Over the course of 50 years we have grown to become a global company that develops innovative solutions for our customers, and manages the best interests of our investors, our employees, society and other stakeholders. Read on to discover what we achieved in 2018.
The demand for smaller, faster and cheaper semiconductor chips continues to rise, driven by advancements in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, smartphones and the Internet of Things.
Our technology is the first step towards making it all possible, as our R&D investment in new materials, new products and new processes means we can help our customers develop their technology roadmap, and further extend Moore’s Law.
In 2018, this led to the introduction of the Synergis ALD tool, which leverages the core technologies from our Pulsar and EmerALD ALD products for high productivity thermal ALD applications. The new Synergis tool allows us to address more ALD applications and therefore increases our served market. Together with our other products and services, this contributed to our strong financial results, which included:
We operate in a fast-paced industry that continues to reshape the world, and our innovative technology enables the semiconductor industry to achieve advancements in computing, communications, energy, transportation, medicine and beyond.
To ensure that we can continue to make a difference to our customers, employees, and company stakeholders, in 2018 we concentrated on the following three key elements of our strategy.
In addition to our fundamental R&D efforts, we continuously expand and deepen our strategic cooperation with key customers, suppliers, chemical manufacturers, and research institutes. This approach enables us to remain innovative and swiftly meet the changing demands of our customers.
We are a key player in the deposition equipment segments for ALD and epitaxy, and a focused niche player for PECVD and vertical furnaces. As a leader in the segment, ALD has turned into a key growth driver for our business, from which we support virtually all of the leading customers in the semiconductor industry. Our newest ALD tool, Synergis, is designed to address a wide range of existing and new ALD applications, effectively increasing the market we serve.
In addition to our internal optimization programs, we are working with our suppliers to improve fundamental quality through statistical methods and process controls. In addition to addressing the technology needs of our customers, we also focus on further increasing equipment throughput and equipment reliability, thereby lowering the cost per wafer of our wafer processing systems.
In 2018, we achieved revenue growth of 11% reaching a record high revenue of €818 million, with sales increasing mainly in the logic, DRAM and analog segments. By industry segment, our 2018 revenue stream was led by memory, closely followed by the logic and foundry segments.
While our ALD product lines continued to be our key sales driver in 2018, accounting for more than half of total equipment revenue, our other product lines also contributed strongly. In our epitaxy product line we increased sales, following the strong growth we achieved in 2017, and we saw additional sales increases in PECVD and vertical furnaces.
Our industry experienced continued growth in 2018, with worldwide semiconductor industry sales increasing by around 14%. This was driven by high memory prices and broad-based electronics demand for cloud services, mobile devices, automotive and industrial applications. These drivers helped the wafer fab equipment market grow by around 10% in 2018.
Our 2018 sales grew to record levels, reaching €818 million. ALD continued to be the key driver, although the other product lines also made a strong contribution.
We benefited from a further increase in wafer fab equipment spending following the very strong market growth in 2017. Our operating profit increased to €124.3 million from €113.2 million in 2017, while the operating profit margin remained stable.
New bookings increased by 22% in 2018 to €942 million, with equipment bookings for ASMI as a whole led by logic, followed by foundry and then memory. Total research and development (R&D) expenses, excluding impairment charges, decreased by 1% in 2018 compared to 2017, mainly as a result of higher capitalization of development expenses.
Our 2018 sales grew to record levels, reaching €818 million. ALD continued to be the key driver, although the other product lines also made a strong contribution.
We benefited from a further increase in wafer fab equipment spending following the very strong market growth in 2017. Our operating profit increased to €124.3 million from €113.2 million in 2017, while the operating profit margin remained stable.
New bookings increased by 22% in 2018 to €942 million, with equipment bookings for ASMI as a whole led by logic, followed by foundry and then memory. Total research and development (R&D) expenses, excluding impairment charges, decreased by 1% in 2018 compared to 2017, mainly as a result of higher capitalization of development expenses.
During 2018, we returned approximately €607 million to shareholders in the form of dividends, share buybacks and the capital return. This was up from €281 million in 2017 and €140 million in 2016.
Over the 2010-2018 period, we returned more than €1.6 billion to the financial markets through dividends, share buybacks, return of capital, and buyback of convertible bonds.
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In 2018, we paid a dividend of €0.80 per common share and we will propose to the forthcoming AGM to declare a dividend of €1.00 per share for 2019. The proposed 2019 dividend will mark the ninth consecutive year that we have paid a dividend.
2018 was a year of continued growth for our industry, following the strong growth in 2017. Worldwide semiconductor industry sales increased by around 14% driven by high memory prices and broad-based electronics demand for cloud services, mobile devices, automotive and industrial applications. The market for wafer fab equipment (WFE) grew by approximately 10% in 2018, primarily driven by memory customers, although some slowing in memory segments began in the second half of the year.
Wafer fab equipment spending was up about 10% in 2018, however it was strongest in the first half of the year as memory spending slowed in the second half, particularly for 3D-NAND. Spending for advanced logic was up for the year and even accelerated in the second half, while foundry spending decreased for the year, but also accelerated in the second half. Our total company’s sales increased by 17% in 2018 on a US$ basis. As such, we believe we outperformed the broader WFE market last year.
ALD continued to be the key driver for our business and again accounted for more than half of equipment sales in 2018. The other product lines, also showed strong momentum in 2018, with solid sales increases in the vertical furnace, epitaxy and PECVD product lines, driven by increasing demand in logic and analog, where we traditionally are strongly positioned with our broad range of deposition products.
We launched our new Synergis ALD tool in 2018 for advanced node logic and memory volume production applications. Synergis leverages the core capabilities of our existing Pulsar and EmerALD tools to address a wide range of thermal ALD applications, and uses our proven high productivity XP8 platform enabling 8 ALD chambers in a compact footprint. Synergis allows our customers to extend existing films to new applications requiring high throughput and allows us to address many new films for a broad array of logic and memory applications. With the successful launch of Synergis, we are further increasing our addressable market in single wafer ALD, especially for applications requiring both high performance and high throughput.
Furthermore, in early 2019, we announced the formal launch of the XP8 QCM tool for high-productivity plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition applications. This newest addition to our portfolio of leading ALD platforms allows for the integration of up to 4 modules each containing four process reactors, on a single platform.
A key tenet of our product stewardship effort is to increase the productivity of our equipment. With the introduction of the Synergis tool in 2018 we are able to address more applications that are capable of running on the XP8 platform. The XP8 platform architecture improves productivity by integrating up to 8 process chambers in a compact footprint. The result is improved efficiency as more wafers are processed in less area of the fab cleanroom, compared to two 4 chamber tools. Furthermore we continue to make progress working with customers to increase the throughput of various processes running on their ASMI tools. Increasing throughput is a direct improvement in efficiency.
In December 2018, we received a Supplier Excellence Award from TSMC for the performance and support of our equipment and technology during 2018. This is the third year in a row that we have received an excellence award from TSMC. During the presentation of the award, TSMC explained the three key points that contributed to us receiving the award: