$10.25bn Guided, Shares −13.6% in One Day (Applied Materials Earnings Preview, 12 November 2026): What to Expect From Q4 — and Why the Fiscal 2027 Outlook Decides the Read

Applied Materials reports fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results after the US close on Thursday 12 November, with the call at 4:30 p.m. ET (21:30 UTC). The company guided revenue to $10.25 billion ± $500 million and non-GAAP EPS to $4.02 ± $0.20, and consensus sits on top of that guide at about $4.06. The quarter is largely known. What is not known is whether the post-midterm sell-off — the shares fell 13.6% on 5 November without the company saying a word — has any counterpart in Applied's order book, and the fiscal first-quarter guide is the first place that can show up.

When Applied Materials reports, and what is already known

Applied confirmed on 22 October that it will publish results for the quarter ended in late October after the market close on Thursday 12 November, with management's call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern (1:30 p.m. Pacific, 21:30 UTC). That timing puts the first reaction in extended trading on Thursday evening and the first full session on Friday 13 November — which is also the morning the US producer price index for October lands. Two days earlier, on Tuesday 10 November, October CPI is published, so the report arrives into a market that will already have repriced rates once that week.

The quarter's shape was set in August. In its third-quarter release Applied reported record revenue of $9.115 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $3.50, and guided the fourth quarter well above where analysts had been. Reuters reported at the time that consensus for the quarter was about $9.54 billion, which put the $10.25 billion guide roughly $710 million above expectation at its midpoint. Our Q3 results breakdown walks through how that quarter's free cash flow snapped back to $2.33 billion.

The EPS consensus and year-ago figure are from Barchart's 28 October preview. Consensus sitting a few cents above the guide midpoint is the normal pattern for a company that has beaten its guide repeatedly: analysts pencil in a modest beat because one has usually arrived. It also means a print exactly at the midpoint would read as a slight miss.

Why the shares fell 13.6% without any company news

On Thursday 5 November the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% and the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index more than 12%, per Reuters. Applied fell 13.6% to $319.25, according to Trefis data published on Yahoo Finance, and it had issued no release, filing or guidance change. The move belonged to its group, not to the company.

The trigger was the midterm result. Reuters reported that wins in states where opposition to new data centres has mounted fuelled concern that tighter regulation could slow the AI infrastructure build-out, and the Christian Science Monitor counted 41 local data-centre ballot measures across 10 states, with development constrained or banned in all but one. Our breakdown of the 5 November sell-off sets out why the bottleneck in that story is the site, not the chip.

Applied sits one step further up that chain than any chip designer. It does not sell anything that goes into a data centre. It sells the deposition, etch, inspection and other tools that foundries and memory makers must buy before they can produce a wafer. Those manufacturers expand capacity because chip designers order wafers, and chip designers order wafers because data-centre operators order chips. Each link adds a lag, and each lag means the equipment maker's order book reflects decisions taken months before the chips reach a rack.

That chain cuts both ways. A delay at the first link takes time to reach the last, which is why Applied's fourth quarter, which ended in late October, cannot have been affected by an election held on 3 November. But equipment makers also sit at the most leveraged point of the chain: a fab expansion is either ordered or deferred, and capital budgets are revised in large steps. The 13.6% fall priced that leverage in advance of any evidence.

What the peers already reported

The two largest US peers reported before the election, and both described an industry still accelerating.

On 21 October Lam Research reported record September-quarter revenue of $8.22 billion, up 22% from the June quarter, and guided the December quarter to $8.60 billion ± $400 million with gross margin of 52.5% ± 1 point. Its regional table showed China at 35% of revenue, Korea 20%, Taiwan 18% and the United States 8%. On 28 October KLA reported September-quarter revenue of $4.14 billion, above the midpoint of its $4.0 billion guide, and guided its December quarter to about $4.7 billion ± $200 million.

Lam and KLA fell 14% and 12% respectively on 5 November, according to TIKR's market data, a week or two after issuing those guides. The sequence matters: the market did not doubt what these companies said about the next three months. It doubted whether the run-rate behind those numbers survives into 2027. Applied's report is the first from the group since the election, and its guide covers a quarter that runs into early 2027 — further out than either peer's.

The three scenarios, and what each would mean

No consensus figure for Applied's fiscal first quarter of 2027 has been reliably published, so the scenarios below are framed by direction rather than by a number.

1. Guide up, 2027 framework intact. A first-quarter guide above the fourth-quarter level and a reiteration of chief executive Gary Dickerson's August statement that the company expects "another strong growth year" in 2027. That would be the first company-level evidence that fab customers have not revised their spending plans since the election. The read-through runs to the other equipment makers first and, more weakly, to the chip and hyperscaler weights in the Nasdaq 100, because it would suggest that the doubt priced on 5 November has not reached capital budgets — at least not yet.

2. In-line quarter, flat or cautious guide. Results at the midpoint and a guide close to the fourth-quarter level, with commentary that avoids a 2027 number. Mechanically this is the ambiguous case: a flat guide after a 12% sequential step-up is not a contraction, but it would read as confirmation that the step-up is not repeating. How it lands depends on how much of the 5 November fall already assumed exactly that, and that assumption is not observable anywhere.

3. Guide down or 2027 softened. A first-quarter guide below the fourth quarter, or language about customers pushing out tools or "digesting" capacity. That would be the first evidence that the sell-off's premise — a slower build-out — has reached orders. Because equipment makers sit at the leveraged end of the chain, a cut here would carry more information for the rest of the semiconductor group than the same cut from a chip designer.

China: the second line to read

China was 28% of Applied's third-quarter revenue, down from 35% a year earlier — but in dollars it fell by only $42 million, to $2.506 billion, while US and European revenue grew sharply. A share that falls because the denominator grew is different from a share that falls because the region shrank, and the fourth-quarter geographic table will show which pattern held.

The channel is export policy. Sales of advanced tools to Chinese customers depend on US licensing, and any tightening reduces revenue in that region directly, regardless of demand. After the midterm result, some market coverage cited fears of more aggressive export controls among the reasons for the chip sell-off; those fears relate to possible future policy, not to any rule announced so far. The concrete question for Thursday is narrower: whether China's dollar revenue held near $2.5 billion and whether management describes Chinese demand differently than it did in August. Our coverage of the September export-control debate explains how licensing reaches equipment revenue.

How the report reaches the indices and the dollar

Applied is a member of both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, but it is not one of the mega-caps that drive most of a daily index move, so even a double-digit swing in its own shares contributes only a fraction of a percent at index level. The channel that matters is read-through. Equipment orders are an early, hard indicator of whether announced capacity is actually being built. That bears on far heavier names — the chip designers, the memory makers and the hyperscalers financing the build — and it arrives in Nasdaq 100 futures in the Thursday evening session.

For currencies the link is indirect and runs through risk sentiment. The 5 November sell-off was a risk-off day, and risk sentiment is one of the five factors the meter scores for the US dollar, the yen and the other majors. A single equipment report is unlikely to change that on its own; it matters to the extent that it confirms or contradicts the story that drove the whole sector lower. The US dollar page shows how that factor is scoring now. For background on how the site separates mechanism from forecast, see about pip theory.

What to watch on Thursday night, in order

• The fiscal Q1 2027 revenue guide against the $10.25 billion fourth-quarter guide. Up, flat or down is the single most informative number in the release.
• 2027 commentary. Whether management repeats the August expectation of "another strong growth year", and whether it describes any customer revising timing since the election.
• The fourth-quarter print against $10.25 billion and $4.06. Important for the record, but the least informative line, because consensus has anchored on the guide.
• China's dollar revenue against $2.506 billion in Q3, and any change in the language about licensing.
• Margin. Third-quarter non-GAAP gross margin was 50.4%; a guide that holds that level while revenue rises would indicate pricing has not weakened.

Educational macro context only — not investment advice.