Is Applied Materials Stock a Buy Now?

The U.S. Senate is working on getting the Chips Act passed to help boost American manufacturing of semiconductors. The act would give some $52 billion in subsidies for chip makers, welcome news for the economy after struggling with two years of chip shortages.

With or without that help, though, global semiconductor demand is poised to keep running higher for the rest of this decade. Some estimates point to upwards of $1 trillion in global spending by 2030 (up from about $600 billion in 2021). With all of those new chips needed in the coming years, chip fab equipment company Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) could be a great broad-based play on the industry.

Fabricating chips is arguably the most complex manufacturing process there is. Semiconductors are an amalgam of specialty materials layered atop each other in sometimes-close-to-microscopic arrangements of electricity-conducting circuits. Advanced and very expensive equipment is needed for these fabrication processes. That's where a company like AMAT comes in.

Source Fool.com