LRCX - Lam Research Corporation (LRCX) Presents at Deutsche Bank 2023 Technology Conference Transcript
2023-08-31 14:45:19 ET
Lam Research Corporation (LRCX)
Deutsche Bank 2023 Technology Conference Call
August 30, 2023, 03:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Doug Bettinger - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Sidney Ho - Deutsche Bank
Amy Sutter - Deutsche Bank
Presentation
Sidney Ho
Okay. Well, good afternoon, everyone. I am Sidney Ho. I cover Semiconductor Semi-Cap Equipment and IT Hardware at Deutsche Bank.
The next company we have on stage is Lam Research. Lam is a leading semiconductor capital equipment supplier across memory and foundry and logic. And today, we're very excited to have CFO, Doug Bettinger joining us. Welcome, Doug.
A - Doug Bettinger
Sidney, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
Q - Sidney Ho
Great. So maybe I'll just jump into questions. By the way, we try to make this interactive. If you have questions that you want to ask later on, raise your hand, we'll run the mic to you.
Doug Bettinger
Hey, Sidney, let me interrupt you real quick. I always like to keep my lawyers happy by flashing up our Safe Harbor language. Everybody have a look at this. I don't plan on saying anything I haven't said already this quarter. So I'm not worried about that. But I may make some forward-looking statements. Please have a look at our SEC filings on our website for the cautionary wording around that. So now we can jump into it.
Question-and-Answer Session
Q - Sidney Ho
There we go. So maybe just kick it off. So you gave fiscal Q1 guidance about a month ago. Can you give us an update if there's anything -- changes from an end market or macro perspective? It seems like memory companies have been incrementally increasing their utilization cuts. Is that all kind of factored into your thinking?
Doug Bettinger
Yes, to the best of our ability, everything is fully factored in. Maybe kind of big picture, what do we see going on this year? I think we started the year thinking wafer fab equipment spending would be in the mid-$70 billion, and then we down ticked a little bit. And now we brought it back to the mid-$70s billion. As we sit here today, we think it's a little bit second half weighted, just a little bit.
I pinch my fingers closely together because it's not too much second half weighted, but a little bit second half weighted. And that has a lot to do with the fact that we got some clarification that one of our customers in China did not cross the technology lines that the Department of Commerce had drawn. And so we wanted to make sure we were able to ship to them before we put it in the numbers, and that's really what's changed, not all that much, frankly.
It is a pretty negative investment year for memory. And I know you'll ask me about that, Sidney, but memory is down quite a bit. Foundry and logic may be down just a little tiny bit. And overall, the broad market is down north of 20% from where it was last year.
Sidney Ho
Okay. That's great. Just to follow up on that. You did mention second half slightly better than first half and partly because of the China clarification.
Doug Bettinger
Yes.
Sidney Ho
To the extent that is helping the sales in the second half, should we be thinking about that business kind of like drop back in the first half, yes?
Doug Bettinger
Yes, too soon for me to tell you what next year looks like. But I think broadly, we talked about all of our customers, especially in China. They all have multiyear roadmaps. Now that doesn't mean it's going to grow every year, but it's also not going to come and then go away at all, right? I believe there's a decent amount of sustainability there. And I wouldn't say this particular customer's any different than the broad market.
Sidney Ho
So we shouldn't think of second half being a catch-up period because you can't ship the first half, and is that the right -- current run rate we should be thinking?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. I mean it's where the level of business is. And I would suggest to you, listen, it's still pretty depressed. I mean the September quarter is up a little bit from where March was, but only a little bit. And again just a little bit second half weighted.
Sidney Ho
Okay. Got it. Now obviously, everyone wants to talk about memory WFE. So how much longer could memory WFE remain at these kind of levels? What are the metrics that you monitor? And on the earnings call, Tim suggested a little bit more optimism that DRAM would recover first. What gives you that confidence maybe a -- month from -- since you gave earnings?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. I guess what I would -- let me unpack kind of where memory is at. Listen, utilizations in the broad set of memory customers is as low as I've ever seen and I've been in the industry for a while. And frankly, right now, it's not getting any better. Maybe it's found its level, so to speak. But I'm not ready to put any time frame on anything at this point. I think the things, if you're on your side of the table you need to be paying attention to is, listen to everybody on the earnings call talking about how much inventory there is, pay attention to where memory pricing is because those two things obviously are very closely interrelated.
As inventory gets back in balance, and it will. It's not yet, but it will, pricing will stabilize and maybe even begin to improve a little bit. That will be the beginning of where things start to improve. Like I said, I've never seen utilization as low as it is right now. I have a hard time envisioning it could get much lower than this. I don't think it will, but anything is possible. But the first thing that will happen when things begin to improve in the memory markets is utilization will come back up.
And what Tim and I tried to describe on the earnings call is, for us, that will show up in the customer support business group in the spares and service lines of business first, right? Because as utilization comes back up, you'll need to replace spare parts with a greater frequency and you'll need to have us in to service the equipment. So that will be the first indication to us anyway in our business that we will begin to see things getting a little bit better.
The rate and pace of it, I'm going to stay away from right now because I'm not sure. After utilization comes back up, the next thing that will happen, and you'll again see this in CSBG for us is equipment will be upgraded. Upgrades are delayed right now. It's slowed down, and that's part of how utilization has been pulled back.
So the next thing you'll see in our business is the upgrades business will begin to inflect a little bit higher. And then after that gets exhausted, eventually new wafer capacity will need to get put in place. I'm staying away from the timing of that because I'm not exactly sure.
Sidney Ho
But you did see DRAM doing a little better first--
Doug Bettinger
Yes. Tim did say that and we believe that. And it's our assessment of what we're hearing from customers, what we see in the market, and a little bit difference in DRAM from NAND is there's a little bit of a product cycle in there, right? You've got new CPUs coming out, Sapphire Rapids and Gen1, they will more directly pair with DDR5 and not DDR4. So that transition will need to begin to happen. So that will begin to pull it through. And then everybody is super excited about what's going on with AI.
There is a packaging solution that uses TSV that pairs into the AI server construct, and that is a great inflection for us with our Syndion deep silicon etch tool and the conductive material is deposited with an electroplating tool. That's our SABRE 3D. And so you also have a little bit of that maybe pulling things forward a little bit more quickly. You don't have something like that in the same way in NAND.
Sidney Ho
Okay. That's fair. The other topic that is quite topical is the lagging edge foundry and logic. Everybody is asking about the sustainability. It seems to be consensus view that the lagging edge spending will be very strong this year, and a big part of that is coming from China. So the question is, how sustainable do you think that is beyond this year? Maybe you can start by talking about the health -- of the breadth of your customers in China. Any concerns that those customers are just buying ahead. I know I ask this question every year.
Doug Bettinger
Yes. I guess the first thing I would point out is, we call it specialty nodes or it's not the leading lithographic process nodes. It's not just China, first, understand that. This is a global set of customers, fairly broad-based. And think about everybody that's running fabs, that does analog, power, RF that's the kind of investment that we see going on. And frankly, when I look at -- we just came through a pretty challenging supply chain environment.
And I think the entire world woke up to the fact that some of the silicon coming off these process knowns was critically important in industrial, automotive, white goods, I mean, silicon coming off these process nodes is pervasive in society. In fact, it's in this room, and all the electronics equipment that we're using. So first, it's a global set [ph] of investment occurring. And yes, there is a decent tail of customers at these process nodes in China. But again, it's global in nature, and it's broad-based. I guess, this is all I would say to it.
I believe, based on what we hear from our customers, there is a sustainability to this, Sidney. This isn't like it's showing up this year, and it's going away next year. I believe it is fairly sustainable. Now that doesn't mean it will grow every single year. Nothing in this business grows every single year, but it's not going away.
Sidney Ho
And you don't think that buying ahead is a real problem?
Doug Bettinger
No. Listen, everybody -- when they're buying equipment, they're installing it, they're qualifying it and they're running wafers. So I don't believe anybody is buying anything too far ahead of when they need it for business reasons.
Sidney Ho
Okay. Maybe another topic on CSBG, you talked a little bit earlier how the memory cycle is going to play out within CSBG. You did talk about that business being down somewhat in calendar '23.
Doug Bettinger
A little bit.
Sidney Ho
Yes. Can you break it down a little bit? I know there's different businesses in there, whether were the different components. I assume Reliant is still growing nicely. But in the past, you also talked about installed base and revenue per chamber. How do we tie all these things together?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. So let me unpack kind of -- we call it the Customer Support Business Group or CSBG. There's 4 components to CSBG at Lam Research. Spare parts, what we call the Reliant product line, which is the specialty node product line for the most part, service and equipment upgrades, so all 4. And they don't all follow the same spending profile.
Before this year, I would have been sitting here telling you this is a product line that grows every single year. Well, guess what, it's not growing this year, and it's not growing this year because utilization has dialed pretty far back, especially on the Memory side. And like I said earlier, that impacts consumption of spares as well as service. The thing to understand about this part of the business model though is our equipment really never goes away. Frankly, it runs for decades.
And so a number we give at the end of every calendar year is the number of chambers in the field. That's an important metric to understand because that defines where CSBG does business for the most part, like I said, grows every single year. And before this year, from a revenue standpoint, it has grown pretty much every single year, maybe all the way back to the financial crisis, it didn't -- the reason this year is down a little bit is because utilization is quite low. So that's what's driving it right now, especially in spares and service.
Having said that, though, to your point, Reliant is doing real well this year. And the way I'm describing the business this year is, the two biggest components of CSBG are spare parts and that Reliant product line, Sidney.
Sidney Ho
Got it. I know you are not ready to talk about calendar '24 on that business. But I'm curious, should we be thinking that going back into the normal rate once that utilization stop going down or maybe start coming back up? Is that the right range to think about?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. If utilization wasn't down as much as it is this year, it would be growing this year. And this is a unique year, like I said earlier. I've not seen utilization dial this far back that I can ever remember and that's why it's not growing this year. But even with that chamber kind of grow this year, just less than it did in prior years.
Sidney Ho
Okay. Well, why don't we pause here for -- if there's any questions in the audience, we can run a mic to you.
Doug Bettinger
I see a hand in the back right side.
Unidentified Analyst
Yes. Can you just talk a bit about the domestic Chinese equipment competitors, companies like AMEC and NAURA? It seems like the Chinese domestic players they don't have enough capacity to serve the domestic market today, but they may in three to five years. So how much of your portfolio is potentially something that could be competed away by domestic players? I'm thinking particularly the lagging edge where perhaps the technology sophistication is not as great as it would be at leading edge.
Doug Bettinger
I guess the thing to understand is it's hard to do the things that we do, right? We've been in business for 43 years. We get better every single year. We continue to innovate every single year. And there's a pretty large moat around the capability even in the specialty known areas. Yes, there are some small emerging equipment companies in China, but the technical capability isn't really all that close to what we're able to do. It's not to be dismissive of it, we're paying very close attention to it, and they will get better kind of year-by-year over time bit by bit.
In the more trailing edge node, they will become more and more competitive, but we're not sitting still either.
Sidney Ho
Any other questions? All right. Why don't we switch the discussion to a little bit longer-term opportunities, we talk a lot about near term. The first one that's in everybody's mind is AI. And clearly, you talked about incremental WFE investment of $1 billion to $1.5 billion for, I think, the way you describe it is every one percentage increase in AI servers.
Doug Bettinger
That's right.
Sidney Ho
Can you expand that a little bit in terms of what areas that Lam may be most exposed to? What are the end devices? Is it logic? Is it memory? And do you think that tailwind will be -- which part it will be skewed towards?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. First, let me unpack how we arrive at that number. It's basically analyzing the configuration of an enterprise server versus what these AI servers look like. So first, an AI server, what's different between the 2? Well, first, it's the most leading-edge CPU, which tends to be the biggest eye that's out there. It's also then these very large GPUs. There's many, many more GPU die in an AI server roughly eight-ish versus one or two in an enterprise server, so that's a meaningful step up in content.
Second, the need to feed data into the training algorithm, the parallel compute architecture is very DRAM intensive. It's got nominally 8 times the amount of DRAM in an AI server versus an enterprise server, and increasingly integrated in an HBM structure that requires TSV technology, which, again, that's very good for Lam in the silicon etch and the electroplating side of things. And then there's nominally three times the amount of man storage, and so that's how we arrive at for every percent that shifts from an enterprise server to an AI server, how much incremental WFE shows up. And so it's going to show up in foundry and logic, in DRAM and in NAND.
So it's going to be across a broad set of customers, Sidney, and all aspects of the things we supply to the industry.
Sidney Ho
Got it. So when you think about your market share in WFE that is you should at least be able to capture that percentage, that market share within that incremental that we have?
Doug Bettinger
We'll do well. Yes, we'll do well. And in particular, we're very excited about HBM and the fact that it uses TSV and our strong position there. So yes, good stuff.
Sidney Ho
That's a good segue to my next question on advanced packaging. You talked about HBM. And I know there's chiplet architecture, there is wafer bonding. There's all these different new types of things, TSV, obviously. How should we think about the opportunity for you in this area? Anything you can quantify for us? And kind of what kind of strategy are you going after this market?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. We sell lots of things into the space. I've already talked about two of them where we have extremely strong position, silicon etch and electroplating, but there's [indiscernible] in there, their CBD applications in there, there's conductor etch applications in there. It's a broad set of things. And in fact, I'm going to give you a new data point, Sidney.
I've been getting asked extensively about how big is this? How big is it going to be? The way we've described it, historically anyway is it's hundreds of millions of dollars of business for us. Now everybody wants to know how big will it be? And I haven't given you a number, but it isn't hard for me to imagine in several years' time that it eclipses $1 billion in revenue, right?
I mean, that is the kind of momentum that is behind this advanced packaging. It's showing up in DRAM. It's showing up in all of the foundry and logic stuff. Every one of the leading foundry and logic customers is investing in some kind of chiplet or they'll refer to it as heterogeneous integration, drive disaggregation, a variety of different ways to describe it. But it's essentially using a 3D packaging type solution to drive increased performance.
So it's something we're very focused on. We've got an organization at the company that is driving the go-to-market aspects of this. And as all of things that go 3D, this is a type of 3D architecture, at least how I think about it. And we do well when things go 3D, and advanced packaging is another example of that.
Sidney Ho
That's great. Maybe switching subject a little bit. You guys have been gaining share in foundry and logic in the last few years. I think last quarter, you have 70% of the shipment to foundry and logic.
Doug Bettinger
That's right. I mean everybody thinks of us as a memory company, but our momentum in foundry and logic is actually quite good.
Sidney Ho
Right. So the question is, clearly, you're gaining share at one of the U.S. logic customer, but how would you characterize the rest of the strength in foundry and logic? How sustainable do you think that kind of momentum is?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. No, I think it's -- like I said, we got a nice tailwind behind us. And I think of a couple of things. First, all the advanced foundry and logic, we've already talked about advanced packaging that pairs together. So you've got that kind of in that set of customers. You have just increasing complexity, different materials coming in that drives the addressable market up. We see on the horizon, a structure called gate-all-around which is a new transistor construct that basically puts sheets down. It is fairly etch and deposition intensive in terms of creating those features.
We've described the rough size opportunity for us by saying for every 100,000 wafer starts that the industry puts in place, it's an incremental addressable market for us of $1 billion. Now, we'd love to get 100% share of that. We likely will not. In fact, I know we will not, but it is an incremental opportunity to sell new stuff. It is ALD-type steps. It is selective etch in terms of how you etch the structure.
So that's going to provide incremental opportunity for us. And then, listen, we've been talking for a couple of years about a new solution we're bringing to bear, but we refer to as dry photoresist -- dry resist. This is a part of the market that we really don't play in today, putting resist down on the wafer. And everybody that uses EUV in the industry today is evaluating our hardware. In fact, we are -- we have D2R positions at two of the DRAM customers, and we more recently announced a D2R position at a large foundry and logic customer.
So I'm very excited about the momentum behind this and the customer pull that we're seeing and the technical advancements that we're making to make this very manufacturable. And the sizing of this that we've described and still the right way to think about it is, this is a $1.5 billion incremental opportunity over the next five years cumulatively, weighted towards the back end of that five year horizon. So eventually, this gets to be a big business, we believe, for us, and I'm really excited about kind of where I see customers at, and we believe this is a question of when not if it gets adopted.
Sidney Ho
Got it. Then maybe on gate-all-around, you just mentioned about the size, every 100,000 wafer starts. What is the time -- I mean, assuming the gate-all-around that in Taiwan is going to start ramping in '25, I think that's the timing.
Doug Bettinger
Yes, there are three of them that are going to ultimately invest in this, and everybody's got a little different timing.
Sidney Ho
When do you start seeing this kind the revenue coming in?
Doug Bettinger
I think later next year, later '24. Yes, I think so.
Sidney Ho
Okay. Great. The other technology inflection, I know this probably a little further out is 3D DRAM. I don't know if you guys want to talk about yet, but it's probably too early -- but what are your thought -- initial thoughts about 3D DRAM being an incremental driver for Lam? And how does that -- at least at this point, how does that compare to 3D NAND transition we saw few years ago?
Doug Bettinger
Yes. I guess what I would say 3D DRAM, it's being worked on by everybody, right? The industry is collectively trying to figure out, okay, what is this architecture going to look like? Is it manufacturable? Is it technically feasible and so forth? That's the kind of activity that's going on. Like I said, all the equipment companies are working on it and all the DRAM customers are working on it.
I would suggest to you, we don't really know yet how to make this work and be manufacturable. But I know enough to tell you it's going to be a good transition for us. I think Sidney, it's the latter part of the decade, maybe 2030, we'll see. I think it will depend on how the industry progresses with figuring the technology out. And as always, with the 3D structure, it tends to mean you need etch and deposition in a more substantial way than a planar structure. So it's going to be a good transition for us.
I don't know that it will be as good as NAND was. NAND was an absolute home run. But I think this ends up being a solid double to keep the baseball analogy going forward. It's going to be a good transition for us, but it's still pretty far away.
Sidney Ho
Okay. No, that's helpful. But one other question I ask you this every year, but looking at the long-term WFE. So obviously, this year, it's at a depressed level. But how do you think about WFE growth in the long-term? It seems like everyone wants to talk about this $1 trillion semiconductor market, apply certain capital intensity. How are you thinking about it? How do you prepare organization for that?
Doug Bettinger
No, it's a great question. I mean, listen, right now, we're in the middle of a pretty significant memory-led downturn in the industry. So it's hard to be optimistic about stuff, but I am extremely optimistic about where this industry is headed, right? AI is a real thing. It's going to drive increasing silicon content, increasing semiconductor revenue for sure. Automotive is another growth vector. There's a huge content story in electrical and autonomous vehicles. That's going to drive a large content story in addition to just broad market stuff.
Is it hard to imagine a $1 trillion industry? No. For me, it's not. And is it hard to imagine a capital intensity like a 15% plus or minus a little bit? No, it's not. Long-term data is exploding in society and to make data useful in an AI architecture or frankly, in any kind of architecture, you need semiconductors. Increasingly, also, you see and you've asked me about this in a couple of your questions. Things are inflecting in the third dimension. That means etch and deposition is needed in a more substantial way.
So I'm optimistic about where the semiconductor industry is going. I'm even more optimistic about where the equipment industry is going, and I'm even more optimistic about where Lam Research is going. This is a growth cyclical industry. And yes, there's a cycle. I would never suggest to you there's not, but don't lose sight of the growth component of growth cyclical. The future is bright. We just need to work our way through where we're at in the cycle right now.
Sidney Ho
I know we have this debate every year about what's the right metric to look at, what is WFE intensity, what is operating -- I think you talked about operating cash flow? How do you think about it now?
Doug Bettinger
You can't just look at one thing. I do believe a through-cycle profitability metric is a very important thing to look at. Because at the end of the day, all of this needs to be affordable. Everybody has got to make enough money to generate the profits to invest the right amount in the business.
Capital intensity is going up from a CapEx per wafer standpoint. Just because the complexity of the next process nodes are greater than the one before it, it's just getting more and more challenging to do some of these things. And at the end of the day, I do believe profitability is the most important thing through cycle profitability, by the way, to pay attention to, because that defines affordability.
Sidney Ho
Very good. Well, I'll pause here, if there is any questions from the audience, we can get you on the mic. All right. Well, let's move on. I have a few financial questions for you.
Doug Bettinger
No problem. I can answer those ones.
Sidney Ho
There we go. So business model. I know you gave the business model back in 2020. Obviously, a lot has changed since then.
Doug Bettinger
A lot has changed.
Sidney Ho
At a minimum, WFE is likely to be higher than what you thought even in the high case back when it was $70 billion.
Doug Bettinger
I think $70 billion, I think, are the scenarios we did, yes.
Sidney Ho
Right. And now we talk about something probably higher, probably trough at $75 billion or something. How should investors think about the puts and takes versus your operating model, when we look out the next few years when WFE returns to normalized level, in terms of maybe gross margin, operating margin, cash flow margin, EPS type of thing.
Doug Bettinger
Yes. I guess the first thing I would say is the model's a little bit stale. I do need to give you an update at some point not too far down the road. Yes, some things have changed. I think right now, memory mix back then, at least our thinking was probably higher than maybe it would be today. Might be the biggest headwind-ish for us because of our strength in memory. We just also came through two years of pretty significant inflationary headwinds that we're needing to figure out how to combat back, if you will, which we are doing largely with some of the structuring things we're doing at the company.
I guess, at the end of the day, what I would tell people is the financial commitments of the company are unchanged. Within that model, we're still going to drive to a gross margin in the high 40%s. We're still going to drive to an operating margin. In my recollection, it was 33% to 34%. That's still our intention to get there. We're going to have to pull different levers and get there in different ways. Like I said, we've come through an inflationary environment. So that reset some things.
We've had to reset pricing. A lot of things have moved around in there, but the company is still committed to get to the same level of profitability that we had represented in those models.
Sidney Ho
Great. Maybe on gross margin specifically, a little more near term. You made really good progress in the last quarter, and you guided September quarter to be kind of well above where you thought six months ago. How should we think about this trajectory over the call it, the next four to eight quarters, assuming WFE starts to recover and your Malaysia fab probably is a tailwind at some point. Are there factors that we should be thinking that's more like an offset to that growth trajectory?
Doug Bettinger
Yeah. Listen, there's always kind of quarter-by-quarter changes in -- I describe it as mix, product mix, customer mix that will move things up and down. So nothing goes straight up, nothing goes straight down. I'm pretty pleased with what we've been able to accomplish at Lam relative to setting the company up to be more efficient operationally when business growth comes back. When it comes back, I'm not sure, I know it will though. And we're taking the opportunity to drive efficiencies in the manufacturing footprint, try to be closer to customers with that. So that we will emerge in an upward trajectory from a profitability standpoint. So that's some of the stuff like I've been saying for a while.
This year, we can't control what the customer is going to spend, but we are working really hard to control what we can to make the company better. So that's an example of what is driving the gross margin you're seeing the company deliver right now. We're further ahead as we sit here today in the September quarter than I expected we would be. I think beginning of the year, Sidney, I suggested you'd see a 100 basis point improvement in gross margin. We're already well ahead of that, right? I just guided to 46.5%, and the baseline when I was talking about 100 bps was 44%. We're in the September quarter, 250 above that, partially because of the structuring things we've done, but also partially because of a favorable mix.
Sidney Ho
Okay. Very good. Maybe one more question on capital return -- sorry?
Doug Bettinger
I see a hand up front. Let's take one upfront.
Amy Sutter
Amy Sutter from Deutsche Bank. I wanted to ask your opinion on this. Now I mean, because China has been such a great opportunity for all these companies -- for all your companies and your competitors, is just how would you think about how we have to -- if you had to advise the Department of Commerce, like how you balance enabling companies to remain competitive and have China as a market opportunity versus like protecting technology. And I know it could be different if you're selling an AI chip to China versus like allowing them to invest and grow their own industry. I mean, to the extent you have some thoughts, it will be great.
Doug Bettinger
Yes. Listen, I guess, to go back, we had these new technology lines drawn in October of last year that impacted our business. We lost a decent amount of revenue, call it, $2 billion. That allows us to invest less money at the end of the day. You invest out of profit. So understand that. Listen, I know the people at the Department of Commerce are very smart.
We do our best to make sure we have interaction with them or relationships so that they understand what this industry looks like, and they've gotten actually very well educated, very smart about how this industry works. But that's as much as we can do at the company is just make sure we're educating, make sure the ramifications of any decisions that are made are understood. And I think we're doing a decent job at that, both as a company and as an industry, frankly.
Sidney Ho
Any other questions? All right. I'll just have two more for you. One is on capital returns. You have returned more than 100% of free cash flow for each of the past five years before this year, of fiscal '23, I should say. Your buybacks have come down, which is totally understandable. As the business normalizes, is there a reason why we should not think your capital returns will increase in the next one to two years?
Doug Bettinger
I guess, Sidney, at the end of the day, our plans are to return 75% to 100% of free cash flow. That doesn't mean every single quarter, we'll do precisely that. But this portfolio of businesses is extremely cash generative. In fact, this year, even in a down year, we're going to generate more cash than we did last year, I believe, at the end of the day. Yes, we'll generate more. So it's a great set of businesses, and we generate more cash than we need to run the company. Our priority is always going to be make the right investments for the business so that we have a sustainable competitive differentiation going forward.
But even with that, we generate more cash than we need to do that. And so our plan is, in fact, just last week, we raised the dividend. I think we put the dividend in place, if I remember right, in 2014. We've grown it pretty much on an annual basis since then. Last week's raise was 16%. I know people care a lot about that, especially if you're managing income-oriented money. And so we plan to raise that dividend every year and then supplement it with the buyback, which is essentially what you've seen us do.
Sidney Ho
Great. Well, my last question, just to wrap up, what are some of key messages that you want investors to take away from the meeting today? What are the areas you think investors may have underappreciated Lam's story.
Doug Bettinger
Listen, I guess at the end of the day, my message in the last quarter or two has been we can't control what the customer is going to spend. We're in a meaningful down cycle, especially in memory. So that is what it is. We are taking this opportunity this year to make the company better, so that when business gets better, we are better. So that's kind of a tagline I've been trying to say, when business is better, we'll be better. So that's, I guess, right now, the near-term message that I'm delivering.
I'd also like to remind people because people have always thought about Lam as the memory company. Frankly though, we have great share trajectory in foundry and logic. And you've seen that in our numbers, right? I think people have -- we've been talking about this for several years, and they've been waiting to see it show up in the numbers, Guess what? It's showing up. And I'm glad that it is in a year where memory is down as much as it is. You're beginning to see the good stuff we have going on in foundry and logic. So don't under appreciate that.
And I guess the last thing I would remind people is we have a great business that isn't just selling new equipment, right? We call it the Customer Support Business Group. It is a sustainable ongoing business that in most environments grows every single year and generates lots of free cash flow. So it's a great part of the business model. Don't forget about CSBG.
Sidney Ho
Okay. With that, I think we're out of time. Thank you for time you spent with us today and enjoy the rest of the conference.
Doug Bettinger
You bet. Thanks for having me Sidney.
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Lam Research Corporation (LRCX) Presents at Deutsche Bank 2023 Technology Conference Transcript