ASM International says its film erases a chip-polishing step in an $8.85 billion market; Q3 lands October 27

ASM International▼−0.20% — ASM International, down 0.20 percent today has quietly moved into a part of the chipmaking line it never owned. On September 22, 2026, the Dutch equipment maker launched XP8 Vertos Flowable Carbon, which it calls the market's first plasma-enhanced CVD flowable carbon film↗, and said it is already in initial high-volume manufacturing across logic and memory devices ¹.

The pitch is step-count economics. Conventional carbon hardmask films conform to a feature's shape, so uneven topography propagates upward and must be corrected downstream, typically by chemical mechanical planarization or etch-back. Vertos instead flows into high-aspect-ratio 3D features, fills bottom-up without voids or seams, and self-planarizes in the same PECVD chamber↗, which ASM says can eliminate those downstream steps entirely ^{1 2}.

Who loses the planarization budget

Every sequence Vertos collapses is spending that today goes to CMP. That market was worth USD 8.85 billion in 2025, projected by Research and Markets to reach USD 15.42 billion by 2035↗, with slurries the largest product segment at 42.5 percent of 2025 revenue and named players including Applied Materials▼−0.41% — Applied Materials, down 0.41 percent today, Ebara, Entegris, DuPont, JSR and Cabot ⁶. ASM says its single-chamber process removes the need for those CMP or etch-back steps in fill-planarize flows ^{1 2}. The win widens ASM beyond the ALD and epitaxy franchise where it built its name, and the loser side is explicit: CMP tool vendors like Applied Materials and Ebara, slurry and consumable houses like DuPont, JSR and Cabot, and multi-step deposition rivals. "The combination of engineered flowability, thermal stability, and area selective properties in a single PECVD platform is something the market has not seen before," said Tyler Sample, who heads ASM's PECVD product unit ¹.

Guidance rises before Vertos books a euro

Whether any of that shows in the numbers is the open question. ASM guided Q3 revenue to EUR 1.10 billion with second-half growth above 20 percent at constant currency↗ and expects the first meaningful 1.4-nanometer customer contribution in H2 2026, but no customer is named and no revenue is attached to Vertos yet ^{4 5}. Q2 revenue hit EUR 1.00 billion, up 24 percent year on year at constant currency and above EUR 980 million guidance, with a 33 percent adjusted operating margin ^{4 5}.

The market is hedging before the print

The stock is not acting like a company that just ate into a USD 8.85 billion adjacent market. ASM closed at EUR 911.60 on October 7, down 3.70 percent, roughly 16 percent below its EUR 1,092.50 52-week high against a EUR 44.9 billion market cap ⁵. When management reports on October 27 at around 6:00 p.m. CET, its first sizing of Vertos adoption will either justify pricing ASM as more than a point-deposition company, or silence would say the HVM win is not yet material ^{3 4 5}.