Overview
- Applied Materials reported a record fiscal third quarter on August 13 with $9.12 billion in revenue and $3.50 in adjusted EPS, and it guided fourth-quarter revenue around $10.25 billion.
- Despite the beat and raise, Applied shares fell in after-hours trading and then into the following sessions as investors punished the stock for not outpacing peers and for very high prior expectations.
- Market scrutiny intensified after Anthropic disclosed an annualized run rate near $65 billion and OpenAI about $40 billion, figures that landed below some investor assumptions about locked-in AI capex.
- Applied said China sales fell to about 28% of revenue and warned U.S. export restrictions will shave hundreds of millions from near-term revenue, adding a concrete regional risk to growth forecasts.
- Management is expanding capacity—planning to double quarterly system output by 2028 and prepare further growth through 2030—which leaves the stock sensitive to whether orders convert to on-time deliveries, pricing power and sustained margins.