VAT Group AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q3 2024 Trading Update Conference Call. I am George, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be listening on remote and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Urs Gartner, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to VAT's Q3 2024 Trading Update conference call. With me this morning are our CFO, Fabian Chiozza, and our investor relations team, Michel Gerber and Christopher Bickley. What a quarter. We have three topics today to cover. First, Q3 results, then the outlook 2024 and beyond, and the progress in our ERP implementation. I want to share what's important to us upfront. First, the ERP implementation for Switzerland has started to plan. Fabian has always used the analogy that this is an open-heart surgery. This operation went well, and we are currently recovering and training to restore all functions. In August, we have had to shut down manufacturing completely in Switzerland and have reached somewhere above 80% of our pre-shutdown output by end of September. We are still seeing certain challenges in the interfaces between the new solution and our legacy systems. To give you an example, finished products couldn't get shipped in due time and therefore impacted revenue recognition due to stranded documentation. We are confident It just takes a lot of manual work around at the moment. Secondly, despite these challenges in ERP, our customers have only seen a limited impact. We pride ourselves as being customer-centric, and this implementation project has proven that our team is there for our customers first and foremost. Our close cooperation with our customer has ensured that there was sufficient people available to cover short-term requirements. Many have gone through ERP implementation themselves and appreciate our transparent communication. And thirdly, we have seen further promising business development throughout Q3. Our order flow in our core market shows that despite some of the headwinds, So orders with semiconductors customers are trending sequentially up. Remember, at Q2, we already reported some pulled forward orders. More importantly, visibility on Q4 orders is high and provides comfort that we can achieve over 1 billion Swiss francs of orders for this year. So now let's go to some numbers. Our third quarter orders amounted to 259 million Swiss francs. 4% lower than in Q2, but 58% up on last year's Q3. For the nine months ended in September 2024, we generated over 766 million Swiss francs of orders. That is up 68% year over year. We are confident in a further acceleration of these markets to come. Group net sales were reported at 209 million Swiss francs. Comparing this to last year, net sales are roughly flat and 16% down versus Q2. To put this number in context, we had around 8 million Swiss francs of sales advance from Q3 into Q2. And in early August, we had production at our Swiss factory close for two weeks for the ERP changeover, which equated to approximately 20 million Swiss francs of missing factory output for this quarter. We discovered at the start of this month that we would be falling short of the guidance by another 22 million Swiss francs due to the shipment issues which triggered the October 8 press release. Transparency with you is important to us and we wanted to share this as soon as possible. This shortfall does not trouble us. We will recover sales in Q4 and the market environment as well as order flow is steadily improving. I can see you mentally adding up numbers here, and let's address all the factors as to why sales have been down this quarter. In addition to the missing sales due to ERP and the pull forward, ATV and global service businesses have seen sluggish sales to date. We will touch on this later on this call. Our order backlog continues to build strengths, reaching 348 million Swiss francs. The book-to-bill ratio in Q3 was approximately 1.2x, and we have had now consistently a book-to-bill above 1x since mid-2023. Across the three businesses, we saw the following performance. In the semiconductor business unit, orders continued to grow sequentially quarter on quarter, a clear sign that investment activities have remained strong, especially in Asia, and therefore our OEM customers or order books are filling up. While end markets still grind higher, everyone is preparing for continuous growth into 2025, which will be driven by leading-edge tools being rolled out in logic and the demand for high-end memory chips like HPM. Borders in semiconductors for Q3 came out at 186 million Swiss francs, and net sales amounted to 144 million Swiss francs. In our advanced industrial business unit, end markets continue to result in sluggish business developments. While some areas are seeing increased demand, like industrial applications and metrology, other areas like scientific instruments and solar remain subdued. Demand infusion remains strong, both in the privately and public-funded initiatives. Ultra-high vacuum will play an essential role in future fusion reactors. Orders in ADD in Q3 amounted to 32 million Swiss francs. On the back of the strong project pipeline in research and energy transition, we generated sales of also 32 million Swiss francs in Q3. EIT's global service segment experienced a rebound year-on-year from 2023 levels. Semiconductor fab utilization rates continue to rise and inventories are operating at normalized levels. Year-to-date orders are up 39% compared to 2023. Nonetheless, order intake declined quarter over quarter despite overall higher average chip fab utilization rates, especially in Asia. Given the ERP implementation, consumables and spares were pre-ordered in Q2, resulting in lower demand Q3 orders and sales. Anticipated upgrade activities have not materialized yet, which we still expect to pick up based on HPM capacity buildup and advanced logic later in 2024 and into 2025. The global service segment reported Q3 orders of 41 million Swiss francs and sales of 34 million Swiss francs. On the ERP transition in Switzerland, we have shared the situation. We have shared what the situation was on October 8th in the press release. This is our first and foremost priority as an organization. We have appointed a task force that meets daily to track and resolve all identified issues. With regards to the next steps. First, we need to recover all outstanding revenues Q3 shortfall we have been speaking about. This will take up most of October. Secondly, I have been speaking about the order visibility on Q4. Customer order flow continues to gain momentum and order backlog continues to build. Now there are still some remaining issues with the order loading, and it's important that we get our output up over the course of the last quarter of 2024. We have reached over 80% and 100% will be reached by end of October with the aim to add another 20 to 30% during November. Right now we are working on getting some bottlenecks resolved. This happens week by week. So we are in the midst of the hypercare phase from the surgery with over 1500 employees working with and in a new system. I'm confident that we will go through a steep learning curve and finally get the benefit of this new integrated ERP system. Despite these challenges, we are providing an ambitious sales guidance of between 270 to 300 million Swiss francs. Note that at the top end, we would surpass the highest quarterly sales result ever Based on these factors, VAT continues to expect higher sales, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, and net income. On delayed collection of invoices following the ERP implementation, we expect free cash flow levels similar to 2023. We are very excited for 2025 and beyond. Client activity, both around spec wins and orders, promise that we are heading in the right direction. Market research, on average, expects 2025 waiver web equipment to reach record levels somewhere above $110 billion. There are a few positive factors playing in here. First, memory capex is in a cyclical recovery. HPM demand is rising rapidly and the capacity is stretched. This will result in both upgrades business and new greenfield fabs that will be equipped next year. Secondly, leading edge logic remains promising with 200 logic fabs equipped in 2025. We have spoken of the around 100 fabs that are coming online in the next two years. And third, China has seen a strong focus on the semiconductor industry in the past quarters as they build lagging-edge supply chain, and the proportion of self-sufficiency is to be increased. We expect demand to persist further into 2025. And finally, our customers have managed down excess inventories and are ready to provide tools to the chip manufacturer. are significantly higher versus 2024. This concludes my prepared introductory remarks, and we are now turning the call back to the operator for the Q&A session.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star N1 on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star N2. Questions on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker while asking a question. Our first question comes from Olivia Honeychurch and Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. My first is around the order number for Q3. The underlying number was 3% quarter-over-quarter growth, yet you've previously guided to 10% to 15% growth sequentially. So can you just explain what exactly it was that drove the delta between the actual number and that guidance? Is it that there are specific areas of WFE or particularly one or two customers that are causing that slowdown? And if so, how long do you expect that slowdown to continue? Thanks.

Okay. Okay. Thanks, Olivia, for the question. Yeah, Q3 orders, I think semiconductor, as you pointed out, we really see this growth, sequentially growth, quarter over quarter. So we were hit still on the other businesses, so there have been than we expected. One of the biggest, and I think that's known in the market, is also, for example, in advanced industrials, that solar business is very, very, very slow. And this will continue into the next year. So this is one portion. And also, as pointed out in my remarks, that also service business was not as strong as we expected. But here we also expect that this will improve over the next quarters.

Okay, so can we understand from that then the sort of X, the pull-in of the ERP, the semiconductor order growth would have been closer to your 10 to 15 cent sequential growth target?

Yeah, I think that's in semiconductors, certainly that's based on the waiver of equipment growth and also the share of the application that goes into the market. This is certainly possible, and we are confident that we can achieve that. In the past, if you see the share of the different applications in wafer web equipment, there was a big jump from lithography compared to the others, and lithography is not the high vacuum applications included. will be if the vacuum-related tools will grow in the market.

Fantastic, thanks. And I just had one follow-up on China. You said that demand for the rest of this year and into 2025 is expected to remain strong. Obviously, we had one of your customers telling a very different story yesterday and guiding their China revenues down 30% for 2025. So, Can you explain the difference? Why is VAT seeing more resilient demand from China into next year?

Yeah, definitely. Of course, we are in a completely different situation as VAT is serving all the different applications, vacuum-related applications. And the China market, they are building up this semiconductor industry and they're Self-sufficiency is around 20% today. So there is a lot of room to grow for the domestic market as well. So also the local OEMs in China, they are growing. And our business is mainly going directly to these local OEMs. And so that's certainly a different situation than other Western OEMs see today. You cannot compare us to the OEM.

That's great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Craig Abbott. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, you mentioned also in your press release that you expect the magnitude, you know, expect sequential increases in the order intake to continue well into the first half of 25. And I just wondered, in terms of us looking at the magnitude of those sequential increases, should we still be thinking about low double-digit sequential increases for the next couple of quarters? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that question. So I think it's... all about how the core will evolve as well, so the way the web equipment grows. So what we see, if you're very close to our customers, they see if you have the demand, if the demand is in the market, the chip will grow. double-digit order intake. And, of course, also other businesses will participate as well. So also the service business is expected to grow as well. But the main driver is always the demand and then the capex. So we are also listening very carefully to how the capex will evolve in the market. And this will then support our growth. Sometimes you also see seasonal effects. So by the end of the year, some customers are ordering full year for the next year. And so that's why this can also sometimes quarter over quarter have a distortion in the numbers.

Okay, but the general trend is still low double-digit sequential.

The general trend is still going up based on the wafer FAB equipment going up and the general demand.

Okay, thank you.

Our next question comes from George Brown, NDB. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks so much for taking my questions, guys. I have two. Firstly, you previously stated that you expect orders to continue grinding higher over the next few quarters before a more significant step up in the summer of 2025. My question is, how much visibility do you have here, given your lead times are back to normal here? and messaging from peers have become less constructive on 2025, on both Logic and Foundry, and now also on memory via Samsung.

Talking about lead times, we certainly see the whole industry, the lead time is shortened. So as a supplier, we have to react to that and be prepared That's also why we always say that we have to invest ahead of the cycle. What we have done with the build-out of Malaysia, and Malaysia sees a huge growth. We're talking today a lot of what's happening in Switzerland because of the ERP change, but on the other hand, we see that Malaysia is growing quarter over quarter as well, and they will have a higher output about 30%. and you have to react fast. But what we see that today, it's manifold that markets, right? We talked a lot this year about China. So China's building the ecosystem out of there. Speed is king to deliver. And now we see more and more the HPM kicking in, and this will be a driver. And in the second half, we also expect that demand will grow as well.

Thank you. And then maybe just a longer term question. If we look at adjacent markets today, we know you're expanded in motion components and advanced modules. But beyond 2027, are there any plans to enter the sensor market more aggressively beyond what you have today, which is the MEMS pressure sensor? Thank you.

Very good question and a very interesting question. Yeah. So, of course, you mentioned the adjacent products. This is now kicking in with the latest generation of wave repair equipment tools. And yes, we are working on more of advanced products and try to combine these products with our core as well. So we don't just want but we always want to add value and combine it with our core products as well. So talking about our pressure control valves and high-performance pressure control valves and what's coming to market. So, of course, it's always a combination. So it's not as lonely that the product itself that we want to launch in the market, but it's always adding value to our core business as well.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Our next question comes from Aziz Nabel and Redburn Atlavnik. Please go ahead.

My first question was just around the ERP system. So I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on the ERP system challenges and how they're impacting production and whether this is both in Malaysia and Switzerland. I know you mentioned it's in Switzerland, but whether there is any impact in Malaysia as well. And will you guys issue a press release when the ERP system is back up and running and functioning properly?

Well, I have to mention the ERP system is running properly. It's not that we have huge issues. As I mentioned, there were some issues in the interface to legacy systems. And these legacy systems we are planning to replace in the course of the next two years as well. This is mainly... The systems we use in sales, these are still the older ones. So at the moment, we are, of course, as I mentioned, 1,500 people working in and with a new system. And you need some time that everybody gets familiar to improve efficiency. And starting using an ERP system or any software, we started a journey now that we do a CIP over the next year. output by end of October and then gradually going to normal operations. Malaysia is also in the company business with Malaysia, but Malaysia is not affected directly.

Okay, sure. And then I just had one question on China. in terms of what you're seeing in terms of the pace of the build-out there and whether you're seeing displacement of Western OEMs with China domestic OEMs. Thank you. Can you say it again? In terms of China and what you're seeing in terms of the pace of the build-out there and whether you're seeing any displacement of Western OEMs in terms of with China domestic OEMs.

Well, we see that the Chinese OEMs, of course, they have a huge challenge in front of them. They have to build, create all these processes and tools, make the tools ready for the processes that are in the market, and it will take time for them as well. So they are bringing up every year new tools, new applications. So speed is very high in China, but it's also, we have also to be, until they reach the same level as we see in the Western world. For us, of course, or the entire industry, it's interesting. It's a growing market. And, yeah, it's always good. Once it is complexly required, it's always good for companies like VAT. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the DRC Mama and Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, gents. Thanks for taking my question. Kapol, if I could, and apologies if you already mentioned that I missed the beginning of the call. Can you remind us how much of your business is driven in Q3 by the China Semicap vendors? And I've got a follow-up. Thank you.

Yeah, well, as I also mentioned before, Derek, it's Water can always be a little bit disturbed. But I would say the last 12 months, we had roughly 27% of China business. And just in the last month, I think it was about 30% as well. So it's a little bit higher than just the last 12 months. So in general, orders and sales are trending to this 30% meanwhile.

So it's first 30% of group revenues and obviously a greater percentage of your semi's business. That's correct, yeah. Yeah, and how do you understand that? Because I understand you're not into DUV for ASML, but, I mean, if ASML tells you that revenues are going to decline 30% or 35% overall for them next year, there is no alternative for ASML in China, at least not that I know of, that are credible. Does that mean that the depth and edge steps, among others, are accelerating the transition away from Western OEMs? Is that your read? Is it beyond the non-critical layers?

So, yeah, as you mentioned, we are always in the tools where Wacom is required, and some of the LISA tools, they don't require Wacom as well. So that's why we are focusing more on the deponets, in China for the EOP. And now if you see the shares in WaferFab equipment of the different applications in the last two years, the portion of lithography was much, much higher than in the past. So you could also read out of that that there was a lot of investment in lithography and especially also lithography in China. And I anticipate it should go back to a more balanced level in the future, and other applications will have more shares in the future as well, and this is mainly the depo net. And there, there is Chinese OEMs already.

Yeah, still the percentage of your revenues coming from China Semicaps is materially massively higher than what is reported by Gartner for China Semicaps, at least for last year. So there is, I mean, do you see that they are sort of hoarding, you know, your type of componentry because they want to be sure that they can service their install base of EMAT, LAM, Tokyo Electron Tools? Is that, do you think that's part of it?

It's not part of it at all. So they're really, they're ramping up and of course they are also trying to replace when and you see that also that the share of the Western OEMs in China is going down.

Okay, that's very clear. Thank you so much.

Our next question comes from Michael Foss in Fontobel. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. One is on the output in Malaysia. How should we understand it? Couldn't you sort of compensate part of the shortfalls of the Swiss output by IR output in Malaysia, or is that not possible? And then I would have a second question regarding your outlook. I'm not sure I understood your comments around the sales outlook on advanced industrials and global services for the fourth quarter, so maybe if you can give some more color on the outlook for, in particular, advanced industrials in Q4? Thank you.

Okay, on the Malaysia. Well, Malaysia is built up for high volume semiconductor business and semiconductors at the moment are also the market that is growing most. So we see the output growing in Malaysia, still not at 100 capacity. So, you know, we build up and I had to cycle and we could do even more in building up Malaysia. we see a roughly 30% growth year over year in Malaysia. We can do, we have for some products, for high-volume products, business continuum plans, and yes, we can compensate partially out of Malaysia for some products. But here in Switzerland, we have a huge diversity of products. We have almost a 60-year legacy as well on products. So some of the series we are building only out of Switzerland. So here, cannot step in. The other was on the second question was on the sales for ADV. Well, we see that some markets as a research the energy transition and all that that's going pretty well and we also see in the mid and long term there will be investments in that direction. Even though solar is very down because of overcapacity but solar will recover And the second one we have in our advanced industry is also silicon carbide, also a business that will grow in the future as well. It's kind of related, of course, to the mobility power chips, and this will grow as well in the future.

Thank you. Just to follow up on... Sorry. Just to follow up on that, just for Q4, should we expect those advanced industrial sales to increase sequentially?

In some of the ATV business, we have sometimes huge projects. For example, if it goes to nuclear, like to uranium enrichment or also fusion, then suddenly you have in one month, you can have a huge project. And this, of course, and with the report, while we have fantastic growth, in orders. So it's a lot of project business in the advanced industrial. But it will go up. We see that already. We have announcements from some of the players here that this will come in Q4. And normally also the Q4 in orders is always higher than a Q3. It's also some seasonal effect always coming in here. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jurgen Wagner in Stifel. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you. A follow-up on Malaysia. You mentioned that output will grow 30%. How flexible would you be with your ramp plan in Malaysia? And the second question, you talked about WFE expectations for 2025. To what magnitude would you expect you can outgrow that ratio, whatever it will be, in 2025? Thank you.

Good morning, Jürgen. This is Fabian speaking. So, as Urs said, in Malaysia, when we look at the run rates that we currently have, this already brings us above the 400 million of output contribution, and yet we are still only gradually ramping up machinery in the second factory 1B. So this will also now be switched on during the course of 2.4, but then certainly also into next year, which will then also cater for additional capacity in Malaysia. And we also ramp the supply chain at the same time. And there we also get then some business contingency to react to market developments. Okay.

The second question was the outlook on the 2025, right? Yeah, please. Yeah, so here we are. results in March. But as of today, we see that, especially if we see the semiconductor business, our core business, our main market is growing. We will certainly outgrow the market with our new products we have on the latest generation of tools.

Okay.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Jeroen Offert in UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. And sorry, I was kicked out during the call in case it was already my turn. The first question would be, please, on the 2025 targets and the ramp. You mentioned that you want to ramp Malaysia and also Switzerland, but currently, do you have everything a little bit more on hold given market uncertainties on chip demand and also considering the news from ASML yesterday, or are you continuing with your initial plan? That would be the first question, please.

Well, we do not see a lot of corrections today. Of course, there was an important announcement for the capital market yesterday, but as I pointed out, our products flow in all the applications, and I think that's will be, even if it's maybe a little bit slower than expected, the 2 nanometer kicking in, the HBM capacity build-up has to happen and as a consequence in a second step also the NAND. These trends are still there and the FABs are being built and so I think that's why we see that. The Malaysia build-out continues as planned so we are flexible to run fast through market. Here we have a very good flexible model as well to just follow the market demand into 2025. Thank you.

And the second question would be please on the CapEx mix outside China for lithium deposition and etch. Do you expect that deposition and etch is increasing in share again in 2025 outside China?

Well, I would say relative, yes.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Nets, Leverage, and Octavian. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. Maybe on the global service, I mean, the service is down sequentially, which is a bit surprising, right? If utilization rates are going up, then you would expect this part also to grow. Now, you mentioned that there is a lot of house being built, but if utilization rates are that low, maybe the growth is going to be lower. So maybe, can you share some thoughts on why global service was this low and then why... maybe the semiconductor valves is still seeing, let's say, a healthy order intake. Maybe this dynamic first, and then a second question.

Yeah, well, that's a very good question, and we did some analysis on that as well. But the main reason, of course, was that we shipped a lot in Q2, so we had close collaborations with our customers. We told them that we go into this open-heart surgery, and we We told them they should order ahead of Q3. And for GSC, it's a lot of spare parts, right, and consumables. And we have seen in Q2, sales and orders were pretty high. And so it was muted then in Q3. So we expect that this will now grow in Q4 again. And so in the average, so over the year, this will be leveled out again.

Okay. And then maybe on the adjacencies, I mean, adjacencies is a part of your growth story. Could you maybe give some more feeling or maybe a number on what you expect for this year or next year as a revenue contribution?

Yeah, I think we are on track so that we will be around 70 million or 10%, even more, I would say, of adjacencies, always the definition of adjacency. So we call it normally the advanced modules and the lifters. What we have seen this year, it was a lot of business also going to ICAPs and not the leading edge. And we also discussed that the share in China was higher. And of course, with adjacencies, we are mainly on the leading edge. So we will see the big benefit and the boost once the two nanometre inflection will happen on the latest leading edge tools.

Okay, so let's assume this year adjacent is already 70 million. Would it be possible next year this grow to 150 million or would you expect maybe up to 100?

It will certainly gradually grow and for us also very important is that we have more spec wins, more wins in adjacent rate this year and it will be higher than 100 million next year for sure.

Okay and then maybe if I made the final answer on the ERP was there any positive effect from ERP in a sense that the customer saw some of the issues you're having and the order intake maybe is even higher in Q3 but Q4 we might have again stable or maybe even lower because of that or was the impact not that high?

Well, the positive impact I see, of course, also internally, right, that we are building now the digital backbone for the company, that we have a fully integrated system, which is all the facilities and sites globally are connected. So in the past, VAT did grow at one site here in Switzerland, and our more than 25-year-old system in all the other places. And I think the big benefit is that we have built now this digital backbone that we can be more efficient in the future.

And I think here also from a financial steering perspective, it will be the first time where we really have an ERP system in its meaning operating in the company. So end-to-end system landscape, much more visibility, transparency, but also functionality like an MRP run, for instance, where we don't rely solely on individual, but also on a system now. And this is one of the he enabled us also for the scalability of the business that we just needed to implement, as Urs has mentioned now, as we thrive to double the business going forward. So I think at the end of the day, it is a sine qua non for a company that wants to grow as fast. And also for us, it gives us much more contingency as we rely less on people but more in a system.

Okay, but my question was if because of the ERP disruption there was positive effect on the order intake because maybe clients are slightly concerned they might not get the deliveries. So the orders this quarter could even be higher than the market would suggest, the market demand.

This was happening in the first half of at that time, and so there was no need to do higher ordering technology. This was not an effect we have seen.

Okay, thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Nigel Payton in Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, yeah, good morning. A couple of questions just on the outlook. I think last time I've seen it in writing, the 2025 outlook, was it the annual report 23? We were looking for 1.5 billion in sales for next year. Clearly, that was on a Swiss franc exchange rate of 0.95. Realizing there's changes here, so I guess it shakes out to 1.4 billion in current currencies. Are you willing to recommit to that target? That would be our first question.

I think in the end of the day, we always look at the WFE developments. And here we have had a number of 115 billion that was on the line in our scenario. And as things are today, there might be some downside risk to this number, whereas we still believe that we will outgrow the WFE by 1.5 to 2x. And I think that is unchanged. Further to that, the FX effect, as you mentioned, might be even a bit higher. As we have said, it's back then at 0.95, and now I think we're about 9 to 10 cents below that. So while I think our commitments still hold firm, but it needs to be seen now how the recent developments that we have all observed are going to unfold. And then we will definitely give an update on that when we speak the next time in March timeframe.

Okay, that's clear. And then maybe just more on the near term, then when you talk to sequential order growth in the fourth quarter, and then also sort of a similar run rate thereafter, kind of makes me curious what you're seeing. Is it like... Double-digit, is it high single-digit? Again, because you seem to imply that it's going sequentially to grow in the fourth, first, and second quarter next year. So I guess it would be helpful for us to get a better idea if you're talking mid-single-digit, high single-digit. It would alter the trajectory of that growth quite a bit.

Yeah, well, here, what we see, of course, is – the 2025, and this shows that the wafer fab equipment will go up. So it will be in the high single-digit to the low double-digit range, I would say. More important for us is the sequential growth overall, and as I mentioned before, I would say we will be positive is that the customer engagement is very, very high in the semiconductor business, but also in some of the advanced industrial business as we report that energy transition and all that is very, very promising. But this is a project business.

Yeah, I understand. Maybe just a small follow-up. So midpoint of guide would be about 285 for the next quarter. Should we assume a positive book-to-bill or, I mean, north of one for the quarter in terms of order intake? Would that make sense?

It would be around one, yeah. Around one.

Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Our last question comes from Michele Nowen with Züger Cardinal Bank. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Good morning everyone. Just two last questions from my side. I was wondering how many percentage of your workers are currently temp workers and do you have any plans of what this is going to be for 2025? I think I remember you said that about 15% of your employees could be temp in a peak year. So How much do you have now and how many do you plan for next year, if you can even plan that? That would be my first question.

Michael, good morning. Right now, our temp ratio is just below 10%.

Fabian, can you make a plan? Do you still stick to that 15% would be something that you do in a peak year?

I would even raise that number. Remember when in August, September 2022, we had up to 30% of temps. So we try to navigate through the cycle, always leveraging this flexibility that we have there. And right now, I think we are still, when you look at the development of the cycle, we're still in a very early phase where we just started to bring temp workers on board again early 2024, and I think now we will operate at this level. We will bring capacity back now to 100% during this month, then we go beyond that, and then also start to gradually increase this temp ratio again, aiming towards this level that I have mentioned before then in the... getting to the peak of the cycle to have the maximum flexibility.

Great. Thank you very much for that. And just quickly also on 2025, you say also in the press release that you expect memory, in particular also NAND, to turn in the second half or let's say later in 2025. Is the timing for an NAND recovery has been pushed out? this year always further into 2025 and I'm just trying to understand not only from you of course from also others in the chain but trying to understand what's the visibility on that recovery really I mean it's we don't really see that yes PC sales smartphone sales you know all these kind of tools where you have the NAND chips actually is not really recovering. So what gives you the good visibility or the good feeling about the NAND recovery? Just because it has to recover at some point? Sorry, it sounds a little stupid.

Yeah, as you pointed out, of course, in the end, demand must grow, but we also see kicking in new technologies. I think everybody will get also sooner or later, new laptops, new mobile phones with the new functionality that will be possible. Maybe it's not a hockey stick, but it will gradually grow. So AI will kick in. Everybody's using it probably right now online. So this will kick in. The timing is always quite difficult to say. But also with the AI growing, there will be opportunities. and or leading-edge technology needed and this will drive and also the capex again okay i understand thank you very much for that okay so uh that uh we want to close uh the call thank you for uh attending today our call all the interesting questions I'm looking forward to seeing you next year in person again, latest in March for our fiscal year results. At that time, we are also planning to provide you with an update on our strategy just following the results conference in March. Thank you and have a good day.

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