Foundry investment in 5nm has started according to ASM

Here are some take aways form the ASM International Earnings Call for Q3/2018 [Full transcript by Seeking Alpa, LINK]. Interestingly there was no talk about "The end of Moore´s Law" at all. On the contrary ASM see that Foundry investment in 5nm has started and will increase in 2019 and incearsed number of additional new ALD applications will be deployed.

For ASM the equipment sales were led by their ALD business, but they also recorded healthy sales levels in our other product lines. By industry segment, revenue in the quarter was led by foundry, followed by memory and then logic. Within memory the larger part of sales was related to DRAM investments, while NAND sales decreased compared to the second quarter. 

"The structural outlook for the ALD market remains strong. ALD continues to be a key enabler of Moore's Law. An increasing number of ALD steps will be needed to help create the smaller geometries, new materials, and more complex device architectures that are on our customers' roadmap." 

- Chuck del Prado, President and CEO of ASMI.

• Spending in the advanced logic segment is clearly higher in 2018 compared to last year.
• Foundry spending is lower this year and is driven by further 7-nanometer investments as well as the first investments in 5-nanometer. 
• Investments for the 5-nanometer node are likely to further increase in the course of next year.
• ASM expectation is that the 5-nanometer foundry node is going to be an important transition for the company, with good opportunities to expand with multiple new ALD applications/layers. 
• The DRAM segment is to show solid growth for the wafer equipment market in in 2018. For ASM, DRAM is also one of the drivers behind higher sales this year. ASM remain strongly focused on broadening our position in DRAM to new ALD solutions.
• 3D NAND spending is coming down significantly in the second half of this year. Also, for the full year of 2018 NAND spending is expected to be lower.
• A recovery in investments in the NAND segment will likely be driven by the transition to the next device generations of 90-plus layers. These next device generations are expected to need an increased number of advanced single wafer ALD applications.