Suss Microtec Se

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the SUS Microtech SE on the occasion of the publication of the half-year figures of 2025. I'm delighted to welcome the CEO Burkhard Frick, CFO Dr. Cornelia Balbisa, the COO Dr. Thomas Rohr, as well as Manager Investor Relations Florian Mangold. The Management Board will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the numbers. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly to the management. We are looking forward to the results, and having said this, I hand over to Mr. Mangold. Please, the stage is yours.

Thank you, and welcome to the conference call on our results for the second quarter and the first six months of 2025. which we have published in our half-yearly financial report this morning. As you probably know from earlier calls, this call is being recorded and considered as copyright material. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcasted without permission. Participating in this call implies your consent to this procedure. Please be aware that our safe harvest statement of page 2 on the slide deck. It applies throughout the conference call. And now I hand over to our CEO, Bogat. Please.

Thank you, Florian. Also from my side, dear investors, analysts, and guests, a warm welcome. After moderate order intake in the first quarter, we now must realize that the order momentum is not as positive as expected. Order intake of 166.8 million marks a 13.2% decrease year-on-year. On the other hand, sales peaked in the second quarter. After only six months, we are already at record high 266.4 million, which is a growth of 38.2% compared to the previous year. Growth is driven by both segments. While EBIT is still at a solid level of 15.7%, gross profit margin came in only at 37.2% after six months. Compared to the first quarter, we have not seen an improvement, but more details in a moment. Now let's take a closer look at the main topics. First, the order intake. We observe greater uncertainty in the market, probably also due to the far-reaching tariff announcements. We are noticing greater reluctance to invest. Further, after huge AI-related capacity expansions in recent quarters, we see certain saturation effects, especially in the HBM sector. To make this clearer, the growth that, for example, major memory manufacturers achieved this year is based on equipment installations in recent months and quarters. In terms of sales, we have also benefited massively from this development since the beginning of 2024. This is obviously reflected in our sales performance. SUSE has never generated a higher first year sales result. After six months, we are at €266.4 million. Considering the upper end of the sales forecast of €470 to €510 million, we have already achieved more than 50% of our 2025 sales target. This is an outstanding performance of our operations team. In terms of gross profit margin achievements, however, we are unfortunately falling short of our own expectations. After 37.9% in Q1, the gross profit margin in Q2 has not improved and was now at 36.5%. There are two main reasons. First, the preparation and training of our employees in Taiwan for the production of the Yiyi projection scanner. These costs of our very big ramp in Q1 and partially Q2 were higher than anticipated. Secondly, major one-offs, especially in the second quarter. Here, we had to write off materials we had ordered for a project which was terminated. This is not unusual for our sector and innovation projects in general, but it was not anticipated. Let us now look at developments in our two segments. First, advanced back-end solutions. Here, the order intake in this segment was down in the first half of 2025. Developments in the three product lines varied. Demand for our 300-millimeter coding solutions from packaging customers in Korea and Taiwan was very strong, particularly in the second quarter. However, the surge in demand could not compensate for the more restrained orders for our temporary bonder and debonderers. Despite a few follow-up orders, we still do not see a big momentum in demand from our memory customers. Demand for imaging solutions was slightly up on the previous year, especially due to higher orders for our UV projection scanner. Sales momentum continued to be strong at plus 25% year-on-year for the first half of 2025. All three product lines contributed to the sales growth with double-digit percentage growth rates. Coders recorded the strongest percentage growth while the execution of AI-related bonder projects continued as planned. Meanwhile, the gross profit margin fell to 35.1% in the second quarter, and the situation did not improve due to one-off effects. Now to FOTOMAS solutions. After the order intake in this segment in the first quarter was the same as in previous year, new business acquisition in the second quarter, however, amounted to just 12.9 million euros. There were no orders from Chinese customers for new tools in Q2, which once again shows the expected decline, particularly in the high-end segment. This underlines the importance of launching a dedicated tool for the mid-end sector in 2026. At the same time, the execution of customer projects gained momentum once again. Q2 2025 sales amounted to €56 million. Growth now stands at a strong almost 70% after the first half year. Looking at both order intake and sales, the low book-to-bill ratio of 0.1%, 4H naturally stands out. The order book has fallen to 106 million euros due to accelerated execution of the backlog. Visibility is still sufficiently high for 2025, but the outlook for 2026 is limited in light of recent demand situation. The higher sales volume and associated scaling effects as well as a better product and customer mix have led to a significant improvement in margins in the photomaster segment compared to the first half of 2024. With a gross profit margin of 40.2% and an EBIT margin of 28.8%, the segment achieved strong half-year margins. Now let's take another look at our new production site in Hubei, Taiwan. As you probably can see, my board colleague Thomas Rohr was recently on site, and he's on that picture in the middle, to monitor the project status. And he was very pleased because the installations for our production clean rooms and the warehouse were almost completed. The outfitting of the office space and the plaza is also progressing very well. Up to now, we have made investments totaling $9.4 million. We currently anticipate total capex of 14.5 million euros in 2025. This means we are below the initial announced budget of 15 to 20 million euros. Here on the next picture, you see on the left side, one of the clean rooms where we will build the new increased output for the UV projection scanner. we are nearing the completion of our build out. With that, I'd like to hand over to Cornelia Wallwieser for a closer look at our financial figures.