KLA Corp (NASDAQ: KLAC) stock rose over 3.4% on 29th October, 2020 (as of 10:21 am GMT-4; Source: Google finance) after the company posted better than expected results for the first quarter of FY 21 and gave upbeat forecast for the current quarter. The company has reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $420.6 million, compared to $346.5 million, in the year-ago period. KLA has ended the first quarter with $2.04 billion in total cash, total debt of $3.45 billion after retiring $50 million outstanding on the revolving line of credit. The company has generated free cash flow of $456 million in the September quarter.
KLAC in the first quarter of FY 21 has reported the adjusted earnings per share of $3.03, beating the analysts’ estimates for the adjusted earnings per share of $2.77, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet. The company had reported the adjusted revenue of $1.54 billion in the first quarter of FY 21, beating the analysts’ estimates for revenue of $1.49 billion. The company posted Non-GAAP gross margin of 62.1%, which is at the upper end of the guided range for the quarter of 60.5% to 62.5%. This is on back of higher semiconductor process control product mix, lower inventory reserve requirements driven by strengthening demand and services leveraged, drove the upside realized in the quarter.
Moreover, the revenue for the semiconductor process control segment, including its associated service business was $1.27 billion. The revenue for the specialty semiconductor process segment was $89 million, which has fallen by 11% sequentially but up 29% year-over-year. The demand in this segment is on back of growth in RF, MEMs and advanced packaging. PCB, Display and Component Inspection revenue was $181 million, which has fallen by 10% sequentially but up 1% year-over-year.
Additionally, during first quarter, the company repurchased $188 million of common stock and paid $141 million in dividend.
For the second quarter of fiscal 2021 ending in December, the company expects total revenue to be in the range of $1,510 million to $1,660 million, non-GAAP gross margin to be in a range of 61% to 63% and Non-GAAP diluted EPS attributable to KLA is expected to be in a range of $2.82 to $3.46. The analysts had forecast $2.80 a share on revenue of $1.5 billion for fiscal second-quarter. For Q2, Foundry is forecasted to be about 52% of semiconductor process control systems revenues for semiconductor customers, Memory is expected to grow to be approximately 37% & Logic is expected to be about 11%.