PVA TePla AG

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's earnings call of the PVA Teplar AG following the publication of the figures for the third quarter of 2025 and the first nine months. In a second, CEO Jaline Ketter and CFO Markus Gross will present our results. And after the presentation, as usual, you will have the opportunity to ask your questions in a Q&A session. And having said this, Ms. Ketter, the stage is yours.

Thanks, Sebastian. And also good morning from my side to our earnings call of the third quarter. Before we start with the presentation, let me give you some general remarks. The economic situation around us is still challenging and it was getting even worse in the third quarter as it materialized in our operational business at the end of the third quarter. But we also see a very positive development in our order book. and a very good start into the fourth quarter. And what makes me even more positive for that long-term development, we see the first R&D projects that are starting to contribute to our order book with contracts from battery development projects that we started during the year 2024 and 2025. Yeah, so let's have a look to the third quarter. We ended the third quarter with a revenue volume of 55.8 million in revenue. This is significantly lower than we expected before, and we are also not satisfied with that development. That low revenue volume is not related to internal delays in the processing of orders. It's an external effect which is caused by external reasons such as global trade-related uncertainties, which came to delays in the operational timing at our customer side. And it is a temporary situation that we are in. So we did not see any cancellations and we also don't expect any cancellations in that regard. Let me give you some examples on that. So there have been customers which are having longer authorization processes to get the systems on site and to make all that approvals for transportation. There have been customers which have decided to bring the system into a different facility than it was planned before. So we had to reschedule everything, transportation and installation. And we also had customers which having delays in their own infrastructure. So building was not ready to move in the system yet. But let me explain a little bit more what does that mean when we look ahead for the next quarter. So we already planned a very busy fourth quarter. That's something that you already realized in the last call. So end of the year was already scheduled as very busy with installations and transportations. on our projects. So resources for these projects already have been assigned. And delays that we are now having from the third quarter, which are having a higher volume of transportation and installation bringing to the fourth quarter again, will also most likely delay orders in processing from the fourth quarter to 2026. And with the reduction of our guidance to 235 to 255, we also did cover potential further delays that are caused by similar external reasons at our customer side. With the CMD that we hold six weeks ago, we gave you an insight in our future growth potentials on the long run. And there are no changes to our view on that presentation that we gave to you. This already reflects partly in our increasing order intake with, as I already mentioned at the very beginning, projects which are building the foundation of their future growth in the metrology business with new customers that we developed out of Asia for automated systems, but also in the material solutions area where now the first R&D projects are starting to contribute, so new Battery solutions that are coming to the market over the next years are produced partly with our systems and these are production lines which are starting to ramp up now. With that general view, I hand over to Markus to give you a deep dive to the financials.

Thank you, Jarlene. Good morning and a warm welcome from my side. So let's directly dive into our financials and start with the group revenue. Q3 and the year to date figures are below our expectations, especially for Q3 and around 11% below the comparison periods. Q3 with 55.8 million is impacted by the trade-related uncertainties Jalen just mentioned, which have effects on the operational timing and shifting projects from Q3 to Q4. So many of the projects we originally anticipated for a plan for Q3 are now realized in Q4. And this year pattern is through several projects across markets and product groups. The project completions and the situation are expected to normalize during the first half of 2026. And it's very important to us to, and we can't stress this enough, there are no delay related cancellations. The delays we're seeing are a couple of weeks. It's not that projects are paused indefinitely and we're waiting for a go ahead. It's just shifting from one quarter to the other. And on the opposite, several customers have placed additional orders despite having delayed projects in the meantime. So that's absolutely nothing we're currently worrying about that delays are turning into cancellations. Looking at our product groups, we can see that metrology is still a strong contributor to our revenues with almost 72 million and material solutions with 104 million. Regional wise, Europe and Asia are our most important markets and North America with 13% is our third biggest market. And when we're looking at the order intake on the next slide, we'll see that there is growth potential coming just from the order book for the upcoming months. Order intake is something where we are very happy about the development, almost 33 million in Q3. That's our strongest quarter since the third quarter of 2023. And here the order intake is driven from demand in both segments and product groups in all entities. So we're very happy here. The book-to-bill ratio on Q3 is with 1.3, something we haven't seen in a long time. And year-to-date, with almost 177 million, the book-to-bill ratio is also larger than 1. Looking at the product groups, metrology is still a strong driver for us. And we will see on the next slide how this has developed over the last 12 months. But also, we're seeing an increasing demand coming from material solutions. which makes us very happy at the current stage here. Looking at the regional split, we can see that Asia and Europe are contributing by approximately 40% and North America was 20% in comparison to the revenues of 13% we have seen on the previous slide. That's why we're expecting here future growth coming from the order book. Yeah, the last 12 months, looking at our product groups here, we can see a strong double-digit order growth of 20% per quarter. And in material solutions, the uptick started with Q1 2025, going from 21.5 approximately to 25 million dollars. and now in Q3 with almost 42 million and the drivers here are coming from the synthesis for silicon carbide systems and high-tech anode materials are also here involved. In metrology, it's more a pattern of steps. So we are seeing 30 million in Q3, then Q4, 24 and Q1, 25 with a little bit more than 21 million. And now in Q2 and Q3, it's above 30 million. So very happy with this development here. Looking at the segments individually, we can see that here in semiconductor systems, the revenue is impacted in Q3 by these timing effects and is 18% below the previous year. And the nine months figures with 115 million are 15% below the previous year. On the EBITDA, we see a temporary effect in Q3 due to the lower revenue volume and high expenses in R&D and sales for future growth, strategic investments. And we're seeing here a high degree of fixed costs. So this is why we see this trend. has a strong impact on the EBITDA and its margin for Q3. Year-to-date, it's more or less in line with the guidance despite the missing volume in Q3 and so this is more or less what we anticipated for the nine months figures without the effect coming from the operational timing effects. The order intake is something we are very happy about. So it's the best quarter in semiconductor systems since the first quarter of 2023. Metrology was a strong driver during the whole year. And now with Synthesis, we're seeing additional uptake in the third quarter. In the industrial system segment, the Q3 revenues are more or less in line with what we have seen in 2024. And the nine-month figures are a bit below the previous year. This is especially caused by the lower intakes in 2024 and the long-term running projects we're having in the industrial sector. system segment. At the EBITDA and EBITDA margin levels, we're seeing here a reduction on a quarterly basis of 1 million, which is also the same for the nine months figures that were here in preparation for future growth investing in our sales infrastructure, which is increasing the overheads by approximately 700,000 at the year-to-date level. The order intake is stable at 20 million per quarter more or less and the demand is here coming from the energy and aerospace sector but also in Q3 high performance materials the already mentioned unknown materials. Looking at the group profit, we can see that the gross profit margin has reduced from 30.8% down to 29.4%. The main reasons here being the weaker sales and the lower volume causes your lower capacity utilization, which is taking its toll. But also, we've seen on the previous slides that semiconductor systems is below the comparison quarter and industrial system is more or less at the same level or a little bit higher. And this means we're seeing here a shift in the product mix in Q3, which will not be continued, but it's the picture we're seeing here currently in Q3. And due to this change in the mix, you're losing a little bit of gross margin. But on the year-to-date nine-month figures, we remain at a solid level of 32%. EBITDA in Q3 and year-to-date are both impacted by the increased overheads for the strategic investments in sales and R&D. We already announced together with our guidance and we're following through. So let me also take a moment to reflect on the lower cash balance at the end of the quarter with approximately 13 million. The position here is impacted by the timing of customer payments, which have been received in October. We're talking about larger payments. And for Q4 so far, we're expecting strong inflows, which are also supported by a continued order intake momentum. So we're here seeing your timing effect in the cash position, which has already been reverted in the October of the last month. In terms of capex, We remain disciplined and are broadly in line what we have spent in the prior year until the year's end then. And we're actively managing our CAPEX project and the same goes obviously for our OPEX. Looking at our updated guidance, we are now expecting revenues between 235 and 255 million and an EBITDA between 25 to 30 million. This is due to the multiple times now mentioned project timing shifts operational wise. And for 26, we're expecting a gradual recovery and growth versus 25. And earlier than usual, we will lease our official guidance for 26 together with the preliminary figures for the year 25, latest early February 26. So for a strategic update and the outlook, I'm handing back over to Ceylin.