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Teradyne Earnings Call Transcript - Q2 FY 2026

Jul 29, 2026

Operator

Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press 0 and a member of our team will be happy to help you.

Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press 0 and a member of our team will be happy to help you.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the Teradyne Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the prepared remarks.

As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Amy McAndrews, VP of Corporate Relations for Teradyne. Please go ahead.

Amy McAndrews

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our discussion of Teradyne's most recent financial results. I am joined this morning by our CEO, Gregory S. Smith; our CFO, Michelle L. Turner.

Details of our performance for the second quarter of 2026 and our outlook for the third quarter. The press release containing our second quarter results was issued last evening. We are providing slides as well as a copy of these prepared remarks on the Teradyne Investor website that may be helpful in following the discussion.

Replays of this call will be available via the same page after the call ends. The matters that we discuss today will include forward-looking statements that involve risks that could cause Teradyne's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We caution listeners not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements included in this presentation.

We encourage you to review the safe harbor statement contained in the slides accompanying this presentation as well as the risk factors described in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, on file with the SEC. Additionally, these forward-looking statements are made only as of today. During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures.

We have posted additional information concerning these non-GAAP financial measures including reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures where available, on our investor website. Looking ahead between now and our next earnings call, Teradyne expects to participate in technology-focused investor conferences hosted by Goldman Sachs and Citi. Our quiet period will begin at the close of business on September 11, 2026.

Following Greg and Michelle's comments this morning, we will open up the call for questions. This call is scheduled for one hour. Gregory?

Gregory S. Smith

Good morning. For the second quarter in a row, we delivered record revenue and once again AI was the driver. Total company revenue topped $1.3 billion up over 100% year-over-year with non-GAAP EPS of $2.47 up over 300% year-over-year.

All three of our business groups, Semi Test, Product Test and Robotics, grew year-over-year in AI demand across all parts of the business. At more than 60%, AI-driven revenue is the key proof point that our wafer-to-AI data center strategy is delivering results. There are many superlatives that we could use to describe this quarter's results.

And Michelle is going to walk you through the details. I would like to use my time today to set context for what we believe is a multiyear growth phase for our entire business driven by the continued AI build-out. Certainly, this is clearest in compute.

Across CPUs, accelerators, networking, and in memory for HBM and DDR. However, data centers are now also the primary growth drivers for flash memory, hard disk drives, power, board test, high-speed interconnect, and robotics. The long timeline of data center investment plans has given our SoC and memory customers the confidence to aggressively invest in wafer fabrication equipment for new process technologies and additional wafer capacity.

For years, semiconductor capital investment grew slowly. And ATE grew even more slowly within it. That is changing.

Two factors are now tailwinds for the ATE TAM. The first is overall semi cap investment. Particularly wafer fab equipment, WFE, which has begun accelerating.

More WFE means more wafers; new equipment generations enable denser process nodes. More wafers and higher density together mean more transistors to test in SoC and more bits to test in memory. WFE CapEx is now forecasted to approach $250 billion, with 5% to 10% annual growth in 300-millimeter wafer production and 15% to 20% CAGR in total production over the midterm.

Total non-memory transistor production is a reasonable first-order predictor of the SoC TAM. Every transistor must be tested and a given process node yields roughly the same transistor count per wafer regardless of device type. Memory bit production is the analogous predictor for the memory TAM, also forecast to grow at a 15% to 20% CAGR over the midterm.

Neither of these predicts the ATE TAM precisely in any given year but both signal direction. Transistor and bit growth rates have inflected upward and are expected to hold a steeper slope through the end of the decade. The second factor is advanced packaging.

Wafer transistor counts do not vary with die size. But the required test volume scales with acceptable quality level for the devices being tested. As accelerators, CPUs, and networking devices pack in more chiplets, memories and eventually CPO, a single latent defect has a greater impact on final device yield raising test intensity per die in multichip packages.

Both package volume and dies per package are forecast to keep rising through the end of the decade, providing a sustained tailwind to the compute TAM. The result after more than a decade of semi cap equipment outgrowing the test TAM, the trend reversed in 2024 and test is now outpacing fab equipment. With WFE long-term forecasts becoming clearer, we are increasingly confident in long-term ATE growth.

As WFE CapEx approaches $200 billion by the end of the decade, we see a path for overall ATE TAM to reach or exceed $20 billion. In addition to being in a growing market, we are confident that we will be able to gain share over the midterm. With the ramp of merchant GPU and the initial dual platform qualification in our second major hyperscaler, we are positioned to gain share in the core compute segment.

Our leadership position in HBM and DRAM maximizes our exposure to DRAM-driven growth. And segments where we have history, memory, mobile, industrial and automotive are positioned for growth driven by cloud edge and physical AI. Whether it is in cars, robots, phones or wearables.

Before I hand off to Michelle, I would like to share a few demand highlights and their impact to share gains. First, in memory, demand has increased from strength in HBM and DRAM and a resurgence in the NAND final test. The 2026 memory TAM is likely to be more than 40% larger than in 2025 with notable growth from the first half of 2026 to the second half.

A highlight in memory is the growth in HBM-based die test. Our Magnum testers have logic test capabilities that provide attractive swing tool advantage for memory makers. Now on to compute.

In Q1, we received our first order from a merchant GPU customer. Which was delivered in the second quarter. Also in Q3, we completed correlation at a second hyperscaler increasing our confidence in our 2027 market share growth.

As we discussed last quarter, our expectation is that our compute business would be concentrated in the first half. We have multiple programs across networking and that built out capacity in the first half that is now being utilized. The next surge for these customers is expected to be in the first half of 2027.

Since dual vendor strategies are emerging at the largest compute customers, I would like to give you a bit more color about how we think this will play out. These customers recognize the importance of derisking their supply chain. We see this as an important share driver over the next few years.

The dual vendor qualification process generally runs through four phases. The first, an opportunity to compete. Second, developing a working solution.

Third, correlation. And then finally, a production ramp. If successful, it takes nine to 12 months from the start to the ramp.

After the initial dual-sourced part ramps, we enter a fast-follower phase where we have a compute customer where the total number of network connections is growing fast, the timing of transitions from cable to backplane and from pluggable to NPO and CPO is in constant flux. Our belief is that there is robust growth in all of these technologies. This drove our acquisition of Quantifi Photonics, the development of the Photon 100 solution for optical connections, and our MultiLane Test Products JV for copper connections.

We are working with multiple ecosystem partners to develop leading-edge solutions from silicon photonics wafers to full data center racks. We expect CPO alone will be a $300 million to $700 million market by 2028. Our IST business grew revenue 2.5x quarter-over-quarter on strength in HDD fueled by AI.

We expect continued growth of our IST business in the second half. With the strong forecast for greater than 20% annual exabyte growth and our design wins, we are confident this business will grow over the midterm as well. The data center build-out will drive growth for our product test and robotics groups through the end of the decade as well.

The logic chain is straightforward. More data center construction drives more rack shipments per year, which is driving growth at contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers. This, combined with the rapid advancement of data center architectures, creates a significant opportunity for Teradyne to provide solutions well matched to the volume, quality, and flexibility data center applications required.

This is best reflected in the total available market for automation and tests among contract manufacturers and ODMs. We believe that there is currently a multibillion-dollar market for assembly, automation, test and burn-in equipment, and we expect mid-double-digit growth rates through the end of the decade. By addressing these applications with enhanced production board test, optical test, backplane test and robotic-assisted test and assembly, Teradyne is uniquely positioned to follow the value chain from wafer-to-data-center. Our wafer-to-data-center strategy is working.

Our optimism around 2026, 2027 and through the midterm has grown. We are leaning further into investments to capture opportunities across the value chain, both organically and inorganically. And we are investing in next-generation products across our entire portfolio.

As we win business, we build out customer teams for major hyperscalers and semiconductor suppliers. The fact that we are leaning into these investments now is a sign of our confidence in the sustainability of this market growth. We expect 2027 to be another year of healthy growth for Teradyne consistent with the transistor and bit growth dynamics I described earlier.

It is clear to us that increases in WFE spend will be a primary driver to ATE TAM growth and this sets the approach for how we will be updating our target earnings model which we will share in our Q4 earnings call. With that, I will turn the call over to Michelle.

Michelle L. Turner

Thanks, Gregory. Let me build on that with the detailed results for the quarter starting with total company performance. Both revenue and non-GAAP EPS came in above the high end of our guidance range as strong AI-driven demand continued across all parts of our portfolio.

Sequentially, total company sales were up 4% from last quarter's previous record. For the first half of 2026, we delivered $2.6 billion in revenue and $5.02 in non-GAAP EPS up close to 100% and 275% year-over-year, respectively, driven by all things AI. Building on that, let's take a deeper look at revenue starting with Semi Test.

Our Semi Test team once again cleared the $1 billion high-watermark established last quarter with revenue up $11 million from Q1 and 128% from Q2 2025. The revenue breakdown within Semi Test was SoC of $843 million, memory at $212 million, and IST at $67 million. As expected, compute order timing was more than offset by another record memory quarter, and IST growing over 150% quarter-over-quarter.

Within SoC, compute remains the largest portion of our SoC product revenue at 70%. Compute revenue grew nearly 600% year-over-year on strong AI-related demand. In the quarter, as Gregory mentioned, we have completed correlation with the second AI hyperscaler customer, and we shipped the previously announced merchant GPU order.

This further diversifies our compute portfolio, creating a foundation for future market share gains over the midterm. Auto and industrial continued to strengthen over last year, driven by power management demand increases for AI data center build-outs. Mobile grew seasonally quarter-over-quarter double digits so it remains below historical levels in a muted part of the overall SoC portfolio.

Now turning to memory. Our memory business delivered another strong quarter at $212 million in revenue. This is another record quarter, up from the previous one set in Q4 2025.

This represents our third consecutive quarter of revenue over $200 million driven by robust HBM and DRAM test solutions demand and a resurgence in NAND. Demand signals remain strong as memory manufacturers are planning capacity additions further out in time driving our book-to-bill ratio in the quarter over two. Finally, turning to IST.

Revenue in the quarter was $67 million, up 94% from the prior year, driven by AI-related HDD storage demand from all three major suppliers in this space. Now on to Product Test Group. Revenue was $107 million up 26% year-over-year and 33% quarter-over-quarter.

The group experienced broad-based growth across all end markets from production board test, to optical test, to defense and aerospace to scale-up networking at our newest portfolio addition the MultiLane Test Products JV, also known as MLTP. Last quarter, we announced our new production board test platform, which is focused on enabling earlier detection of defects that are impacting the build-out of AI data centers. The initial customer traction is strong with units already shipping in the second quarter and continued growth expected in the second half.

Similarly, momentum is building in MLTP as the need for high-speed IO in data center interconnect test solutions is increasing. Both Omnyx and MLTP are examples of our wafer-to-AI data center strategy in action, both solutions focus on solving our customers' most critical pain points along the value chain. As a result, we anticipate their continued growth in the second half of the year.

Robotics revenue was $100 million up 33% year-over-year and 9% quarter-over-quarter. Electronics manufacturing and semiconductor revenue increased by 50% from Q1 and is now the largest end market segment in this group which includes AI data centers. Our U.S. sales increased to 32% of the robotics sales.

Aligned with this, our U.S.-based manufacturing center is on track for opening later this year. Now moving down the P&L. Strong earnings results continued in the second quarter, driven by robust AI-driven volume and favorable product mix. Gross margins for the quarter were 59.8% up 250 basis points year-over-year driven by strong Semi Test volume and product mix.

While sequentially, gross margins were down 110 basis points driven in part by one-time benefits in Q1. OpEx increased as expected, driven by more R&D and go-to-market investment for 2027 growth. Plus higher variable compensation on stronger results.

Finally, non-GAAP operating income was $448 million with an operating margin of 33.7%. Now moving to capital allocation. Our first priority for capital continues to be reinvesting into the business, aligned with the growth opportunities we see along the wafer-to-AI data center value chain.

That means continued R&D investment in innovation and next-gen technologies as well as continued investments in COGS and CapEx aligned with scaling our operations and supporting our current and future customers with demo assets. Beyond that, our capital allocation strategy remains consistent. Maintain cash reserves to run the business and keep dry powder available for accretive M&A. Ended the quarter with cash and investments of $517 million, up over 30% from last quarter.

We had free cash flow of $351 million. For the first half of 2026, free cash flow was $579 million, up 150% from the prior year period. Working capital, predominantly inventory investment, increased in support of future sales.

As discussed last earnings call, capital expenditures increased to $26 million from last quarter driven by continued investments in innovation, and operations scaling. We paid $20 million in dividends in the quarter, and our share buybacks were $69 million. Now looking ahead to our third quarter guidance.

For the quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $1.85 to $2.15. Gross margins are expected to be in the range of 58% to 59% reflective of product mix and new product launches. Operating expenses are expected to run at approximately 29% to 30% of third quarter sales, driven by continued investments in R&D and go-to-market.

The non-GAAP operating profit rate is expected to be between 28% and 30%. Based on current customer order visibility, we are updating our first-half weighted revenue to 50% to 52% of annual revenue. The outlook for the second half has strengthened, and we have narrowed the range from three months ago with increased visibility and continued robust demand signals from our customers.

The range also takes into account revenue timing across quarters or years. To aid in your modeling, we expect growth in second half in comparison to first half in memory, auto and industrial, IST, product test and robotics groups. We expect this growth will be offset by softness in mobile and order timing in compute.

We anticipate a resurgence in growth in 2027 driven by overall ATE TAM expansion and market share gains. Aligned with the strength in demand signals, we expect OpEx in Q4 to be comparable to Q3 guidance positioning us for further growth in 2027. So in closing, once again, our team delivered exceptional financial results, meeting our customers' increasing AI demand needs through strong execution and a maniacal focus on customer satisfaction.

We remain confident in achieving our target earnings model at an accelerated pace and look forward to providing an update in our Q4 earnings call. I will close by thanking our Teradyne team for their execution and discipline this quarter, delivering for both our customers and shareholders. With that, we will open the call for questions.

Operator?

Operator

We will now be taking questions from Teradyne's research analysts. Our first question today comes from Timothy Arcuri with UBS. Your line is now open.

Timothy Michael Arcuri

Thanks a lot. Gregory, in correlating the test TAM to the WFE TAM, typically, it is been about 8%. And if I look at your TAM slide, it looks like the upper end of the range, is, like, $16 billion to $17 billion for next year.

When some of us like me think that WFE is going to be $200 billion. so it seems like that number holds. Next year. And when I look out to 2028, I mean, you know, some of us think WFE can be 250.

So that is like, you know, $20 billion, which is quite a bit higher than even the upper end of what this slide shows. So I guess the question is, like, is 8%, like, in your mind, when you think about it, is 8% the right number? What are the puts and takes on that?

Gregory S. Smith

Yes. Tim, first of all, I want to thank you The investor meetings that you helped mediate for us recently really gave us a ton of insight in terms of how people were thinking about our market and our model. And so we have been going back and doing some homework on this.

The thing that you are bringing up in terms of that 8% is a really interesting trajectory that if you look back to 2023, it was down near 4% of the total CapEx spent on test equipment. And by 2025, that had gone up to 7% The first five months of 2026, it is 8% of total semi CapEx has been on test equipment. So it is kind of this rocket trajectory.

As I said in my prepared remarks, there are some reasons why we think that is happening connected to advanced packaging. But right now, we are not sure whether it is going to settle, but we think it is going to settle somewhere in the 7% to 9% range, but it is not going to continue to go up from there. So we are, you know, I think we are kind of thinking it could settle down in the 7% to 8%, but it could go up to 9%.

Timothy Michael Arcuri

Got it. Okay, great. Thank you.

And then from your slide, it looks like you think the range of, like, $12 billion to $14 billion is it is it is pretty similar to the new TAM range that Advantest put out last night because they do not include burn-in their TAM. If I use those TAM numbers and I use your loading for the back half, it basically implies that, you know, that, you know, Q4 is basically flat. Q on Q. I get your test share for this year is up just a touch, but it is still basically flat sort of in the 37% range.

So the question is, when do all these new calls start to add to share gains? You know, we talked about these calls and, like, what is the right long-term share to use, like is 40% your sort of aspirational share? Is 42% the right number?

And like, when will these start to show up in share gain? Thanks.

Gregory S. Smith

So, sort of taking that bit by bit, I think that the numbers that Advantest put out for the total TAM both SoC and for memory, are kind of in the right ZIP code. That we were surprised when they had not brought it up last quarter because it seemed like the writing was on the wall that the TAM was increasing pretty strongly. The other commentary that they had was that, they believed that they were going to continue to gain share in SoC that they were going to lose a bit of share in memory.

I have to say I agree with their commentary about memory, I think in terms of SoC, it is probably going to be pretty flat, maybe a slight incremental gain for us year-on-year. So I would say that the we are gaining share in most of the segments of the market but the part of the market that is growing most strongly is the part of the market where we are starting with the lowest share. The important thing for us in 2026 is that our share in the compute segment is actually stabilizing and starting to inflect upward.

So I would say to answer your question directly, think you will start to see some of the effect of share change in 2027. But it is going to be gradual. it is a socket by socket thing. And we are riding a big upward width.

Timothy Michael Arcuri

Okay, great. Thank you.

Gregory S. Smith

Thank you.

Operator

We will take our next question from Mehdi Hosseini with SIG. Your line is now open.

Mehdi Hosseini

Yes. Thanks for taking my question. And two from my end.

Gregory, when I look at the way you are laying out companies' strategy, especially how you have illustrated in your slide. It seems like you are looking at the test as holistic, starting from wafer and going all the way to the rack and data center. And what I wanted to ask you is to what extent are you still focused on consolidating the test insertion, especially before we get to the complete package.

Are you facing challenges? Or is that lower priority and you more focused on a holistic approach that you have laid out in your slide.

Gregory S. Smith

So I think as you look at this wafer-to-data-center journey, there is a through line of Teradyne is a company that test things and our robotics help build things. And just about at every step of that process, we are a participant in an ecosystem. You know, so when we are building-- when we are building test equipment, it is being put into test cells with material handling equipment that come from a number of different suppliers.

The same thing is true at every step. And so we are trying to be very mindful that our customers appreciate what that open ecosystem has delivered. So, you know, the best example of that, ecosystem developing is really in the whole silicon photonics space.

That it is early days where there is individual partnerships sort of against the initial customer ramps, but ultimately, that is going to turn into the same open ecosystem where all of the like, each test company works with all of the material handling and vice versa. I do not know if that answers your question. I do think that there is some potential pull through or customer value that customers can get by getting more of their tests from the same supplier.

You know, so in terms of leveraging the work that is done from wafer sort to final test to system test to burn-in into the onboard test and beyond, there is some value to being able to leverage things across those boundaries. But our customers are quite adept at choosing the best solution at each stage. So we have to really compete for everything that we are getting.

Did I get what you were talking about?

Mehdi Hosseini

Yes. I am not sure if there is a very concise answer. it is evolving supply chain with some disruption as to how is all going to come together? To be determined.

Does that summarize your answer?

Gregory S. Smith

So I think the supply disruption is definitely on the mind of everybody in this space, that we are all only as strong as the weakest link in our whole supply chain and our customers feel the same way. That and that is one of the key things that is underpinning the drive towards a dual vendor strategy from players in the compute space. So they are working to qualify multiple test suppliers because they want to be sure that they are going to be able to get the capacity that they need when they need that capacity.

And it is not just a matter of how big any one test supplier can get. it is also that they need to have the assurance of different suppliers to be able to do each step in the chain. Got it.

Mehdi Hosseini

And I do not want to monopolize your time, but if I may ask my second question, which has to do with robotics. This is the part of business that is not getting as much of a headline, it is part of the AI, it is one of the verticals. Has there been any update to the strategy.

You know, you have been expanding capacity in the U.S. To capture some of the opportunities there. But how should we think about the trajectory of AI recovery, especially as it fits into your longer-term model?

Gregory S. Smith

So robotics we believe that robotics is positioned to essentially grow in proportion with the rest of the company. Over this midterm. And the important stuff that is going to drive that growth are physical AI applications.

Our fastest growing segment in robotics is really electronics manufacturing and semiconductors. And that is like as Michelle says, that is part of the all things AI. The data center build-out and the desire to reassure a lot of the data center build-out is pushing automation of the assembly process and the test process with a fair amount of budget behind it.

So we think that robotics is going to basically follow the same kind of growth path as all of the chunks that are connected to data center build up. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from C.J. Muse with Cantor. Your line is now open.

Christopher James Muse

Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. Guess first question on memory, you talked about growth half-on-half.

I am curious if you could speak to any changes in the drivers there, whether you are seeing an uplift in NAND and V NAND versus HBM? And then perhaps more importantly, how are you thinking about memory into 2027? And should we expect lumpiness in the first half?

Or will that strength continue in the first half?

Gregory S. Smith

So this year, I think coming into the year, we expected that HBM was going to be significantly stronger, that if you remember, 2024 was a big, big year for HBM. 2025 There was a little bit of digestion, but it was clear from the long-term capacity add plans for HBM that 2026 was going to be very strong. The thing that surprised us a little bit was just how strong the DDR business is And I think that is, to a certain extent, coupled to the resurgence in CPU oriented applications. So Edge AI there is also use some of the-- LPDDRs that are driving that market harder than we would have expected.

So the DDR market is stronger now than we thought it would be in January. In January, we were talking a little bit about that we anticipated that we would see a strengthening in NAND but we did not hear that from our memory customers yet. That like we were waiting to hear that they are going to need more capacity in NAND because there was a gap between what data center demand was and what memory capacity planning was providing. what is different now is we are actually have been seeing the beginning of that inflection and are actually getting pull from our customers for more NAND capacity.

Looking into 2027, I do not think we are looking at particular lumpiness in memory. I think that is going to be capacity adds are there is significant WFE investment increase in memory There are fabs that are coming online. There are wafers that are being planned for output.

And they are all making their test capacity add plans out into 2027 now.

Christopher James Muse

Perfect. And I guess as a follow-up, if you could speak to gross margin in the guide and driving-- what is driving kind of the 130 bps headwind. You talked about kind of new products, but we would be curious how much is from new products, how much is just kind of a mix shift.

And then any help into thinking the trajectory into December and 2027 would be very helpful. Thank you.

Michelle L. Turner

Hi, good morning, C.J. it is Michelle. So I will start, and then Gregory, feel free to add any additional color. So just taking a step back, let me share some context, especially for some that are new to the Teradyne story.

So overall gross margins within our business tends to be variable quarter to quarter. So if you look at past, like the last five years, you will see about 400-basis-point swing when you look quarter-on-quarter, However, when you look at kind of the annualized gross margin amounts, we tend to be pretty tight, within about 200 basis points. So part of what you are seeing first half to second half is just the normal quarter-on-quarter variability that we experienced.

But we also did have some non-recurring, non-operational impact that were favorable in the first half that are not repeating. So as you look at going from Q2 to Q3 in the guide at 58% to 59%, part of that is product mix. So coming off the high volumes that we had in Semi Test and Compute, as we are starting to ramp the other parts of our portfolio.

So just going back to our opening remarks, we are going to have more auto and industrial in the second half more IST, more robotics. As well as more product tests along with memory. And so all of that netted together gets us to a full-year gross margin range, which is just shy of our target earnings model.

So right around the 59%. So there is going to be a product mix element. there is going to be the new product introduction And there and there is going to continue to be some pricing elements as well. As we know and you guys know as well, memory is going to continue to be a strain from an overall margin perspective.

And we expect that, that will continue in 2027. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question from Vivek Arya with Bank of America Securities. Your line is now open.

Vivek Arya

Thanks for taking my questions. Gregory, I just wanted to dig into how tight this correlation is between WFE and your growth prospects? When I look at the current year, your sales are roughly growing twice as fast as WFE growth this year.

So I am curious as to why that is. And then if I were to carry that argument into 2027, if WFE does not equal 30%, what scenarios would make you grow faster or slower than that base?

Gregory S. Smith

So the correlation is I would say that the correlation is strong over kind of three- to five-year periods. That it is not at all correlated when you are down to a quarter level And when you look at the annual data, when we when we sort of drew out the charts ourselves, we saw that there can be like a year lag between a significant increase in WFE and when it echoes in the impact in the ATE space? So it is there is like a time lag in the correlation as well.

So I think it is that is why we are saying it is not a great year-by-year predictor, but it does the thing that it does is it gives us confidence that not we were trying to figure out whether 2026 was a, like, an unusual unusually strong, non-sustainable market. And when we are looking at the WFE data, it certainly gave us confidence that we were looking at something that was different than what we have seen in prior cycles, that there is this very heavy lean in WFE investment and that is going to drag things up. So that is the correlation part.

Could you repeat the second part of your question? I want to make sure that I get it right.

Vivek Arya

Sure. So if we look at 2027, and the expectations are for WFE growth to be, say, percent plus year-on-year. Under what scenarios would ATE, TAM or Teradyne for that matter over or under grow that growth rate?

Gregory S. Smith

So I think right now we have like we are outpacing WFE growth in 2026. So if you draw a line and sort of use the WFE spend to project what the 2026 TAM should be it should be smaller than that model would predict. Looking ahead to 2027, I think that WFE is essentially catching up a bit.

And the way you sort of think about that in the statistics is, that the percentage of semi cap that is test equipment has gone from 7% and so far in 2026, it is at 8% it is possible that next year that could revert down to, you know, 6, 7% or so I would expect that we are going to see a increased TAM in 2027, but we are still trying to work out kind of whether that percentage is going to stay flat or how far it will go down.

Vivek Arya

I guess my question is to why? Why would it go down?

Gregory S. Smith

Just it is the time lag. The thing is this is a-- this is correlation, not causation, right? Therefore, well, is causation, but there is a time lag.

So when people buy fab equipment, the money changes hands about a year before the wafers start coming out of the factory. Because they have to go into front-end facilities that are being built and commissioned and piloted. Once those wafers are coming out, there is about a you know, our lead times are in the 16-week-ish range.

So you know, it is three quarters on from when the revenue for the for the fab equipment has happened to when the revenue for the test equipment happens. And there is also unpredictability about the required test intensity on a part-by-part basis. So, you can have situations where due to yield issues or quality issues, there is significant overbought buying in ATE.

Or you can have other cases where there is higher efficiency test time reductions. So you are not going to see a tight, tight link between this in any particular period, but it is more of a over-time guide.

Vivek Arya

And for my follow-up, Gregory, I am curious to understand your position when it comes to CPU testing. Right, that has become a new area of growth. Right? $200 billion-plus type TAM that different people mentioned.

So I know historically, Teradyne has been more exposed to ARM rather than the x86 ecosystem So how do you see that developing? And if ARM CPUs take share, does that help Teradyne also take share in that market? Thank you.

Gregory S. Smith

Yes. So we certainly are seeing increased strength in CPU business We definitely benefit more as the share mix of server CPU shifts towards ARM that gives us a greater share gain opportunity right now. But we are working hard to try to gain share in the x86 space as well.

But I think it is a fair assumption that if that market twists more towards ARM that positions Teradyne for greater share gain in the compute space. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Krish Sankar with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Krish Sankar

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I have two of them. To the first one.

I just want to follow-up on the CPU side. I understand you are more exposed to the ARM ecosystem, but it is seems like test intensity of a CPU is only 25% better for GPU. So is that fair to assume that the merchant GPU opportunities are larger even with one customer than trying to get more on the CPU test side.

Gregory S. Smith

Well, it is a great question, Krish. So the accelerator market is definitely the one that has the highest test intensity. And I think your one-to-four ratio is probably not far off.

I think that is a reasonable assumption. The key thing is the ratio of accelerators to CPUs. So as the number of CPUs increases, that becomes more important.

The other thing that I think is one of the ways that we are looking at this is there are a number of bottleneck resources through the supply chain. The supply of substrates for CoWoS, the supply of HBM memories, and basic advanced node fab capacity. And our customers are trying to optimize the utilization of what resource-- what allocation they get of those scarce resources.

And the test suppliers, Teradyne and our competitors, are positioned to no matter what, all of the wafers that get fabbed are going to need to get tested. And the share between VIP accelerators, merchant GPU, and CPU all of those are places where we are positioned to gain share. And so we we are not overly hung up about whether CPUs grow faster than GPUs because at the end of the day, most of the test seconds are at the wafer level and the same number of wafers are going to be produced.

Krish Sankar

Got it. Got it. Very helpful, Gregory.

And then as a quick follow-up, I had a question on the silicon photonics testing.

Krish Sankar

Correct me if I am wrong, I think the general view is that Advantest is strong in insertion one. And you are more strong in insertion two? A, is that correct?

And number B of the question is there is some view in the industry that insertion two can be skipped if you have a known-good die and your die-to-die fit.

Krish Sankar

Any thoughts on that would be helpful.

Gregory S. Smith

Sure. So I want to tell you a funny anecdote. We were having a conversation with a customer in this space and we were a good 15 minutes into the conversation before we discovered that we and the customer had an entirely different definition of insertion two.

So, like, there is certainly a pilot customer in this space that is ramping and there is a certain definition of the different test insertions for that customer. But, it is so early in the maturation of that production process that I think it is a mistake to draw broad conclusions. But directly to your question, getting a known-good die at insertion one does not help you all that much.

In terms of the quality of the optical engine die in that you need to attach to the CPO. The production steps between insertion one and insertion two are the, you know, bonding the electronics IC to the photonics IC wafer and then applying the lens that gets applied on top of the photonics to make the connection to where the FAU will connect to the device. And the types of optical testing that you can do at insertion one are limited because the lens assembly is a critical part of the optical path.

So many of the loss and polarization tests that you need to do cannot be done until the real question on our mind is how much of that testing needs to happen at the wafer level post-bonding and how much of it can be deferred to do once those optical engines are singulated. That you need to do for to validate the quality of the device at insertion one.

Operator

Thank you. We will go next to Jim Schneider with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

James Edward Schneider

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe following up on the your prior comments and last question, Gregory.

You talked about the sort of CPO TAM alone being $300 million to $700 million, I believe in 2028. Obviously, that is a very wide range. I am sort of curious how you would think about maybe what the size could be or is likely to be next year if at all, or if material?

And maybe talk about the sort of certainty level you have in your overall networking business growing sort of strong double digits over the next three years on a compounding basis or at least every year? Thank you.

Gregory S. Smith

Okay. So the wide range, $300 million to $700 million in 2028, is our attempt to be as honest as we can be. Like, we really are looking at a number of different market sources in terms of the number of CPO ports that are going to be produced and they are all over the map.

And so it really comes down to how quickly the initial higher volume ramps of CPO, primarily for scale out, achieve success over the 2027 timeframe. That is what is going to drive that 2028 TAM towards the you know, if that goes well, then it will drive it towards $700 million. If it does not, it will still be closer to $300 million.

Next year, I think we are probably like, probably aiming towards more of the low side of that $300 million. So, if you draw a line from $100 million to the $300 million next year, kind of the low end would be in the $200 million range. I do not think there is as much upside next year as there is in 2028.

Now your last question was around networking. And networking in general is an area where we have a lot of confidence that, we are talking about transistors growing at 15% to 20% over this midterm, we feel pretty strongly that the networking TAM is going to be growing proportionate to that. So and it is not just CPO.

It is copper connections going from cable to backplane. Pluggables are still growing and will transition not just to CPO, there is NPO and CPO, stages along that path. And so Teradyne's strategy is really to make sure that we are positioned to benefit from the growth in all of those segments.

So that is why we did Quantifi Photonics. That is why we did the MLTP JV. And it is why we are in the market with the Photon 100 because we think that CPO is the technology of the future but there is so much growth in just basic networking that we really want to make sure that we are covering all the modes.

The other thing that I will say is behind all of that, is the networking silicon, the switch-- the switch silicon. And Teradyne has a terrific position in that market that we think will grow over the midterm independent of the physical layer.

James Edward Schneider

That is very helpful color, Greg.

James Edward Schneider

Thank you. And then maybe a quick clarification for Michelle. Relative to your prior commentary on gross margins or variability, I just want to make sure that you do not see anything in 2027 whether that be customer mix or product mix, etcetera, that would drive a material headwind to gross margins on a year-over-year basis?

Michelle L. Turner

No. It is going to be pretty consistent, as we talked about, in terms of the ranges annually. And it will really come down to, Jim, the things that we noted.

It will come down to product mix compute is going to be heavy within the year. Along with the rest of the portfolio growing. So we are not anticipating any fundamental changes in gross margin.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Shane Brett with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Shane Brett

Thank you for letting me ask a question. My first question is on memory. So if I assume your memory test revenue growth half-on-half, we get to full-year growth north of 70%.

Slide 6 of your presentation deck shows the memory test TAM growing at approximately half of the rate of memory brick growth. two-part question here, but one is how should I think about memory test growing 2x bit growth this year? But also, how relevant is test growing at half the run rate of bits given the test intensity of HBM and just extremely low NAND for the last few years? Thank you.

Gregory S. Smith

I think I am going to need to take that question offline. There you are interpreting a lot of information from that chart. That I am not sure we were intending to communicate.

So the chart shows sort of the big growth trajectory and the ATE TAM history. We were not trying to project the memory ATE TAM. So but I guess to answer the principles behind what you are saying, In memory, there is a correlation between bit growth and ATE but it is not as like there is a gain-- there is a factor involved in that.

Because the in memory test the part of the market where you test every bit is served by much lower priced, less differentiated equipment than the final testing part of the market. So there is a big chunk of the market that follows bit growth. there is also a part of the market that follows technology shifts. The HBM3 to HBM4, DDR5 to DDR6, and then next-generations of flash technology.

So memory has sort of two flywheels. One is bit growth. And the other is technology change.

But it is also a very efficient test market where you know, the just in terms of the overall size, right now, the SoC TAM is 5x the size of the memory TAM. Even though the memory revenues are much or have caught up because of ASP changes. So there is a lot of things going on Our take is that the memory TAM is likely positioned for similar growth rates over the midterm that the SoC TAM is.

Shane Brett

Understood. Thank you. And for my follow-up, so you talked about auto being better half-on-half.

Can you talk a little bit about what the path back to prior peak would look like? I would also appreciate if you could talk about how much of prior peak was China-driven. there is sort of an element of China localization risk, but also some of the tailwinds you are seeing just on the back of the Infineon strategic partnership back in January of 2025? Thank you.

Gregory S. Smith

So I think we are likely 2027 is going to be up to or exceeding prior peaks in that space. We have not done all of the work, but that is my gut feeling around that. There is some China localization.

Like, I would say that our China power mix between prior peak and now is kind of above the same. That we are, you know, we are in that market. There is some local competition, but there are also some players that we are doing quite well with.

In the power market overall, the part of that market where the Infineon deal that we did is most helpful is in wide-bandgap discrete test. So that is a smaller chunk of that market but one that is expected to grow robustly over this period of time. And I would say that the technologies and the people that we have in that group is positioning us to establish a real leadership position in the testing of wide-bandgap discretes.

Shane Brett

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we have reached our allotted time for questions. This will conclude today's Teradyne second quarter 2026 Earnings Call and Webcast.

You may now disconnect.