INFICON Holding AG

Well, it's 9.30 by my watch, so good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweitzer, Investor Relations Contact at Inficom. I have the pleasure of hosting this webcast. Thank you for joining Inficom's conference on its first quarter 2026 results. With us today are Oliver Wiersch, CEO of Inficom, and Matthias Sternle, CFO of Inficom. We would also like to welcome our future CFO, Dimitri Vifak, on this webcast. Dimitri will take over from Matthias on July 1st this year. He will present the first quarter financials in greater detail. The management team will first present the results and then take your questions. During management's prepared remarks, you are kindly asked to turn your microphones and cameras off. You should have received by now the press release on the Q1 2026 results, together with the links to the accompanying presentation for this conference. All these documents are available for download in the investor section of the Inficom website. During the Q&A session, you can ask questions either in writing using the chat function in MS Teams, or you can add yourselves to the queue by clicking on the raise your hand icon. I would also like to inform you that we are recording this web conference in order to archive the audio file later on the Inficom website. The oral statements made by Impecum during his MS Team session may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations as well as future results of operations and financial conditions. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would now like to hand over to Oliver Virsch. Oliver, please. Thank you very much.

Welcome, everybody, to the earnings release first quarter of 2026. Very pleased to welcome you here today. About the agenda, we have the usual structure. I will first tell you a couple of key messages and highlights of the quarter, talk about the different markets and the full year expectations. After that, I will hand over to our CFO Matthias Fröndl and our future CFO Dimitri Rysak for more details on the relationship. What are the Q1 2026 results? We saw a very strong quarterly sales result and a strong order momentum with a book-to-bill ratio well above one, a solid underlying profitability with one-off restructuring costs. The Q1 sales reached 181 million US dollars, growing plus 14% year-on-year. and nearly on the same level as the last quarter, which is seasonally normally the biggest one. So this quarter is the second biggest of all times, which, if you take seasonality into account, is a fantastic achievement. The orders are particularly in Street Conductor continuously increasing and also have increased during this first quarter. And that's why we reach a book-to-bill ratio well above one. If you look at semiconductor and vacuum coating, market has delivered a growth of plus 24% year-on-year, and grew, even on a high comparison of Q4, another 1.5%. It's an accelerating market development here. The general vacuum continues this positive momentum, delivering another solid quarter of plus 20% year-on-year, and also an increase of over a quarter-on-quarter. RSE also increased by nearly 3% year-on-year and 11% on Q4. A challenging market environment, but I believe our strong position gives us here the continuous opportunity to further grow. Security and energy is a cyclical market, is down again versus Q4 currently, but with very good outlook. If you look at the operating result, gross margin, we reached nearly 46%, which is above previous quarter. It reflects the improved operational inefficiencies. There is still some tailwind in ethics and tariffs, but there is also, with the one-off costs, clearly then a move in the right direction based on last year's difficulties, we have been, with our improvement plans, making great progress. If you look at the operating income of $29.4 million, or a 16.3 margin, that is a solid profitability, in particular when you look at about three percentage points, one of restructuring costs, which are related with our reconfiguration. The operating cash flow is solid with $22 million in Q1. The production reconfiguration that we talked a lot about last year, which was accelerated due to the trade disputes, is concluded. And with this new setup, we are very confident in this ever-changing world and geopolitical difficult situation that we can go and react also to future changes. We have also discussed efficiency measures implemented, and this is related with the one of construction costs. These are the efficiency measures that we have triggered also based on the configurations and the changed environment, related with ethics and tariffs as well. We continue our investment in leading-edge R&D. This part of the market is truly on fire. So much going on, so much exciting innovation partnerships working. I believe also our approach last year proved to be a right to work closely with the customer, especially also during these trade disputes. Our partnerships have strengthened and we have clearly made a step forward in these partnerships to even further work together on the next generation of our customers' products. The CapEx is in Q1 at 3.8 million U.S. dollars. That is the timing. The question is relatively low. For the full year, we would estimate it at around 30 million U.S. dollars. If you now jump into the worldwide markets, you can see that we could show growth in all of the four regions that we are reporting. The most exciting, certainly, is Asia-Pacific. That's where most of the AI-driven semiconductor manufacturing is happening. But also China has shown good development, and especially also Europe. There is semiconductor driver, but there is also the advanced industrials in GenBike, a driver in there. America is probably the least exciting one, but it's a tough comparison also with for if you look at the development over the last quarters. They're optimistic, but it is less dynamic as the other regions because many of these AI-driven initiatives materialize for us in Asia. If you then jump into the end markets, first, our biggest market, semiconductor and vacuum coatings. We have a strong leading position and you can see how we are able to grow over multi-years, even in different cycles and geopolitical uncertainties. And the industry upcycle we expect to further accelerate. We have just seen quite an acceleration again in Q1 after already good momentum last year in the second half. If you compare the Growth is 23.5% above Q1 2025 in the sequential growth of 1.5, with a tough comparison. We have built out our number one position, are continuously building it out. There is about 80-90% where we are number one, so we're continuously working on this. We expect for this year strong growth. and see obviously the mentioned industry upside still gaining momentum. If you look at it a bit more specifically, the HPC, the leading logic development already has started some time ago with HPM or memory DRAM accelerating also for some time now. But now we see it really going beyond that, broader, also in more mature nodes. into power, into IoT and other places. So that is now a truly broad momentum building up. We have a very strong pipeline at Inticon with new products, new applications, a lot of design innings. Again, I want to stress that our strategy last year to stay close to the customers in difficult times proved to be the right one. All these partnerships have further strengthened and actually give us even more opportunities than we think not only mid-term, not only short-term, but also mid-term. So there's a lot of interesting product upgrades in the works and being launched, as you speak, on these new tech nodes, gate all around, or the smaller tech nodes also in memory, and so on. If you then jump in the next end market automotive refrigeration air conditioning, you have a very strong position there. I think even in a difficult market that is in parts, Consolidating with strong headwinds, we were able to show sustained growth over the last years, including also this quarter. Quarter on quarter plus 11%, year on year plus 3%. Good order intake. I think here it's important to see that a part of the market is still slow. The EV transition has been so fast. also the underlying automotive market has been soft, but there's recovery signs, which is positive to see. The consumer battery has been continuously more resilient and also growing. Then you have the RSE portion of this market breaking down in different sub parts, which one is related with the automotive market, which is rather the slower end. Then you have in the middle the continuously growing HVAC market, which is It's core growing continuously, but it is accelerated for us for some time through these new refrigerant regulations, through climate change. But the most exciting one now, developing more and more, is the state-percentage supply with air conditioning on a whole new level, where a new market is just about to form with new products and new requirements, and we have first product launch also from our end. Also in this market, strong R&D pipeline, very close with the customer, lots of momentum, a lot of exciting new stuff coming. Then we jump into general market. General vacuum, our next market. Strong sales growth. This is a broad market with about 20 sub-markets in it. We rigorously test them and check them if they are in line with our overall growth and profitability and technology synergies requirements. And we have a couple of smaller markets in here that push us forward. Big Science, Space, Robotics, a few more. We also have broad positive development in advanced industrials. We have a clear number one position here in vacuum instrumentation that we further build out. We also work here on different channel partners, which we have expanded, which is a exciting long-term development as well. And maybe the last note is the slow part in this market is probably the portion around solar. And I think last time we spoke in the full year results, we were expecting this to be recovering after 2026. Most recently, actually, there have been a couple of positive signals. I'll be in China next week again, so I'll get the latest and greatest. from the market, I believe there could be some reason for optimism that we have a recovery sooner, but we'll have to still watch that closely. Then we jump to the last market, security and energy. Again, cyclical market, depending on very long qualification cycles with governments. Generally, defense market is growing really fast. We are growing with it. Activity is high. So we are staying committed to this and are also excited about this, but this quarter Q1 was a bit slow. As you see, Q4 was much bigger than the others. So this shows also this attractiveness, but at the same time also the cyclicality. The products, we have very strong products, specifically with the half-side line, which we continue to show in the market a very strong performance. And with that, I jump to the expectations for 2026. Inticon raises the full year 2026 guidance. The orders have developed strong in Q1. The semiconductor industry itself, the momentum is accelerating, which really gives us a lot of optimism. Hence, in spite of geopolitical risks and the trade disputes ongoing, we raise the guidance for 2026 to sales of 710 units. to 750 million US dollars, and an operating income of 18 to 20%. And with that, all my reminders, as always, if you're interested in Inticon, go have a look at our different channels. You'll see a bit under the hood what's happening, exciting technology developments, new innovations, openings, and so on. Lots going on. Actually, a very exciting time, I believe. Another growth expert, another big leap in many technologies, so we're quite optimistic looking into the future. I want to share that with you. Then, I conclude my part and would like to hand over to Matthias Freundli, our CFO and our future CFO Dimitri Lisak for some financial details.

Thank you, Oliver, and good morning everyone to our Q1 call. As you know, and as communicated in December, I will hand over the CFO role to Dimitri soon. Dimitri will be the new CFO of Indicom starting July 1st. Therefore, Dimitri will take over the financials today and walk you through the financials. And for me, it's to say I would like to thank you for your interest, support and also sometimes the tricky questions over the last nearly 18 years. As I'm from finance, it would be exactly 17.83 years. And then, yeah, it was a pleasure meeting and working with you. Thank you very much for that. I'm very sure Indicon is in good hands with Dimitri, and you will enjoy working with him, I'm pretty sure. With that, I hand over to Dimitri. Dimitri, it's your turn, please.