Ams Osram Ag Unsp/Adr

Good morning. I see quite a few familiar names on the call. Very nice to meet you again. I would like to welcome all of you to our Q2 2023 earnings call. And with me are Aldo Kamper, our CEO, Rainer Ehrle, our new CFO, who started July 1st. Aldo will take you through the new strategic direction of the group, and Rainer will comment on the business development during Q2. And after which, we're happy to take your questions. Aldo and Rainer will refer to the Q2 earnings call presentation that you find on our website besides the extended Q2 presentation. With this, I hand over to Aldo.

Thank you, Juergen, and also good morning to everyone from my side. In our earnings call three months ago, I promised that I will take a look with the management team where the company stands. There's no discussion around the fact that our recent performance has been lackluster and has not met our ambition. Over the last three months, we took a careful look at the prospects of each of our 20-plus business lines and the overall strategy. In particular, the outlook for some low-performing consumer applications, amongst others, requires a significant reset in view of the macroeconomic environment. Our core businesses continue to have a healthy and positive outlook. The reduced long-term forecast for some segments results in a goodwill impairment of 1.3 billion euro. It's obviously purely a non-cash item. We know this is a significant correction, and we are convinced this is a necessary step to earn your trust by taking a realistic view on our business outlook in a changing environment and a basis for the path we are taking to improve our performance. Now, let us look at further details on slide two of our earnings call presentation. Once we are convinced more than ever that the combination of capabilities, emitters, sensors, and ICs on the one roof provides a unique opportunity and potential, The balance in market exposure and between established and new technologies, as well as existing and new markets, was not ideal. First, a strong focus on disruptive custom technologies for high-volume opportunities in the consumer space has proven to be challenging when it has come to industrialization, execution, and market adoption. Second, we have not always lived up to our own standards when it comes to flawless execution of our roadmaps. Third, the uptake of new markets or adoption of new, partly disruptive technologies that often happen not as quickly as we'd hoped and planned for. Fourth, we didn't fully exploit the growth opportunities in sticky, structurally growing core markets as automotive and industrial medical. And last but not least, obviously the crisis in the macroeconomic environment also caused additional headwinds. Due to this, we have decided to rebalance and refocus the company towards profitably profitability, structural growth, and monetizing innovation. And what do we mean by this? With a stronger commitment towards automotive, industrial, and medical markets, we will focus our semiconductor portfolio towards a very profitable core in differentiated intelligence centers and emitter components. This also means that we will exit non-core, lower-performing semiconductor businesses with a revenue run rate of around 300 to 400 million euro. At this time, we cannot share all details as the test approach for exiting certain business areas is still being fine-tuned. The exit of passive optical components, however, is one of the examples already today. We stress that we will continue differentiated opportunities in high-volume portable consumer devices markets, such as micro-LED. However, we will focus our engagements on product development where we can achieve sustainable differentiation through cutting-edge innovations. The automotive and specialty lamps business will continue to contribute significantly to the group's earnings. We are actually expanding our leading position in this business. Portfolio choices we made, combined with a performance push and an adjustment of the company's overhead and infrastructure to its new base, is summarized in our Re-establishing the Base program. We also addressed some of the past execution topics by strengthening the ownership and accountability in the semiconductor segment, through implementing full end-to-end responsibility in the business units. The strengthening of the divisional entrepreneurial responsibility allows us to move away from the previous organizational model of a functional management board. As a consequence, the management board can be reduced to two members, a CEO and a CFO, that is Reiner and myself, effective January 1st, 2024. We're also consolidating the business units in the semiconductor segment from three to two. One will be dedicated to emitters, the other to sensors and analog mixed signal ICs. The structure is already a theme throughout this Q2 presentation. We expect savings from all of these measures of €75 million by the end of 2024 and €150 million by the end of 2025 on a run rate basis, improving earnings and cash flow. I will comment on the updated target operating model a bit later. Taking now a closer look at slide number three. With our semiconductor core portfolio, we address the fast-growing segments in automotive, industrial, medical, and selected high-volume consumer applications of the total optoelectronics and sensor semiconductor market. Those segments are expected to grow high single-digit, low double-digit percentage every year for the coming years. In total, we can address a market of roughly 17 billion euro with our core semiconductor portfolio. Let us take a look at this focused portfolio, illustrated at the center of the slide. The bulk of our portfolio is comprised of differentiated sensors and emitter components, as well as mixed-signal ICs. Examples are cutting-edge hyper-red LEDs in special packages for horticulture applications or position sensors for automotive applications. On the IC side, you can imagine differentiated specialized standalone driver ICs for LEDs, for example. Now, the power and the potential of the unique combination of sensors, emitters, and ICs on the one roof comes into play. combining our own ICs with an emitter or sensor in a differentiated package, and writing our own firmware to deliver unique intelligent emitters or intelligent sensors that provide a much higher customer value. An example is our recently announced cutting-edge 25,000-pixel automotive forward lighting, a VIA solution, where we use our own highly sophisticated driver IC and ASIC in our own packet technology. This is currently receiving tremendous traction, such as we already have more than 150 million euro design wins in our books. We are very pleased having been able to announce the first customer ramp with our partner, Magneti Marelli. Our core portfolio continues to enable sensing, illumination and visualization like in the past. Innovation and technology leadership will also continue to be the key driver for our success. For the more pronounced focus to automotive industry and medical markets, we will therefore strengthen investments in the relevant product areas such as high-performance LEDs, lasers, mixed-signal analog ICs, and specialty sensors. In many of these markets, we hold leading positions, as you can also see on the next slide, slide number four. Let me now take you through slide number five, the probably most important slide, to understand our revenue model with the short-term changes and our design impact, structural growth in coming years. The group will continue to be based on two segments, semiconductors and lamp and systems. The latter segment primarily consists of traditional automotive lamps, such as halogen-based lamps and LED upgrade modules, as well as a relatively smaller business with specialty lamps for entertainment and industrial applications. Looking at 2023, you see that we plan to exit non-core, lower-performing semi-businesses of the order of €300 million to €400 million. Due to this, the revenue base in 2024 will be lower but more profitable. With the structural road drives in automotive, industrial, medical, and consumer, we plan to grow from this lower base in the range of 6% to 10% per year on average. This implies that the semi-segment will grow 9% to 13% on average, and the land and system segment will show a fledgling development as the traditional automotive land market is slowly declining, but we continue to expand our share in our portfolio. The growth of the semisegment is well aligned with the expected growth of the selected focus segments, and we want to grow faster than the market in these segments. Of course, the macroeconomic development influence all these segments, such that all our growth and also profitability expectations are to be understood through the cycle targets as customary in the semiconductor industry. Now, let us turn to the structural growth drivers in our semiconductor core portfolio. we look at automotive we command the number one position since many years in automotive leds and the number two position in automotive flight sensors with new products new applications driven by safety regulations as well as appetite for more convenience our efforts called the per vehicle will structurally grow on top in many of these areas we've already secured significant amount of design wins and oem launches which will unfold in the coming years. I mentioned already the design wind volume of more than €150 million for the highly pixelated headlamps. Another example of this is incumbent sensing, where we have a solid design base of more than €250 million already in our books. When it comes to industrial and medical device markets, our approach has always been to leverage our cutting-edge sensors, emitters, and IC platforms to market niches and applications where we are the key for system performance. This has allowed us to become the leading supplier in those very specific product categories such as photon counting for computer thermography. We will continue this very successful niche strategy and expand it. Industrial and medical markets are structurally growing as devices become smarter and need more sensors and more emitter technologies. For example, the computer thermography scan market. We are a key supplier for 8 out of the 10 leading CT scanner OEMs and our content per scanner can be up to €60,000 in some high-end scanners. In the wide space of consumer devices, our main focus has been portable personal electronic devices, smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and ARVR devices. This application focus will remain. However, we will carefully balance the investments into products that evolutionary can improve cost performance ratio and deliver a more steady stream of business. There's more disruptive, often custom technology platforms that are challenging in terms of innovation, pre-investments, and market introduction. We are determined to improve the risk-reward balance and improve ROIs, which have in many cases not come in the way as we aspired. We hold leading positions in areas like display management or camera enhancement for smartphones, where 8 out of 10 best cameras are enabled by our technology, and we are renewing many of those sockets. In the past, these strong positions in our core markets have perhaps not been so much in the limelight as they deserve, as a lot of attention has been towards the new, exciting micro-LED platform. However, these core markets possess a high degree of attractiveness for us as they offer good growth chances and profitability combined with a strong starting position. Of course, wrapping the industry's first 8-inch LED factory with a new generation of LED technology, MicroLED, remains a significant element in our growth plans. We are well on track in terms of setting up the factory operationally. Our MicroLED effort is in the centerpiece when it comes to monetizing cutting-edge innovation. It's the biggest investment in the history of the company and we're determined to make the success and they make it successful and financially rewarding. All four elements of the structural growth, automotive, industrial medical, consumer, and monetizing innovation, you will find dedicated sections with more details in the full quarterly presentation, which I highly recommend to flip through. It is reworked and updated substantially. You can find it on the web. And I'm now on slide six. We are a high-tech company with great ideas, but we need to put monetizing these innovations more at the center of our thinking. In view of the somewhat lower revenue base within new core portfolio and the next steps in terms of leveraging the capabilities of sensors, IC and emitters, and the one roof, we are launching a multidimensional enhancement program we called Re-establish the Base. In addition to the portfolio adjustments, there are further important elements. One element is right-sizing the company's overhead and infrastructure. This also includes consolidating the organizational structure from three business units in the semiconductor segment to two. At the same time, we give these business units true end-to-end ownership and responsibility, supporting our drive to better monetize our innovations. As already stated, we expect an improvement of the bottom line from this program of around €75 million by the end of 2024. and around €150 million on a run rate basis until end of 2025. The one-time costs are estimated at around €50 million. We are confident that the planned portfolio streamlining will show the indicated positive financial impact as we have demonstrated a similar procedure in the LEMS and system segments, which you can see on slide 7. We brought the adjusted EBIT from close to break-even to sustainably mid-teens to portfolio focus and realignment. Now, I want to comment on our revised mid-term target operating model on slide eight. As I laid out at the beginning, the risks in launching disruptive custom technologies for high-volume consumer device applications, the late uptick of new markets such as AR, VR, some execution problems, and multiple microeconomic challenges have left their marks on our previous business model. As a consequence, we need to update our mid-term target operating model. As I explained, our revenue growth is targeted to be 6% to 10% CAGR from the reduced base. Starting base will be fiscal year 2023 revenues, less the €400 million revenues related to the exit of the non-core semiconductor portfolio. With this growth, we target an adjusted EBIT margin of 15% and above. The capex-to-sales ratio is required to reach the 10% over the cycle again, meaning it will come down significantly from the high expenditures of the last years. Our long-term goal for the leverage continues to be below 2, measured by net debt to adjusted EBITDA. As usual, the model is to be understood as over the cycle and assumes the structural road track present the ramping of the new Coulomb 8-inch facility in a timely manner. With this overview, I now hand over to Reiner to comment on the Q2 business performance and the financials.

Thank you, Aldo, and good morning, everybody. Many of you already know me from my previous role at Cellotronic, a leading supplier of semiconductor wafers. I hold a degree in business and engineering, worked six years at AD Corning, and then joined Wacker Kamin and subsidiary Sertronic. I spent 20 years at the company and various engagements took me to the US and to China. In 2015, we took Sertronic public and I'm leaving behind a great company with wonderful people. I've been looking for a new challenge in a real semiconductor company and I'm really happy that I was given the opportunity to work for AMS Austria. The company has a great product pipeline and a successful core business. We are working hard to put the financing on a new long-term basis as the basis for future growth. A few comments are prone to keep in mind during the financial section. When we refer to adjusted financial metrics, we refer to adjustments for M&A-related, transformation and share-based compensation costs, as well as results from investments in associates and sale of businesses. The reconciliation to the IFRS basis is available in the presentation on our IR website. All assumptions are based on the Euro-US dollar exchange rate at 1%. Now let us start with revenues on page 10. Revenues came in at the midpoint of the guidance with €831 million, slightly up compared to the first quarter of €848 million. if you adjust the deconsolidation effect of 79 million due to the disposals at the lamps and systems segment. I will comment on the sequential and year-over-year development on the following page. On page 11, we see revenue development for the group by end markets excluding deconsolidation effects, i.e., comparing apples to apples. Quarter and quarter, on the left side, we saw some stabilization and some improvement in all end markets. The decrease in automotive is due to the seasonality in the Lamson system segment, while automotive semiconductors increase quarter on quarter. Looking at the year-on-year comparison, we see almost flat automotive revenues, indicating some normalization of the supply chain in the auto semiconductor segment. Industrial medical continues to be impacted by the weak macro economy. Consumer remains almost stagnant. remains our most challenging end market. Here, the year-on-year comparison reveals a slowdown in consumer spending for personal electronic devices, but also the gradual end-of-life for certain bigger sockets. We re-won and won some new sockets, but there will be a gap, unfortunately, before such wins will contribute. For better understanding the dynamics behind this, let's take a look at the revenue development by end market for the reported sector. And it starts on page 12. The semiconductor segment showed mixed traction across the various end markets. Automotive showed improving book-to-bill after almost two years of erratic behavior and inventory corrections in the wake of the various macroeconomic shocks to the automotive supply chain. Industrial and medical business performed better than in Q1, but showed the typical mixed behavior during the macroeconomic week period with certain applications running well, such as laser welding, where we sell our new blue edge-emitting lasers. Other applications, such as hyper-red LEDs for OTTI, are disappointed and are muted given the elevated energy and project financing costs. This market is really down and will be so for some time, we believe. The consumer business shows signs of improvement with a 90% quarter-on-quarter increase due to higher sales from existing sockets. However, the consumer business remains challenging for the group compared to previous levels a year ago, as some big sockets are approaching end-of-life and will be declining consistently. Due to end-market weakness, price pressure remains high, and the new designs we have won will only kick in in 2024 and 2025. This is particularly true for design wins in smartphones. Their lamps and system segment, shown on slide 13, recorded robust revenues in spite of the typical seasonal decline on the back of strong off-season automotive aftermarket lamps. The specialty lamps for entertainment and industrial applications came in as expected, however, especially lands with semiconductor manufacturing equipment, so a softer traction due to global slowdown in the sector. And if you look at group earnings on page 14, in spite of an essentially flat revenue development quarter on quarter, the adjusted gross margin receded by one percentage point to 28%. This resulted in adjusted gross profit of 237 million Euro in line with expectations. Main reason for this underwhelming performance is the low utilization in high fixed cost manufacturing facilities. 20% obviously is just the average temperature, while we have quite a few business lines that deliver a good 40%, even at that low utilization rate, while other lines are hovering around zero or even negative. This is where portfolio actions are urgently required, as Aldo pointed out earlier. Adjusted EBIT margin of 6% came in at the top end of our guidance range. The better than expected profitability relative to revenues coming in at the midpoint resulted from strict cost control and reducing fixed operating expense. Now, turning attention to page 15, you see the sequential development in adjusted R&D and SG&A. While R&D expenses saw savings of 10 million euro, we could meaningfully trim our SG&A expenses by more than 20 million euro. These savings brought down the adjusted SG&A to revenues ratio by one percentage point, though 11% continues to be too high in my view. Let us now look at the segment performance of semiconductors on page 16. We saw a 10% sequential increase on the back of stabilization in certain consumer and industrial areas, as well as a normalization of the automotive supply chain. Medical business came in strong. With higher revenues, we also saw a return to profitability in the semiconductor sector. continue to be far away from our expectations. Some product lines are simply not delivering sufficient margins and need to be cleaned up. Underutilization and high fixed costs are the second problem. We need more flexible cost structure. And finally, our need costs are high as a percentage of revenue, but are the key for future breakthrough innovations like micro-LED. Switching to page 17, lamps and systems show that softer than usual seasonality, which is good, with a sequential decline in revenues by €50 million on a like-for-like basis. EBIT margin came in at a strong 15%, and the strong profitability is now structural after the disposals of non-performing business and the result of a successful streamlining of the portfolio. Now, let us turn to page 18. It will comment on adjusted net results and earnings per share. The adjusted net result improved significantly to €31 million. A less negative financial result compared to Q1 contributed and is the result of positive FX effects and adjustments due to reduced amount of outstanding Osram Licht AG minority shares. The income tax result was also positive €7 million for the quarter. which is related to several changes, mainly around deferred taxes. This adjusted earnings per share improved significantly to 0.12 Eurocent or 0.12 Swiss francs, reflecting the improved profitability of the court. And let me now comment on cash flow, net debt, and the non-cash impairment in view of the revised group strategy. In slide 19, you see that our operating cash flow significantly improved to 232 million euro, after an already strong 162 million euro in Q1. CapEx came down to 263 million euro compared to the first quarter. The bulk of it went into our industry-first 8-inch LED front and factory in Cullin. Some focused investments in European sites for enabling some structural growth opportunities that Aldo mentioned also contributed to the capex figure. Overall, this still resulted in a negative, but only slightly negative, free cash flow of minus €31 million for the quarter. Let me now comment on the non-cash impairment on Goodwill on page 20. Obviously, in line with IFRS requirements and regulations, we perform impairment testing. For this, the long-term business outlook is the best. We, as the new management, had to take a meaningfully more realistic view in light of the current macroeconomic environment. This revised internal outlook in conjunction with external parameters decreased the fair value of certain Goodwill assets, triggering their impairment charge. This non-cash, one-time impairment charge related to Goodwill came in at 1.3 billion euro. It is entirely related to the semiconductor segment and has no impact on liquidity. And we had to do that. Now, let's look at page 21. Our net debt position increased to 2 billion euro. This development is primarily a result of the significant CAPEX spending, tendered minority shares, and interest payments. This brings our group leverage to 2.9 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. Our cash position is north of 800 million euro, and we continue to have more than 900 million euro of undrawn multi-year credit lines at our disposal. This includes a fully committed multi-year 800 million euro revolver, which remains undrawn at this point of time. And again, our refinancing considerations are making good progress, though I cannot disclose any additional details today. And with that, let me hand back to Aldo for the audience.

Thank you, Rainer. And let me now walk you through our guidance on slide 22. Assuming an exchange rate, US dollar, of 110, we expect revenues to come in between 840 and 930 million euros in the third quarter. The adjusted EBIT margin should come in between 5 and 8 percent in Q3. We have clearly heard your call on providing better visibility, even if the nature of our business often does not allow for a precise annual outlook. We will try to give you better color, so we want to share our view on the sentiment towards Q4 2023. Looking at the semiconductor segment, we still see a lot of uncertainty. While automotive outlook seems to stabilize in view of a normalizing supply chain, the second half of 2023 uptake might be less pronounced than we had hoped for. Industrial is certainly further weakening. We have mentioned the weakness in horticulture, but also general lighting and industrial lighting remains very difficult. In consumer, the challenges persist. Looking at the automotive special M segments, we expect the segment to remain on a robust level in the second half of the year. The typical aftermarket lighting season in autumn kicking in towards the end of Q3 will support this robust outlook. In view of the quite substantial change to our strategy and a new mid-term target operating model, let me also share some Early thinking on 2024. With exiting non-core semiconductor business with a revenue run rate of €300-400 million, our absolute revenue as a group will be lower in 2024 by that amount. The development of the various end markets is too difficult to predict, but we have good design wins and should outgrow our target market, all subject, of course, to end market stabilizing. In view of much reduced capex spending compared to 2023 and our efforts to improve profitability, especially our re-established base program and the portfolio effects. We targeted a slightly positive free cash flow in 2024, again assuming that the end market stabilizes. With this, let me summarize the key takeaways of today. We have completed a deep analysis of the company and all its business lines. We have taken key decisions and set the direction for focus on profitability, structural growth, and monetizing innovation. Our portfolio in semiconductors will be sharpened towards intelligent sensors and emitter components and more profitable. We will strengthen the focus on structural growth in automotive, industrial and medical markets as we continue to pursue selective high-volume consumer device opportunities where we can sustain a competitive advantage through cutting-edge innovation. Overall, we will be a better performing company based on its great technology in the core and based on its innovation power. This concludes our opening remarks and we are now happy to answer your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Janet and Menon with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question and welcome aboard to both of you. Just going to some of the details on the portfolio pruning programs and your comments about 2024. So the 75 million and the 150 million run rate savings that you're targeting, can you split that out as to, you know, what is the saving from just the 300 to 400 million exit? What I'm trying to get at is, you know, what is the profitability of that business today? Is it heavily loss-making? And so what would be the impact from that exit versus, you know, any kind of cost reduction program that also you have? ongoing as part of that saving. And then when I look at your comment about, you know, slight positive cash flow, free cash flow next year, you know, you've done about $170 million of negative cash flow, but with an improvement in Q2 and you're forecasting improving margins into the second half of the year, your CapEx should be roughly similar in the second half or thereabouts. So I'm just wondering, given your comment of a sharp cut in capital expenditure next year and improving profitability, why that should end up at a small free cash flow? What is it that I'm missing in those numbers? Thanks very much.

Let me take the first question and then Reiner will take the second. The 75 and the 150 million run rate improvements of 24 and 25 are roughly 50-50, half of it roughly coming out of the portfolio decisions, half of it coming out of further structural improvements.

Yeah, so on the pre-cash flow, we are trying to set a bottom here for next year. Again, we don't know exactly how the market will develop next year. There's still some segment that appears to be very muted with automotive improving, so we have to take that into consideration. We also have to see that The portfolio actions will take some time. We're talking about divesting that. That is nothing that will be available on January 1st next year. And the other actions that we're taking will also lead to certain one-off costs. We will have next year, we will not be returning yet to the 10% capex goal because we have to continue the big investment in Malaysia, which is very important and is a one-of-a-kind thing in the industry. So all of that put together, the cash flow will be positive next year by how much we will guide then early next year.

Understood. And just a small follow-up. On your design wins, you said that you will get new design wins into your revenue in 2024 and in 2025. Can you just clarify when you talk about the – because the previous management had talked about a new sensor win in smartphones in consumer in 2024 – Can I assume that it's the same design win that you're referring to, and is there any other win in 2025 outside of perhaps micro-LED? And what is your current perception of micro-LED timing?

Thanks. Well, that's a bunch of questions combined in one. First of all, in the consumer segment, you're right, there is a meaningful design win that will start to bring volume in the later part of next year. Of course, there are other design wins as well that kind of flow into the portfolio at the same time. The overall demand is quite muted. And also, of course, we have a certain number of end-of-life events in products as well. So we will see these new products coming in in 2024, and that being, of course, also quite a dynamic market that is kind of a business where you have to keep winning quarter after quarter, year after year. And, of course, we cannot share each and every win with you, but the bigger one that was talked about is obviously still there, and we're preparing for that. The other numbers that we gave, the 150 and 250, for example, in design wins, these are not tied to specific years. It is the design win that you get in a special automotive. These are then for products that last a number of years, not only 12 months, but three, four, five years for a headlamp generation, for example, or for the in-cabin sensing. Also here, these are normally products that once you're designed in, you keep these sockets for quite some time. So you have to also think about that not as one event of suddenly adding these numbers in one year, but as a number of programs that you win with individual SOPs kind of staggered through time. But we want to give you a flavor of how we are converting technology into design wins and give you a feel for the size of the opportunities that we have in, for example, this automotive segment here that we mentioned. Then I think the question was on micro-LED. We continue to work towards revenues in 25, like also mentioned in earlier calls, and that's what we're working hard for and what we're still targeting.

Thank you very much. That's very useful. Thanks, Mike. You're welcome.

Next question is from the line of François Bovini with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. I just wanted to follow up quickly on micro-LED, and as you expect, 2024, five revenues, and when we look at 2026 targets of, you know, the growth rate of 6% to 8%, is it, micro-LED, is it really meaningful contribution to that target for out to 26 in your growth rate? So that's my first question, and if you can quantify, obviously, with the And the second question is on the margin. So if we look at next year, you know, you have this new portfolio that you – the portfolio that you exceed, which we assume low margins. You have the saving program kicking in. On top of that, your core business is going to outgrow the markets from what you're seeing. So excluding the portfolios exceeding, you have – growth coming in with this new mobile. So what I'm trying to get here is why shouldn't we expect a significant margin recovery into next year, putting all of that together? What would be the drive to the margins? And I include the one, of course, of restructuring, of course, on an organic basis. That would be great. Thank you.

Let me comment on the micro-LED. As we said, we will start to see first revenues in 2025 of a meaningful size. And, of course, that will then become a full-year revenue in 2026. However, given the overall size of the company and the overall growth of the portfolio that we're shooting for, it is a contributing factor, but it is by far not the only contribution to growth in 2026.

Yeah, and I think without discussing the margin of next year, I mean, there's obviously positive contributions and there's negative contributions. Negative is definitely that the market remains to be muted, and for some of the... end markets we are still waiting to to see the turning signal so um and then kind of you know we taking costs how much takes time uh the portfolio measures will take time it's obviously the measures we are taking are those uh those portfolios those products that contribute almost nothing or very little to the contribution margin, though obviously still also covers a portion of our fixed costs. When we trim that or we sell that, you know, we have to take care of the fixed costs. So it is nothing that you can expect to be already in place on January 1st, but, you know, then within next year, you will start to see that improvement and We obviously are much more positive for next year than for next year.

And do you plan to sell these products, these 300 to 400 million, or just exceed? I mean, can you monetize it at all?

I mean, we will try to. I mean, we did not take exact decisions what to do, but we will obviously do whatever is best to generate the highest RA possible on those businesses. Great. Thank you.

Next question is from the line of Sandeep Deshpande with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for letting me on. A couple of questions. Firstly, in terms of the products that you're planning to exit, many of these products in previous management has been talked about as being able to supply complete solutions on optics to customers. like these passive optical products, et cetera. So will that impede the sale of your higher value semiconductor products getting out of some of these supporting products? That's one of my questions. And the second question I have is regarding the improvement in profitability from here. When we look at, you know, I mean, clearly the market is incredibly weak today. And so, you know, your guidance in the long, mid to long term looks very reasonable, but in a better market with better product mix, as well as a better, as well as a better volume, will you not be able to exceed that 15% margin target that you're setting yourself?

Okay, no, both very relevant questions. I think, yes, your observation is right that with this step we're kind of departing from this model of trying to build the business around complete optical solutions. We've seen that the components that make up the overall solution play an instrumental role and we have to focus our efforts on really making the components as competitive and as intelligent as possible And that will allow us to focus our R&D efforts towards this goal and be there the most successful that we can. And looking at what we have in the solution space on the table, I think we will not see any impeding effects of us not having that optical technology or not to that extent anymore. We see that we can work very well within the solution. the ecosystems that are surrounding us and make good use of also other people's technology for the overall solution. And that at the end of the day requires anyway a close interaction with our customers and we have those relations, I have to say, across all the segments and we'll utilize that to build the overall solution for our customers. On the second question, yeah, we have, like Rainer said, take a very, in our mind, realistic look at the business, at the growth prospects in the current environment. And, of course, it's a high... fixed-cost business, and if the factories are really super full, you will see also the fall-through of that. So is the 15% the maximum? No. Is that a realistic first mid-term step? Yes. Will it vary, like with the volumes going up and down, will it vary significantly from year to year? Yes, that's the kind of beast that it is. But we will continue to fight, of course, for better profitability. And in good, strong years, the profitability will be also beyond the 15%.

Just one quick follow-up.

Maybe a quick addition to the 15%. Please keep in mind that the factory we are building in Kulim requires a lot of upfront costs, right, both on the COC side, but also on the R&D side. And that will carry very well into 2025, right? The factory will change AMS Osrom into the future, but there's a lot of upfront costs to be borne by the company. And that, unfortunately, will drag down the margin in the first years. With the ramp of that factory, yeah, definitely we can go very well north of 15%, but it will take time.

Thank you. I'll come back in the queue for questions. Thanks.

Next question is from the line of Adam Angeloff with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question. So firstly, just in the 6% to 10% CAGR you have for 2026, Sounds like it's a little bit back-end loaded. So just wondering about 2024. I understand visibility is a bit low today, but if the markets were, let's say, flat to slightly up, and it sounds like you still have the smartphone sensing win, do you think that your core revenue in 2024 can grow? That's the first one, and then I'll follow up with the second.

Yeah, as Ryan has said, I mean, it's kind of hard. We're not really... It's still quite a bit out, and the uncertainties are high. So I think overall, we will... We will have to see how the overall demand develops, even in automotive, where we see some positive traction right now. Still, the uncertainties are high. Interest rates are high. How is this going to affect the buying behavior, for example, in the U.S.? How are the overall uncertainties affecting our overall business? We see industrial also coming now more under pressure as the the recessionary pressures around the globe kind of spread throughout the different segments. So there's just a lot of uncertainty and therefore I think where Rhino has been careful in giving a bullish outlook on 24. Of course, we're happy to take volumes if they come back and support those, obviously we have the capacity to do so.

Yeah, fair enough. And then just on the, I mean, previous management team talked about a prepayment. Sounds like, you know, still on track with the micro ID timing, but just, you know, related to the prepayment, if you could share any details there, you know, is it contingent on certain yields for the technology on certain steps of the fab build out? And yeah, I mean, any details you can share on timing, size and anything else would be very helpful to the extent that you can. Thank you.

I understand that it is helpful, but unfortunately, you know the sensitivity of our customer in this context, so we cannot, unfortunately, share much, much detail on that.

Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

As a reminder, that's staff followed by one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Sebastian Stavovic with Kepler Chizuru. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. One on inventory. Could you please elaborate a little bit on the level of inventory in your key markets today where they are standing in consumer, automotive, and industrial markets? That would be the first question. The second one would be on 3D sensing. Just to understand, when you analyze the company right now, do you see any specific growth opportunity coming from 3D sensing? We see that behind the LED is gradually increasing. coming to the market with some of your peers, maybe could act as a catalyst to accelerate deployments within the Android ecosystem at some point. And basically, do you see other markets where 3D sensing could gradually, I would say, take off? And where are you standing in your technology roadmap there in 3D sensing behind OLED and so on? Thank you.

On the inventory side, the positive is that we seem to have worked through the inventory correction on the automotive side. We see now more normalized inventory levels in that segment. At the same time, in the industrial markets and some of the medical markets, we see quite high inventory levels. Usually, anyway, our customers hold higher inventory levels in those segments, and if then their end customer demand kind of drops, it has kind of a bullwhip effect. on the inventory levels at our customers and then the demand that they project towards us. So those are a bit more challenging, but yeah, again, it's a mix. Some segments like automotive looking better at the moment than the others. It's kind of one market after another that has an issue. And now, fortunately, automotive, which is an important segment for us, kind of seems to have worked its way through it. And now we probably have to deal with some of the corrections in the industrial and medical segment in the second half of the year, I would assume. On the 3D sensing topic, it is still overall a bit the question what the... the killer app for it is. I think that's still what people are struggling with to find out. And in that sense, yes, we do see interest, but we don't see a breakthrough at the moment in terms of new applications. Okay, thank you.

Next question is from the line of Jürgen Wagner with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning. Thank you. I'm looking at your cross-margin analysis What would it be if your factory would be better utilized or meaning on a normalized utilization level? And then what is the underlying assumption on the cross margin for the 15% margin target and 26? And an update on your minorities. And now that we had a ruling from the judging last month Has that been appealed by the minority shareholders by now? Thank you.

Yeah. Hi, Jürgen. Good talking to you again. So, yes, it has been appealed. Simple answer. On the margins, I mean, yeah. I mean, if we were full, we could easily have just from the better absorption of the fixed cost, we would have a 5% to 10% higher margin. I mean... Could be 10, but I mean, I've never seen a company that is full everywhere at the same time. So let's say 5% to 10%, yeah.

And the underlying assumption for 26, would that be also this plus 5% to 10% plus a bit from portfolio measures?

As I said, I mean, it's never full everywhere.

So it's not all the way. And demand, as Reiner outlined, is next year not that much better than this year. So in that sense, the overall utilization doesn't go through either. Sorry, my mistake. I misheard you.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Next question is from the line of Sandeep Deshpande with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, I have a follow-up question on your automotive market. My question is, you know, AMS Osram has found it, you know, in the last three years where the automotive market in semiconductors was incredibly tight and most semiconductor vendors could not supply. This did not apply to AMS Osram, mainly because your content growth in the car was not as much as these other companies were facing in terms of content growth. Do you think that over the next few years as your new products, whether in emitters or in detectors or whatever, that you should be able to increase your content per car and thus change your economics per car in comparison to what you've seen in the last two, three years?

Yes, definitely. I think, first of all, the fact that we were not in allocation so badly with the other guys, yes, what you're saying is partly true that For some very specific semiconductors, the demand kind of exploded and they had a hard time getting behind it. But also for us, the content per vehicle has grown also in the last years, but we have been able to accommodate that given the capacity that we have installed. Looking forward, we see really also a content growth per vehicle across the portfolio. You see it in a variety of different ways. We spoke a bit about the hypixelated headlamp. You can imagine that a complex high-end product like that is a significant add in terms of value per car versus a standard simple LED headlamp. You can also think about the in-cabin sensing that is now becoming a mandatory standard. So that wasn't there before or it was only partly there in higher end cars and it becomes now a feature that has to go across. You can see it in the fact that the amount of intelligent lighting within the car is rising. People want to help the driver kind of be focused on the specific area that you need to pay attention to if he has now increasingly his hands off the wheel for a little bit of time. So you can get light bands in different colors within the interior that also kind of have a functional, yeah, that have functions, not only ambient lighting that we're seeing there. And on the outside of the car as well, I was in China last week and they actually used the car increasingly on the outside as kind of a display almost. They had not only tail lamps, but on the tail of the car, hundreds of LED points as a matrix to also animate a certain welcome light functionality or or greetings to other drivers. So there were actually vehicles on the road in China, also part of our LEDs, with not a few tens of LEDs on the outside, but with hundreds of LEDs on the outside. So there is a whole bunch of trends ongoing, partly safety-oriented, partly comfort-oriented, partly styling-oriented, light being the new chrome, if you will, that will drive the ASP per car forward. At the moment, roughly, we are talking about 35, 40 euro per car. We see that grow in the next years to above 50 euro per car. And already today, in the high-end segments of the market, we are already above 50 euro per car and continue to see that increase based on these higher-end features that are also outlined. So definitely, it is for the automotive market, not only vehicle count that should... That should add to the revenue growth, but also the content per vehicle that we see good traction on for the whole portfolio, not only for emitters.

Thank you very much.

Final question is from the line of Adam Angeloff with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi, thanks for letting me back on for just two quick follow-ups. So firstly, just on the comments you mentioned on inventory earlier, I didn't quite catch the inventory situation in the consumer market. If you could update on that one, please. And then just so we're on the same page, the free cash flow is slightly positive for 2024. Could you share your definition of that, i.e., does it include interest expense, payments for Osram minorities. Basically just, yeah, if you could share the definition of that, that would be great. Thank you.

In the consumer segment, I would say that the inventory situation is quite similar to previous quarters. There's no big change there. No tightness, but also no huge overstocking. So we will not see any significant whiplash effect out of the consumer area. I think it will more or less fluctuate with overall demand, which unfortunately still remains muted. Just looking at China, people still are kind of hesitant to buy the next phone or the next gadget at the moment. kind of unknowing where the overall economy takes them. So let's wait and see how the overall consumer segment develops, but the inventory position will, I think, not heavily influence that.

Adam, the definition of free cash flow is pretty simple. It's operating cash flow minus capex. It does not include interest payments or any payments under the options from minority shelves. Got it. Thank you very much.

All right, thanks very much for your lively interest, the questions. With this, we would like to close today's call. If there are any follow-up questions, please reach out to Investor Relations and we will try to provide more details and the answers. And please do not forget to also flip through our extended Q2 presentation There should hopefully be also quite a few more details, particularly also on some of the questions you had. Thank you very much, and have a good day and a good weekend.