Adds comments in paragraphs 2-3, 7; details and background 5-6, 8-12

By Jun Yuan Yong

SINGAPORE, June 10 (Reuters) - Applied Materials AMAT.O will be able to respond to demand increases as long as it continues to get eight quarters of lead time from customers, President and CEO Gary Dickerson said on Wednesday.

"We don't want to be a limiting factor as our customers are ramping going forward so we made those investments," he said.

"As long as we have that eight-quarter lead time from our customers, which is unprecedented versus what we had seen in the past, I have high confidence that Applied Materials will be able to respond," he said.

Dickerson was speaking at a press conference before the opening of Applied Materials' new facility in Singapore. The new $500 million campus more than doubles Applied Materials' advanced cleanroom capacity in Singapore.

In a press release, the company said the facility is already operational and is serving chipmakers that are expanding production to meet increasing AI demand.

In response to a question about the company's growth being constrained by the amount of available cleanroom space that customers have, Dickerson said that the number of new fabs that are in progress has ramped up significantly.

"Our customers have been very creative. They've moved capacity from NAND to DRAM, or they've repurposed some facilities so they're doing everything they can to increase output," he said, referring to memory companies shifting capacity from storage chips to in-demand memory chips, which have been in short supply.

Aside from the Singapore facility, Applied Materials said its $5 billion EPIC Center in Silicon Valley is set to become operational this year. It expects the facility to speed up the commercialisation of breakthrough technologies.

The company has existing facilities in the United States, Europe, Israel and Taiwan.

Applied Materials produces equipment essential to semiconductor chip manufacturing, which is growing increasingly complex to make as transistor sizes shrink further.

In May, the company forecast third-quarter revenue and adjusted profit above Wall Street estimates, betting that strong demand for its chip-making tools will be sustained on heavy data centre and AI infrastructure spending.

The company announced in March that it will partner with memory chip companies Micron Technology MU.O and SK Hynix 000660.KS to develop next-generation chips crucial for AI and high-performance computing.