A Pause Before the Next Leg of HBM Growth

Research evidence excerpt

A Pause Before the Next Leg of HBM Growth

IdeaMthe first production customers following broader outsourcing of advanced packaging by

TSMC. Current deployment remains relatively small, with only a handful of systems

currently under evaluation, while industry bottlenecks continue to be driven more by

interposer availability and advanced packaging capacity than bonding equipment itself.

Nevertheless, we believe logic TCB is strategically important as it introduces an additional

growth avenue outside memory packaging, although we expect financial contribution to

remain relatively modest until customer adoption broadens.

China remains a timing rather than a structural debate: Our latest industry discussions

suggest China HBM investment is likely to remain gradual, with the pace of equipment

deployment increasingly shifting toward late-2026 and into 2027. While this may push out

part of the near-term opportunity set, we continue to view the underlying investment

cycle as delayed rather than structurally impaired. Given the technical challenges

associated with scaling HBM production, we would expect equipment purchases to occur

ahead of meaningful volume manufacturing, supporting future demand even if end

production ramps prove more gradual. Accordingly, we continue to treat China as upside

to our mid-term forecasts rather than a key assumption underpinning our estimates.

HBM4 transition continues to support new equipment demand: Management also

pushed back against the view that the transition from HBM3E to HBM4 can be

accommodated using existing equipment with only limited upgrades. According to

management, higher bandwidth requirements, increasing die sizes and tighter process

tolerances require meaningful hardware improvements, including redesigned bonding