Rudolph Technologies Growing Into Expanding Markets, And Priced Fairly

Against a backdrop of generally weakening sentiment, Rudolph Technologies (RTEC) has been a bit of an outlier in the semiconductor equipment space. Up almost 30% over the last year, and over 20% year to date, Rudolph is solidly ahead of peers/rivals/comps like KLA Tencor (KLAC), Lam Research (LRCX), Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT), Nova Measuring (NVMI), and SUSS Microtec (SMHN.XE). What makes that a little odd is that although the company has been steadily growing its addressable market, its revenue growth hasn't been all that outstanding on a peer-to-peer basis and its product exposures (RF, etc.) could be a vulnerability.

Rudolph has done a little better than I'd expected back in 2016, but compared to a stronger equipment environment than I'd expected the "net outperformance" hasn't been all that significant. Although I do like Rudolph's prospects for leveraging ongoing demand for advanced architectures and packaging, as well as its prospects to sell lithography stepper tools into the OLED space, the valuation seems pretty fair at a time when the overall sector is looking pretty wobbly.

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Rudolph Technologies Growing Into Expanding Markets, And Priced Fairly