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.

Thank you very much, Matthias, for the nice words and for the introduction. Welcome, everyone, also from my side. I'm pleased to guide you through a little bit more in detail for the quarter financials, the guidance, and the corporate calendar. First of all, Q1 was a quarter strong on both sales and orders, as well as the further improved operational efficiencies and a strong cash generation, while we actually kept investing into the future and into new technologies in R&D. Going for the main highlights, book-to-bill, as mentioned, was well above 1. We generated sales of 181 million, which is an increase of 14.4% versus prior year. A gross margin of 45.9, which is an increase of sequentially of around 1.6 percentage points, and compared to last year, a decrease of roughly 3.5 percentage points. We generated an operating income of 29.4, 16.3% operating margin. This is a decrease versus prior year of 7.8%, and this number includes the one of cost and one of impact already mentioned before of around 3 percentage points, as well as certain headwinds from ethics and from tariffs that remain in the operating income. The equity ratio remains very strong at 74.1%, underlining the overall financial resilience of our business. And the operating cash flow, as well as the net cash, increased and continues to be strong. Operating cash flow at $21.7 million, which is $3.6 million above the comparing quarter, and net cash of $96.5 million, which is a growth of 10.5%. Finally, CapEx at 3.8 million, which is 1.4 million lower than last year. Here, as previously mentioned, this is more a seasonality topic and a timing topic because we actually expect the CapEx to be higher than in 2025 at around 30 million. Going to the sales, overall sales score was 14.4%, growing in all regions and three out of four markets. Specifically on the regional side, the most exciting, the strongest growth came from Asia-Pacific at 30.5%, China at 6.7%, Europe at 22%, and Americas with a very slight decrease of 0.2%. And looking at the markets, the strongest growth came from Semi with 23.5% in the accelerating market, followed by General Vacuum growing at 20.3% year-over-year, and RSE auto increasing moderately by 2.7% year-over-year, while security and energy driven by seasonality and more temporarily affects decline by 59%. Operating expenses remained under tight management and tight control. While R&D costs actually increased by 10.9%, reflecting mainly investments into the future, into the upcoming product launches, as well as an FX impact, the SG&A costs increased by 17.8%. Here it's worth noting that a significant part of this increase is resulting from the one of restructuring measures we mentioned before, as well as unfavorable FX impacts. all these two impact dimensions, we're actually structurally reducing our SG&A costs. And finally, on the operating income and gross profit performance, so gross profit margin, as mentioned, reduced by 3.5 percentage points to 45.9, which is also at the same time an increase of 1.6 percentage points sequentially versus the previous quarter. operating income reduced by 7.8 and generating a margin of 16.3%. Let me summarize the key drivers behind this performance. First of all, the operating income, the underlying result is structurally very solid and clearly reflects the improvements in the operational efficiencies we've been working on in the past months. There are certain negative effects that remain from tariffs and impacts on the costs. But at the same time, the effect of the capacity duplication is actually reducing significantly and improving. And we were also able to mitigate partially the effects impact with our relocation efforts and with our restructuring, basically reducing the footprint in the Euro and Switzerland. Finally, as mentioned, the significant impact in this quarter resulted from one of restructuring costs. These costs actually came in both in Cox and in OPEX, and this is related to the previously initiated production and cost optimization. The income tax increased by 21.8%, reflecting overall a slightly higher tax rate, 22.5%, mainly due to timing and mix effects. while the net income decreased by 7.3% and the margin reaching 12.8% net sales, mainly driven by the lower operating income. The balance sheet remains consistently solid. I mentioned the cash flow increase both on operating cash flow and net cash. Operating cash flow generating 21.7 million US dollar, which is a 19.7% increase versus Q1-25. And net cash generated 96.5 million US dollar, which compares versus 81.2 in the reference period for 2025. Overall, also what's positive to highlight is the inventory returns. So our inventory returns actually improved. Our inventory remained more or less flat versus prior year, while accounts receivables increased mainly due to the strong invoicing in the previous quarter as well as in Q1. This had an effect on overall accounts receivables, but also a slight increase of DSO, and with this leading to a net working capital of 241.5 million. Coming to the full year 2026 guidance, as mentioned, we are raising the full year 2026 guidance both for sales and operating income. This is based on a strong order intake and solid market, solid outlook in most markets, specifically an acceleration in the semiconductor market, and the mentioned improved operational efficiencies. This means that the new guidance will be for sales $710 to $750 million, and operating income 18% to 20%. And with this, I conclude the financial up. and I would like to highlight the next events on the corporate calendar. We will have the upcoming analyst visit in Liechtenstein and Walzers on the 27th of May, the Q2 2016 media conference in July 30th, followed by the Q3 media conference 27th of October, and the last analyst visit of the year in Walzers as well on November 19th. With this, I conclude the financial update, and we are happy to take your questions.

Thank you, gentlemen. The first question comes from .

Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my question. I would just like to understand the margin profile a little bit better. Because there's been five and a half million in one of costs in the first quarter. Can I just confirm that the increased guidance on EBIT margin for the full year isn't reported on the underlying EBIT margin? Because it would basically assume that for the next nine months you would return to 20% EBIT margin. if you were to reach the midpoint of that year. Just so we're clear here and we're talking the same numbers. And then maybe also if you could help me understand a bit better where these 5.5 million one-off costs were really put in the first quarter and if there's any more one-off costs expected as the year progresses. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, Martin, obviously an expected question. I will give a few high-level explanations and then Dimitri can ask a bit more on the financial side. Yes, we don't plan on reporting different operating income numbers. So the guidance is the guidance of the operating income as we reported. And hence, the logic is relatively clear then, but just to confirm it, yes, it's one of costs now. It's all bundled together. Obviously, this is a large program across all the different locations across different functions that we have based on long-term strategy and then this acceleration last year. And then we have added some more aspects to it as well, right? And triggered was this additional program basically by last year, April, where the trade is good escalated. And then we really went into a review of these plans and then expanded it further and accelerated it. Of course, there is also these efficiency measures in there. As you remember, we have these three buckets, ethics, tariffs, and underabsorption. Underabsorption was because of the duplication of the production line, meaning when we move from one place to the other, you cannot immediately switch off the old line, right? You want to have continuity for the customers. So this is something we've been working on with high priority. And I think we made good progress. And so this is the back end of this, obviously. So the idea for me is for the outside, but particularly also for the inside in the company to turn the page with this. And now we go full on into growth mode. There is no reason to not be very optimistic, as I mentioned, because the markets are exciting. The technology is exciting. the technologies we're working on, if our customers are excited, but also what happens inside of our R&D, the whole acceleration. We already write a lot of lines of code automatically and gently spreading everywhere, so it's one of the most exciting times for different reasons, right? And then you have these upcoming new technologies down to space and content technologies and so on, while already semi is exciting with the new technologies. So, I would like to move on to the growth mode after this, and that's in answer to what you said. If you wanted to look at what's remaining of these three buckets from last year, I would think we were around residual value of one to two percentage points there. Some of it will stay, right, the ethics we can only influence so far, and the tariffs, they will be going down, but they have been around before, and not everything will be gone, even with refunds and whatever. we can do. So we continuously work on this, but it's going to be, the improvement is going to be a bit slower there. But we can already show improvements also there. Obviously, as you can see when you do the math. I hope this helps.

Maybe if you have more... I think we'll summarize just two things to your question of how this clip is. So actually, or what this one of costs are affecting. They're affecting both OPEX and the gross margins, so we have effects in both areas. And the rest, actually, Oliver mentioned, I think it's, you know, aside from this, from the one-off effect, we also have some remaining effects that we had in previous courses, but these are gradually reducing, while I would say tariff stays, you know, as the most prominent one. But the other effects, especially under absorption, we are managing very closely, and we see quite a positive development there in reduction.

Yeah, maybe that is a as we often say, right? It's not the best measure for Inticon as we have a big mix in the product portfolio, but you can see that's why we spoke about this too. We can see the improvement, which clearly shows how we address the underabsorption.

That's very clear. If you allow me a very quick follow-up, can you maybe just also give a bit more color on the development of the semi-market in China in particular? I know you're going there next week, but I'm sure you must be aware of what's going on on the ground.

I've been there already a couple of weeks back, and obviously we all come there. We have a large team there. So, yeah, I think there's good reason to be optimistic. Certainly, the 15-5 year plan is a course correction where we believe that in China, the market forces will be led to play more. And some of the players that are not profitable or viable will go and be allowed to shut down. What that means is we probably have a little bit more closer market development there in CEMI, but also outside in other technology space where we are. As we know it from the West, we also see that we actually, with our setup, are very well positioned to compete with Chinese companies that there is actually no big difference with our footprint. And so the market itself certainly is not going to go back to this growth rate before COVID, but I think the tech markets are quite resilient. They're building global players there that will also come out of China, or we see some of this in automotive, for instance, and also in semi. the strong partnership we have with them for a very long time, I would say for more than a decade, some two decades remain. So, for us, we're committed to the Chinese market. It's a good market. We have these good partnerships and they also have nice growth. Some of this growth is, of course, also still replacement of US-American players. This is due to geopolitics, largely. I think... For us, we're in a very good position as we are and how we set ourselves up to profit from it and, again, see the market also optimistic. The development quarter to quarter is a bit harder to say. You know, many of these projects are a bit chunky and they move around. It depends on planning and approvals. So I would not exactly look at quarter to quarter, more long-term trends, and those are the cycles.

helps. Perfect. Thanks so much. And Matthias, enjoy the summer.

All the best for future endeavours. Try my best. The motorbike is already ready.

Which one? A big one.

Very good. Alright. The next question comes from Michael in Ireland. Michael, please.

Yeah, good morning, everyone. Hope you can hear me. So, congrats on the good result. Really surprisingly strong. I was wondering if you could... I mean, I have three things that I would like to raise. First of all, maybe you can give us a little bit insight in your thought processes. One month ago, it sounded a little bit different when you were presenting, and you tried to be at least cautious in... in your guidance and you were a little bit cautious in how you talked about the market, but now it looks a little different on the positive side. So maybe just a little hint on what changed in your thought process there. And overall, a bit of a broader question on the semiconductor market. I mean, you were growing really strongly. Of course, you report in US dollars, but still much better than some of your competitors. let's say, both the peers in Switzerland, Comet, EAT, just trying to understand what drives that. I mean, obviously, we see a really strong, I would say, a strong recovery in mature edge. Taxis Instruments is really strong. I mean, we see it also in the European chips, stocks. Is it coming more from the mature side, or is it really memory, partially, where you're not super exposed, or is it more leading edge? And then, within that, would you say it's more OM or chipmaker driven? I'm just trying to understand, you know, what makes you grow so much more. So maybe these two things and I'll leave it with that.

All right, good. Okay, let me go one by one through your sub questions there as well. So, I mean, first of all, I want to stress the reconfiguration and I believe how we went through last year paid off for this year. I'm a big fan of, ripping off the Band-Aid early, then move on and look into the future quickly, refocus. So I think that's what we did lastly with the production configuration. But also then when you accelerate a long-term strategy, moving also, I mean, I can say we're moving percentage-wise. our footprint towards Asia, obviously. That's also one of costs, represents some of this. What we also have done is we have strengthened our supply chain and our production footprint, and that's why we can also deliver a Q1 like this. Not everybody was able to react like this. There is already some sand in the supply chain. We know that air freight, helium, aluminum, So we need to continue to monitor that and stay close to it as we ramp, right? So we already made quite some investment in inventory and some more is coming. There's a plan there and also in CapEx to go and capture the ramp and taking into account potential bottlenecks on the other end. So that's work, though, that we have done, but we have seen, and now I'm getting to this other part of the question that you have. In Q1... We needed to still figure a few things out and see if this works and align with some of the customers and the projections. This happened in Q1. Then there was Lunar New Year, which always throws a bit off the projections because it gives a temporary slowdown and then an acceleration. We saw a good Q4, but we couldn't really see if that is now a one-off or is this going to be a trend? So I think all of this added together led us to go and doing this race of guidance. But we're rather a company that first proves what we can do before we make promises. I guess that's our brand and we continue to do this also as we look forward. So we try to do the hard work and then go and impress people with good results. And when we have, of course, big curveballs coming our way like last year, then it's more work before we can then show good results. So I'm optimistic for this year for sure. So that on the topic of what changed, maybe on the same more color, it's pretty broad-based now. As I mentioned earlier, HPC started already some time ago, a couple quarters really, and then also memory started a couple quarters. I want to stress again, the times are over where we're not exposed to memory. These customers buy the same sophisticated sensor packages as logic customers now. As you can also see, the development even on Litho, what kind of tools they buy, this is different now. And then the sophistication down into packaging, there is also some logic in each HPM package. So this has really changed now. I believe the change has started probably seven, eight years ago, but now I would see memory customers equally important. Naturally, the leading edge in terms of nodes is still with logic, but the sophistication is a similar level, while maybe different in nature, right, within memory. So for us, then you asked OEM chip makers, we have this 50-50 split roughly. This is, you know, each trend, each large customer has their own kind of waves. Epson waves, so that's fluctuating, but the overall trend is roughly that. And OEM, those who won big orders, there's always winners or losers in this expansion project. I think everybody wins, but the question is whether you're growing 20%, 30%, or are you growing beyond that or below that, right? That's a bit where the spectrum is this year, but fantastic, obviously, if you think about these numbers and these projections. So I would say OEM equally, because we have the center package for the OEMs equally comprehensive as we have it for chip makers. I used a bit more of the sophisticated part. And I believe regionally we discussed a little bit already, China is its own ecosystem to some degree, or more and more, I would say. We are committed to China. We're well entrenched. And I think we're optimistic. We have a good footprint there for a long time. We don't need to go and build anything. We're just expanding and relocalizing where it makes sense. We also have more innovation collaborations there. So we're optimistic there. But, I mean, most exciting was really Asia-Pacific region for us for obvious reasons. There's a lot of leading semi-players there, memory and logic. So as it happens, that was last week in Japan. Also there is a lot happening. So there's also a little bit of a trade war there with China. It's complicated also Asia, but we're navigating also this footprint. So I think there's reason for optimism in all regions. That's roughly the summary. I'm thinking now, did I miss any of your dimensions that you wanted talk about. Oh, yeah, exactly. Leading versus mature nodes. And that is definitely now starting. That is probably the last one we saw. And they buy simpler sensors, smaller sensor packages, and more software. And that is a good dynamic to see. I think that is a bit the earlier days, to be honest. I do still see mixed results from some of them over the last quarters. And I believe now we can be optimistic how it develops further also with their expansion project. So that's probably roughly all that I mentioned, I hope, Michael.

Yeah, no, it's perfect. Thank you, Story, for asking such a broad question. So I leave it at that, and I wish you guys a great time, and all the best also to Matthias, of course, and looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. See you soon. Bye, guys. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Next questions come from Jörn Ifrit.

Jörn, please. Thanks, and first of all, I wanted to quickly thank Matthias and wish you all the best hopefully we'll see each other at some point in time again. And then two to three questions, if I may, on the business. The first one would be, please, on your overall capacity. Is there a risk, I mean, that you could run into some supply chain bottlenecks, not getting enough electronic components like you see in 2022, or Is this something which you're preparing, going on inventories now, the next one or two quarters? And also, I mean, are you able to have around 260 million quarterly revenue capacity, for example, end of the year? You can manage this. This would be the first question, please. Second question, on Europe, if I ethics adjust it, maybe it's still around double-digit growth, maybe around 10% plus minus, still pretty strong. In a weak industrial environment, is this mainly the indirect semi-sales via your OEM partners? or how you describe this. And the third one is really just a double check, this 300 basis point margin impact from restructuring. This is now really, that's it. You put everything in NQ1, and I assume a lot of non-cache is in the NQ1, but you don't expect more NQ2 from this point of view.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Thank you, Jörn. You're breaking up a little bit, but I could hear you fine, I believe. So I think two and three, definitely Dimitri will have some additional details for you. Yeah, on capacity, there have been a lot of discussions the last two quarters, three quarters probably, on that, but it really accelerated in Q1, and we formalized, finalized, and kicked off additional projects in Q1. So this is all kind of Connected with also our more optimistic outlook for the year. This customer's discussions and also how we navigate the supply. And one is production, right? That's tools, that's clean room, that's people. And then there's also supply chain, which is certainly a topic of concern here. There is a certain fear that there could be a similar situation back a couple of years ago in the COVID times where the demand went up and the supply was constrained. And we are certainly taking our learning from that. I mean, the last three years we really spent a lot of time on hardening our supply chain, making more resilient. And I believe we are much better prepared and we definitely take actions in that direction. PCB, we remember still what happened there on the PCB supply front, right, and we have made quite significant actions on this side to be able to navigate this. Because now is the time, I think, after we built a strong foundation for growth last year with this reconfiguration, strong customer partnerships, and now to really go and make the step ahead and not only grow with the market, take an extra chunk. That is the plan. So, for us, this is a big determination to supply in Iran. Hence, these investments are in there. I believe, yes, we can go and supply that. We are not done, actually, the expansion project. It's deciding and kicking off and implementing. So, it's accelerating, actually, currently, still. So, I'm optimistic that we can... provide this level of output. But again, I will make this disclaimer of the geopolitics and how some of the logistics are constrained. There is quite an amount of uncertainty, obviously, for everybody, not specifically for us. I think for us it's almost a little better because of our footprint. But it's a bit hard to say. We have every angle covered. So maybe that on capacity, then you want to add something? Maybe, oh, you can talk to the ethics. Maybe we talk to the ethics. You had, I think, a little bit of a market question there as well. How did Europe develop?

Yeah, I apologize. If I ethics adjust Europe, it's still around 10% growth in the quarter, which is pretty strong. My question is, where is this 10% growth coming from? Is it coming from your OEM partners, which have been seeing exposure, or where exactly would you attribute this?

Some of it is there, but some of it is beyond that also in other industries. It's not only European semi, it's also the advanced industries in Europe. There's obviously not every piece that we sell in Europe goes to Europe, right? So there's partners there that integrate that sense.

But maybe if you want to say a few words about... Yeah, just to add to this. I think that the growth in Europe is quite broad in this quarter. So it's same, but also in the other markets. Security and energy are a bit less exciting for this quarter. But other than that, actually, to your question, the growth is actually coming from... It's quite broad and it's coming from almost all the markets. And you had a question on the restructuring costs. So a few words to this. We... You know, we previously mentioned that we had these initiatives running, right, on the one hand, the product reconfiguration, but also then the efficiency improvements. And for us, with this quarter, these initiatives and the costs from these initiatives are booked in and concluded. Now, we have the disclaimer that Oliver mentioned, of course, your political situation and other factors, but this is another story to talk about. If you talk about the initiatives we discussed earlier in the earlier calls, these are concluded ones.

Yeah, I think maybe, I mean, we talk about what's not in there. I think there's a restructuring, the reconfiguration, the capacity expansion. This is all rip off the band-aid, move into full-on growth mode. But there is inflation fears also when you think about the supply chain, right? The constraints, energy prices or oil prices feeding to different pieces of the supply chain. I think that's something we all watch closely together, right? And what's happening there. It In an extreme situation, we'll have again something like a couple of years ago where everywhere is inflation, everybody needs to renegotiate. That's burning a little bit through time and money for renegotiations and realignment and all of it, with everybody ending up at the same margin roughly at the end. We hope that this is not going to be too expensive. Right now, there's still reason for optimism, but It is a bit related with how geopolitics develop now, right? Is there a little bit of an unchanging resolution specifically in the Middle East? Or how is this going to work out? But, yeah, look, our guidance is our guidance in the sense, this sounds trivial sentence, but in the end we practice it all in and I believe that's where we end up with as our realistic scenario to pull your guidance. Thank you very much. All right. You're welcome.

All right. We have next questions coming from Craig Abbott. Craig, please.

Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Yeah, first of all, on General Vacuum, I just, I know you don't publish specific figures per segment, but maybe from a color perspective, you said orders as well again, but I just wonder, I mean, could you confirm if that book to bill in General Vacuum was also again above one, and just the second part of that question, which in markets in particular perform so strongly within that? I know you gave us some color in your initial comments, and do you expect that to, like, continue heading into key two and key three? And then I have one more follow-up. Thank you.

Yeah, okay. You can also add some, maybe. I mean, generally, Yes, this is a broad market with the sub-market curated and selected depending on technology synergies and also a financial profile. It has to have a certain growth. It has to have a certain profitability that is comparable to the semi-market. Some are also above, right? There's markets that grow faster. So battery was for a long time like this. Solar also for some time So this is all in this market. About half of this market is done with channel partners to serve the advanced industries. That is an easier way. So some of the transparency is not 100% for us, but certainly we try to go and steer this into the right direction. The book-to-bill is positive, but it's not, of course, comparable with what we see in semiconductors I think, though, a lot of the AI trend lifts also other industries, and sometimes, as we're all kind of realizing now, it's going through different corners and then pulls up industries that you would not even think that are closely related because of this whole infrastructure impact that this data center build-out has. So, I believe there's a good amount of that in there, but In some of the tech markets, they have their own development, right? I mean, I said a very early market would be maybe quantum technology and carbon capture, but then at the other end, there's markets that are more established, like life science, and then solar would be one of those, and I made my comments about solar. It can be more optimistic now than some... quarters ago, or also in the full year, reporting, if you compare directly, there's a bit more optimism again. And then there's these smaller markets, like robotics or space, that they all have very good momentum. And that's actually, I would say, somewhat independent of the data center build-out. Robotics, obviously, you could say is the next stage of AI, physical AI, but it's a bit independent still, and also positive. whenever there's sensorization. So I'm trying to give you a little bit more color there. I hope that helps. Do you want to add something?

Just a quick two words on the book-to-bill question. So you said it yourself, I mean, we don't disclose every single detail of this per market and for the book-to-bill performance, but overall what we can say is that also for General Vacuum, we saw that the Maybe not as much as in SEMI, but we definitely see the growth versus prior year.

Okay, thank you. And then in SEMI, you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier in your commentary, which we certainly hope to gain market share. But I just wondered, in addition to the strength in the WFC CapEx trends that we continue to see, Are you already seeing market share gains as you compare with your direct competitors and particularly your most important competitor in that area? Thank you.

I would say yes. I mean, that's a continuous development, and then we're very determined there with laser focus on doing that. But I think when you look at the CAGR in our markets where we, in all markets, can outperform the market, if you just look at the last five years, is 10 plus right which is clearly not the market development itself there so it's above and i believe that comes from the fact that more things are measured which are not measured or have been measured in the past and things are measured more sophisticatedly meaning with a higher price of sensor which has maybe more analytical capabilities, more sensitivity, or is it multi-sensors, or is it different sensors? And then you correct it all, more software. So that is a very strong trend that we see continuously, actually, as well.

So it's a bit both, with that as an explanation. Yes, thank you.

All right. Was that the second question, Craig?

It was my second question. It was. Thank you. Thanks.

Very good. Thank you, Craig. We have our next Craig on the queue. This time it's Craig McDowell. Please, Craig.

Hi, Craig. Hi. Good gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is just following up on the general back to the teams. Obviously, there's distribution channel partners there. Do you get any stalking happening in the queue number? And maybe you could speak to the staff of your distributors as well. And then, secondly, on the security and performance, also weaker Q1 than maybe we were expecting, but it seems like you've raised the FY26 guide from decreased to flat on revenue. What's going on the next nine months to get us back to that flat for the full year? Thank you.

All right. I'll quickly try to answer this too. And generally, largely it's not stocking. There might be some of it in it, right? And you were right, maybe we do not have the full visibility, but I would say at this point of the time, also when you consider that there's some of these industries ramping because of AI or other technologies that I mentioned, I would say there's not a large effect at all. So rather smaller effect or no effect. And then on the SME, yeah, we have to realistically look at our pipeline. The timing is difficult, right? And then the realistic look at the pipeline and decrease didn't make sense. So we need to be more optimistic midterm, we are very optimistic for midterm anyway, but we need to also this year be reflected a little bit of how the pipeline developed over the last most recent time and how this will materialize. So obviously we cannot disclose standards or proposals or timings of it or our estimation of when they're going to hit, but that's based on this basically on the sales funnel that we see or the project funnel. Super. Thanks very much. Sounds good.

All right. Thank you, Craig. We have the next question from Martha Moravacalio.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is on the semiconductor division. I mean, looking at the strong growth in QR and comments on book to build, Should we assume that we see a similar kind of growth in that division this year? So I guess outperforming WAC by a few percentage points, or are there some elements of comps or cyclicality from quarter to quarter that we have to take into account as well? That would be the first one.

The first one, okay. Yes, there is definitely cyclicality. That's underlying, right? We have a big cycle. the ramps coming, and you can argue, is this several ramps, or how big is it compared to the past ones? It's a little bit hard to say at this point. We can certainly say it's quite steep, and it's accelerating, and there's a lot of optimism. It's a chunky business, though, how it materializes for us, particularly the shipmaker side of things, because you need to imagine this that these chip makers talk to us about the whole build-out plan over a longer period of time, and then the timing is moved, not the actual project. It's not that suddenly somebody sends a big order. That's not what typically happens. We design it into a certain technology node during the R&D process, and then it's defined of how many How big is this production going to be? And then there's different expansion phases that can change and move around. And those have been most recently pulled in, being pulled in. And sometimes what happens otherwise is typically in a cancellation is they get stretched out in the timeline. So it's definitely chunky. We see a bit of a slower Q3 normally seasonally and a higher Q3. Q4 typically seasonally as well, whereas maybe Q1, Q2 are a little bit in the middle to say this. So there is still a lot of volatility in there, I think largely with upside risk, I think. As we've seen most recently, that's why the transition from when we just spoke recently full year results to now, we have seen a lot of this kind of moving in. And so we don't know how this is going to continue. This is normal, actually, even in a ramp. There can be slowdowns or, you know, one customer wins over another one a big bit. Who makes for a certain phone the display or the memory chip or that chip or the other one? All of this is kind of in the mechanics of that, to maybe give a bit of color on how it works under the hood. It is all then projected, right, in different scenarios. And then now Jack is basically the realistic one.

Okay, great. And the second one and the final one for me is just on the general vacuum division, on the solar business. I understand that you see this market still being in overcapacity this year, but let's say the rent happens in 27 or 28, but let's say it's 27. Do you think it would be a steep ramp or more of a gradual one if you look at past cycles on that division?

I wish I knew. I can almost say there because that has been a bit unpredictable. This overcapacity trend in China has been making it much harder also to predict. And now I mentioned this 15-5 year plan which tries to go and rectify this. also that maybe there's fewer players but stronger players. At the same time, on the demand side, there is increasing demand while capacity is consolidated. The increasing demand, there's everything in there from just the base demand and large expansion process, more sustainability push up to data centers in space with solar power. So, and that is actually, that is not so hypothetical. So I have to go next week and specifically look at it, and we are monitoring it. Yeah, it could be moving into 26. It's not going to be soon in 26, right? I think it could come sooner. But the shape of it is very hard to tell. Also, solar has sometimes had quite some acceleration. So, it depends a little bit on technos as well, right? So, there's a few smaller improvements there, and then the bigger step coming with TopCon and Periscope. Everything is kind of not too far away. So it's interesting times, actually, on that end, too. It's much smaller, I think, compared to Semi, but, yeah, there's a reason for optimism, I think, at this point. It certainly goes up one way or another over the timeline in some shape or form. I know it's not great, Martin, but it's just not so easy to say. I mean, we have analytics, and you all have also great analytics, and we probably look at similar kind of projection and scenarios there. I hope it helps a little bit.

Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Thank you, Maka. There are no further questions at this time. So, gentlemen, maybe you want to add some closing remarks?

Yes, if I may. Today may be a little bit longer because I would also personally like to thank and also in the name of the company our CFO Matthias Freundli for so many years, 18 plus years of really fantastic work. It was a big pleasure to work with you before. I was CEO, but especially also in CEO times, we had some stormy times, for sure. You always are a rock in a storm, which is great when you have a CEO like me who has a million ideas and there's a lot of action. So we did a great, I think, teamwork there, and that was just a lot of fun. I also very much appreciated, Nick, your really broad knowledge, also your really sharp analytics. You know where to go, where it hurts, and then pull it out. That was extremely helpful in some times with the super very confusing data in the market and everywhere else. So that was just fantastic. So a truly exceptional CFO. A huge, big thank you for all you've done for the company, but also for me. It was really great work, but also it was a lot of fun. So, really enjoyed that. We'll meet each other still, obviously, right? But also in the name of the company and me, I want to do this in a public setting like here. Big thanks and all the best for the future. We will for sure stay in touch.

And maybe from my side to add two words, Matthias, also to you, a big thank you for the smooth and very constructive professional handover and for actually handing over a finance function that is well oiled and a super strong balance sheet. So I'm also thankful for that. And I wish you also from the bottom of my heart all the best for the future.

Thanks a lot, Paul. Thanks for the nice words. I'm still here, right? Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.

Thank you also. And yeah, with that, I would also like everybody to thank everybody for their big interest and the support over all these times and the calls and good and the bad times. Yeah, stay tuned. You heard from Dimitri what's up next. There's plenty of ways to hear from us and interact with us. We're looking forward to see you again. Have a wonderful day and talk soon.