KLAC Set to Report Q1 Earnings: What's in Store for the Stock?

KLA Corporation KLAC is set to report its first-quarter fiscal 2026 results on Oct. 29.

For the to-be-reported quarter, KLAC expects revenues of $3.15 billion, plus/minus $150 million. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues is pegged at $3.16 billion, indicating an increase of 11% from the year-ago quarter’s reported figure.

KLA expects non-GAAP earnings of $8.53 per share, plus/minus 77 cents. The consensus mark for earnings is pegged at $8.55 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, indicating year-over-year growth of 16.6%.

KLAC’s earnings have surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all the trailing four quarters, the average surprise being 6.16%. 
 

KLA Corporation Price and EPS Surprise

KLA Corporation price-eps-surprise | KLA Corporation Quote

Let us see how things have shaped up for the upcoming announcement.

Key Factors to Note Ahead of KLAC’s Q1 Results

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to serve as a key catalyst for KLA as compute efficiency advancements fuel demand for advanced semiconductors and sophisticated process control solutions. KLA’s fiscal first quarter results are expected to have benefited from the growing importance of process control, as it reduces time to debug process integration challenges in the fab ramp phase and optimizes yield across a high-volume manufacturing environment. An increasing complexity of advanced packaging is creating strong demand for KLA’s process control solutions. 

The advanced packaging business has robust growth prospects driven by increasing complexity in chip integration and expanding AI infrastructure requirements. The segment's revenue trajectory from over $500 million in calendar 2024 to an anticipated $925 million in calendar 2025 underscores its emergence as a significant performance driver. This, along with strong spending in development of leading-edge logic nodes and high-bandwidth memory in DRAM, is expected to have driven KLAC’s top-line growth in the to-be-reported quarter. 

However, gross margin is expected to have suffered from weak systems revenues in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Tariff remains a headwind, but lower than the previous guidance of roughly a 100-basis-point negative impact.

What Our Model Says

According to the Zacks model, the combination of a positive Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat. However, that’s not the case here.

KLA has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they are reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Stocks to Consider

Here are some companies worth considering, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings in their upcoming releases:

Corning GLW has an Earnings ESP of +4.15% and a Zacks Rank #2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Corning is slated to report third-quarter 2025 results on Oct. 28. 

Meta Platforms META has an Earnings ESP of +3.03% and a Zacks Rank #2 at present. Meta Platforms is scheduled to report third-quarter 2025 results on Oct. 29.

AMETEK AME has an Earnings ESP of +1.21% and a Zacks Rank #2 at present. AMETEK is set to report third-quarter 2025 results on Oct. 30. 

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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