Applied Materials forecasts Q2 sales above estimates on AI chip demand and memory shortage

What happened

Applied Materials ($AMAT) reported a Q1 beat and guided Q2 revenue and adjusted EPS above Wall Street estimates, pointing to accelerating AI-compute investment, tight memory supply (especially DRAM/HBM), and strength in leading-edge logic and advanced packaging.

Why the market cares

This is a read-through for the whole semiconductor capex cycle: if AI-driven memory and logic spending is rising, the equipment stack (etch/deposition/metrology/inspection and packaging) typically sees improving orders, utilisation, and pricing power.

Winners

Wafer fab equipment and process control

When memory and logic-foundry capex expands, fabs buy more deposition/etch and inspection/metrology tools. ...