New York, May 29, 2026, 8:02 AM EDT
- Photronics was quoted at $34.78 in premarket trading, up 2.23% after a 36.4% drop on Thursday.
- The photomask maker missed adjusted EPS and revenue estimates, then guided third-quarter sales below Wall Street’s consensus midpoint.
- Management blamed delayed chip-design releases, tight memory supply, high fab use and geopolitical uncertainty.
Photronics shares edged higher before the open on Friday, a small bounce after the photomask maker lost more than a third of its market value in the prior session on a weaker-than-expected quarter and a soft outlook. The stock was quoted at $34.78 at 8:00 a.m. ET, up 2.23% from Thursday’s $34.02 close, Public.com data showed.
The move matters because Photronics had been treated as a leveraged way to play chip-design activity, not just chip production. Photomasks — high-precision glass or quartz plates used to transfer circuit patterns onto semiconductor wafers and flat-panel display substrates — sit early in the chip and display manufacturing chain, so delays in new designs can hit orders fast.
The selloff followed second-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $209.9 million, down 0.5% from a year earlier and 6.7% from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings, a profit measure that excludes some items, were 42 cents a share, down from 61 cents in the first quarter.
Wall Street had expected more. Investing.com reported the company’s adjusted EPS missed consensus by 11 cents and revenue came in below the $216.7 million estimate. The firm also set third-quarter revenue guidance of $207 million to $215 million, below the $218.5 million consensus midpoint cited by the data provider.
Chairman and CEO George Macricostas said the market showed “supportive long-term drivers” but also “temporary headwinds,” citing delayed design releases, memory constraints, cost pressure at original equipment makers and geopolitical uncertainty. Photronics, Inc.
There was a split inside the business. Integrated-circuit revenue fell 5% from a year earlier to $147.5 million, while flat-panel display revenue rose 13% to $62.4 million, helped by strength in advanced AMOLED displays.
On the earnings call, President and CFO Eric Rivera said visibility was limited, with typical backlog of only “one to three weeks.” He also said demand became cloudy during the quarter as geopolitical tensions and elevated factory use hurt design starts. Investing.com
The company is still spending through the downturn. Rivera said Photronics kept its fiscal 2026 capital-expenditure plan at $330 million, with money going into U.S. and Korea projects, 8-nanometer production support and tool upgrades. A nanometer is a chipmaking scale measure; smaller nodes usually mean more advanced chips and more complex masks.
That spending is part defense, part offense. Photronics says its Allen, Texas, site has begun qualification work and should generate revenue later this year, while Korea investments are intended to extend capability to 8 nanometers and beyond.
Competition for high-end photomask work is tight. Toppan Holdings-backed Tekscend Photomask, another chipmaking photomask supplier, was reported by Reuters last year to be targeting a Tokyo IPO at a roughly $2 billion valuation, a reminder that investors still see strategic value in the mask supply chain even as Photronics now faces a demand air pocket.
But the risk is plain. If customers keep delaying new chip designs, Photronics has few quick cost levers: Rivera told analysts a large portion of costs is fixed and product mix is mostly dictated by the market. That could keep margins under pressure even if display demand holds up.
The company filed an 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 28 covering the results, the press release and the slide presentation used for the call. The next test for the stock will be whether early May order recovery, flagged by senior Asia executive Frank Lee, becomes visible enough for investors to look past the weak third-quarter guide.
