MKS Posts 86% EPS Growth But Flags Margin Headwinds

Air Products said on September 16 that it signed a long-term deal to supply high-purity gases to a leading chipmaker, backed by roughly $250 million of its own money in Arizona. It is the company's second semiconductor supply win, and the two projects together carry more than $900 million of investment. Under the Arizona project, Air Products will build, own, and operate the equipment, from hydrogen generation units and carbon dioxide purification to bulk supply of helium, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide, with supply targeted to start in phases. The company has supplied electronics makers for more than 40 years, and its Chandler facility has served the Phoenix chip cluster since 1981. In the fiscal third quarter reported on July 30, adjusted earnings per share rose 12% to $3.47, and management lifted its full-year outlook to an adjusted $13.39 to $13.49 per share. The pivot away from clean energy has been costly: on June 30, Air Products said it would not proceed with its Louisiana Clean Energy Complex and would discontinue a zero-carbon liquid hydrogen facility in Casa Grande, Arizona, triggering roughly $2.9 billion in pre-tax charges and a GAAP loss of $6.47 per share in the third quarter. Air Products expects about $3.5 billion of capital spending in fiscal 2026, and the release did not name the customer or state the contract's length.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned this week that memory prices have jumped 5x to 7x and now account for roughly 75% of the cost of some lower-end phones and laptops, cautioning the shortage could deepen in 2027. Tan told investors the industry faces one of the most severe supply constraints in its history across leading-edge logic, silicon wafers, memory, and subscripts, and said these shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. Intel is pivoting production toward data-center CPUs and now guides 2026 capital expenditure above $20 billion, with 2027 spending set to run significantly higher. Micron Technology echoed the outlook, saying it sees tightness continuing beyond 2027, aligned with SK hynix flagging 2027 as potentially the industry's worst supply year. Micron's $100 billion in take-or-pay remaining performance obligations and $22 billion in customer deposits and letters of credit lock in floor pricing above prior peak margins, while its fiscal third-quarter gross margin hit 84.9% on DRAM pricing gains in the low 60s percentage range and NAND pricing in the mid-80s percentage range.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Thursday he expects the company to sell twice as many chips in the next year as it did this year, a signal to investors that demand has not yet peaked. Huang attributed the outlook to AI investment spreading across industries, economies and countries. Management said consumer expectations point to another doubling of growth next year, and Nvidia projected around 70% revenue growth for the fiscal year ending January 2028, bringing revenue to almost $673 billion. Management classified the outlook as supply tight, implying Nvidia's capacity to ship chips could remain one of the largest impediments to growth. Last year, Huang said the company shipped around 6 million Blackwell GPUs in four quarters, and Rubin is now coming up as the next big part of the product cycle.