ACM Research disclosed a voluntary announcement on the evening of September 30: as of September 29, 2026, total backlog reached 17.073 billion yuan, up 88.20% year-over-year, equivalent to approximately $2.5 billion. Parent company ACM Research (Nasdaq: ACMR) disclosed these figures overseas simultaneously; the company is registered in Fremont, California, with its main operating entity being ACM Research (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
What scale is 17.073 billion yuan? ACM Research's previous full-year 2026 revenue guidance was 8.2 to 8.8 billion yuan, meaning the backlog is nearly double the annual revenue target. However, in the first half, operating revenue was 3.718 billion yuan, growing only 13.87% year-over-year. Orders rose 88%, while revenue grew less than 14%—this gap is more telling than the 88% itself.
Three Product Lines, Three Growth Rates
Breaking down the product mix clarifies the picture. In the first half of 2026, the first line, primarily cleaning equipment, generated 2.259 billion yuan in revenue, up 4.71% year-over-year, with its share falling from 66.06% in the same period last year to 60.75%; the second line, consisting of front-end equipment such as electroplating and furnace tubes, generated 1.102 billion yuan, up 36.29% year-over-year, with its share rising from 24.76% to 29.63%; the third line, comprising advanced packaging (excluding electroplating) and other back-end equipment, generated 358 million yuan, up 19.27% year-over-year, accounting for 9.62%.
+4.71%
Cleaning Equipment
+36.29%
Front-end: Electroplating & Furnace Tubes
+19.27%
Advanced Packaging & Back-end
These three figures represent the year-over-year revenue growth rates for ACM Research's three product lines in the first half of 2026: cleaning equipment +4.71%, front-end equipment including electroplating and furnace tubes +36.29%, and advanced packaging and other back-end equipment +19.27%. The disparity in growth rates is itself an answer—the bulk of the backlog increase is not in cleaning.
Electroplating Captures Orders First
Cleaning equipment remains the ballast, with the largest revenue and share. According to Gartner, ACM holds an 8.3% global market share in semiconductor cleaning equipment, ranking fourth, and over 60% share among domestic manufacturers. Its issue is not competitiveness, but the base—the scale is already large, so growth naturally slows.
What is actually scaling up is electroplating. In the first half of 2026, ACM Research (Shanghai) delivered its 2,000th electroplating chamber. Looking back, the 500th chamber was delivered in 2022 and the 1,500th in 2025, indicating a clear shortening of the interval between these milestones. According to Gartner, the company holds a 9.6% global market share in semiconductor electroplating equipment, ranking second worldwide. Its delivered chambers cover front-end copper interconnect, back-end wafer-level packaging, 3D stacking, and compound semiconductors.
The demand for electroplating is driven by two process shifts: larger logic chip dimensions and increased metal interconnect layers are boosting the need for copper interconnect electroplating; meanwhile, the rising stacking layers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) are increasing the copper electroplating steps required for through-silicon via (TSV) filling. Additionally, large copper pillar (TIV) electroplating solutions for CoWoS processes have already achieved volume sales.
Younger product categories are still in the validation phase
A third source of growth comes from newer products. Atmospheric oxidation furnaces and LPCVD tube furnaces have entered the production lines of multiple domestic fabs and are gradually passing validation while moving toward additional orders; ALD processes have completed small-batch validation for certain steps; coater-developer Track equipment is expected to complete full production flow validation for KrF processes by the end of 2026; and the first PECVD SiCN equipment has just left the factory, utilizing a proprietary three-station rotating deposition architecture.
Panel-level equipment is another line worth watching. Vacuum negative-pressure panel-level cleaning technology has achieved mass production and final acceptance at leading domestic clients, while the company has also secured and delivered orders for 510x515mm panel-level negative-pressure cleaning equipment overseas. An equipment vendor that started with wafer cleaning moving into panel-level applications addresses the need for large-area, low-damage cleaning in panel-level packaging—a trend aligned with the shift from panel manufacturing to packaging discussed earlier.
Orders are rising, but net profit excluding non-recurring items is falling
One figure is easily overlooked. Net profit attributable to the parent company in the first half was 989 million yuan, up 42.14% year-on-year, which appears significantly stronger than revenue growth; however, net profit attributable to the parent company excluding non-recurring items was only 570 million yuan, down 15% year-on-year. The company explained in its semi-annual report that the increase in net profit was primarily driven by fair value changes and investment income from external investments—indicating that core operating profits actually contracted during the period. Meanwhile, R&D spending reached 663 million yuan, up 21.73% year-on-year, accounting for 17.82% of revenue. The R&D headcount increased to 1,297, representing 49.9% of total employees—funds are being channeled into the validation of new products.
Here is a falsifiable judgment: the bulk of this 88% order increase is not driven by cleaning. The evidence lies in revenue feedback—if the incremental orders were primarily for cleaning, given the relatively mature delivery cycle of cleaning tools, the first-half revenue growth rate would not have been just 4.71%. I assess that the increase is concentrated in new categories such as electroplating, furnace, and advanced packaging. This brings inherent risks: first-time mass production ramp-ups for new categories and long customer validation cycles mean the conversion of the 17 billion yuan in orders into revenue may be slower than market expectations. This judgment can be disproven—when ACM Research (Shanghai) discloses its Q3 report on October 28, if cleaning revenue growth returns to double digits while new categories show no significant volume increase, my assessment will be wrong.
On the demand side, the company cites two drivers: accelerated localization of semiconductor equipment and a global capacity expansion cycle driven by AI computing power demand. In terms of products, these two factors point to different outcomes—localization drives the replacement of mature categories like cleaning and furnace, while AI computing power drives new categories like electroplating and panel-level packaging, which are tightly coupled with advanced packaging. The former is stable; the latter is fast-growing but requires validation. The market has assigned a market capitalization of approximately 142.8 billion yuan and a dynamic P/E ratio of 72x, implying expectations skewed heavily toward the latter.
If you are an equipment buyer facing an order where the quote remains unchanged but the delivery schedule has stretched from a few months to over a year, would you first secure capacity for mature tools like cleaning, or shift your budget to new categories that have just passed validation?