PVA TePla AG

Good morning everyone and welcome to the earnings call of PVA TePla AG for Q2 and the first half of 2026. My name is Sebastian Gonsior and I'll be moderating today's call. As usual, CEO Jalin Ketter and CFO Markus Groß will first walk you through the results for Q2 and the first half of 2026, and then share their outlook on the rest of the year. After the presentation, we'll open the floor for your questions. A quick housekeeping note before we start, this call is being recorded and a replay will be made available on our website within the day. With that, let's get started and Jalin, over to you.

Thank you, Sebastian, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our earnings call. We will take you today through the first six months of the year of the development of PBI TePla. But yeah, I'm afraid that anyone who joined the call today expecting a lot of news will be disappointed because we are on track and this is good news because we are executing what we set to do. Let us look back one year and let's recapitulate where we have stand. We were in the middle of our transformation and we had clear targets, high expectations, but we were still rolling out the measures needed to get there. And today we are one year later and we can see that we have come a good way. Our technologies are widely accepted in our target markets and we have made significant improvements across all of our business segments. In the areas we identified as important, we have started the necessary changes and this applies for example to an efficiency improvement program in the material solutions segment beyond others. But of course, not everything is in place yet because transforming our organization is something which is a long-term process. And not every measure we have implemented also shows results immediately. All in all, also the last quarter assured we are moving in the right direction and we will follow the path we have chosen. The coming quarters will show that our strategy is gradually taking effect and that we also be reflected in our figures. Before our CFO, Markus Groß, takes you through the H1 results in detail, I would like to give you an overview on a few key aspects. And I'm pleased to report a solid demand and improving performance across our business. Our order intake increased by more than 80% year-on-year in both segments. Material Solutions and Metrology supported this outcome. Metrology is contributing a growing share of our group revenue and in Material Solutions, we expect a recovery in the second half of this year and also beyond. To support our margin targets in that In this area, we rolled out an efficiency program to improve our profitability. Compared with the first quarter of 2026, our revenue and earnings have improved. Our strong order book gives us visibility for the coming quarters and we expect revenue and earnings to improve gradually. And considering these points, we confirm our full year guidance 2026 with an EBITDA expected in the lower half of the guidance range. So you can see we are progressing. Quarter by quarter, our performance is improving and we expect this trend to continue. We are doing that step by step, and we are very confident that this will bring us back onto our growth path exactly as we have planned. So with saying that, I now hand over to Markus before we are coming to the strategic part again.

Thank you, Jalin, and a warm welcome from my side, and good morning. So let's directly start with our group revenue. and after a rather soft start into Q1 of 26, we're seeing a quarter over quarter increase of 20% up to almost 66 million, which means we're seeing an 8% increase year over year in Q2. Both segments contributed to this development. So we're seeing a 7% increase in material solutions and 9% in metrology. Looking at H1, the revenue is more or less at the same level as in the first half of 25. But in detail, Materials Solutions is with 67.6 million in revenue, 10% below the first half of 25. But based on our order book, we expect this development to turn around in the second half of 26. And on the other hand, Metrology is with 53 million, 20% above the first half of 25. And this shows the success of the group's strategic transformation. Looking at the order intake, we're seeing an increase of 13% in the second quarter of 26. and with 30 million in material solutions we are having follow-up orders for compound materials like indium phosphide. In metrology 35 million means we're a bit above the expected run rate of 30 million. The first half is a great success from our view and the sustained customer demand for advanced semiconductor materials is shown with an increase of 80% year over year in the first half of 26, with 89 million in material solutions and almost 100 million in metrology. Looking at the development over the single quarters, we can see that Q1 was exceptionally strong. and with Q2 we are returning to a more normalized level. As I said, metrology with 35 million is above the expected run rate of 30 million and material solutions with the project nature of the business is more lumpy, but the underlying demand environment is intact and looking in the direction of H2. We're seeing a continued demand in our target markets coming from our structural growth drivers. So for the second half of 26, we expect the order intake to remain at a solid level, but again showing some volatility due to the project business and material solutions. For metrology, we are very happy to report to you that our existing product lines in H1 of 27 are already at full capacity and the production lines currently under construction are also quickly filling up. And with the first orders we received for 28, our visibility is also increasing. The group's profitability is improving in the second quarter But H1 results remained impacted by lower utilization and one-off effects. Generally speaking, metrology and its gross profit margin is on the expected high level. But the material solutions were a bit below, especially if you compare it with the first half of 25, where we had a very strong product mix And with the large orders we received in the last quarter of 25 and the first quarter of 26, we're still in an engineering and sourcing phase. This means the revenue contributions are still low. And in some areas of our group, we're suffering from underutilization because the production hasn't started there yet for these projects. But this will turn around in the second half of 26. Based on the order book, we can see that the margins, the gross profit margins in material solutions will improve and also the underutilization will end. As I said, we're seeing an improvement in the quarterly profitability. If you look at the gross profit margin, which was 30% in the second quarter, we were coming from 28.5. And for the upcoming quarters, we expect the gross profit margin to increase gradually. Both segments combined had then 29.3 due to the week first quarter. The EBITDA and the EBITDA margin were impacted by one-offs. So the EBITDA in the second quarter reduced from 6.7 down to 3 million. And here we are having non-period expenses, which impacted the second quarter of a little less than 4 million. The most relevant here is the recognition of a provision for potential compensation with a customer in material solutions. Looking at material solutions, we can see a continued order momentum But the profitability is currently not where we want it to be. As I said, gross profit margin is impacted by the product mix and underutilization and also the EBTA by non-period expenses. For the moment, or as of now, we don't see any effects like we had in the second quarter for the rest of the year. We expect the gross profit margin to improve. and the recovery in the margins in the third and fourth quarter. In metrology, we're seeing a continued growth in revenue and the order intake. But the EBITDA is currently impacted by strategic investments, which are temporarily waiting on our profitability. These investments are in our infrastructure for sales and services, and also increased R&D activities. The second quarter also was impacted by expenses for free demo systems, which decreased our EBTA in the second quarter as well. So wrapping it up. In the first half of 26, we achieved revenue of 120 million. For the third quarter, we expect a revenue in the direction of the second quarter of 26 and an acceleration in the fourth quarter, which is coming from our order book. So we're very confident here. The EBTA in the first half has been heavily impacted by one-offs. And due to the stabilization and increase in the gross profit margins, and especially in the fourth quarter with the product mix and material solutions, we're expecting to be in the third quarter approaching double digit levels again. And confirming our guidance in terms of the revenue and also in terms of the EBITDA, but we see ourselves here at the lower half of the guidance range. So that's it from my side, and I'm handing back over to Jalin.