KLA Corp. (KLAC)
Technology · NASDAQ · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
KLA Corp. trades at $219.37, which is 58% above the $92.75 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure it screens as expensive, which is not the same as saying it will fall.
Our moat model scores it 94 out of 100, which is a wide moat. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 65.4 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About KLA Corp.
KLA Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and markets process control, process-enabling, and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and related electronics industries worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Semiconductor Process Control; Specialty Semiconductor Process; and PCB and Component Inspection. It offers inspection and review tools to identify, locate, characterize, review, and analyze defects on various surfaces of patterned and unpatterned wafers; metrology systems to measure pattern dimensions, film thickness, film stress, layer-to-layer alignment, pattern placement, surface topography, and electro-optical properties for wafers; chemical process control equipment; wired and wireless sensor wafers and reticles; wafer defect inspection, review, and metrology systems; reticle inspection and metrology systems; wafer inspection and metrology systems; and semiconductor software solutions that provide run-time process control, defect excursion identification, process corrections, and defect classification to accelerate yield learning rates and reduce production risk. The company also provides etch, plasma dicing, deposition, and other wafer processing technologies and solutions for the semiconductor and microelectronics industry. In addition, it offers direct imaging, inspection, optical shaping, inkjet and additive printing, and computer-aided manufacturing and engineering solutions for the PCB market and inspection and metrology systems for quality control and yield improvement in advanced and traditional semiconductor packaging markets. The company was formerly known as KLA-Tencor Corporation and changed its name to KLA Corporation in July 2019. KLA Corporation was incorporated in 1975 and is headquartered in Milpitas, California.
KLAC passes 4 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
18 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Capital Research Global, Capital Research Global Investors$1.44B · 0.2% of book
- Arrowstreet Capital, ARROWSTREET CAPITAL, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP$1.17B · 0.6% of book
- Parnassus Investments, PARNASSUS INVESTMENTS, LLC$792.69M · 2.3% of book
- Impax Asset Management, Impax Asset Management Group plc$535.65M · 3.7% of book
- Jensen Investment Management, JENSEN INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT INC$243.88M · 4.8% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is KLA Corp. (KLAC) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $92.75, KLAC at $219.37 is 58% above fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own KLAC?
18 of the institutions we track reported a position in KLAC in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is KLAC's P/E ratio?
KLAC trades at 65.4 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for KLAC, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.