LAM RESEARCH CORP (LRCX) Stock Analysis

Price updated 2 days ago · SEC data refreshed 3 days ago ⓘ · Not investment advice

LAM RESEARCH CORP

LRCX Industrials Special Industry Machinery📄 SEC filings ↗ CUSIP 512807306
Valuation N/A
Long-term trend (200d) 13% above 200-day Risk 43/100 Elevated
▾ What's in the 43/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Fundamental health (43%) 22/100 → +9.4
leverage 20/100 · FCF trend 25/100
Smart money (short interest + insider buying) (31%) 79/100 → +24.8
Macro backdrop (VIX, curve, credit, fear/greed + week-over-week momentum) (26%) 35/100 → +9.0
early-warning: macro conditions deteriorating week-over-week
Total43/100

Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.

💵 Price $298.22 · 2 days ago 📄 Financials SEC EDGAR · refreshed 3 days ago
📍 START HERE

How to read LRCX

We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.

Where to start — the sections that matter most for this stock
  1. 1 Reported earnings & margins ↓
    What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
  2. 2 Balance sheet & book value ↓
    Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
  3. 3 Who's selling & betting against it ↓
    Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
Or — what are you trying to decide?
A note on process: fear-driven decisions — including fear of missing out — tend to be the expensive ones. A stock up 10% a day for three days is excitement, not evidence. Whichever reader you are, the data below is there to be checked before anything is decided.
🚀
"It's surging — should I chase it?"
The momentum / FOMO trade. Before you chase, see whether the people who know it best are quietly selling into the rally.
🏷️
"Is it a cheap bargain?"
The deep-value trade. How far below assets and our value it trades — and whether it's cheap for a reason.
ⓘ The price sits far above our cash-flow model

Our DCF for LRCX lands well below today's price. For a non-cyclical that usually means the market is pricing in growth far beyond recent cash flows (or there's a data quirk), so we don't headline a single fair-value number.

What to use instead: The Reverse-DCF shows exactly how much growth the price demands — decide whether that's realistic. Pair it with peer multiples.

This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — LRCX's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.

ⓘ Why does LRCX trade at $298.22?

LAM RESEARCH CORP has 1.26 billion shares outstanding. At $298.22 per share, the market values all outstanding LRCX equity at $376.1 billion. That's market capitalization, not enterprise value — enterprise value also accounts for debt and cash. The share price by itself tells you almost nothing — a company can pick any share price by splitting or issuing more shares. What matters is the total value (Market Cap?Market Cap — The total dollar value the market is assigning to the entire company.
Why it matters: This is the number that actually matters when comparing companies. Two companies with the same business but different share counts have the same market cap.
Reference: Mega cap >$200B · Large $10–200B · Mid $2–10B · Small $300M–2B · Micro <$300M
Full explanation →) compared to what the business actually produces. This page values LRCX in Per Share?Per Share — A company-level figure divided by total shares — what one share represents.
Why it matters: Per-share metrics are the only way to fairly compare two companies with different share counts.
Full explanation → economics — what each share represents of the underlying business. Play with the share-price calculator on the homepage →

Loading insider & short-seller data…
Checking filings for failure warnings…
PEER BASKET — LIMITED COMPARABLES

⚠ We found only 1 genuine same-industry (Special Industry Machinery) comparable — fewer than the 4 we require for a reliable median. So we do not derive a peer-implied share value here. Read the multiples as rough context only.

How does LRCX stack up against its closest peers?

Ideally we compare LRCX only to same-industry peers, but too few exist in our universe right now, so the basket below mixes in broader-sector names. Treat the multiples as rough context, not a valuation. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.

▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?

EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.

EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).

p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.

What peers trade at (p25 / median / p75)

Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Based on the single available name (broad — see caveat) we could price — with one company there is no median, so read it as a single data point.

Peer-implied value check
We're not showing a peer-implied price for LRCX: with only 1 genuine same-industry comparable, a median built partly from broader-sector names would be misleading. Lean on the DCF above; use the multiples table only as loose context.

⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.

▾ View peer list (1)
Ticker Company Industry Mcap EV/Sales EV/GPEV/EBIT FCF Yield
ASML ASML HOLDING NV Special Industry Machinery $654.6B 17.9x 33.8x51.7x 1.9%
FINANCIAL HEALTH SCREENS

Bankruptcy + quality screens

Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.

Altman Z-Score?Altman Z-Score — A bankruptcy-risk score combining 5 financial ratios into one number. Predictive of bankruptcy within 2 years.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
25.11
Safe zone

Safe zone under the classic Altman thresholds — companies scoring here have historically gone bankrupt only rarely within ~2 years. A screening signal, not a guarantee.

The classic Z-score was calibrated on manufacturers. It is less reliable for asset-light or non-manufacturing businesses (broadcasters, media, software, services) and not applicable to banks, REITs, or insurers — for those the coefficients and the asset-turnover term distort the result. Read it as one screening input, not a verdict.

Piotroski F-Score?Piotroski F-Score — A 9-point quality checklist scoring profitability, leverage, and operating efficiency.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
8 / 9
Strong
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
  • ✓ Positive net income
    Net income $7,265.4M in FY2026.
  • ✓ Positive operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow $5,857.7M (was $6,173.3M the prior year).
  • ✗ Cash flow backs up reported profit
    Operating cash flow $5,857.7M vs net income $7,265.4M.
    Why this matters: When cash generated exceeds reported earnings, profits are high-quality (not propped up by accruals or one-time items).
  • ✓ Return on assets improving
    Return on assets 30.9% vs 25.1% a year ago.
  • ✓ Debt load (vs assets)
    Long-term debt is 15.8% of assets vs 17.4% a year ago ($3,721.9M of $23,529.7M assets).
  • ✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)
    Current ratio 2.63x vs 2.21x a year ago.
  • ✓ Share count (dilution)
    Share count declined 2.4% (1,286.1M → 1,255.1M year-over-year), so the no-dilution check passed. (One-year change; the multi-year buyback pace can differ.)
  • ✓ Pricing power (gross margin)
    Gross margin 50.5% vs 48.7% a year ago.
  • ✓ Sales per asset (asset turnover)
    Asset turnover 0.99x vs 0.86x a year ago.

Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.

INTERACTIVE — TWEAK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

What if you assume different inputs?

Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount Rate?Discount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for LRCX. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.

Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.

4.5% (risk-free)9-10% normal18% (deep-risk)
0%2-3% (GDP)5% (rarely sustainable)

A full intrinsic value isn't shown for LRCX because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.

For comparison — the revenue growth today's price already assumes
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—

—

⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
Where the discount rate comes from — discount rate = risk-free + beta × equity-risk-premium
What you'd earn risk-free from government bonds — the floor under every other rate. Slide it down to model the market expecting rate cuts (value rises); up for higher-for-longer.
The extra yearly return investors demand for owning stocks instead of safe bonds — the price of risk. History runs ~4.5–6.5%; we default to 5.5% (slightly conservative). It's an estimate, not a law — lower it if you think equities are less risky than that.
Inflation reduces the purchasing power of a nominal return: a 9% gain at 3% inflation is about 6% in real terms. The intrinsic value above is already in today's dollars (a nominal DCF carries inflation in both the growth and the discount rate), so this switch does not change the value — it restates the return in real terms.
Higher beta → higher discount rate (sets the rate above). 1.0 = moves with the market.
What you think LRCX can grow revenue for ~5 years, then fades to terminal.
For a pre-profit company: the % of revenue that eventually becomes free cash flow once mature. (Our published value uses the sector norm.)
All inputs start at the values our model used.

    Copy shareable link to this scenario →

    Price$298.22
    Model IVNot applicable — DCF couldn't price this stock. The other valuation lenses on this page (reverse-DCF, peers, sector lens — whichever apply to this filer) carry the read instead.

    A standard discounted cash flow?DCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
    Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
    Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
    Full explanation →     (DCF) valuation is not meaningful for Lam Research due to the market pricing optionality and narrative catalysts beyond what trailing cash flows support, as indicated by the 'Price is 8.4x model IV' flag. While the company exhibits positive net income and operating cash flow, investors are likely focused on its expanding gross margins and consistent revenue growth. The biggest risk to our own assumptions is that the market's implied expectations for future growth and margin expansion do not materialize, leading to a potential re-evaluation of its current valuation multiples.

    ⚠️ The company retires ~2.3%/yr of its shares (a multi-year CAGR), but we do NOT add that to the growth rate: buybacks at fair value are value-neutral per current share, and adding them would double-count the same cash the DCF already values. We also do not model future buyback ACCRETION: repurchases below intrinsic value CAN raise value per remaining share, but only if they continue, are funded after debt service, and are made below intrinsic value — excluding that potential benefit keeps the model conservative.

    As of 3 days ago

    ANATOMY

    Anatomy of a share

    What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.

    LRCX LAM RESEARCH CORP stock anatomy showing per-share revenue, operating expenses, free cash flow, and debt
    31.3%
    profit
    Where each $1 of revenue goes
    Net profit — 31.3¢ of every dollar ($5.76/sh — latest fiscal-year net income per share)
    Costs & taxes — 68.7¢ (on $18.42 revenue/sh)
    Net margin = net income ÷ revenue (most recent fiscal year).
    Plain English: each share (at $298) represents $18.42 of revenue per share per year, $5.76 of net income per current share, and $3.57 of free cash flow per share from the latest fiscal year. Each share carries $2.95 of total debt (interest-bearing borrowings, current + long-term).
    What's free cash flow / what do these mean?

    Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.

    Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.

    Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.

    Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.

    THE KEY DEBATE

    What you actually need to decide

    Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.

    🐂 The Bull Case
    The most important factor for the bull case is the continued expansion of gross margins from 45.7% to 50.5%, coupled with sustained revenue growth around the modeled business rate of +7.2%. This would validate the market's current valuation of the company.
    🐻 The Bear Case
    The biggest operating risk is that the gross margin expansion reverses or revenue growth significantly decelerates from its current 7.8%/yr trend. This would indicate that the market's expectations for future profitability and growth are overly optimistic, leading to a re-rating of the stock.
    📌 Signposts to watch — update your view as these print
    • Gross margin trends in upcoming quarters
    • Quarterly revenue growth rates
    • Updates on semiconductor industry capital expenditure cycles
    MOMENTUM — WHAT'S GETTING BETTER & WORSE

    The trend, in plain numbers (FY2025 → FY2026, latest reported)

    Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.

    ✅ Improving
    • Revenue grew +26% to $23.23B.
    • Gross margin improved to 50% (+2 pts).
    • Net income grew +36% to $7.27B.
    ⚠ Worsening
    • Free cash flow fell to $4.50B.
    WHO

    Management & Leadership

    Timothy M. Archer serves as the CEO of Lam Research. Other key executives include Douglas R. Bettinger as CFO and Richard P. Gottscho as EVP and Chief Technology Officer. These names are from public sources and may not reflect the absolute latest filing.

    Timothy M. Archer
    Chief Executive Officer
    Douglas R. Bettinger
    Chief Financial Officer
    Richard P. Gottscho
    EVP and Chief Technology Officer
    WHAT

    What They Make

    Lam Research Corporation designs, manufactures, markets, and services semiconductor processing equipment. Their primary customers are semiconductor manufacturers who pay for the equipment used in chip fabrication.

    End Markets

    Semiconductor manufacturingMemory productionFoundry services

    Revenue Drivers

    New equipment sales
    Customer service offerings
    Spare parts and upgrades
    Market Cap: 376.1BBeta: 2.02
    WHY

    Why Is It Priced Like This?

    Why Customers Pay

    Enabling advanced chip manufacturing
    Improving semiconductor device performance
    Increasing production efficiency
    No discounted-cash-flow value for this filer Our own data-quality checks flagged this company's figures as inconsistent enough that a discounted-cash-flow value would be misleading, so we hold it. This is our judgement about model reliability, not a gap in the company's reporting.

    What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B), dividend yield & payout — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.

    The market is likely pricing Lam Research based on expectations of continued revenue growth (7.8%/yr over 4yr) and expanding gross margins (45.7% to 50.5%). The 'Price is 8.4x model IV' flag suggests investors are betting on future optionality, narrative catalysts, or margin expansion beyond what current trailing cash flows support, rather than just its present cash flow generation.

    HOW

    Business Model & Valuation

    How They Make Money

    New equipment sales
    Customer service offerings
    Spare parts and upgrades

    Free Cash Flow DCF Strong franchise

    Owner-earnings FCF DCF: positive free cash flow (operating cash flow − capex − stock-based comp) in a sector suited for cash-flow-based valuation. High P/FCF (83x) - market pricing significant growth.

    Show advanced inputs
    Revenue Growth7.8%
    Eps Growth-35.2%
    Historical Fcf Growth18.4%
    Sector Default6.0%
    Sector Default SourceIndustrials sector default
    Best Estimate7.2%
    Methodblend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector) (buybacks ~2.3%/yr: per-share support, not added to growth)
    Growth Basistotal
    Business Growth7.2%
    Buyback Rate2.3%

    What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project its revenue segments independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.

    WHEN

    Maturity & Competitive Position

    Mature cash-generating business

    Moat Signals

    Proprietary technology in semiconductor equipment
    High switching costs for customers
    Strong customer relationships with chipmakers

    Revenue has been growing at 7.8%/yr over four years, from $17227M to $23.2 billion.

    WHERE

    Geography & Markets

    Lam Research is a US-headquartered company with significant global operations, particularly in Asia, which is a major hub for semiconductor manufacturing. Specific geographic revenue mix percentages are not available from current data sources.

    Geographic Risks

    Concentration risk in the cyclical semiconductor industry
    Geopolitical risks affecting global supply chains and trade policies
    SIGNALS

    Market Signals

    These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.

    Model neutral, tape neutral - aligned.
    RSI?RSI — Relative Strength Index — a 0-100 momentum gauge. Above 70 = overbought; below 30 = oversold.
    Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
    Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
    Full explanation →     (14)    45.2NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
    MACD?MACD — Moving Average Convergence Divergence — compares a fast and a slow price trend to gauge momentum direction.
    Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
    Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
    Full explanation →    BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
    50-Day Average$314.24Price below (-5.1%)Price below its 50-day average = near-term downtrend.
    200-Day Average$264.19Price aboveThe 200-day line is the long-term trend divider — above it is generally considered a bull market for the stock.
    50 vs 200 CrossGolden50-day above 200-dayA "golden cross" — the medium trend has overtaken the long trend (often read as bullish).

    Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.

    QUALITY

    Data Quality & Risk Flags (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
    Guardrail Notes (5)
    • The company retires ~2.3%/yr of its shares (a multi-year CAGR), but we do NOT add that to the growth rate: buybacks at fair value are value-neutral per current share, and adding them would double-count the same cash the DCF already values. We also do not model future buyback ACCRETION: repurchases below intrinsic value CAN raise value per remaining share, but only if they continue, are funded after debt service, and are made below intrinsic value — excluding that potential benefit keeps the model conservative.
    • Price is far above the model output - market may be pricing optionality, narrative catalysts, or margin expansion beyond what trailing cash flows support.
    • Extreme valuation: the price is far above the model output for a non-cyclical — likely dominated by a data issue. The model value is suppressed.
    • VALUATION HELD (EXTREME_MODEL_GAP): per-share values suppressed due to the model output failed plausibility checks.
    • Extreme valuation gap (P/IV withheld — see the note above): result may be dominated by model assumptions, share count issues, or sector-specific dynamics. Treat as low confidence.
    FINANCIALS

    Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)

    From LAM RESEARCH CORP's SEC filings (EDGAR).

    Income (5yr)

    YearRevenueNet IncomeEPS
    202623.2B7.3B$5.76
    202518.4B5.4B$4.15
    202414.9B3.8B$2.90
    202317.4B4.5B$3.32
    202217.2B4.6B$32.75

    Cash Flow (5yr)

    YearOperating CFCapEx− SBCFree Cash Flow
    2026 5.9B 966.4M 386.4M 4.5B
    2025 6.2B 759.2M 343.4M 5.1B
    2024 4.7B 396.7M 293.1M 4.0B
    2023 5.2B 501.6M 286.6M 4.4B
    2022 3.1B 546.0M 259.1M 2.3B

    How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 5.9B − 966.4M − 386.4M (stock-based comp) = 4.5B. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses.

    Balance Sheet

    Total Assets23.5B
    Total Liabilities11.1B
    Equity12.5B
    Total Debt3.7B
    YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

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    PG
    Methodology by Pouyan Golshani, MD — founder of Gighz. Savng was built by a physician for busy professionals: every number on this page comes from SEC filings (EDGAR) and FINRA data through transparent, rules-based models — no analyst opinions, no hidden inputs. How we calculate every number →
    ⚠️ Not investment advice. Automated model outputs, last refreshed 3 days ago (the analysis-refresh date, not the latest filing period). All models have blind spots. Full disclaimer →
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