PVA TePla AG

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PBA Tepli AG's earnings call for the full year 2025. My name is Sebastian Gonzo, and I'll be moderating today's call. And in a second, CEO Jarlene Ketter and CFO Markus Gross will walk you through the results for the fiscal year 2025 and share their outlook. After the presentation, we'll open the floor for your questions. A quick housekeeping note before we start. This call is being recorded and made available on our website within the day. And with that being said, let's get started. And Jarlene, over to you.

Good morning and thanks, Sebastian. 2025 was a challenging year for PVI Tecla, operating in a very cautious market environment. But at the same time, we used that period to prepare the company for growth in both segments, metrology and material solutions. Over the last two years, PVA has evolved from supplying highly specialized solutions with small volumes to now significantly targeting global high-volume markets, which means that we are addressing the world's largest chip producers now. This transformation requires a fundamental transformation of our organization, and this is something that is still ongoing. Further to this, we've had a strong order momentum, which especially took place in the second half of 2025. Both product lines developed very positive. Aiming for growth also requires the right fundament to build on. We did set up an investment plan to support this, which was executed in 2025. This also caused higher operational expenses for investments in technology and sales and service infrastructure and our organization in general. And these investments also include some project costs which are having short term effects on our overhead costs 2025 and 2026, but will not be recurring. Markus will explain a little bit deeper what this is about. Our gross margin development were stable with 32% and also was coming with a lower revenue volume in a positive development. Efficiency projects, which we already have started, contribute to the gross margin development already starting from 2026 and onwards. And we started to focus our activities in the industrial segment to new high volume markets. With this, we already have started to increase our share in the energy market. For example, R&D projects with customers to produce advanced anode materials for battery technology. But also we increased our share in aerospace in North America and Europe. Within 2025, we expected our portfolio with We extended our portfolio with corporations and acquisitions, and we started with a vertical integration of a supplier of us. This was supporting a faster production increase in our metrology business. And further, we strengthened our optical metrology with new pattern technology that we took over and a strategic partnership. And the positive about that I would like to mention is that there is already an outcome of that project. So we started to produce first R&D systems, which will be delivered to institutes in the first half of 2026. Most excitingly, we stepped into high volume business with our acoustic metrology. But this is something that I would like to keep for a deep dive later. Let's first look to the financials with our CFO Markus Voss.

Good morning and welcome to today's earnings call. I'm happy to guide you now through our financials and we're immediately starting with our group revenue. Q4 was our strongest quarter in 2025 with almost 69 million. And for the semiconductor systems, it was a good quarter. And for the industrial system segment, it was a quite strong quarter. Overall, we completed the year with a revenue of $244 million. And here are two key takeaways. First of all, we are pretty close to the midpoint of our updated guidance from October between $235 and $255 million. but we are also almost 10% below the previous year. When we started into 2025, we guided for 260 to 280 million. And during H1, we had to realize that there are delays in your order intake, which led us to guide with H1 to the lower end of this bandwidth. In H2, Project timing shifts affected our revenue recognition across several markets and product groups. And in this context, it's very important for us, there are no cancellations and projects were and are expected to convert in 2026. Looking at our product groups, metrology, it was 40% contributing to our revenue mix. And in this revenues, high volume customers have a growing share. Looking at the regional split, Europe is our strongest market in 2025 with 43%, closely followed by Asia. There's always a back and forth between these two markets. We will see in two slides ahead that this is about to change here. Coming to the order intake, we see a very strong development over the year with an almost double order intake from Q1 with 46 million up to 91 million in Q4, which also means that there is an average growth rate per quarter of more than 25%. Demand was supported by both product groups with especially strong contributions from material solutions in Q3 and even more in Q4. Here, semiconductor-related investments played an important role. Metrology showed normal quarterly volatility in Q4, and we're seeing already in 2026 a catch-up with a very strong order momentum with orders as of today around 50 million euros. But some of these orders have agreed delivery for 2027. So more generally speaking, the metrology order run rate is only expected to accelerate from late H2 2026 onwards. And we're also seeing an increasing demand in material solutions for crystal growth for high end semi applications. Jalen will give you additional information here in a couple of minutes. The ordered intake for the full year increased by almost 78% from $151 million to $268 million. Demand was supported from both segments, especially in the semiconductor system segment. And our book-to-bill ratio is now again above one. Looking at the product groups, Metrology has also more than 41% and it highlights the growing importance of our inspection technologies. Looking at the regional split, we can see that Asia is accounting for more or almost 50% of our order intake and that the US or North America increased in comparison with the revenue from 15 to 20%. Both markets are driven by semiconductor investments. Coming to the group profit and looking first at the gross margin, which developed quite stable from 32.6 to 31.9%. So we're seeing a reduction of 0.7 percentage points. But this is despite a challenging environment with weak order intakes in 2024 and the first half of 25. which is a clear indication for us that there is no price pressure in our product mix. And it shows the strengths of our group's business model. Revenue was at the same time down by 10%, which means that also there are capacity underutilizations in comparison to 2024. This adds another pressure on the gross margin. So all in all, were satisfied with the development of the growth margin in 2025. Looking at the EBITDA and its margin, we're seeing a quite dramatic reduction of 22.5 million or 47%. I would like to break this down for you to give you a little bit better understanding here. Due to the lower sales volume, we lost around 10 million in the gross profit. And the remaining 12.5 million can be more or less broken down into the scaling up of our R&D, sales and service activities with 9 million euros as recurring costs. And another 4 million of non-recurring strategy and related one-off items. Both in the light of our strategic initiative. So taking a closer look at our semiconductor system segment, we already discussed the revenue development. And here, once again, the delayed projects are expected to convert into revenue in the coming periods. Looking at the EBITDA and the EBITDA margin, it's important here, despite the effect I just explained, that the gross profit margin developed positively from 37.3% to 37.7%. The R&D increase we're seeing in the P&L is especially attributable to the segment semiconductor systems and is around 6 million. And the other operational expenditures increased by 2 million, which translates to around 5 percentage point of margin. In the industrial system segment, revenue and order intake both increased, order intake especially. Both developments can be attributed to a stable demand coming from the energy and aerospace sector. Looking at the EBTA in Q4, we see a quite dramatic reduction, which is related to consolidation-related on-off effects. So looking at the full year, it gives you the better picture. The growth margin developed from 23 to 25% during the year 2025. But at the same time, due to strategic initiatives, the operational expenditure increased by 4 million, which is more or less the effect you see in the EBTA. Coming to the cash development, our operating cash flow was around 12 million. for the full year, but also for Q4. If you remember, in Q3 we were quite close to the year zero due to working capital effects which reversed in Q4. The cash flow from investing activities was around 30 million, and 50% of these can be attributed to strategic growth initiatives. Five million for the acquisition of Defcon Pro and dive or PVA vision as of today as investments in our metrology business. Other investments were in technology and capacity expansions. With 2025, we're in the middle of an investment cycle which started in 2024 and will continue at a comparable level in 2026. But then onwards, we will return to approximately 50% of what we're seeing today at a normal level. So let me conclude the financials with a little bit more color on our guidance. We are guiding for revenue between $255 and $275 million. And at the same time, the ordering take was 268 million, with especially strong contributions in Q3, but even more in Q4. And these were primarily driven by material solutions. Projects here often have lead times of 12 to 18 months. And especially in this case, a substantial part of the revenue will take place in 2027. At the same time, we have a very good view on 26 and also beyond. So roughly 50% of our guidance in 26 are already covered by the order backlog, and the rest will be coming from ordering takes in H1 in metrology and materials solutions, as well as our regular run rate from service and after-sales revenues. In 2026, the EBTA has been guided for 26 to 31 million. And here, around 18 million are attributable to strategic initiatives, where 13 million are from recurring scale-up costs, and 5 million are related to one-off items like IT projects or restructuring. That's it from my side here for the financials. I'm happy to answer your questions during the Q&A. I'm handing back over to Jennifer.