日本半导体2026年第一季度业绩前瞻：高预期提升门槛

Japan Semis Earnings Preview (1Q CY26): Lofty ExpectationsRaise the Bar We preview the upcoming 1Q CY26 quarterly results season for Japanese semiconductorcompanies based on a set of data sources that we track and proprietary methods to derivethe expected results. The data pack is available upon request. Expectations into earnings are now high as stocks are up 31% YTD on average.Both ASML and TSMC’s earnings suggest the bar for beats is high for further upside, whilemisses may be punished. Based on the tracking data, we expectAdvantest to beat;Ibiden and Screen may miss. TEL is no longer tracking behind guidance after a strongMarch. Equipment companies need new stories to deliver alpha.With investor expectationsfor this year’s WFE growth at 20%+, it’s hard to see upside on raising market forecastalone. Instead, companies with new stories or narrative changes will likely outperform:Advantestshould be able to raise guidance on the back of the testing demand beyondGPU (i.e. ASICs, CPUs, CPOs).Kokusaibenefits from the strong ramp up of China memorycapacity expansion and should be able to revise up its forecasts.Lasertecproduction hasturned positive strongly and is highly anticipated to raise full year order to ¥220bn, andupdates on TSMC qualification will be taken positively. On the other hand,TELandScreenmay need to find new reasons to outperform, especially for Screen which may miss thequarter, whileDISCOdemand is solid but restricted by production capacity. For non-equipment names, shortage is the keyword.SUMCOresults is almostirrelevant as long as they show customer inventory coming down significantly, a strongsign to suggest the cycle turn. Narrative is quickly shifting towards a raw wafer shortagenext year, which is not our base case given China supply but is helping the stock in the shortterm.Ibidenfundamentals are very strong, but the slower Rubin ramp up probably hurtsthe near term, and investors pricing in a substrate price hike like the TW peers may getdisappointed. However, we are not that negative into the earning as there could be upsidefrom CPU (Intel/AMD) demand and would buy the dip if any.Hoyaresults are likely solidwith strong EUV and HDD substrate demand, and investors are likely to ask when theymight be able to raise price for HDD substrates, especially if a capacity constraint is likelynext year. ForRenesas, the AI story is well understood, and its non-AI business is hurt byweak macro. But there is some pent-up expectation for analog shortage and price hike,especially for Industrial. Given the low valuation, Renesas can probably still outperform. On FX, JPY depreciates further,with 1QCY26 USDJPY at ¥156.88 vs. ¥154.07 (1.8%depreciation), this would be a slight tailwind for most companies. 2Q26 QTD is showingfurther JPY depreciation to ¥159.13 (+1.4%). In our view, Ibiden, DISCO, Advantest,SUMCO and Renesas are likely to benefit more for the FX sensitivity. BERNSTEIN TICKER TABLE INVESTMENT IMPLICATIONS We rate Advantest (PT=¥34,300), Kokusai (PT=¥8,620.00), Tokyo Electron (PT=¥56,800), DISCO (PT=¥70,800), Lasertec(PT=¥41,000), Renesas (PT=¥3,300.00), Hoya (PT=¥31,500) and Ibiden (PT=¥9,200.00) Outperform. We rate Screen (PT=¥21,600) and SUMCO (PT=¥1,530.00) Market-Perform. DETAILS Exhibit 1 summarizes the tracking data for the upcoming earnings. EXHIBIT 2:Sumco / Disco were the key outperformers YTD, and TEL / Kokusai underperformed. TOKYO ELECTRON Tokyo Electron will publish 4Q26 results on Thursday 30thApril. Mixed signals on Q4 -Our SEAJ data tracker suggests a weak Q4 with ¥647bn SPE sales (+18% QoQ) for TEL, which is 6%below consensus. On the contrary, country import data suggest TEL’s 4Q FY26/3 revenue to be ¥720bn (+32% QoQ) which isabove consensus by 4.5%. As the biggest WFE manufacturer in Japan, there is an abundance of data points to track TEL, and we believe SEAJ / Chinaimport / Taiwan import / South Korean import / US import data collectively have good prediction power (Exhibit 4-Exhibit 11).Q4 has seen QoQ growth for all of the regions we track. Guidance raise- On the earnings call the key data point would be the guidance — company suggested that their previousmarket growth guidance of 15% may have been too low — so we expect them to raise it probably to 15-20% and guide for 20%+ growth for TEL. Margin- Another debate would be margin. As revenue is expected to grow strongly and come near the MTP target of ¥3tn, thenext focal point for investors should be their OP margin target of 35%. Apparently it seems quite farfetched vs. this year’s 25%,but how they plan to balance margin with capacity buildout would be a key watch point. EXHIBIT 3:Our SEAJ-based regression and Import-based regressions show a mixed signal for Q4 results. SEAJ Japan WFE Billings EXHIBIT 4:SEAJ data suggests a QoQ growth for C1Q26, and the data has very good directional correlation with TEL. Import Data EXHIBIT 5:Based on regression, we expect TEL's SPE revenue from Taiwan, PRC, Korea