MKS Inc. Common Stock (MKSI) : juste valeur

Thèse ACCE

MKS Inc. makes the vacuum pumps, RF power generators, lasers, and process control instruments that semiconductor and advanced-manufacturing tool makers bolt into their equipment, so its revenue tracks wafer-fab capital spending more than end-consumer demand. The moat is in qualification: once an MKS subsystem is designed into a customer's tool platform, switching costs are high because requalification takes many months, which supports a 47% gross margin and a 20.6% operating margin. Revenue grew 28.3% over the last year, and the near-term driver is the cycle turning up in fab spending as chipmakers ramp advanced logic and memory capacity. The stock trades at 39.4x trailing earnings but only 14.1x forward, a gap that signals the market expects earnings to recover sharply from a depressed base, which is the central question to test. A 15.8% ROE and a 65/100 score put it on the list for deeper work, with the key diligence items being how durable the current order momentum is and how much of the forward earnings estimate depends on a single semiconductor upcycle.