US Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment: 2Q26 Earnings Preview—Expect Further EPS Upside

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US Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment: 2Q26 Earnings Preview—Expect Further EPS Upside

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06 Jul 2026 05:00:00 ET │ 27 pages

US Semiconductors and

Semiconductor Equipment

2Q26 Earnings Preview – Expect Further EPS Upside

Atif Malik AC

CITI'S TAKE +1-415-951-1892

atif.malik@citi.com

SOX is up 78% YTD versus S&P500 +9%, led by outperformance in

descending order from memory, semi caps, compute, analog, and Kelsey Chia, CFA

smartphones. We see earnings upside across our coverage universe, with kelsey.chia@citi.com

~58% of the semis end demand strong/improving and SOX trading at 19x or Elizabeth Sun, CFAin-line with S&P500, below its 5-year average premium of 17%. We view the

recent pullback in the group as healthy and like AMD, TXN, and AMAT as our elizabeth.sun@citi.com

top Buy-rated picks into earnings on share gains. We add upside Catalyst James Bowlin

Watch on MU on higher 2H26 DRAM prices and a downside Catalyst Watch james.bowlin@citi.com

on QCOM due to downside risk on incremental smartphone unit weakness.

Papa Sylla

Data Center — We view recent concerns on excess compute supply with the launch papa.sylla@citi.com

of Meta Compute as an overreaction. Fundamentally, AI compute demand remains

undersupplied as reflected by recent AWS EC2 GPU instances price hike of 20%.

DRAM shortages are the biggest constraint on compute supply, in our view. We like

AMD on likely GPU share gains in 2H26.

Analog — The global manufacturing PMI stood at 52.6 in May, the strongest reading

since 2023, driven by continued AI infrastructure buildouts. Utilization rates are

approaching optimal levels, and analog IDMs and lagging edge foundries have been

raising prices with lead times stretching to six months. We like TXN and see upside