KLA Corporation (KLAC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call

KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 27, 2023 6:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Kevin Kessel - Vice President, Investor Relations & Market Analytics

Rick Wallace - Chief Executive Officer

Bren Higgins - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Joe Quatrochi - Wells Fargo

Brian Chin - Stifel

Tim Arcuri - UBS

Harlan Sur - JPMorgan

Atif Malik - Citi

Sidney Ho - Deutsche Bank

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Chelsea, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the KLA Corporation June Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participant lines have been placed in a listen-only mode to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. And I will now turn the call over to Kevin Kessel, Vice President of Investor Relations and Market Analytics. Please go ahead, sir.

Kevin Kessel

Thank you for joining us for our earnings call to discuss the results of the June 2023 quarter and our September quarter outlook. Joining me is our CEO, Rick Wallace; and our CFO, Bren Higgins.

During this call, we will discuss our results released today after the market close along with supplemental materials that are all available on our IR website. Today’s discussion is presented on a non-GAAP financial basis unless otherwise specified. Whenever we make full-year references, they relate to calendar years.

A detailed reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results is in the earnings materials posted on our website. Our IR website also contains future investor events as well as presentations, corporate governance information and links to our SEC filings, including our most recent Annual Report and Quarterly Reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. Our comments today are subject to risks and uncertainties reflected in the Risk Factors disclosure in our SEC filings.

Any forward-looking statements, including those we make on the call today, are subject to those risks, and KLA cannot guarantee those forward-looking statements will come true. Our actual results may differ significantly from those projected in our forward-looking statements.

Rick, will begin the call with some comments and quarterly highlights. Bren, will conclude with our financial highlights, including our guidance and outlook.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Rick Wallace. Rick?

Rick Wallace

Thank you, Kevin. Let’s start with a summary of KLA’s performance in the quarter, along with a few highlights. Further color and detail on my comments and the semiconductor demand environment can be found in our shareholder letter released earlier today. KLA’s June quarter results exceeded expectations and demonstrated consistent execution, despite a challenging marketplace.

Specifically, revenue of $2.355 billion finished at the upper end of the guidance range, declining 5% on a year-over-year basis and 3% sequentially. GAAP earnings per share was $4.97 and non-GAAP EPS was $5.40, with each finishing at the upper end of their respective guidance ranges.

As near-term demand headwinds persist, there are some bright spots. In particular, automotive and other markets served by legacy nodes remained strong, demonstrating the diversification of demand and growing adoption of semiconductor technology across multiple industries.

Additionally, process control plays a critical role in enabling our customers to execute on node and technology transitions that are the focus of R&D efforts, and that is more resilient to near-term pressures. We work closely with our customers, and they continue to prioritize R&D investments. This is important for KLA as our products are heavily relied upon during the R&D process, as well as the early ramp phase when faster timely yield is critical.

KLA remains focused on supporting our customers' requirements while maintaining critical R&D investments to enable our technology road map. Our June quarterly results are the latest example of successfully meeting or exceeding our commitments and creating value for our customers, partners and shareholders. Specific factors driving KLA's performance this quarter include KLA's market leadership and process control, which includes some of the most critical and fast-destroying segments of WFE. Growth and market leadership in critical wafer and vertical infrastructure is fueling relative growth for KLA.

For example, revenues from our unpatterned wafer inspection and metrology products used in silicon wafer and photomask manufacturing are expected to significantly outperform the overall WFE market and deliver strong growth in a down year for the industry. The KLA services business grew to $539 million in the June quarter, up 5% year over year.

Our consistent execution, despite challenges in the marketplace continues to prove the resiliency of the KLA operating model and the dedication of our global teams. KLA remains well positioned with a comprehensive portfolio of products to meet customer requirements.

I'll now hand it to Bren to go through our financial highlights. Bren?

Bren Higgins

Thanks, Rick. KLA delivered results at the upper end of the range of guidance and commitments, demonstrating consistent execution despite a challenging marketplace. Our continued focus on meeting customer needs while expanding market leadership, sustaining industry-leading growth in operating markets, generating strong free cash flow, and maintaining our long-term strategy of assertive capital allocation is what makes us successful.

Quarterly revenue was $2.355 billion, towards the upper end of the guided range of $2.125 to $2.375 billion. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $5.40, also towards the upper end of the guidance range of $4.23 to $5.43. GAAP diluted EPS was $4.97 above the midpoint of guidance. Non-GAAP gross margin was 61.2%, 45 basis points above the midpoint of the guidance range due to product mix, as upside in the quarter was driven by higher margin products. Normalizing freight expenses and improving factory utilization as overall capacity adjust to current demand expectations.

Non-GAAP operating expenses were 543 million, slightly higher than guidance due to adjustments to variable compensation. Total operating expenses comprised 314 million in R&D and 229 million in SG&A. Non-GAAP operating margin was 38.1%. Other income and expense debt was $49 million, and the quarterly effective tax rate was 12.4%.

If the guided tax rate of 13.5%, non-GAAP EPS would have been $0.07 lower, or $5.33. Quarterly non-GAAP net income was $743 million. Gap net income was $685 million. Cash flow from operations was $959 million. And free cash flow was $880 million.

As a result, free cash flow conversion was strong at 119%. And free cash flow margin was 37%. The company had approximately $137.7 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding at the end of the quarter. Breakdown of revenue by reportable segments and end markets in major products regions can be found within the shareholder letter and slides.

Switching to the balance sheet KLA ended the quarter with 3.24 billion in total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, debt of $5.89 billion, and a flexible and attractive bond maturity profile supported by strong investment grade ratings from all three agencies.

Turning to our outlook, our WFE outlook for 2023 remains largely unchanged at down approximately 20% from $95 billion in 2022. While the timing of a meaningful resumption in WFE investment growth remains unclear, we continue to see overall demand stabilizing around current business levels for our semiconductor process control systems business. And we expect this demand profile to continue through the remainder of the year.

Our 2023 WFE estimate reflects a tops-down assessment of industry demand as follows; in memory, we expect WFE investments to decline by approximately 40%. Foundry/logic to decline by about 10% overall with legacy investment outperforming the segment overall due principally to automotive and continued demand for legacy design nodes.

KLA's primary value proposition is focused on enabling innovation through technology transitions, which our customers continue to prioritize across all business environments. While capacity plans are often adjusted due to changing demand expectations, technology road map investments are more resilient. This adds additional confidence to our business expectations as customers align shipment slots with road map requirements.

In this environment, we will continue to focus on meeting customer requirements, maintaining our high-level investment in R&D to advance our product road map and KLA's market leadership and delivering strong relative revenue growth and financial performance.

Moving to guidance now. Our September quarter guidance is as follows; total revenue is expected to be $2.35 billion, plus or minus $125 million. Foundry/logic is forecasted to be approximately 70%, and memory is expected to be around 30% of semi PC systems revenue. Within memory, DRAM is expected to be about 90% of the segment mix and NAND 10%.

We forecast non-GAAP gross margin to be roughly flat at 61%, plus or minus one percentage point as product mix expectations and cost components are consistent with the prior quarter. Given our current view of a stabilizing demand environment for the remainder of 2023, we expect full year calendar gross margin to trend near 61%.

Non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $535 million as cost measures executed earlier in the calendar year align our current cost structure with top line expectations. We would expect quarterly operating expenses to remain around this level for the remainder of the calendar year. Other model assumptions for the September quarter include other income and expense net of approximately $48 million, and an effective tax rate of approximately 13.5%.

Finally, GAAP diluted EPS is expected to be $5.02 plus or minus $0.60 and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $5.35 plus or minus $0.60. EPS guidance is based on a fully diluted share count of approximately 137 million shares.

In conclusion, we continue to see process controls and bonds technology transitions and advanced key to R&D growth and prioritization despite persistent weakness in our customers' businesses. We are also exposed to wafer and reticle infrastructure investments that are contributing to our revenue performance. As a result, KLA remains positioned for strong relative performance versus the industry in 2023.

Looking ahead, we continue to see the business environment stabilizing and remain confident that the secular trends driving long-term semiconductor industry demand and investments in WFE remain strong and compelling, driving semiconductor demand and simultaneous investments supporting growing semiconductor content across multiple technology nodes remain catalysts for sustainable long-term industry growth. Multiple applications for leading-edge road maps are driving competitive dynamics and design challenges requiring more customer engagement and faster time to results.

Technology investment and node transitions reflect the value that semiconductors in our industry have a lowering cost for our customers and enabling a broader application universe for semiconductor-based technology across multiple end markets. While the global economy and semiconductor industry are facing challenges, KLA is well-positioned to deliver strong relative financial performance, driven by better than market performance of our semi PC and SPTS businesses and continued growth in services. We remain focused on innovation as we execute our portfolio strategy to support our customers' technology road maps and multi-year investment plans.

For the KLA operating model guiding our execution, we will implement our strategic objectives and drive outperformance. These objectives are also the foundation for our technology leadership and competitive differentiation. Our focus on customer success, delivering innovative and differentiated solutions, and operational excellence continues to enable us to deliver industry-leading financial and free cash flow performance, while delivering consistent capital returns to shareholders.

That concludes my remarks. I'll now turn the call back over to Kevin to begin the Q&A.

Kevin Kessel

Thank you, Bren. Chelsea, can you please provide instructions for questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Yes, sir. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Joe Quatrochi with Wells Fargo.

Joe Quatrochi

Question. I was wondering if you could maybe talk about the strength that you're seeing in your blank wafer business. How do you see that looking into next year? And is there a risk of maybe some digestion after a pretty strong investment cycle there?

Rick Wallace

Hey, Joe, thanks for the question. This year has been a strong year for that. We have a very strong market position there. So that's been good for us. And you're seeing investment from the global players, but also investment in infrastructure in China to provide more domestic supply.

It tends to invest according to a different cycle. I wouldn't exactly call it countercyclical, but the lead time to get equipment to actually make silicon wafers to take some time. And so you see those customers continuing to invest through to prepare for future demand, they're also dealing with new capacity requirements related to hybrid bonding and some of the other wafer-to-wafer packaging that are out there that are driving incremental demand as well.

So look at this year, it's going to continue to grow, this year, expected to do well. And then -- but I do think, as we move into next year, we'll see some moderation of that investment. So while I don't think it will fall off a lot, I don't think we'll see it grow into next year.

Joe Quatrochi

Got it. That's helpful. And then as a follow-up. You guys saw some pretty -- I think any upside to your memory kind of expectations or at least relative to what you were thinking three months ago, and particularly around DRAM. Just wondering if you could maybe comment on what drove that in the quarter?

Rick Wallace

So we had some movement across a number of our customers, and the numbers overall is, frankly, pretty low, but that was part of it. The other part is we also had some shipments that we weren't expecting to make in the quarter related to one of our Chinese DRAM customers. And a clarification of some of the export rules enabled us to ship some additional equipment there. So that was a factor in the upside on the DRAM side.

Joe Quatrochi

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from C.J. Muse with Evercore.

C. J. Muse

Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. I guess first

question, can you update us on where optical inspection lead times are? And

given the importance of that tool set for R&D lines. Is that something that you

expect will sustain at elevated levels, or do you think that should normalize

over time?

Rick Wallace

Hi, C.J. It's Rick. The answer is the demand continues to be very strong and for a couple of reasons that we've talked about many times. And we have struggled in increasing the output. So we're still booked out through as far as we can see into next year. So business remains strong. The product has had a lot of success dealing with some of the challenges we're seeing.

So we expect that to remain elevated, and we're working hard to actually increase capacity in order to meet that demand, but that's going to take some time. Lead times will come down a little bit. I don't know if they'll come down all that much, given the drivers of that product line. But as new capacity comes online as we move through '24, and beyond we see it -- we'll see them come down a little bit, but I think you'll still see them remain elevated for some time.

One of the nice we talked about in the past data is that we're still running Gen 4 in addition to Gen 5 and Gen 4 is really seeing pretty good adoption in prices that we didn't necessarily forecast in automotive. So we still have pretty good tailwinds for that.

C. J. Muse

Very helpful. And I guess as my follow-up, encouraging to see your semi service business grow sequentially. Can you kind of comment how you see that playing out in the second half? And what kind of potentially negative impact are you seeing from lower utilization from your memory customers?

A –

Yes. We're very pleased with the performance and service, and it's not atypical for us in a downturn to see service utilized because people are still trying to squeeze out all the yield capability they have. We have seen utilization. We had forecast from some customers for a higher level of -- or a lower level of utilization asking us to back off a little bit.

And those have moderated through the year to the point where utilization rates are higher than what has been forecasted by our customers at the beginning of the year, specifically in leading edge leading-edge logic foundry. So that has been an upside. Memory looks a little bit slower in that regard, but it's kind of what we forecasted. And with the level of shipments, we feel very good about our long-term forecast for the services business.

C. J. Muse

Thank you.

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

Krish Sankar

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I close the first one, Rick, obviously, you have like very strong revenues from China. -- there's been some chatter that the U.S. might expand export control maybe mature nodes. I know right now, your cap at 14-nanometer and below for foundry logic. Is there any commentary you can give on that? And how to think about it, like, let's say, for example, 14 goes to 28, the restriction of 28 goes to 40 [ph], is there a way to quantify the impact to your sales? And then I have a follow-up.

Rick Wallace

Yes, I won't calculate what the government will do or not do on that. We have ongoing conversations with them, obviously, and really -- we've been supportive of their efforts to try to figure out how to cut off the very leading edge. Beyond that, that's not conversations we've been having with them. But in terms of quantifying, obviously, given that most of the business we have in China as legacy, that would obviously impact our ability to support them in legacy.

Q – KrishSankar

Got it. Got it. Thanks for that Rick. And then as a follow-up, based on the numbers it looks like you're going to outperform WFE again this year, and you did last couple of years, the last couple of years, it is more -- some of your peers were supply chain constrained while you were not and this year, obviously, there's a lot of technology bias. I am just wondering, as we head into the next couple of years, as WFE starts rebounding, is there a risk that some of the fabs already bought process control equipment that you could actually underperform WFE?

A – Rick Wallace

Well, so I would say that we were supply constrained, but for a different reason, we continue to struggle with the demand that we've had for optical. And as I mentioned to a prior question, we continue to see demand for that. So it's true that we manage our supply chain, but we still had gaps. It wasn't like we got hit with things that we didn't expect. We just couldn't ramp as much as some of our customers wanted. The process control intensity has gone up.

I mean one thing that we clearly forecasted and we're seeing by out now is as EUV gets adopted in more nodes and more layers, and advanced architectures happen, there's a greater need for process control, and that's really what we're experiencing. So when we talk about in the Analyst Day and what we're seeing play out is increased need for process control across all technologies and we feel good about how that looks as we go forward and some of the splits of the forecast we had for our Analyst Day for 2026.

Q – KrishSankar

Got it. Thanks a lot Rick. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Sidney Ho with Deutsche Bank.

Q – Sidney Ho

Hi. Thank you for taking the question and congrats on the good results. A few of your peers have talked about fab readiness being impacting their shipment this year, especially for EUV tools. Is that something that you already kind of factored in WFE outlook you gave a quarter ago when you also said foundry and logic will be down 10%, which you should reiterate today, or are there some of the offsets that you would point out that kind of offset that?

A – Rick Wallace

Yeah. Sidney, it's a good question. And it's something that we had already factored in to our plans as we looked out. What you're seeing is the adjustments to some of the ramp plans. And so there's still some shipments going into some of these facilities, fewer tools. But it's something that we already made adjustments for. I think it tends to usually shorter lead time, tools feel it first and then it gets progressively eventually, those delays filter into everybody, but it does take some time. So we feel very good about the forecast we provided here in terms of our expectations over the next couple of quarters.

Q – Sidney Ho

Okay. Great. That's helpful. As a follow-up, speaking of China, I know the revenue is now back to the 30% level you talked about some of the shipments that came in a little earlier. But I want to ask if this is a little bit different angle. It's clear that there is a big push of self-sufficiency in China, but certain process are harder to replace than others. Can you give us maybe a little bit of color on the competitive dynamics there that some of your process control requirements could be satisfied by domestic companies? Thanks.

A – Rick Wallace

Yeah, our market share continues to be strong. I mean, we started focusing on legacy market opportunities several years ago. In fact, we started some older product lines, and they continue to be the most competitive really at all price points turns. So, we feel while there is more competition trailing edge, we're very well-positioned to be able to win.

And a lot of customers have a lot of confidence around the world in our capabilities. So, we feel good about our ability to compete, again, standing competitors that are out there. We've been competing with people for a long time in terms of capabilities. So, this is not unique that we would have competition in China.

And you have to remember, our competitive offerings in China or in any other region are really based on the portfolio of products that we can offer. So, we can offer a lot of solutions to our customers.

To Rick's point, some of our older generation tools, which we've restarted, but even de-configured versions or more recent tools. And then we allow our customers to manage across their requirements either for economic or more advanced tools, more capabilities. So, our go-to-market in terms of the portfolio benefits us in that region as much as it does anywhere else.

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Chin with Stifel.

Brian Chin

Hi there. Thanks, good afternoon. Thanks for letting us ask a question. understanding again that memory investment in general is reduced, and it sounds like the China memory shipment might have hit there in the June quarter.

But if I were to assume that some of your DRAM activity in coming quarters will be more beer towards DR5 and applications for outperformance high-density DRAM for data center and AI applications. Are you noticing or anticipating a higher level of process control intensity for that kind of spend?

Bren Higgins

Look for more advanced DRAM, particularly with the introduction of EUV, it's driven higher intensity levels, and there's the infrastructure to support the introduction of that, particularly around reticle quality and medical facility. That's been the driver of process control intensity for us over the last couple of years.

And so I would expect that, that we'll continue to see. And I'm not expecting to see an uptick in business from memory customers. There will be some additional business from the Chinese DRAM customer in the second half of the year.

But we're not really seeing any changes in overall utilization rates in memory, as Rick said earlier, and so I think until our customers start to create a pricing improvement, improve their profitability and cash flow, I don't think we're going to see meaningful investments.

Now we will participate in process node development as we always have. And that's going to be the biggest driver of the contributions from that market.

Brian Chin

Okay. Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just a broader follow-up question. Obviously, there's some underutilization of capacity at the leading foundries more advanced nodes and this might just be a cyclical phenomena, but in your conversations with them, it detect any changes in how they might elect to deploy capital in support of multiple advanced nodes differently?

Rick Wallace

I mean they've slowed down. I mean, for sure, we've seen and heard the reports on forecast for their investment in WFE going down. So, I think that's been the main one.

What the leading indicators that we are looking at that are encouraging, as I mentioned earlier in this call, we had utilization rates creep back up from what was forecasted just a few months ago. The other thing is we're still seeing a heavy number of design starts. And so of course, it takes a while for those to filter through. But we still anticipate a very large number of designs at the advanced out -- and so that will portend for a strong business down the road. You can't pick the timing -- but I think that this slowdown in terms of their investment is related to the overall business environment, but not the fundamental dynamics. I think that as pretty good as we get the next few quarters, is behind us.

Brian Chin

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you,

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Arcuri with UBS.

Tim Arcuri

Thanks a lot. Bren. Can you give the purchase obligation number? I think it was about $12 billion last quarter. I assume it came down a smidge and book-to-bill is still lessened. And then also, can you tell us how much is sitting out side of 12 months on?

Bren Higgins

So the specific details will come through when we file our K here in another week or so. But it was down about a little over $500 million quarter to quarter. So book-to-bill was a little less than one. We still see some activity in terms of new orders. So the backlog levels are obviously very elevated. So it's come down. It seems like it's been coming down right around that $500 million or so per quarter for the last few quarters, but still close to 11.5 billion overall. And the beyond 12 months is between 40% and 50% of it. It's delivered beyond the 12 month window.

Tim Arcuri

Cool. Thanks for that. And then, Bren, just from the soft guide for December, it sounds like process control system shipments are pretty flat. It looks like maybe EPC should be up a smidge, because you had said before that EPC would be about, you know, down about 20 for the year. So is that right? And I guess part of that was that you had said last call that maybe the process control shipments in December depended on a couple projects. So sort of what's the, you know, what are like puts and takes on process control shipments in December?

Bren Higgins

Yeah, I don't want to get specific on guiding December, but certainly consistent with the prepared remarks, we see a stabilizing rate moving forward, and obviously that's plus or minus, given the integers of some of our ASPs, that can be plus or minus $20 million or $30 million generally overall across the businesses. And of course, we drive the business to meet the targets we have overall and not necessarily trying to deliver to certain numbers across each of the segments.

That being said, service continues to grow and will grow a little bit each quarter just like it generally always has as the install base continues to grow over time and so we see growth in service. EPC could potentially be a little bit volatile, so I'd like to be optimistic. We'll see it pick up from current levels as we get closer to the end of the year, but not modeling it today. I'd like to see, it's a good indicator given its short lead time. It's more capacity-centric. It's closer to consumer, so it's a decent indicator on consumer markets when we see it recover because it weakened earlier -- and so it should recover sooner perhaps than the semi PC part of it.

And then so semi PC, I think, will generally be somewhat consistent with -- with the June quarter result as it flows through into September, which is, again, back to a point of relatively flat guidance quarter-on-quarter.

Yes, there are some projects at the end of the year. We'll see how those play out. Could cause the numbers to skew a bit in terms of deliveries into December and so we'll just have to see how that goes as we work closely with those customers. And so depending on that, that could cause potentially maybe the number to be a little bit higher. But if you just think about it over a couple of quarter time frame. We -- the choice of the word stabilizing was an important one because that's generally how we see – see the business overall here over the next couple of quarters.

Tim Arcuri

Great, Bren. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Harlan Sur with JPMorgan. Harlan, please make sure you're off mute.

Harlan Sur

Yes. Sorry about that. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe on a follow-up to Tim's question. Your prior view was for process control to be down roughly kind of mid-teens, right, relative to WFE, which was down 20%. Now also the better June quarter results and if I flat line stabilize that process control for the remainder of the calendar year after the June quarter. It looks like your process control franchise is actually going to be down only 10% to 12% for the full year. So even better outperformance versus WFE. You mentioned not inspection, their wafer or strong dynamics. Like what other product segments are driving the better implied outlook for process control?

Rick Wallace

Yes. Yes, your math is consistent. So yes, that's how it will play out, assuming the December quarter comes through the way we expect today. We talked about their wafer obviously, being a strong driver, optical inspection, reticle inspection is also a business that isn't declining as much as the overall market. So -- so we've seen strength in those areas. So it's mostly there.

Look, given the percent of investment that's happening in logic and foundry, obviously, the process control tends to be there is higher than it is in memory. So that tends to provide a nice tailwind in terms of the dynamics within WFE playing towards KLA. And so obviously, the products we talked about are big drivers. But overall, it's good in terms of the percent spend on our products as a percent of the total.

Harlan Sur

No, I appreciate that. Advanced packaging demand is picking up quite strongly, right, driven by all these accelerated compute workloads like AI, right, you have HBM, coleus [ph] packaging, multichips 0.5 [ph] configuration. TSMC, Intel, all the memory guys, those saturate, you guys supplying to all of them. Are you seeing the demand pick up for your solutions for accelerated compute applications? And the advanced packaging segment growing this year for the team, or is that sort of AI-accelerated compute demand being somewhat offset by some of the more consumer-focused end markets.

Rick Wallace

Harlan, yes, good observation. And we have seen an increase. There haven't been a ton of bright spots with our customers, but that's one, and that has happened fairly recently. We've seen an uptick. It's a small – relatively small number at as a percent. It's got quite a bit, but off of a small number. So absolutely, we've seen it, and we see it directly tied to some accelerated orders for some work that we've done, as you know, with EPC and finding some of the products we have semi process control and EPC, we've absolutely seen that. So we're seeing an uptick in that.

Yes, you had the overall packaging market down with 15% to 20% or so. But if we look at our packaging business within the company, it's pretty flattish year-to-year. Rick talked about some of the recent upside we're seeing related to some of the AI drivers that are recurring right now. So it's a good and evolving story moving forward as more complexity moves into the package across process but also process control.

Harlan Sur

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Atif Malik with Citi.

Atif Malik

Hi, thank you for taking my question. I have a question on leading-edge logic investments. At Semicon West a couple of weeks ago, when we spoke to the suppliers, there were expectations at the leading edge spending could be up less than mature nodes into next year? And I assume a process control intensity is higher on leading versus mature nodes. My question for you is, are there any major product cycles or EV or x-ray or major contribution from areas like auto, which could help perhaps offset your exposure to leading edge investments next year?

Rick Wallace

Sure. I think that for KLA, the one thing you have to keep in mind is we're still supply limited on some of our most critical process control products that apply to the leading edge, such as optical and even some of the reticle products. We just cannot -- we still cannot meet demand. So I think we have a natural governor in there in terms of being able to keep that business sustained over the next several quarters based on even the current booking environment. So I think that's one factor.

And then the other is we still see, especially with the new architectures that are being out there and people moving to the next-generation transistor architectures, a lot of demand for the leading edge in the R&D phase. So we feel pretty good about how we're positioned for that much so than one who is primarily focused on capacity we see.

Atif Malik

Good. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And there are no further questions in the queue at this time. So I would like to turn the floor back over to Kevin Kessel for any additional or closing remarks.

Kevin Kessel

Thank you very much, Chelsea, and I wanted to thank everyone again for their interest and their time. We know it's a very busy earnings season, and it's also a very busy day, and this was a later call in order to try to accommodate as much as we could. So we look forward to speaking to all of you in the weeks ahead.

And with that, I'll turn it back to Chelsea for any final remarks.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes the KLA Corporation second quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. Please disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day.