FormFactor Inc. Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Thank you. Welcome everyone to FormFactor's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On today's call are Chief Executive Officer, Mike Slessor, and Chief Financial Officer, Aric McKinnis. Before we begin, Stan Finkelstein, the company's VP of Investor Relations, will remind you of some important information.

Thank you. Today, the company will be discussing GAAP P&L results and some important non-GAAP results intended to supplement your understanding of the company's financials. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures and other financial information are available in the press release issued today by the company and on the investor relations section of our website. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Examples of such forward-looking statements include those with respect to the projections of financial and business performance, future macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions, the benefits of acquisitions and investments, including the ramp-up of manufacturing facilities, anticipated industry trends, potential disruptions in our supply chain, the impacts of regulatory changes, including tariffs and changes in export controls, the anticipated volatility in demand for products, our ability to develop, produce, and sell products, and the assumptions upon which such statements are based.

Those statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed during this call. Information on risk factors and uncertainties is contained in our most recent filing on Form 10-K with the SEC for the fiscal year ended December 27, 2025, and in our other SEC filings, which are available on the sec.gov website, and in our press release issued today. Forward-looking statements are made as of today, July 29, 2026. We assume no obligation to update them. With that, we will now turn the call over to FormFactor CEO, Mike Slessor.

Thanks for joining us today. FormFactor's second quarter revenue, gross profit, and earnings per share set all-time records. We achieved two important milestones on the path to the new target model we introduced in May. First, we surpassed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate. Second, we exceeded 50% gross margin. In the current third quarter, we expect to deliver sequential increases in both revenue and profitability as we extend our run of record results. Over the past four quarters, we've grown revenue by more than 30%, increased non-GAAP gross margin by 1,500 basis points, and tripled our earnings per share. These improvements are the product of a multi-year effort to create and expand FormFactor's unique position at the intersection of high-performance compute and advanced packaging, while simultaneously strengthening the company's execution to enhance profitability and drive operating leverage.

Our second quarter results and third quarter outlook show a clear path to our new target model. Looking further ahead, our Farmers Branch site is on track to come online in the fourth quarter and ramp throughout 2027, providing increased capacity at a structurally lower cost. This will in turn enable us to accelerate revenue growth and generate additional profitability and operating leverage. Aric will discuss our current operational performance and future plans later in the call. The breadth of demand we saw during the quarter is particularly encouraging, with strength in major growth initiatives like High Bandwidth Memory and co-packaged optics powering sequential revenue increases in both the probe cards and system segments. This broad participation reflects the diversification strategy we've discussed for years and demonstrates the value of serving all major semiconductor customers and applications rather than concentrating on any single segment, customer, or application.

Currently, most of the manufacturing activity at this intersection of HPC and advanced packaging is occurring in Taiwan. FormFactor's important role in this region is evident in our supplemental materials. Second quarter revenue from Taiwan grew sequentially by more than 30%, and the world's leading foundry was again a 10% customer. Yesterday, we announced the expansion of our multi-year partnership with Keystone Microtech, a provider of semiconductor manufacturing and test services based in Zhubei, Taiwan. This latest step expands FormFactor's regional footprint in Taiwan, improving our local assembly and service capabilities and our responsiveness in supporting the exceptionally steep ramps of complex devices like GPUs and custom ASICs. Turning now to segment and market details. In DRAM probe cards, we delivered the expected sequential growth from the first quarter to set another record in this business, with increased HBM4 demand paired with sustained demand in DDR applications.

HBM comprised approximately two-thirds of our overall DRAM revenue, driven by two customers' continued adoption of FormFactor's differentiated SmartMatrix full-wafer contactor technology in high-speed HBM4 applications. SmartMatrix provides a unique combination of high parallelism productivity and high-speed performance, enabling our customers to test hundreds of completed HBM stacks simultaneously at the 10 gigabit-plus I/O data rate of HBM4. This capability is critical in advanced packaging processes like TSMC's CoWoS and Intel's EMIB, where stacked die test insertions ensure a known good HBM stack before it's combined with costly GPUs or custom ASICs. Our second quarter results show the impact of FormFactor's competitive advantage and the resulting market share gains, as pin I/O speeds and overall stack bandwidth for HBM continue the relentless increase as the industry progresses from HBM3 to HBM4, and then on to HBM5.

In the current third quarter, we're forecasting DRAM revenues to be comparable to the record second quarter, but with a significant underlying shift from HBM to DDR. As you've heard recently from all our major DRAM customers, the supply environment continues to be extremely constrained, and our customers are shifting their wafer start mix to DDR designs to capture the profit opportunity provided by significant DDR price increases. Since probe cards are specific to each customer chip design, we expect DRAM mix to track these dynamic customer product shifts while these unusual end market conditions persist. Shifting now to the Foundry & Logic probe card market. As expected, second quarter Foundry & Logic demand increased significantly over the first quarter.

This increase was driven primarily by growth in probe cards for data center CPU applications, building on continued strength in networking applications, initial momentum in hyperscaler custom ASICs, and steady demand in PC and mobile. In the current quarter, we expect continued growth in Foundry & Logic probe card revenue, driven by broad incremental demand across our served application space in this market. Compared to a quarter ago, the trend of increasing CPU compute intensity to enable agentic AI use cases is now broadly appreciated, and is resulting in increased probe card demand for data center CPU designs. FormFactor has opportunities to benefit from this trend in several ways. First, our long-term relationship and strong incumbent market share with a leader in data center CPUs.

Second, an expanding relationship with the world leader in high-performance compute, as our strong position in networking expands into supporting their GPU and CPU product lines. And third, our successful qualification and subsequent multiple design wins at a large fabless XPU customer. Each of these three customer relationships is at a different stage, but together they represent a broad-based opportunity for FormFactor to serve growing CPU demand. They also provide an excellent example of the value of FormFactor's long-held diversification strategy, where being a key supplier to all major customers for growing applications like CPUs provides us with broad exposure to the overall growth trend. Turning to our systems segment, systems revenue nearly doubled sequentially in the second quarter, albeit off an unusually weak first quarter. This growth was driven by two components.

One, a recovery in our core engineering prober business, and two, and more significantly, accelerating growth in co-packaged optics or CPO. A quarter ago, we forecasted our 2026 CPO revenues to reach the high end of the $10 million-$20 million range we'd communicated at the start of the year. We now expect to exceed that range by the end of the third quarter, and to significantly exceed the $20 million level for the year overall. This acceleration is driven by two factors. First, the growing volumes of CPO chips planned for later this year, and second, our leadership in the all-important test insertion one, which ensures known good die on the photonic integrated circuit, or PIC wafer, before it's combined with the electrical integrated circuit, or EIC, to form the optical module in scale up and scale-out network switches.

The rapid recent growth of our CPO business is an exciting development, which we believe represents the very early stages of widespread adoption of silicon photonics in the broader semiconductor industry. Traditional copper interconnect is reaching physical limits in speed, heat, and energy consumption, and photonics provides a fundamentally more efficient way to transact data within and between data centers by using light instead of electricity. FormFactor is ideally positioned to help lead tests for this new area of the semiconductor industry, as our lab-to-fab strategy has produced a decade-long first-mover advantage paired with key customer and partner relationships. Before turning the call over to Aric, I want to thank the global FormFactor team as they continue to demonstrate remarkable agility in navigating the challenging supply environment by quickly resolving internal and external constraints.

This agility helped deliver double-digit sequential growth in the second quarter. We expect to grow again to another record in the current third quarter. We're well-positioned as test intensity and complexity continue to rise at the intersection of high-performance compute and advanced packaging, and are excited to be making good initial progress on the path to our new target model that commits to double revenue and more than double profitability by 2030. Aric, you're up. Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon.

Q2 was another strong quarter for FormFactor. We delivered our third consecutive quarterly revenue record and drove additional non-GAAP gross margin expansion to 53.3%, demonstrating significant operating leverage and making progress on the priorities we discussed last quarter and at our investor day in May. At our investor day, we introduced our new target model with a goal of doubling revenues to $1.6 billion, achieving 55% non-GAAP gross margin and more than doubling non-GAAP earnings per share to $5 per share by 2030. The current strong demand environment, combined with our continued focus on operational execution, drove measurable gains towards the new target model in Q2. Non-GAAP gross margin increased 430 basis points sequentially and up nearly 15 percentage points as compared with Q2 of last year.

Similarly, non-GAAP EPS increased by nearly 50% sequentially to $0.82 per share, and more than tripled as compared with Q2 of last year. The quarter-over-quarter improvement in non-GAAP gross margins is driven by several factors. Approximately a third of the improvement is from baseline cost reductions that are durable in nature. One third is driven by the $32 million or approximately 14% quarter-over-quarter increase in revenues. The remaining one third represent items that we don't expect to recur, such as IEEPA tariff refunds and precious metal reclaimed from our Baldwin Park site shutdown, announced early in Q1. Product mix remained strong in Q2, driven by factors like record HBM revenue within DRAM. Excluding the tiny items and mix favorability, we believe baseline non-GAAP gross margins have improved to around 51% at Q2 volumes.

The combination of higher volumes and more efficient cost structure is enabling us to convert strong demand into higher gross profit and operating income. We have taken several measures to increase output in the short term, even as we prepare to ramp Farmers Branch starting at the end of this year. Gains in output have been primarily achieved through yield and cycle time improvement, even as we see more constraints across the supply chain at current production levels. Our Farmers Branch site expansion remains on track to ramp starting the end of this year and continue to ramp over the course of 2027. Bringing this capacity up on time and on budget remains a key focus, as it will enable our next phase of growth and gross margin expansion. Stepping through our results in a bit more detail.

Q2 2026 revenues of $258.2 million came in $18.2 million above the midpoint of our Q2 outlook range of $235 million to $245 million. We're up $32.1 million, or about 14% from Q1. Systems segment revenues made a significant recovery, reaching a new record of $48.5 million in Q2 2026, up $20.6 million or 74% from Q1. GAAP gross margin for the second quarter was 50.7%, up from 38.4% in Q1. Cost of revenues included $6.7 million of GAAP to non-GAAP reconciling items, primarily related to stock-based compensation, amortization of intangibles, and restructuring charges. Details of the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciling items are outlined in our press release issued today, and in the reconciliation table available on the investor relations section of our website. Q1 GAAP gross margins included $18.8 million of restructuring costs that did not recur in Q2.

On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin for the second quarter was 53.3%, 430 basis points higher than Q1 and 230 basis points above the high end of our Q2 outlook range. ProCard segment gross margin increased to 54.4%, driven primarily by higher factory utilization, manufacturing spending discipline, and improved yields. System gross margin increased to 48.5%, driven primarily by higher volumes and favorable mix. Our GAAP operating expenses were $73.1 million for the second quarter, up from Q1, but down as a percentage of revenue. On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses were $65.7 million or 25.4% of revenue, compared to $62 million or 27.4% of revenue in Q1. This 200 basis point sequential improvement in OpEx as a percent of revenue demonstrates operating leverage across the P&L and is the result of continued spending discipline even as we grow, invest in key R&D programs, and fund the Farmers Branch expansion.

Included in Q2 operating expenses were $4.9 million of pre-production ramp costs for Farmers Branch. GAAP net income for the second quarter was $56.2 million, or $0.71 per fully diluted share, up from GAAP net income of $20.4 million or $0.26 per fully diluted share in the previous quarter. The increase was driven primarily by higher revenue, higher gross margin, and lower restructuring-related costs. Second quarter non-GAAP net income was $65 million, or $0.82 per fully diluted share, up from $44.5 million or $0.56 per fully diluted share in Q1. The GAAP effective tax rate for the second quarter was 11.1%, and the non-GAAP effective tax rate for the second quarter was 16.2%. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flows. We delivered free cash flow in the second quarter of $52.6 million, compared to $30.7 million in Q1.

This increase in free cash flow was driven primarily by higher cash flows from operations. Cash flows from operations were $61.8 million in Q2, up $16.8 million from Q1, driven primarily by higher net income, partially offset by working capital investments to support these higher operating levels. At quarter end, total cash and investments were up $42.8 million to $349 million. We continue to expect that the cash CapEx for Farmers Branch and capacity additions will be between $140 million and $170 million in 2026. Pre-production ramp costs are recorded as a component of G&A, and are expected to now be around between $25 million and $30 million in total in 2026, with about $12 million incurred to date through Q2, and about $7 million expected in the current third quarter.

Once production ramp begins, the cost currently recorded in G&A will become part of the cost of goods sold on a go-forward basis. Upon completion of the ramp to the initial target capacity, which is expected by the beginning of 2028, we expect Farmers Branch to be accretive to gross margin. Associated with our investment in Farmers Branch, we secured certain incentives from both the state of Texas and the City of Farmers Branch that we expect will partially offset the associated expenditures. Among others, these incentives include a $24.2 million grant from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, designated to fund capital expenditures upon meeting certain criteria. Overall, we continue to expect that we are largely self-funding the investment in Farmers Branch from increased profitability, more efficient cost structure, and cash flow from operations. During the second quarter, we did not repurchase any shares.

At the quarter end, authorization of $70.9 million remains available for future repurchases under the April 2025, $75 million two-year buyback program that is intended to offset dilution from stock-based compensation. In the short term, we are continuing to prioritize our deployment of cash to accelerate the ramp of our new manufacturing site in Farmers Branch. Turning to the third quarter non-GAAP outlook. We expect Q3 revenues of $270 million ± $10 million. At the midpoint of this revenue range, we expect non-GAAP gross margin of 54% ± 150 basis points. The increase from the Q2 baseline of 51% described earlier to Q3 outlook is driven primarily by items that are not expected to recur, specifically $79 million, or about 300 basis points in IEEPA tariff refunds that we expect to receive in the current third quarter.

These refunds represent the return of tariffs paid starting in 2025 and through the beginning of 2026, prior to these tariffs being ruled unlawful. The benefits of marginally higher Q3 revenue volumes are expected to be offset by less favorable product mix and DRAM, as Mike mentioned earlier. At the midpoint of the outlook range, we expect Q3 non-GAAP operating expenses to be $70 million ± $2 million, including about $7 million in pre-production ramp costs for Farmers Branch. Our Q3 non-GAAP effective tax rate is expected to be between the range of 15%-19%. Non-GAAP earnings per fully diluted share for Q3 is expected to be $0.86 ± $0.09. A reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP Q3 outlook is available on the investor relations section of our website and on our press release issued today.

As demonstrated by our Q2 results and our Q3 outlook, we are already making meaningful progress towards our new target model we shared in May, as we capitalize on the strong secular trends at the intersection of high-performance compute and advanced packaging. Our differentiated products are driving demand in areas like high-speed test of HBM memory and traction in new addressable markets like co-packaged optics. These growth vectors, combined with our focus on execution, cost discipline, and the timely ramp of additional capacity in Farmers Branch, have resulted in good operating leverage in our Q2 results and chart an encouraging path into the future. With that, let's open the call for questions. Operator? As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone.

To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star one one again. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to allow everyone the opportunity to participate. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Krish Sankar of TD Cowen. Your line is open, Krish.

Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the very strong results and impressive gross margins. I had a clarification on the question. Aric, on the clarification, did you say that 51% or 53% gross margin is the new baseline, and as Farmers Branch comes online, it's going to be more accretive? Should we assume, as these revenue levels go higher, the gross margin should be better than 53%?

Hi. Yes. Thank you for your question. Just to clarify what I said, the actual gross margins for the quarter were 53.3%. That included some items that we don't think are recurring. There were some tariff refunds and things like that, reclaim from precious metals, for example. Those things won't recur. The recurring or sustainable element of gross margins, we believe, is more like 51% at the current volumes and mix. We expect that that's the new baseline that you should be thinking of. Does that answer your question?

Yes. That incorporates even Farmers Branch when it comes online?

That's the current baseline with our current operating footprint. We do expect that Farmers Branch, when it comes online, will be accretive to current gross margin levels.

Perfect. Awesome. Then a quick follow-up for Mike. Mike, it's kind of impressive to see TSMC being 11% customer. I'm just wondering, in last quarter, you had NVIDIA, I think it was mostly networking chips. I'm just wondering, does Rubin and CPO for NVIDIA come under TSMC or it'll be under NVIDIA, and what is the status on the Rubin qual?

Let me address that one first, Krish. There really is no component of GPU business in the second quarter results for this 10% customer. As we said in the past, we expect this to be a second half event for us, and we're on track. We're qualified, as we've shared with you, and are shipping production units for revenue here in the third quarter. The CPO piece does flow through that 10% customer. It is in many cases, with the combination of the fabless foundry ecosystem, you recognize revenue in different places depending on the market segment, even depending on the individual product line they have.

Awesome. Thanks a lot, Mike. Appreciate it. Congrats again. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Prisco of Cantor. Please go ahead, Matthew. Hey, guys.

Thanks for taking my question. I guess, first on Foundry & Logic, can you provide some more color on the breadth of the strength you're seeing there today? Then I know you highlighted the kind of agentic AI driving the CPU demand. How are you thinking about that as a potential upside source versus your target model that was outlined only a couple of months ago now? Thanks. Yeah. The strength, as we went from Q1 to Q2 in Foundry & Logic, as we said on the call, primarily associated with an up-step in CPU demand from one of our historically strong customers.

As we look at our opportunity in the CPU space, which we do view as a longer-term opportunity, there's a couple of different ways that we're exposed to that. As I mentioned, the growing relationship with the leader in high-performance compute, they obviously are starting to participate in the CPU business. Remember, we're qualified and now competing for share with the large fabless CPU manufacturer. A great example of where we're diversified and sort of no matter how the CPU market share landscape shakes out between our customers, we feel like we at least have the opportunity to participate. All of those relationships are in different phases.

If it all hits today, it'll have different components for us. Again, a good example of our goal to be a broad-based supplier to all the leaders in the industry.

Got it. That's helpful. Maybe on the supply side, the efficiency is obviously coming in much better than we had expected. How do we think about your ability to continue driving efficiencies from here within the current footprint through the end of the year, maybe into 2027 as well? Maybe more importantly, Farmers Branch coming online in Q4 and ramping through next year. How do we think about the timing of the revenue contribution there? How meaningful can that be over the next few quarters? Thanks. Yeah, we're very excited about the output we've been able to drive out of our existing footprint.

Just to reiterate, that was driven in large part by the transformation that we've done in our global operations team, really thinking and doing different. We see those benefits being driven primarily from yield and cycle time improvements. As you can tell by our most recent results and also by our outlook for next quarter, we've been pretty successful, and we intend to continue to push on those levers through the end of the year in advance of Farmers Branch starting to ramp beginning in Q4. The initial targeted capacity of Farmers Branch is roughly equivalent to our California probes footprint to date. We expect that that will come online over the course of the year, but should contribute meaningful capacity to the extent the demand is there.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Ellis of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead, Craig.

Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions, and let me start by recognizing the stellar execution in the quarter. Nice job, team. Mike, I'll start with DRAM since there haven't been questions there. I think three or four quarters ago, we all wondered if some of the legacy formats like DDR4 and 5 would come back, and here they are. Can you help us understand how long live do you see some of the strength that you talked about for 3Q, and how we should properly think about the DRAM business from here, given that it does seem to have at least some near-term legs?

Well, DRAM overall, both HBM and DDR5, is a pretty dynamic marketplace right now, both for our customers and for us. As we said, we see a pretty significant mix shift in Q3. Although the top-line DRAM revenue is expected to be pretty similar to Q2. We expect the mix to shift towards DDR quite significantly. That really, in conversations with our customers, is a rational reaction to the pricing they're seeing in the market, where they are, and you've heard this from them in recent earnings calls, going to adapt their product mix to maximize their profit opportunity.

That's given the probe cards are a device-specific consumables, as they change their wafer start mix, we're going to see our mix change correspondingly.

The follow-up question goes back to a point you made in your prepared comments around the breadth of demand, and it's really brought home by the fact that on the 10% customer list, the ones disclosed, and I know you have many big customers beyond that, total 35% of revenue. So 65% of the revenue comes from those not at 10% in the quarter. The question is this, as we think about the business opportunities from here, I think you alluded to competing for business at a fabless CPU supplier, and you talked about other 2H revenue at a leading GPU supplier. How many opportunities are there like that? Can you give us your Pareto list and help us understand the timing that those could come into the model? Thank you. There's a bunch of different opportunities, and I'll ground people back in what we said at our Investor Day in early May.

The segments and the customers we're operating in, where we plan to gain more than half of the increase in the addressable market between now and 2030, they're pretty familiar places, right? It's things like GPUs, it's things like co-packaged optics, custom ASICs. In addition, when we look at expanding our HBM business, for example, coming back to DRAM, I made the point that we're seeing strong adoption now from two customers. There's broadening and diversification in share gains. You're seeing the early innings of what we told you was going to happen at the Investor Day. You're seeing the early innings here in Q2 results and the Q3 guidance.

That's helpful. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Sun of Citi. Please go ahead, Elizabeth. Hi, thanks for taking my question, congrats on the good result.

I guess my first question is on the CPO side. Mike, you talk about total CPO revenue expected to cross over $20 million by Q3 and another step up in Q4. I'm just wondering for the CPO rev throughout the year, is it increasingly higher quarter-over-quarter? Ultimately, how much revenue can you do for this year in CPO?

Yeah, it's an interesting question, right? To ground everybody, when we came into the year, we said we were expected to do between $10 million and $20 million in CPO revenue. Today we've upped that we're going to expect to do $20 million by the end of Q3 this quarter. How much more on top we do in Q4 for the full year, kind of an open question right now. We're seeing some significant acceleration in this business. It's new technology. It's new technology for our customers. It's new technology for us. We certainly expect to be above $20 million for the year. The magnitude of that is a little tricky to judge right now. What I will say, all of these new technology programs, they always have acceleration, digestion phases. Right now, we're seeing strong acceleration and a reminder that this is a significant market.

We told you at Investor Day that our piece of that serve market, about $400 million by 2030. Right now, accelerating pretty hard towards that.

Got it. That's good to know. The second question is on the HBM side, from the competition perspective. You are pretty strong at two HBM customers, so I'd like to ask, how about the share dynamics at the third biggest HBM customer? Also, one of your foundry logic probe card peers has been pretty vocal about talking about getting into the HBM market. I'm just curious, how do you see the competition environment going forward in, say, HBM4E and going forward?

Yeah, this is one where I'll try not to get too deep in the weeds, but it's important to understand sort of the subsegments and applications in HBM overall. Where we're really doing very well and now have strong share at two major DRAM manufacturers, HBM manufacturers, is on the high-speed stack die test, essentially the final test for the HBM stack, where our customers ensure that it's good before it gets shipped to the foundry to be packaged together with GPUs and custom ASICs. That's a very high-performance insertion and one where we have very strong share. There's lots of competition, for example, in the core die insertions and other places, which are a lot like regular DRAM wafer sort.

Our differentiation, our share continue to be quite strong at these high-value, high-speed final test insertions, and we're continuing to partner with all the customers, all three of them, although our share is stronger at two of them right now, to advance that capability and differentiation as speeds continue to increase and stack heights continue to increase as we move from four to 4E to five.

Got it. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of David Duley of Steelhead Securities. Please go ahead, David. Thanks for taking my question.

I guess, congratulations on being able to get a lot more output out of your current factory footprint. I think at your Analyst Day, you showed a chart with cycle time improvements. I believe the goal is getting to 60% cycle time improvements, something like that. I was wondering if you could share with us any metrics now that you've had several quarters of improving output from the factory, is how much you've lowered your cycle times or how much you've improved your yields. Any sort of metrics about where you are on your journey would be most helpful.

Yeah, thanks for your question. We don't typically share those sorts of metrics in these forums, in general, what I can say is that the drivers that we expect to really chart our path forward for gross margins remain consistent with what we discussed at our Investor Day and the target model that we laid out. We still expect to drive the majority of the improvements from volume, operational excellence, and more transformation innovation. I believe that we are on track with that. If you look at where we are on more of a stabilized or a normalized basis at 51%, we see appropriate contribution from all of those vectors.

Are you halfway on your journey to 60% improvement cycle times or three-quarters? I don't have the chart in front of me, but there was a chart at your Analyst Day that kind of implied you were significantly along. I think at that time, you'd improved cycle times by 25%.

I would say. Sorry, go ahead.

Go ahead. Yeah, I would say, again, we are on track.

If you look at a high level, the implied revenue run rate for our Q3 outlook, it's starting to get close to something like $1.1 billion run rate. If you look at our gross margin trajectory from where we were at our Investor Day at 49%, looking at 51% as a normalized level at the current revenue and mix, I think we're aligned. We're on track. We're on the journey. We're very happy about the performance to date. No significant changes in our expectations.

Okay. The second question is, there's been a lot of chatter now with, I think, a third hyperscaler customer kind of ramping into volume. Could you just take a step back and remind us where you are in servicing, I guess the three customers now that are somewhat significant, and how big you think the TAM for hyperscaler probe cards is?

Hyperscaler custom ASICs, I'm going to do the same thing Aric did and take you back to the Investor Day. This is one of the key growth initiatives for us. We're engaged with all the hyperscalers, and some of them are further along, certainly, in their ASIC programs, having released multiple parts. Some of them are early on. We do have revenue in the second quarter, and we've updated you on some design wins earlier. I think the big discontinuity is still to come here when these custom ASICs require an advanced MEMS probe. Looks like the next generation of something like a Google TPU is going to require an advanced MEMS probe because of the power and speed requirements it runs at.

If you remember, for those of you who followed us for a while, exactly the same thing happened with GPUs two, three, four years ago, where historically they'd use legacy probe cards, pseudo-MEMS technology. All of a sudden, these chips crossed the performance threshold where they needed advanced MEMS probe card. We're engaged with all the hyperscalers on working through the development right now for those next generation devices. I don't think you'll see significant revenue contributions here in 2026, but certainly into 2027 as those parts ramp, we expect to be a key supplier in those ecosystems.

Okay, thank you. Just one follow-up on our earlier question about broadening out in the foundry logic space. You've talked in great detail about the CPU segment. Is there any other broadening out? I imagine you might see some GPU in the foundry business, maybe some improvement in industrial and automotive. Maybe talk about the two or three largest needle movers for the continued strength in foundry logic.

Yeah. It really revolves around high-performance compute and advanced packaging. Remember, we're pretty levered to the leading edge. Probe cards and wafer tests are most valuable for our customers, where yields are low and packaging costs are high. HPC and advanced packaging is the nexus of those things. Automotive and industrial, although we have some exposure, pretty spotty and nowhere near as significant a growth driver as even from a SAM perspective, from an available market perspective, nowhere near as significant as HPC and AI. In terms of growth opportunities, again, I'll take you back to the Investor Day, the different elements of GPUs, custom ASICs, CPO, those are the things really driving.

Well, those are some pretty good drivers. Congratulations on nice results. Thanks, David.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dennis Patchen of Needham & Company. Your line is open, Dennis.

Great. Thank you very much. Perhaps a question on the CPO adoption outlook. I think initially you had said that it was going to be a 2028 story, now you're seeing more acceleration. Are we perhaps expecting the timeline to accelerate a little bit? Are we maybe going to see more volume hit sometime in 2027? Have there been changes about that?

I wouldn't say there's changes, Dennis. What I would say is there's acceleration here in the very short term. Sorry, we're having some audio problems. Give us a second. Let me try that now. We're good? Okay. I wouldn't say there's a significant pull-in or change in our view. If I endpoint you to the 2030 target model, we said our served market is about $400 million there. We are seeing some rapid adoption right now, very early innings, right? We talked about $20 million in 2026. We now expect to achieve that by the end of the third quarter. As I said in response to an earlier question, we would expect to obviously go above $20 million in the year overall. Having said that, it gets pretty difficult to forecast out.

There's lots of variables in this, both overall CPO adoption by our customers, also yields test time, some very important variables that go into the adoption rate. Having said that, we're really excited about the opportunity, right? We've got a strong position in insertion one. We're partnered with the leaders in this overall ecosystem and serving all of the different customer ecosystems and architectures. We expect it to grow significantly. Granulizing it or making it granular enough to go quarter by quarter through 2027, I think is probably a bridge too far at this point, strong growth business and a great opportunity for us.

Yeah, no. Thanks for that. That was a lot of great detail. Maybe for my follow-up, we can talk about a longer-term question in terms of GPU tests. Previously, these products weren't tested with the MEMS-based probe cards, there may be some move towards that. How does that roadmap look for now? Have there been any changes or any acceleration in terms of when MEMS-based probe cards could be adopted? Is there any particular product that you can discuss that may adopt these sooner rather than later?

Yeah. GPUs have fully adopted advanced MEMS probe cards. You see that happened probably two generations ago. It really is driven by the power and speed requirements of testing these GPUs. The immense amount of current has to go in and out of the parts at some significant speeds. Really the only way to do that is an advanced MEMS probe technology. There's only a handful of us in the industry that can produce that technology. Right now, it's primarily our competitor's business. As we've updated everyone, we're now qualified and shipping production units here in the third quarter. We expect that business to grow. As I fast-forward to custom ASICs, in response to a previous question, custom ASICs are undergoing that transition to advanced MEMS probe technology right now.

GPU is a nice history lesson for how this happened. Exciting that that custom ASIC transition is in front of us as well.

Great. That's it for me. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Once again, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Christian Schwab of Craig-Hallum. Your line is open, Christian.

Hey. Great quarter. Can you give us some idea on the fabless CPU customer, where your market share is today and where you think it can go over time?

Yeah. We've updated people on the multi-year journey to get qualified, which we're qualified, and gain share there, and we've now won a couple of designs. As we said in the past, it's going to take a while, right? For a couple of reasons. One, this is a brand-new customer for us. Unlike some of the opportunities that involve, like GPUs, that involve existing customers but a new application, those can move relatively quickly. When you're introducing yourself to a brand-new customer supply base, that takes a little bit longer. We're happy with the progress there and the exposure. The other reason it's going to take a little while is because things are very capacity-constrained across the industry. As we ramp things up, we want to be thoughtful about the capacity commitments we make, both to existing customers and new customers.

That's probably, until Farmers Branch comes online, going to be a little bit of a governor on our market share growth there as well. Good position, executing well. I would characterize it as low single-digit market share at this point, but with a whole lot more opportunity in front of us.

Great. Thank you. Just one last question here on gross margins. I know it's your Analyst Day. You expected Farmers Branch, I believe, to drive gross margin accretion by 2028. Just as we think about exiting this year in gross margins for 2027, should we assume some gross margin improvement due to lower cost manufacturing base, et cetera, in 2027? Do you really think that'll just all come in 2028?

I think we're primarily counting on seeing that sort of improvement and accretion from Farmers Branch fully in 2028. The reason why is that, as you know, ramps like this come with some measure of inefficiency, and we expect to see some of that through next year as we ramp the site. That said, we're planning to be as efficient as possible. One element of that is completing the ramp as quickly as possible. Confining it to the course of a year to complete the ramp to initial capacity. We are planning to largely offset those inefficiencies through the operational effectiveness improvements that you've seen us making, some of which you've already seen. We expect that to largely offset some of these headwinds as we ramp the site. What remains clear to us is that we need this capacity.

It's coming online very timely, and we think it's very important to support the growth that we see in our current addressable markets.

Great. No other questions. Thank you.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Mike Slessor for closing remarks. Sir? Thanks again, everyone, for joining us today.

As usual, we're going to be attending some late summer and early fall conferences, and hope to see you there and answer your questions about FormFactor. Until then, stay safe and take care.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.