Let me share a couple of things I'm seeing—don't just stare at the numbers and shoot from the hip.
First assumption—the cadence follows the seasons. An equipment maker isn't like a consumer goods company where you can spread shipments evenly across the year. On the fab side, the milestones are what they are—building top-out, MEP completion, tool move-in, machine qualification. So full-year revenue recognition naturally tilts toward Q3 and Q4. That's exactly how those 2025 peaks of 2.27B and 2.30B came about. For 2026, I don't think it'll be materially different—pushing Q3 to around 2.5B isn't aggressive. The Q2 ramp from 1.11B to 1.49B is built on the historical pattern that Q2 is typically a meaningful step up from Q1, plus some tools that got pushed from last year coming through in concentrated qualification batches in H1. That's the projection.
Second assumption—gross margin "cools off" back to around 38%. That 41.7% in 2026Q1 looks pretty, but you need to read it right—that's a product mix that was temporarily skewed high-end stacking on top of a small window of upstream pricing leverage. It's not the new normal. A farmer watching the seasons to plant still needs to know which years run warm and which years need thicker clothing. There's no reason gross margin stays parked at 41%. In H2, the share of mainline PECVD models recovers, so I'm sizing it at 37% to 38%. There's also a non-operating piece in net income—government subsidies, treasury returns, that kind of thing—Q1 booked a big chunk, and that tails off later. So net margin won't look as wild as Q1.
Biggest risk, one word: customer fab timeline pushouts. Several large customers in the industry have already been re-prioritizing capex recently. If a key fab's Phase 2 slips a quarter or two, the full-year revenue layout has to be redrawn—that Q3 peak could get shaved down. Second hidden risk, just to flag it: if the supply chain for advanced-node components gets pinched, our tool shipments and qualifications slow down, and gross margin gets dragged along with it.
Bottom line: directionally we're following the seasons of domestic substitution forward—Q2 steadies, Q3 pushes—but you need to leave buffer for customer timing.