Lam Research still splits etch from deposition on the 10-K for the year ended 28 June 2026, filed 7 August. The same filing still says a manufacturer generally keeps a qualified supplier on that specific application and technology node.
Etch is a recipe. The tool is sold.
Lam Research printed 307.65 on the public scan of 5 September, up 1.9 percent on the five-day window. That is a share print. A 1.9 percent five-day in Lam is not a qualified node. Applied Materials printed 454.71, down 1.5 percent. KLA printed 185.6, up 5.7 percent.
Etch is a recipe
The 10-K for the year ended 28 June 2026, filed 7 August, still splits the work. Deposition creates the film. Etch carves it. Clean finishes the wafer. Conductor etch sits in the Kiyo, Versys Metal, and Akara families. Dielectric etch sits in Flex and Vantex. Selective etch sits in Argos, Prevos, and Selis. Those are chambers out of Fremont. The product the foundry actually keeps is a qualified application on a named technology node. The tool is sold once. The recipe is what stays.
The same 10-K is plain about the lock. Semiconductor manufacturers must make a substantial investment to qualify and integrate new capital equipment into production lines. Once a manufacturer has selected a particular supplier's equipment and qualified it for production, the manufacturer generally maintains that selection for that specific production application and technology node as long as the products demonstrate performance to specification in the installed base. That is the recipe sentence. The 10-K still names Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Taiwan Semiconductor as the kind of customer that lock is written for.
Not Applied deposition
Lam names Applied Materials as the primary competitor in the dielectric and metals deposition market. In etch the same filing names Applied Materials, Hitachi, and Tokyo Electron. Deposition adds. Etch removes. They are not one tool. Recasting Lam as Applied because both sell wafer fabrication equipment is the category error this page is for. Applied's own filings still call the franchise materials engineering: deposition, etch, planarization, implant, inspection, in one Semiconductor Systems sleeve. Lam's filing still bothers to split etch from deposition. Keep the files separate.
Applied printed on this scan. Lam printed. NVIDIA printed 230.36, up 5.9 percent. Micron printed 1,016.59. Those are an accelerator and a stack. They already have pages. TEL on this scan is TE Connectivity. Do not borrow a Japanese etch house onto a Harrisburg connector.
The 10-K still splits etch from deposition. 307.65 is a share print.