2/26/2026

speaker
Anna
Conference Call Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ekstron's first quarter and full year 2025 results conference call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. Let me now hand you over to Mr. Christian Ludwig, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Ekstron for opening remarks and introductions.

speaker
Christian Ludwig
Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Ekstron

Christian Ludwig. Thank you very much, Anna. A warm welcome to Ekstron's 2025 results call. My name is Christian Nutrich. I am the head of investor relations and corporate communications at Exxon. With me in the room today are our CEO, Dr. Felix Kravart, and our CFO, Dr. Christian Daninger, who will guide you through today's presentation and then take your questions. This call is being recorded by Exxon and is considered copyright material. As such, it cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without permission. Your participation in this call implies your consent to this recording. All documents referred to in this call can be accessed via our website in the investor relations section. Please take note of the disclaimer that you find on slide one of the presentation document as it applies throughout the conference call. This call is not being immediately presented by a webcast or any other medium. However, we intend to place a transcript on our website at some point after the call. I would now like to hand you over to our CEO for his opening remarks. Felix, the floor is yours.

speaker
Dr. Felix Kravart
Chief Executive Officer, Ekstron

Thank you, Christian. Let me also welcome you all to our full year 25 presentation. I will start with an overview of the highlights of the year and then hand over to Christian for more details on our financial figures. Finally, I will give you an update on the development of our business and our new guidance. Let me start by giving you an overview of the highlights of the year on slide two. The most important messages of the day from my viewpoint are In 2025, we have performed well in a soft market environment by achieving revenues of 557 million, a decline of 12% year-over-year. That translates into a CAGR of more than 13% since 2020. We delivered on our adjusted 2025 revenue guide, meeting the upper end of our guidance given in October 25. Mainly due to the lower utilization in operations, due to one-off restructuring cost, and due to G10 ramp-up adjustments, our gross profit was down 15% to 222 million euros, and EBIT was slightly down with minus 24% at 100 million as a result of this. Similar to last year, we finished the year with a strong Q4 25 performance. We achieved 31% EBIT margin, a level comparable to last year's extraordinary Q4. This marks a great achievement of our operations team as we managed to realize all shipments that customers had asked us to deliver in Q4. The highlight of the operating performance is our cash flow generation. Operating cash flow increased by more than €180 million to €208 million. And our free cash flow increased by more than €250 million to €182 million. With that, we concluded the year 25 with a cash level of 225 million euros, a good step toward rebuilding our strong cash position that we always have desired. Thus, despite the weekend net profit, we have decided to propose a stable dividend of 15 euros per share to our shareholder. Our outlook for the year 2026 is based on an expected continued weaker market environment. We expect revenues to come in at 520 million euros in a range of plus or minus 30 million, with a gross margin between 41 and 42%, and an EBIT margin between 16 and 19%. Breaking this down per segment, AI will be the key revenue driver in 2026. fueling strong growth in optoelectronics and lasers through rising demand for optical interconnect. In contrast, thick silicon carbide power will face a weak year due to overcapacity and slowing EV momentum, with LED and micro-LED and land power demand remaining broadly stable. This concludes the short highlight section. I will now hand over to our CFO, Christian Dunninger. He will take you through the full year 2025 momentum. Christian? Thanks, Felix, and hello to everyone. Let me start with the highlights of our revenue development on slide four. As Felix mentioned, the revenues in 2025 were down 12% to 557 million euros. Our strategy of serving various uncorrelated end markets with our equipment proved again successful in 2025. We saw strong growth in the optoelectronics area. This compensated, to some extent, the weaker demand for equipment for LED and micro-LED, as well as gallium nitride power electronics. The breakdown for application shows that 57% of equipment revenues comes from GAN and SIGPOWER, 23% from optoelectronics, 15% from LED, and a 5% contribution from R&D tools. The after-sales business contributed to total revenues with a growth 1% to 112 million euros. The aftersales share of revenues grew to 20% up from 17% a year ago. Now, let's take a closer look at the financial KPIs on the income statement on slide five. Gross margin decreased by 1 percentage point versus 2024 to 40%, which was primarily due to lower utilization operations, G10 ramp-up adjustment expenses, and a one-off restructuring cost. Accordingly, gross profit was down by 15% year-over-year to 222 million euros. As we had planned, our spending on R&D in the year 2025 decreased to a total of 81 million euros due to a reduction in external contract work and lower consumables costs. This helped to drive our OPEX down 7% to 122 million euros. Combined with the lower gross profit, this resulted in an EBIT of 100 million euros, which is 24% lower year over year. Net profit was down 20% year on year at 85 million euros. This results in an effective tax rate of 15% in fiscal year 2025. A clear positive were our Q4 2025 gross and EBIT margins at 46% and 31% respectively. Despite the 18% lower revenues number at 187 million euros, we were able to beat the very strong level of Q4 2024 on gross margin level and meet it on EBIT margins. Orders in the quarter came in at 170 million euros, an uptick of 8% versus last year's quarter. For the full year, order intake came in at 544 million euros, slightly weaker than last year, and thus our backlog at 258 million euros is down by 11% year-over-year due to the above-mentioned softness in demand. Now to our balance sheet on slide six. We ended the year 2025 with a total cash balance including other financial assets of 225 million euros, which was well above the 65 million euros last year. There are a number of factors driving this increase. Firstly, inventory levels at the end of 2025 came down by about 85 million euros to 284 million euros compared to 360 million euros at the end of 2020. This is the result of our adjusted supply chain strategy and corresponding measures after initially front-loading the supply chain in 2024 in expectation of stronger revenue growth. We target a further reduction of inventory levels through 2026. Second, we have seen a solid decrease in outstanding receivables compared to the last year, and which generated some 60 million euros in cash. As a result of putting on the brakes in our supply chain early on, the amount of payables have been stable during the course of the year. Advanced payments received from customers, on the other hand, were slightly down year-over-year at 44 million euros due to the decline in order intake combined with a shift in the regional customer base and partially impacted by some key data effects. At year end, down payments represented about 17% of all the backlog. As a consequence of all these factors, operating cash flow improved by more than 180 million euros to 208 million in the financial year 2025. As mentioned already in previous course, CapEx decreased significantly in 2025 due to no additional investment requirements for the innovation center. As a result of the significantly lower capex, free cash flow improved by more than 250 million euros year-over-year to 182 million from negative 72 million euros in 2024. We expect further solid free cash flow generation in 2026. Lastly, we are proposing a stable dividend of 15 euro cents per share. Despite our lower net earnings, we want our shareholders to participate in the improved cash flow generation. Going forward, following an intensive investment phase in the years 2023 and 2024, Apex alone for the Innovation Center was 100 million euros. Extron plans to use the cash flow in 2026 to further build a strong cash position. Also, I want to remind you that Extron expressively Expressly does not pursue a fixed dividend policy, but rather adjust the payout ratio to reflect the respective business performance and capital allocation priorities. With that, let me hand you back over to Felix. Thank you, Christian. I will continue by giving you a brief summary of the key market trends we saw last year, and before I move on to our expectations for 26. I will start with our currently weakest segment, the silicon carbide power business, before moving on towards the strongest segment step by step. As I see, throughout the past year, the global silicon carbide market has undergone a significant transition. In Western markets, we are seeing a temporary slowdown driven by weaker electric vehicle demand and substantial idle capacity at several customers. This has even resulted in reduced or scrapped six-inch capacity in some cases. We expect the digestion period for silicon carbide epitools to continue throughout 2026 in Western markets. China, by contrast, remained the strong pillar of demand in 25 for Acton, with solid order intake and robust shipments in the first half of the year. In the second half of 25, also in China, SIC demand has softened. And in 26, we expect the digestion to continue also in China. Despite this short-term softness, the mid-term outlook for SIC beyond 26 remains highly attractive. Substrate prices have dropped significantly, making silicon carbide devices far more competitive versus silicon IGBTs, and enabling broad market adoption, both in EVs and across industrial applications. Even more importantly, the technological transition is well underway. The industry is rapidly moving from 6-inch to 8-inch wafers, starting with Western customers, now also in China, with a full shift expected towards 27 and 28. At the same time, the introduction of superjunction silicon-carbide MOSFETs which require multiple thin epitaxial layers instead of a single thick layer, will significantly increase epitool demand. Our batch-based G10 SSE platform is ideally positioned for this new operating model and has already achieved major milestones with the shipment of our 100th system during 2025. In 2026, we expect very small demand and no difference in SSE. Contribute to the attention of our group members. This is the main reason I have started in this webinar. In the meantime, looking across the next three or four years, building for our government needs the consumption of natural resources. We have short orders. at the beginning of 25 and has been steadily recovering extra maintains a clear market leadership position with more than 85 percent market share across darn device classes and we remain deeply engaged with customers expanding their gam roadmaps into coming years importantly GaN is emerging as a central technology for AI-driven power architecture, particularly as hyperscale data centers plan the transition to high-efficiency 800-volt platforms. We expect additional volume from GaN from AI applications at some time in the 2027 and 2028 timeframe. The exact timing for when this happens is unknown. and we will keep you posted when signs of this are getting clearer. In parallel, we are working with a small set of customers on 300-millimeter GANs. These customers have existing 300-millimeter silicon fabs, which they desire to repurpose for GANs. Our 300-millimeter GAN tool is fully operational with our own innovation center, as we call our 300-millimeter clean room. and collaborations with INAC and leading power semiconductor manufacturers are ongoing. Now, let me come to the LED and micro-LED market. After a period of muted investment, now the market for red, orange, and yellow LEDs, we call them Roy LEDs, is showing clear signs of recovery, driven primarily by development in trim. This momentum from display makers who are pushing the boundaries of image quality. In fact, several major TV manufacturers are now transitioning to full RGB backlighting architectures, which further boosts demand for ROY LED LED tools. This trend underscores a broader shift. Even traditional LED backlighting is being reinvented, establishing mini-LEDs at preliminary storage stage towards micro-LEDs. Enhanced local dimming, full-color backplanes, and ultra-high brightness panels are now becoming standard and premium consumer displays. These innovations are breathing new life into an application space that many consider mature. At the same time, exploratory and qualification work of customers toward micro-LEDs continues with customers in Europe, U.S., and Asia. The focus of this work has shifted away from watch and television, now strongly towards AR, VR, glass applications. We expect this market is still some time out into the future until a larger revenue contributes. And given the fact that one wafer can serve hundreds of AR glasses, the expected demand will be much, much smaller than what we would have anticipated for television applications. Overall, we can say that for Xtron, ROY LEDs and micro LEDs together translate into a solid revenue contribution of around 15% of group revenue for both 25 and 26. Now, let's finally come to our strongest segment in 26, the lasers for datacom. The global indium phosphate laser market has entered a new phase of growth And from Q4-25 onwards, we have seen an even stronger momentum in this segment. We have served this market for many years with our proven G3 and G4 platforms historically for telecom and datacom applications, supporting the further adoption of high-speed broadband communication. And first, cloud services with a market share we estimate well north of 90%. The demand we see today is linked to a structural upcycle linked to AI data center build-out and the development of data-hungry new generation of GPUs. And this structural shift creates the demand for indium-phosphate-based lasers grown by MOCVD with a massive adoption of optical interconnect now also within the data center architecture. As bandwidth requirements move to 800 gig and data 1.6T, the laser content per data center is increasing multifold to enable the required bandwidth. Our customers are subsequently not only ramping their manufacturing, but also rolling out new product generations with higher bandwidth that are also more integrated, like photonic integrated circuit peaks, now in order to be almost faster, more compact, and more energy efficient. For the majority of our users, their road trip now includes a shift away from three and four inch to six inch wafer size. That is an enormous step for a market that has been historically very conservative. It enables them to access the advanced manufacturing technologies for these new types of products. Our G10 ASP product has rapidly established itself as the tool of record, as we say, for these new generation of photonic devices. replacing customer legacy systems, producing higher yield and cheaper 150-millimeter helium phosphate epiwafers. We are serving all of the top 10 suppliers to this market, and demand is coming from all regions of the world, from leading suppliers in the U.S., from the ones in Europe, but also from optoelectronic leaders in Japan, in Taiwan, and in China. Looking at demand dynamics, we expect the optoelectronics business for more than double year-over-year from 2025 into 2026. With this, it makes up for a large part of the revenue that declined in silicon carbide that I illustrated earlier. Finally, let me now present our full year guidance for 2026 to you on slide 90. This guidance takes into account all the factors that I just described previously. We expect revenues to come in at 520 million in range of plus minus 30 million. We expect a 2026 gross margin of 41 to 42%, and an EBIT margin between 16 and 19%. The effects of a personnel reduction we have initiated in the beginning of 26 are already included in this forecast. Now, let me comment on the first quarter of 26. As usual, sales in the first quarter of the financial year will be lower than the annual average of quarters. In Q126, we expect revenues of 65 million in the range of plus minus 10 million. This is comparatively low figure, fully in line with expectations and with a seasonal pattern of the business. For completeness, we've adjusted our USD to Euro budget exchange rate, in which we record US dollar denominated orders and backlogs to 120 US dollars per year. With this outlook, I'll pass it back to Christian.

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