AI-first analytics capability out to our community.

It is a big milestone in the history of the company. As we look at Q4, we see an industry that is continuing to expand across all aspects, from equipment companies to chip design. The expansion has spread from primarily on the leading edge to more broadly across many technologies. For us, this means we started the fourth quarter continuing work on a significant number of customer opportunities, some of which are very large. This activity gives us confidence in achieving our goals for the year while setting up the company for a successful 2027. With that context and our progress in the first nine months of the year, we reaffirm our 20% annual growth target for 2026.

I want to thank all the PDF Solutions customers, employees, and contractors for their efforts during the quarter. Now I will turn the call over to Adnan, who will review the finances and provide his perspective on our results. Adnan.

Adnan Raza: Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone. Good to speak with you all again today. We are pleased to review the financial results of the third quarter and to bring you up to date on the progress of the business. We posted our earnings release and management report on the investor relations section of our website. Our Form 10-Q has also been filed with the SEC today. Please note that all of the financial results we discuss in today's call will be on a non-GAAP basis, and a reconciliation to GAAP financials is provided in the materials on our website. As you saw from our press release, with our Q3 results, we achieved a record for quarterly revenue.

During the third quarter, we booked an eight-figure deal for an additional eProbe and characterization analysis for an existing leading-edge customer, and multiple additional seven-figure deals across our product platform. We continue to make good progress on larger deals, including renewals, and expect the timing of these to play a role in the future quarterly ending backlog numbers. We ended the third quarter with backlog of $247 million, and as we communicated on the prior earnings call, we continue to expect to close the year with backlog above the $271 million backlog we saw for second quarter.

Our total revenues for Q3 came in at a record $68.3 million, or 11% higher than last quarter, and 20% higher on a year-over-year basis, driven by strong contribution from platform revenue. Our platform revenue came in at $58.3 million, up 19% versus prior quarter, and up 22% on a year-over-year basis, driven by leading-edge engagements. Our volume-based revenue was also up 10% on a year-over-year basis due to a significant increase in Cimetrix runtime licenses, offset by revenue related to a large secureWISE contract shifting from volume-based to platform-based revenue as the new contract locked in data volumes as a subscription.

For total annual revenue for calendar year 2026, like John said, we reaffirm the 20% growth target we set at our analyst day last fall. As we approach the sixth anniversary of our Cimetrix acquisition announcement this month, it is worthwhile mentioning that we are very pleased with the way we have grown the Cimetrix products within PDF Solutions. Additionally, the acquisition of secureWISE in Q1 of 2025 has also progressed well, evidenced in large part by revenue we started to recognize this quarter from the large booking we discussed last quarter. Together, the Cimetrix and secureWISE product lines form the basis of our meaningful equipment business, which we did not have a few years ago.

When we embarked on expanding into the equipment industry, our thesis was driven by our customers' desires to link their equipment platforms with their fabs and fabless customers' data. Now, with our equipment business forming an important third leg of our platform, in addition to data collection and data analysis, we have a diversified customer base spanning all aspects of chip manufacturing where customers benefit. We will continue to look for ways to enhance the value of our platform to bring AI-based collaboration across the entire semiconductor value chain.

Continuing down the P&L, we reported gross margin of 77% for the third quarter, a meaningful margin expansion versus 73% of last quarter, and ahead over the same quarter of last year as well. This increase was driven by a reduction in the eProbe-related costs compared to last quarter and controlled expansion of personnel costs during the quarter to support the growth in revenue we demonstrated during the quarter. We remain committed to our long-term gross margin target model of 77%, which was set less than a year ago, and are pleased with the progress we have made towards that.

We expanded our operating margin during the quarter to 28%, a meaningful improvement versus 22% of last quarter and 23% for same quarter of last year. We managed to deliver this operating margin performance while supporting the spending increases needed in both R&D and SG&A to deliver on our growing revenues. Below the operating income line, we saw benefits from interest income on the cash we raised during our May equity offering. For EPS, we delivered $0.40 per share for the quarter, up 60% versus $0.25 of same quarter a year ago, and up 48% versus $0.27 of prior quarter.

For the first three quarters of 2026, our EPS of $0.99 is 55% ahead of the EPS of $0.64 for the same period of last year. We generated positive operating cash flow of $13.8 million this quarter and $31.8 million for the first nine months of this year. During the quarter, we spent $15.1 million on CapEx, primarily to support our tool equipment builds, and ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of approximately $107 million.

Given the strong business activity and the customer opportunities in front of us, we reaffirm our prior guidance of 20% annual revenue growth rate for this year, and we'll continue to make the progress towards our long-term target model of 77% gross margin and 27% operating margin. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to commence the question-and-answer session. Operator?

Operator: Thank you, Mr. Raza. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star one on your telephone. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before asking a question. Please wait one moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research. Your line is now open.

Stacy Rasgon: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First, I was wondering if you could give us some color on how big the equipment business is, the secureWISE plus Cimetrix, is now as a percentage of revenue. If I am looking at WFE forecasts into next year, they are up probably 35% year-over-year in 2027. Should we be thinking about that equipment business growing at similar rates or in line with that?

John Kibarian: Yeah, sure. Stacy, thanks for joining. The equipment business is now about 20% of the total business. It has actually been growing within the high teens. When you look at the runtime licenses, so the number of equipment that ship, that tends to track with WFE. So, if WFE is up in the 30s or 40s, then our runtime licenses year-over-year tend to be in that range. That shows up in our volume-based line because we just do not know when people are going to ship. For the secureWISE business, it is kind of more dependent on the total install base. So, once a customer installs a tool, they will connect.

If it is under a support contract, they will connect it to secureWISE. So, it tends to track with the number of tools under some level of AI-based services. So, that tends to be a number that does not move as fast, but also does not go down as fast as the runtime licenses do. Collectively, as I said, it is about 20% of our business. It is, particularly for the Cimetrix piece, it has been growing faster than the rest of the company this year because of the runtime license piece.

Stacy Rasgon: Got it. Thank you. That is helpful. If I could ask one follow-up.

John Kibarian: Sure.

Stacy Rasgon: You talked about being committed to your long-term operating model, but you're kind of there, right? You did within spitting distance of 75 gross, and you hit 28 operating margin in Q3. So, I mean, how should we think about that into Q4, and then what might be possible into 2027, especially if you're growing at a similar rate that you're growing now? Like, why wouldn't the margins—

Adnan Raza: Yeah. Good question, Stacy. Look, first of all, we're very pleased with the results that we delivered this quarter. That's point one. Point two, you'll also see that it's a marked improvement from Q2, where we had some eProbe shipments, right? So, over the next few quarters, and we haven't yet talked about next year, depending on the product mix itself, the numbers could move. But specifically to your point about how we think about the next quarter itself, somewhere between the 75% and where our target margin model is a good way to think about it.

I think, like John said, we're pretty pleased with the contribution and the scale of the equipment business as well, which, candidly, when we talked about the acquisition of both of those, was accretive to our margins. So, stay tuned. Last time we set the target model, we achieved it in two years. This last December, when we set the model, we said we would achieve it in less than two. It's been three quarters. Give us a little bit of time to clock it in a few times.

Stacy Rasgon: Got it. Thank you. I'll go back in the queue.

John Kibarian: Sure.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Charles Shi of Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Charles Shi: Hey. Good afternoon, John, Adnan. Maybe a question on the backlog. You are expecting ending the year above the Q2 backlog level. That kind of implies almost maybe $100 million net bookings in Q4. I know you are probably waiting for some large contract, given in 4Q 2022, you had some pretty large bookings as well. I believe there are contracts that are probably four-year in duration, and so it is about time.

But for us to really think about upside, downside risk, how confident you are regarding the timing of that large contract coming in this quarter, and should we be thinking about maybe the timing can slip out to next quarter, or you are very confident it will close by the year-end? Thank you.

John Kibarian: Sure. Thanks, Charles. Yeah, you are correct. Our expectation is to grow backlog this year. You are right there. It does result in our expectation as being a very strong quarter. There are multiple customers with large contracts. There are some that, you are correct, sometimes they slip from one quarter to the next. Sometimes they get split, like what we closed in Q3 is part of something that we expect to also have follow-on components to. Sometimes they get split up, right, just as they go through and look at what parts of the organization fund an overall deployment.

But when we look at the collection of contracts, and there is a handful of them, we do anticipate enough of them will close to grow our backlog this year, and the remainder will probably spill into Q1 next year.

Charles Shi: Thanks. Maybe just want a little bit more housekeeping. How should we think about the next year, the top-line growth is still feeling good about 20%? Any upside to that number possible based on what you see in the bookings activities into the year end? Thank you.

John Kibarian: Yeah. We haven't given out a direct guidance for 2027, Charles. I would say in general, as we look at the bookings in Q4 and Q1, that will give us some perspective on what we think the growth rate would be. Nothing we see about 2027 has us thinking it's going to be less than where we expect our typical targets to be. Overall, I think it's a good environment that we're in right now. It typically, for us, if you just look at the last few years, growth tends to be more back-end loaded than the front-end loaded, just on the way that as we sell and deploy.

We'll see as we finish up this year, will that same profile be there? Would it be a little bit more aggressive, or will it be more like a typical year?

Charles Shi: Thank you, John. Appreciate the color.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Blair Abernethy of Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is now open.

Blair Abernethy: Thanks. Nice quarter, guys. If we could drill in on the eProbe business right now. I notice your CapEx year-to-date is 20% higher than your full year last year. Maybe some sense of how that's looking going forward and to rounding out this year. Then just for the fielded units, how are the usage trends going? What are any anecdotal feedback you're getting from some of the newer eProbe customers?

John Kibarian: Sure. Yes, you are correct that the CapEx this year is up over last year. A lot of that is for anticipation of next year, really, more than this year, because some of the spend that happened in the first half of this year does affect, let us say, like that machine that we sold last quarter. A lot of that ends up basically spilling into the future, like 2027, in effect. In terms of, as I said in my prepared remarks, we have a broadening of the customer base. Now we have at least additional customers starting to have multiple machines. This was a milestone for us in Q3.

Prior to that, there was one customer that had multiple machines. The utilization on the machines is generally quite good. We often are clipping into what we tell them will be over 80% or 90% utilizations pretty consistently. The application space is broadening out with, I would say, more and more related to products and what you would see as problems that recur with the technology. In other words, you can think of them as control problems because they do not really ever go away. That is a good sign too, that it is where the machine is able to keep up.

As they improve their yields, typically what the fabs will say is we had, let us say, two hours, and this machine needs to see a defect in two hours. Historically, the problem with e-beam has been, as the yield improves, eventually you just cannot see anything in a two-hour recipe. It does not scan enough of the features. The eProbe does quite a good job at keeping up so far with the customers improving yields. That also is a good sign for the utilization of the tools as we look out. Lastly, we are trying to make sure we are more broadly exposed. We were primarily in leading-edge logic.

In the first half of this year, we sold into trailing-edge logic, a 28 nanometer. We have started an on-site pilot on DRAM that we shipped in the second quarter, I think that machine shipped in and is installed, running at the customer now. As I mentioned, we are starting an eval at our facility on flash. We are trying to make sure we are covering more of the application space. That would give us an opportunity as we look at 2027 and 2028 to make sure we participate in a lot of those aspects of the industry.

Geographically, we are still not very exposed to China, and that is another area that we want to make sure that we pick up at some point.

Blair Abernethy: Okay, that is great. Thanks for the color, John. Just one quick one if I can on Exensio or Aurora. Any early feedback from some of the customers trialing this now? What is the revenue uplift opportunity here if somebody who is working on or has been working with Exensio for a while and now wants to upgrade to Aurora?

John Kibarian: Yeah. I think we are getting mostly demo-related feedback now. I think the feedback is, architecture is right. The kinds of challenges that it is designed to address, in other words, very, very wide datasets, which is common now with chiplet products where you may have 1 million or 5 million or even 10 million tests, so you need to operate on very wide datasets, is resonating with customers. The agentic first, in other words, where one of the more significant users is an agent, also resonates. The fact that the agent always generates a workflow. In other words, something, it is code, right?

A workflow is just Python code, but Python code that an engineer can go back and look at, and therefore commit it to production so you get the same result every time. Customers really like that piece of the architecture. Now the proof is in the pudding, and it is too early to say how the pudding is doing. In other words, as they use it in real-life cases, does the actual capability meet what we are showing them in demos and what they are playing with today in toy cases? We believe that will happen. In terms of what the uplift is, we are still very early on.

I will mention, as in a point of reference, when we did move customers from on-premise to cloud, it tended to increase their ARR about 2x-3x. That was because we did not just lift and shift a relational database-based system that was on-premise to a relational-based database system that was in the cloud. We leveraged the cloud to move our customers' data to our deployment of Cassandra, which is a non-relational database. That gave about 9x the performance on load or pull out data compared to a relational system. In other words, it came with benefits.

We expect the same kind of thing here, that if the customer is paying a multiple, those kinds of 2x or 3x multiples over what they paid in the past, it is because they are able to get a lot more performance out of the system that solves challenging problems. We think we can demonstrate that for our customers. Our goal was to do something that really enabled something much more powerful for them. Ultimately, we think, as the customers use more and more agents, they will be processing more and more data.

As you look at kind of what that means for us, that means more use of the system, and hence our ability to show them more value and charge more for it. But we tend to use something very much like what we've done in the past. In other words, give them more value, and then charge a portion of that value, but not even all of it.

Blair Abernethy: Okay. Great. Thanks, John.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Clark Wright of D.A. Davidson. Your line is now open.

Clark Wright: Hi there. Thank you. There was a notable geographic mix shift this quarter in favor of Japan. Could you provide some clarity in terms of the developments that is driving strength in that geography, and if we should expect a similar mix shift going forward?

John Kibarian: Yeah, it's a good question. I think some of the larger contracts came out of Japan over this last quarter. Japan continues to be an important market for us. It always has been, actually. At one time, Japan was 75% of our revenue, so that's quite a long time ago. If you look at what's going on, it's going to bounce around. In general, what you're seeing is a lot of countries with activities to reshore, whether that's Japan, obviously U.S. To some extent, we started to see that in Europe. I was just in Europe last week.

Then, you see that in places like India, where it's not maybe a reshore, but a new shore, and other countries like that. All of those are probably going to drive a general geographic diversification of our revenue line. For customers that are making investments in leading-edge nodes or new facilities, those tend to be customers that are spending on buildings and equipment, billions, sometimes tens of billions of dollars. So, when you look at what we charge, while for our business it's a very high percentage of our business, for their business, what we're charging them is pretty small, right, in the global scheme of things. So, it will bounce around our geographic distribution, I guess.

Probably from their perspective, it's not all that big a deal.

Clark Wright: Got it. That's helpful. I just wanted to go back to the backlog. We haven't seen a decline in sequential decline since 2024. How much of that reflects unusually strong revenue conversion, contract timing, or exclusions from backlog versus a change in just bookings momentum versus what we started the year trending at?

Adnan Raza: Yeah. It's a little bit of both. Candidly, it's bookings. As John said earlier in the call as well, it's the timing of some of the larger deals, and I alluded to the backlog getting affected by the impact of the timing. To comment on a little bit on both, look, last quarter, we signed a large deal that we talked about on the secureWISE side, and that quarter, it was just bookings, so we started to recognize some of the revenue on that. So that's some strong contribution. Plus, as you rightly noted, the Japan contribution was strong compared to the prior quarter. Right?

The bookings comment I already made, and John already talked about how some of the larger bookings we still expect to come. I think the net takeaway is much like geographic revenue. Sometimes it is hard to predict the precise timing of the large deals, but net-net, it is not just one kind of thing in the hopper. We have a few things, and that is why we were confident enough to share that by the end of the year, we expect to be above where we were at the Q2 ending backlog number of 271.

Clark Wright: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein. Your line is now open.

Stacy Rasgon: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking some follow-ups for me.

John Kibarian: Sure, Stacy.

Stacy Rasgon: I guess with the new tool shipment in the quarter, I guess if you did one more in Q4, you're kind of on track to ship maybe six this year, which I think is what you said. But given the higher levels of CapEx year-over-year, do you think you'd be on track to ship more eProbe tools next year than you are this year? Or is this still a good run rate to think about?

John Kibarian: Yeah, we're still working through what our ability to build, execute, and customer demand is for next year. I don't know that we could probably give you much visibility into next year yet, Stacy. We are trying to execute that. A lot of it is on our side, like what are we able to do. As we get into next quarter, we'll give more visibility for next year.

Stacy Rasgon: Got it. Maybe just on free cash flow, I think last quarter you'd said that you thought you'd be free cash flow positive for the full year. CapEx would It sounds like CapEx should have been running about $15 million a quarter in the back half, and I know you did that in Q3. Do you still believe those are both true? Is this still a good CapEx level for Q4, and do you think for the full year you'll still be free cash flow positive?

Adnan Raza: Yeah, like John said, some of the spend that we saw was increased levels as we were increasing for next year, and you are starting to pick up some threads. Obviously, it is not just the machines that we ship out that we spend on, but it is also some eval situations that some may be at the customer site, in which case we will ship out, or some may be doing evals for the customers on here, right? So sometimes those evals will not show up in revenue, but they are the spend for us. So all of this is the direction of expanding the customer base.

On the CapEx, to answer your question of the dollar amount, yeah, we believe this is the high number for the year, and Q4 should be at or below this number.

Stacy Rasgon: And free cash flow for the year?

Adnan Raza: Again, we feel pretty good about growing the cash balance. I think for the second quarter call, we made the comment that we would expect to grow the cash from that point onwards towards the rest of the year at a higher level where we ended the cash at the Q2 level as well. So, free cash flow positive is the right direction to think about for the whole year as well.

Stacy Rasgon: Okay. Got it. Thank you, guys.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Gus Richard of Northland. Your line is now open.

Gus Richard: Yes, thanks for taking the question. Can you give us any color on, you are going to ship probably one more eProbe in the fourth quarter? Is that for advanced logic, trailing edge, new customer, old customer, memory? Any color on where you think that tool might end up?

John Kibarian: Yeah. We are trying to reserve some. It comes down to whether we can get this thing built or not. So we are racing towards the end to get this thing done. There is a couple places where it could go. To be candid with you, as mindful of 2027, in my prepared remark, I would like to get one going in China if I could, if not this late this year, early next year, just because I think we are missing out on a piece of that business that we should be getting at when we look at who could use these things and how helpful I think it could be.

Now that we have seen kind of positive results on trailing edge and the spend going on there, I think we had, in the past, assumed it was not that important a market for us. After what we did in Q2, I was like, "Hmm, we probably made a mistake on that." So we are trying to scramble to try to get that done. It will be tight, but I think we can squeeze that in at the end of this year or early next year.

Gus Richard: Got it. Thanks. Can you share the build plan for eProbe for next year? You expect to build five, 10? Just looking at CapEx, I would definitely think it is over five.

John Kibarian: Yes, it is. We expect we are trying to be able to build more than we built this year. A lot of it is on our end, and some not. Some of it is on our suppliers' ends, but just our ability to execute. I do not think I have a final number. I think we think it will be more than what we were able to build this year.

Gus Richard: All right. If I can sneak the last one in. How many columns have you got on order?

John Kibarian: Those are some of our long lead items. There is an increased number of columns on order compared to what we had last year.

Gus Richard: All right. Thanks so much.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Blair Abernethy of Rosenblatt. Your line is now open.

Blair Abernethy: Thanks. Just a couple more quick ones here, John. secureWISE, it has done very well since you guys took over that business, and you have had the opportunity to do some pretty large expansions with that technology. What is it looking like in the market now in terms of new customers that could be brought into the secureWISE?

John Kibarian: Yeah. I think, yeah, actually, as we have been looking at this, it kind of comes back to the question Stacy asked. We see an awful lot of customers that have sold equipment this year. As was covered at our user event in 2025, Intel standardized on secureWISE for its equipment, not just in the front end, but for test and assembly. So we have been going around to those customers and showing them how they can get access to their tools remotely, just like the leaders do. And the leaders transmit the most data and have the largest kind of AI-based services based on top of that data that they transmit across secureWISE.

With about nine months of that ongoing, we are starting to pick up more customers there. Also, other fabs are seeing the same benefits that, seeing that Intel got substantial benefits from standardizing. We do expect, and it is kind of natural that if the Cimetrix runtime business had a really strong 2026, you would expect the secureWISE business to then have a really strong 2027, right? Because it lives off the install base, and the install base just went up a lot, or at least shipped out of the equipment vendors to the fabs. As we look at next year, we expect to see growth in three areas.

Number one is the existing large customers, as well as some large customers that are, I think, meaningfully stepping up their deployments. More fabs, as fabs see the benefit of standardizing on it, even for their own internal work, particularly as they become more geographically, they run more geographically diversified operations. Then, lastly, as we start looking at the backend, test and assembly, more opportunity there. Of course, Intel and its suppliers, but as well as others. We are looking, as we do our first analyses, we think it will be a very good year for secureWISE next year.

Blair Abernethy: Okay, that is great. Thanks, John.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Quatrochi of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Travis Poulin: Hi, guys. This is Travis Poulin on for Joe Quatrochi. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to go back to backlog. I mean, your backlog peaked at $292 million in 3Q 2025. I'd just be curious, how should we think about you getting back to that level, either in 4Q 2026 or into the first half of 2027? Any color on that would be great. Thanks.

John Kibarian: Yeah, sure, Travis. Of course, a lot of the backlog comes from the largest contracts. Those tend to be very large, eight figures, and can even be nine-figure contracts. You're right to ask about Q4 and Q1. We expect, in our own model, some of them will close in Q4, some of those will close in Q1. Collectively, we think that will have a meaningful add to backlog that would get us above that 2025 number you quoted.

Travis Poulin: Thank you. That's it for me.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein. Your line is now open.

Stacy Rasgon: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking. Maybe just one last one for me.

John Kibarian: Okay.

Stacy Rasgon: I know you said 20% growth for the year still. You did something like 22% in the first half. You were like 19.5%, almost 20% in Q3. If I just took it very, very strictly, 20% would give me something like, I don't know, $73 million in Q4, and it would be up something like 17% year-over-year, so a little bit of a decel. Is that what you have in mind, or am I just being sort of too pedantic about this?

Adnan Raza: No, I think you're in the right direction. I mean, there's a reason why we were very careful to talk about the 20% and kind of setting that as a reaffirmed guidance. I mean, candidly, you know, welcome to PDF Solutions' story, but if you go back and look at some of our prior years, we've been accused of being cute with language about 20%-22% or approaching 20% and whatnot. But if you even use that grading lens on us, you will find that we were pretty precise and consistent in our prepared remarks as well as the ER quote as well that we put in there to talk about how we're thinking about 20%.

So, you're thinking about it the right way. The other thing I meant to think of mine also is second half of the year, like John Kibarian also said, it tends to be a strong one for us, as was last year. So we're set up against strong numbers even going into this year.

Stacy Rasgon: Got it. That's helpful. Thank you, guys.

Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Okay. At this time, there are no more questions. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the program. Thank you for joining us on today's call.

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