What Would You Have Needed To Notice In Applied Materials Stock

Applied Materials (AMAT) stock returned 143.9% in the twelve months to October 5, 2026, against 17.1% for the S&P 500. The run turned out to be about artificial intelligence: chipmakers wanted far more of the machines Applied sells for making advanced chips. You may have watched from the sidelines and wondered whether anyone could have seen it coming. So what had Applied itself said before the run began?

What Applied Materials Said In November 2024

Management described a shift on its fiscal Q4 2024 call, held on November 14, 2024, more than ten months before the run began. The whole chip industry, it said, was turning toward energy-efficient computing. That shift laid the foundation for today's AI surge: because modern AI workloads are bounded by strict thermal and power limits, demand for high-performance AI chips inevitably required the energy-efficient architectures Applied was preparing for.

Applied then put money into chip packaging. On April 14, 2025, it announced that it had bought 9% of BE Semiconductor Industries, a company it had worked with for four years. The two had been developing hybrid bonding, a way of joining chips together that is used in advanced packaging. So nearly six months before the run, Applied had said where it saw the industry heading and had bought into chip packaging.

Applied Materials' Sales Showed It Only Later

Applied's results looked ordinary before the run. Revenue grew 6.8% from a year earlier in fiscal Q2 2025 and 7.7% in fiscal Q3 2025, the final period Applied reported before the run began. In its fiscal Q3 2025 call, held on August 14, 2025, management was still talking about uncertainties in its China business. So the signs were in what Applied said and bought, and they are far easier to read now than they were then.

The sales arrived during the run. Revenue reached a record $9.1 billion in fiscal Q3 2026, up 25% from a year earlier. Semiconductor Systems, the chipmaking equipment segment, brought in $7 billion of that.

Are Applied Materials' Customers Still Ordering More?

Management says they are. In its fiscal Q3 2026 call, held on August 13, 2026, it guided fiscal Q4 2026 revenue to $10.25 billion, plus or minus $500 million. Revenue at that level would be a step up from the record it had just reported. Management has also raised its revenue growth forecast for calendar 2026 twice since February. And it expects packaging revenue to grow more than 70% in calendar 2026, which is the business the stake in BE Semiconductor Industries pointed to.

But buyers of the stock are already paying for that growth. Applied Materials stock trades at 46.5 times earnings, against 21.5 for the S&P 500. The shares were down about 4% in trading the day after that call, even though results and guidance beat expectations. And the $10.25 billion is a forecast, not a result. Fiscal Q4 2026 revenue inside management's range would show demand still building, and revenue below the range would be the first sign that growth is decelerating from management's aggressive pace, even if it still marks a sequential record.

Does This Mean You Should Act On AMAT?

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