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Applied Materials

AMAT on Nasdaq. Applied Materials sells equipment and services for making semiconductors to chipmakers. Market value $430.4bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to July 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to October 2025.

Should I look at this?

Good business, but not cheap right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See cheaper Technology stocks on the list

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to July 2026
1.3%low

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $1.31 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to July 2026
47.2×full

You pay 47.2 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to October 2025
38.1%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 38 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 100 of 100. Price score: 19 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$542.28 a share, 167% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $203.40 to $739.67.

Dividend: 0.3% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Payouts have jumped around in recent years, so this may not repeat.

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

4.8
4.6
7.6
7.5
5.7
5.6
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jul '26
Revenue
$23.1bn$25.8bn$26.5bn$27.2bn$28.4bn
Operating margin
29.9%30.2%28.9%28.9%29.2%
Debt to equity
0.450.450.350.370.32
Shares outstanding
0.86bn0.84bn0.82bn0.80bn0.79bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)8 of 9
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.32× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 10.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 8% fewer since 2021

The quarter to July 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $9.1 billion last quarter, up 25% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $2.5 billion, up 43% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 30 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $5.6 billion, down from $5.8 billion.
  • About the same number of shares as a year ago.
  • Debt is $706 million more than cash, down from $1.6 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in 2 of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$7.0bn
January 2025$7.2bn
April 2025$7.1bn
July 2025$7.3bn
October 2025$6.8bn
January 2026$7.0bn
April 2026$7.9bn
July 2026$9.1bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$1.7bn
January 2025$1.2bn
April 2025$2.1bn
July 2025$1.8bn
October 2025$1.9bn
January 2026$2.0bn
April 2026$2.8bn
July 2026$2.5bn

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
12 November 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
12 December 2025
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
19 November 2026

Who owns it

26 long-term investors we follow own it, up from 25 last quarter. 3,494 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

1 investor owns more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 9 sold $180m.

  • BRUNER JUDY
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    8 September 2026
    Shares
    1,000
    Price
    $465.00
    Value
    $465,000
  • Hill Brice
    SVP, CFO
    Sold
    Date
    25 August 2026
    Shares
    7,500
    Price
    $479.25
    Value
    $4m
  • DICKERSON GARY E
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    30 June 2026
    Shares
    20,000
    Price
    $735.22
    Value
    $15m
  • DICKERSON GARY E
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    29 June 2026
    Shares
    58,321
    Price
    $700.36
    Value
    $41m
  • Raja Prabu G.
    President, Semi. Products Grp.
    Sold
    Date
    18 June 2026
    Shares
    10,000
    Price
    $633.53
    Value
    $6m
  • Iannotti Thomas J
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    16 June 2026
    Shares
    9,250
    Price
    $599.77
    Value
    $6m
  • Nalamasu Omkaram
    Senior Vice President, CTO
    Sold
    Date
    16 June 2026
    Shares
    24,263
    Price
    $593.43
    Value
    $14m
  • DICKERSON GARY E
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    16 June 2026
    Shares
    71,727
    Price
    $593.75
    Value
    $43m
  • Nalamasu Omkaram
    Senior Vice President, CTO
    Sold
    Date
    15 June 2026
    Shares
    10,737
    Price
    $591.95
    Value
    $6m
  • DICKERSON GARY E
    President and CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    15 June 2026
    Shares
    11,273
    Price
    $590.03
    Value
    $7m

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 12 Dec 2025, plus the 10-Q filed 20 Aug 2026 and 6 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

  • It isn't cheap on profits: 47.2× operating profit.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.