2/5/2026

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Hello and welcome to the presentation of Micronic's Q4 report. My name is Sven Tjatkovic. I'm the Director of Investor Relations at Micronic. And with me today I have Micronic's CEO Anders Lindqvist and CFO Pierre Brusson who will be presenting today. And with that I hand over to Anders. Please go ahead and present Micronic's Q4 report.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Thank you very much, Sven. And this is what we will talk about today. No change from before. So about a quarter, of course, go deeper within the different divisions. Pierre will talk more about the financials, a few words on sustainability. And then we have a question and answer session at the end of the session. presentation and as usual there is a market update in the material that will be posted on our website which we will not present but it could be interesting reading so starting with a short summary of the last quarter of last year so we had A decline of order intake with 19% to a level just below 2 billion, which is a good level. It's on our annual average, but compared to a very strong quarter in 2024, it was nevertheless a decline of 19%. Very much explained by the lower order intake in pattern generators. Also worth to note is that currency makes a lot of impact on all the numbers here in PR. We'll talk a little bit more about that in the financial part. Also sales were more or less flat compared to last year, around 2 billion. And we had decline in three divisions, so pattern generators, PCB assembly solutions, and also in the high volume division. Then we had quite good growth in the global technology division that almost fully compensated for that difference. So being flat in total compared to the year before. EBIT also declined 342 million, which is a margin of 17%. backlog more or less flat at 4.7 billion which is a good and healthy backlog I would say and also the Board of Directors will propose to make a dividend of 3.25 krona per share which is a little bit an increase from before and no extra dividend as we did last year. We made a small acquisition after the end of the period, a company called ETZ that's a supplier of critical components for our PCB test business line. So it will not have a large impact on the numbers, but it will really reinforce our quality of the supply chain. So quite an important acquisition for us. So going into the different divisions, starting with pattern generators, we could see that the markets were stable, I mean, and even positive. The semiconductor photo mask market has shown positive development. I think you can read it by also in the report from PEERS that it's mainly driven from applications related to AI. On the display, photomask side market, we see that stable as usual, a little bit irregular, but stable nevertheless. And we saw a decrease then of order intake down to 545 million. And this has to be compared to a super strong quarter in 2024. We had five machines on order, or we got orders for five machines. One display mask writer, Precision 8 Evo, FPS 6100 Evo, and also three SLX mask writers for the Semicon industry. Sales down to $577 million. We delivered six equipment and this is 18% down. One display mask writer positioned like the 8 EVO and one FPS 6100 and four SLX. So quite similar to the ordinary tech actually. But it's not the same equipment. Gross margin, 58, which is good, stable around that level, and EBIT, 173. Backlog is a bit down to 2.6 billion. So as we said, the total company backlog was flat, and you can understand that the backlog has increased in the other divisions. So we have 18 systems in the backlog as per end of the year. And after the period this year, we also received orders for Precision, 8EVO, and MMX. You can also see that in the headline we talk about continued R&D investments, and we do increase R&D investments. We develop new products to offer more equipment to our current customer base, and that kind of equipment is in the inspection technology area, so we will launch at the end of this year a range of inspection machines for the semiconductor photo mask market, which are ramping up right now, both in R&D investments, but also we are preparing space for the production for that. So quite a large project for us. On PCB assembly solutions, we have talked before about the difficult market, and this continues to be difficult, especially the European market. We have seen positive trend in Asia and also U.S., but Asia is not so large for us for the PCB assembly solution, and the U.S. market has been stable, but the European market has continued to be very, very weak. Every second year, there's a large show in Munich called Produktionica, where we're We and our peers in the business normally introduce new products, and we had two large introductions there. Gen-I, which is an AI-enabled inspection machine, and MyProA41, which is a continuation of our pick-and-place series. Order intake down to 362, which is 7%. Also sales down 10% to 438. Gross margin at 40%. Okay, and EBIT down to 60. Backlog 147, which is quite okay, but still a difficult market in this division. On the high volume side, also participated on the Productronica show. A large part of our strategy in the high volume is to expand sales outside of China, so very important to be present at those shows outside of China. We have also decided to put the listing. Some years ago we announced that we are contemplating and investigating the possibility to list Axon on the China Stock Exchange and this is put on hold right now. That listing would have contained also an investment program for employees. So as that is not happening, we have launched what is called an ESOP program, which is Employee Share Ownership Participation program. So that is just launched. We also opened a new facility for production in Thailand to be able to supply machines not made in China, which is to be more flexible in this restricted world that we live in today. We are from place of origin of manufacturing. Order intake was down 30% to 271. Sales was very strong at 448. million still a little bit less than the year before gross margin 41 we were good margin and ebit 55 and in this 55 there is a bit of plus and minuses we have a cost of this share ownership program of minus 23 million and then we had a positive impact of provisions for personnel that was made that contributed to 13 million backlog 683 which is quite good or normal i would say So all good there. Global technologies. Here we see a very strong development. As many companies now in these days report that it's driven by AI-related applications, and we have the same. This is in particular notable for our PCB test and also the die bonding business line. So, and also we have some acquisitions, of course, supporting all that. So, order intake up almost 70% to 773 million and sales up 41% to 570. And you can see the sales contribution from acquired businesses, which is H-Probe, Robot and Surface, 131 million. But still a very strong development there. Very solid gross margin at 45%, EBIT 118 and some negative impact from the recently acquired businesses of minus 6. And a very strong backlog of almost 1.3 billion. So very good development in this division and an EBIT margin of 21% in the quarter. And as I said before, we also acquired this very small company, ETZ, which will not really have a lot of impact on the numbers, but really will solidify our supply chain for the PCB test business line. So all that, we believe that we will continue to grow the business and this year we see that an outlook now, which still almost 12 months to go, or at least 11, to reach 8.25 billion in sales. All right, now I hand over to Pierre to talk more about finances.

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

Yes, good morning from my side as well. And we will do a little bit deeper review of the numbers. Starting with this graph displaying the quarterly numbers and we reach just above 2 billion in sales. And this is compared to last year, a small decline of 2%. But it's really a volume increase. It's both organic and inorganic growth and 11% negative currency impact. And this currency impact is even bigger on the order side because they also revalue the orders on hand. So very significant impact of the currencies in the quarter and also throughout the year. The aftermarket revenue, we exceeded 500 million, so we are approaching 2 billion on an annual basis. This is a good number. However, for the first time since 2021, we were not sequentially growing towards the same quarter. last year, so we were slightly below the good quarter of 2024, mainly related to that we at that time had some upgrades in the pattern generators division, which we could not fully compensate for this year. EBIT margin 17%, a solid number, a bit high on the OPEX side, but really according to the plans that we have made. and how we want to develop the company going forward. If we look at it on an annual basis, we ended the year just below the $8 billion with an EBIT margin on 24% good level. Aftermarket revenue, as I mentioned, we are approaching the $2 billion, which is then constituting 25% of the net sales and continuously growing this part. So we will see fluctuations on the equipment side, but The aftermarket revenue is important to continuously, gradually build and grow, which we are doing at this point in time. We'll go a little bit deeper into the costing details and the different parts of the income statement comparing quarter on quarter. And this may look at us as a less positive staircase, but it's really largely according to plan. We had a little bit lower sales in the patent generators division as a share of the total in the quarter, and thereby we have a small negative gross margin effect. On the R&D side, Anders alluded to that, that we are continuing to spend at high pace and in very relevant projects, particularly in the patent generators, but we also have an organic increase of the R&D spend in the high volume division. In that division, in the high volume division, we are also expanding the footprint in particularly outside China. And this drives a bit the marketing and sales cost. Here we also have, when we compare the numbers versus the prior year, we also have the newly acquired entities. adding to all the cost categories here and also the acquisition related costs and in particular the retention and mechanism for the surface acquisition that is running over six months, which will end now in the fourth quarter, which is affecting the numbers a bit. About 10 million net impact of the China ESOP versus the provision release as well. If we look at the 2025 full year bridge, we can see that we have been growing throughout the year despite the currency headwind that we have had. And in several of the divisions, we have also improved the gross margin, in particular in the global technologies division, which we are very happy about. We have decided to do investments on the R&D side and on the marketing and sales side in order to set the company for the future. and to create the organic growth that we want to have sustainably going forward. We have also a bit higher acquisition related costs and transaction costs this year compared to the prior year. And then this other column that you see there, we have mainly the net effect of the FX, realized and unrealized exchange differences. ending the year at a solid 19.40, which is 24% in relation to sales. Division by division, if we cut it that way, we have said that we had a little bit lower sales and also lower margin and higher R&D in patent generators, and this is really the main explanation for the relatively lower EBIT in the fourth quarter. We had last year record quarter in PCB assembly solutions and in high volume. We could not fully match that this year, but particularly for PCB assembly solutions, we had the best quarter of the year in the fourth quarter. It's normally that way, but I think it's also fair to say that it's not a bad level, it's a good level. In high volume, we had a little bit slower ending of a solid year. And it looks quite good going into 2026 as well. Global technology is really good despite not getting contribution yet from the acquired entities. delivering 20% or about 20% EBIT margin in the quarter, taking us to a total of 17% or 342 million in quarter. Looking at the full year, we were slightly lower than last year in patent generators, mainly related to the R&D investments. The number for PCB assembly solution is of course a bit bigger in relation to the baseline. So we did not reach what we wanted to reach in a tough market where we had our largest markets in Europe. having a negative economy and US having a bit of a difficult investment climate with tariffs as well as the headwind from currencies. High volume and global technologies on track and for global technologies even exceeding the plans we made. And here you see on the group functions that we have and this is largely transaction related costs that has increased over this period of time. ending the year on, as we said, 24% or $19.40. Cash flow-wise, it's all natural in relation to the activities we have conducted and the situation on the P&L, plus the acquisitions and the dividends that has been paid out. Maybe noteworthy is that we have about $200 million less good change of working capital, and this is largely that we have a lower order stock in the patent generators where we have a significant portion of advance payments from customers. We have almost spent one billion in the acquisitions we have done during the year. still at a position where we can be active in the M&A market and with 2.3 billion cash and additionally facilities in place of 2 billion. And with that, I hand the word back to Anders.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Thank you, Claire. And let's continue. So as usual, a few words on sustainability. And first, I want to talk about diversity, where we make some nice progress. And especially on the share of women in the workforce, both in the workforce as also in the different managerial roles. And we could see that, very notable, the Patent and Interest Division had a good rise in the female representation from 19% to 22%. And also that in our annual employee engagement survey, we could see that diversity and inclusion is having now the highest rate topic of the mall. Positive development on that. On other parts of sustainability, we had training for sales representative in this and also purchasing managers that participated in different seminars to strengthening the due diligence that we do in our supply chain.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

So, with that, Sven, move over to question and answers. Thank you, Anders, and thank you, Pierre. And as you say, Anders, now we are moving over to our Q&A session. And today we will start with Handelsbanken and Fredrik Littell. Fredrik, please go ahead and ask your questions.

speaker
Fredrik Littell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Thank you very much for taking my questions. I'm going to keep it to two questions now. Maybe we could get a little bit of elaboration on the outlook, the $8.25 billion, Pierre, what the US dollars are based on, and if this includes or do not include Calvin in Korea, and at the same time maybe an update on the Calvin acquisition. The second question is, you talk about the investments that you expand the organization, increasing your time. You now also elaborate on that you will launch machines towards the end of this year. It would be very interesting to hear you talk more about that to the extent you can, of course, Anders. Always interested to hear about machines. Thank you.

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

Okay, if I start with the outlook, the outlook is based on all we know now, which means the current exchange rates as they stand today. We also believe that we will have a small contribution from COVID, which we believe will be closed towards the end of the first quarter. This will not have a dramatic impact on the sales for this year, but we do believe a limited contribution from COVID.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

And, yeah, regarding the new products, yeah, so this is super exciting, and as you understand, this is something we have been working on for a while, so you have seen that we have increased R&D spend over the time. We have also increased manufacturing availability by moving out of the division in our main production facility to make space for this new equipment. So this is inspection equipment for photo mask for semiconductor and it can inspect the quality of a full mask and not only the pattern, but also defects from particles and contamination and so on. We will come into an environment with competitions from very capable partners here. It will be mainly companies like Lasertech and KLA. Size of the market we see is quite, everything is quite equal to SLX, actually. So the size of the market is the same, we believe, the available market for us, like a billion SEK. We believe also that the price of the machine will be in a similar range, something between from $4 up to $10 million per equipment. We have, of course, an ambition to take a part of that share, but we do have very capable competitors here as well, as we have in the laser-based mask writers as well. So this is a super exciting opportunity. The launch will be to the end of this year, and we believe that the first revenues will be visible first 2027, really, where you can start to count on that. But we will have this year a further increase of R&D spend, a little bit more than what we currently do, and most likely peak out during this year. So it's a lot of cost and no revenue so far, but we believe very much in this.

speaker
Fredrik Littell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

I mean, I'm intrigued by that you sort of explain it so explicitly already now, you know, 11 months before you will launch it, giving your competitors some time to think about it. Do you bring in a new type of technology angle to this? Is it something you could talk about?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

All of the players here have a little bit of differentiation between how they do and how they compare patterns. Either you compare it to other masks or you compare it to the drawings and so on. So we believe that we will have a unique position. We will also have the benefit of also being able to sell the mask writers. And the combination of this is... is given an additional value, actually, and which the others don't have, where we can use data from both equipments to kind of optimize the whole solution there. So, of course, we believe that we have something better, but exactly how and what, I think we will need to come back a little bit later in the year, really, on the features and benefits and all the nice stuff.

speaker
Fredrik Littell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Exciting. Good luck with that, and I'm done for now. Thank you.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you Fredrik. And now we move over to SEB and Ina Jypsund.

speaker
Ina Jypsund
Analyst, SEB

Please go ahead and ask your questions. Thanks for taking my question as well. I have a question on pricing and kind of assuming FX is where it is now. How important of a growth driver will price be and is it any particular division where price hikes play a bigger role?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Price is of course very important in all divisions and I think everywhere we can offer quite a large degree of differentiation. We are able to keep the prices quite high, but we don't really see any change in price pressure or so. We see, of course, a little bit an effect in the PCB assembly solutions divisions where you have the tariffs. And in cost for customers, which we not always can transfer fully to the customer for different reasons. And so there cannot be a small decline. But otherwise, we keep pricing on every ever and even increase where we can. We have seen that the demand for some products in global technologies are extremely high. And that's, of course, an opportunity to be a little bit more stiff on the pricing side.

speaker
Ina Jypsund
Analyst, SEB

And how is capacity utilization? If we look at next year, I think there's a little bit fewer deliveries for PG and H2. How do you kind of approach that?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Yes, and we can still feel a bit of that, I think. And we have been... maybe producing more than we could in the past times. I think that it's good for the production facility. But we're also expanding production for the PV division also to be able to, not only actually for this inspection machine, but also for the other product lines to make that more efficient. So I think we have sufficient capacity There we face a little bit on the PCB test in the global technologies where we have an extremely high demand and Last year, we built a new factory, inaugurated that in January last year, and we are already making the first extension of that to meet this increased demand. So to be able to supply, we deliver double as much as equipment as we did two years ago. So high pressure on production there. And also then in high volume, we expand by adding additional production site that's mentioned in Thailand now. So, yeah.

speaker
Ina Jypsund
Analyst, SEB

And within PG, do you think you can still take orders that can be delivered in 2026 as well?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

It depends on configuration and model, but theoretically or practically as well.

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

On the Semicon side, we could definitely get something towards the back end of the year, yes.

speaker
Ina Jypsund
Analyst, SEB

Okay, thank you. That was all for me.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Ina. And now we move over to ABG, Sundar Collier and Henrik Hindse. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Henrik.

speaker
Henrik Hindse
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Thank you. So about the employee stock option program in Axon, I was just wondering if you could give us a bit more detail on the reasoning behind that and if it's a one-off thing here or if you will keep offering programs like this over time after this one is done.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Yes, so this is the first and the IPO that we were investigating should have had an investment program built into it. So now the IPO is on hold. We still want to offer an investment program. And the reason for that is that China is extremely competitive when it comes to talents, both to retain and to attract, but also to engage and to drive performance. So we believe that this is a very good way to to fulfill that, to really keep the engagement, the performance of people and attract the best talent and retain our good people. So that is the motivation. Behind that, this program is the first one, and it's large. We will, like a normal company, launch this every two, every three years, something like that, in a sequence with a duration of a similar time, between three and five years. But the first one now is larger than the coming because we didn't have a program during this investigation period of the IPO. But it will have a bit of cost last year, this year, and next year as well. Pierre can explain a little bit more on that side. But first of all, it should have a large benefit also, of course, of driving value and driving engagement and performance in the business. And it is a co-ownership program. And it's quite broad. We have invited 120 people. So it's a broad program. And we have 100% almost participation. So there's a big willingness to do this. And most China companies either have this kind of program or ownership through the real shares on the stock market. So we believe that it's very good to stay competitive in the talent market.

speaker
Henrik Hindse
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Okay, thank you. Secondly, on global technologies, the margin here in the quarter was quite a bit stronger than at least I had expected. So I was just wondering if you could give us any more detail regarding how we should think about that and the margin going into 2026.

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

I think we have two larger portions that we've been owning for some time within global technologies. Both are benefiting from AI driven demand in the background and this trickles down to us who do equipment for various parts of this chain. With this demand, we have seen good increases in sales, and we've also been able to improve the margins in this existing business. And then we have added acquired businesses, which are profitably sound as a standalone entity. We have been suffering a little bit this year because we've had extraordinary acquisition-related costs. But we see good growth prospects and solid profitability in line with the group targets of the 20% that we see for global technology specifically. I think it's perfectly realistic to believe.

speaker
Henrik Hindse
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Okay, thank you. That's all for me.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Henrik. And now over to Nordea and Anders Åkerblom.

speaker
Anders Åkerblom
Analyst, Nordea

Thank you, Sven. Good morning. So firstly, I was wondering a bit on display. We saw recently in Samsung's Q4 report that they were discussing the recent memory price surge is impacting display shipments. What's your view on this?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Our view is, I mean, the link between Photomask and price and so on display is quite far, I would say. So we haven't seen any change in the willingness to invest in Photomask. We still have the growth drivers on the display side, being the... the area driven by new applications mainly. We have also the layer and the complexity of the displays driven by new applications as well as new technology such as OLED and so on. So I think the price changes and the supply and demand of memory and other components is more short. has a more short-term impact on the end customer business, I would say. So from our side, we don't see any change, and we haven't seen any change in demand either.

speaker
Anders Åkerblom
Analyst, Nordea

Right. Thank you. I guess I was hinting a bit towards, in your customer discussions, Do you think that that might drive a mix accretion towards a higher proportion of OLED compared to LCD so that OEMs can maybe absorb that cost inflation to a greater extent?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

I think it's typical in the display industry that when demand is lower, they need to invest in technology to create demand and launch new features and so on. And I think that is still valid. But we also see quite a lot of new technologies. this mix of technologies where you have OLED, you have microLED, you have other types, you have the transparent displays, curved, foldable phones, all that requiring more advanced production methods of displays and in most cases more layers that needs photo masks to be produced.

speaker
Anders Åkerblom
Analyst, Nordea

Okay, thank you Anders. And just a final question. I sense your wording in terms of the semi-market outlook in PG is incrementally more positive compared to Q3. I mean, we've seen some developments during the quarter with TSMC and others raising targets, but kind of what underpins this more specifically?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

I think you can see in different reports also that the semiconductor industry is forecast to start to grow on a quite high level and very much driven to various types of AI. But also what we have seen in the past was China kind of standing out, driving a lot of demand. And now we see a lot of demand created in other places, more kind of more balanced markets. We can see that all those projects in the US are moving forward. We also see the European projects moving forward, also in Singapore, other places. India is gearing up and want to have their own capability, domestic for semiconductor and so on. So I think, yeah, all that together, I think, shows that the semiconductor market will be good. And at some point in time, that should be good for us as well.

speaker
Anders Åkerblom
Analyst, Nordea

Very, very helpful. Thank you, Anders. I'll leave it back to the others. Thank you.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Anders. And now we go from Stockholm to London and Oliver Wong at Bank of America.

speaker
Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Hey, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the question. First question is on the semi-mask riders. Just curious about what you guys are seeing in terms of demand from China, in terms of demand from... the non-Chinese companies that, you know, may or may not be replacing, either replacing their old machines or not doing anything or kind of, you know, upgrading with, you know, their existing machines from the incumbent supplier. Yeah, just kind of curious what you're seeing there relative to maybe this time last year.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Yeah. Yes, China has a difference. We saw at this time last year we had a very strong and also had before that quite big demand from China, from domestic mask manufacturers, which is less now. We still have demand from China, so I think it has more maybe normalized. It was maybe more than normal in the past time. But we do see at the same time a pickup from the other people. where everyone wants to position themselves very good. And China still should have a huge potential for mask writers because the domestic mask production in China compared to what is used, it's still quite low. If China would go for 100% in China for China production on mask, that will require a lot more machines than what the order they have. And that's maybe a theoretical thinking. But anyway, you can see that the potential is huge. is still there otherwise we see potential everyone wants to make more more capable masks and so on also in in more places so we have you could see all the new factories building up and the mask production facilities is most likely to happen in the neighborhood of those so So that compensates for the peak in China that we had, hopefully.

speaker
Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Got it. So it sounds like it's kind of more, you know, new fabs where they're kind of buying new equipment and they're going with you versus, you know, kind of existing fabs where they're replacing old machines.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

Yeah, I think that will be a mix because I think existing fabs will also be upgraded, both capacity and capabilities. So that's going on. And we've seen that.

speaker
Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Absolutely. Got it. Yeah, got it. And then in terms of margins for next year, I was wondering if you could just talk through kind of the big moving parts. Yeah, just to give us a sense of how to expect margins to trend next year.

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

And we typically don't really guide on margins. What we have issued is that we expect everything we own to be double-digit EBIT margin. This is based expectation on all divisions we have and all business lines that we have. And then as a group, we should be consistently above 20%, which we have been now for some time. And then on the pattern generators, I think you can make the estimates by looking at the backlog and the aftermarket. And then here we will continue to invest in R&D slightly above the level we have done this year. So I think that gives you a little bit of guidance on where we will end.

speaker
Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, got it. Thank you.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Oliver. And now we go back to Fredrik Littell at Handelsbanken to see if you have any further questions.

speaker
Fredrik Littell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Thank you very much. Pierre, in your prepared remarks, you talked about the aftermarket revenue and elaborated a little bit on that. You said you had... a few more upgrades in 2024, for example, than you did have towards the end of this year. Can you put some more color on this? Can you sort of give us a range of what value we talk about and how much it came down? Is it software? What's in that would be interesting?

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

It's software upgrades, and it can be laser upgrades as well in that. And as you see, we were a notch below the same quarter last year, so still had to – to explain why we for the first time in five years could not continue to grow really. It's not a game-changing amount that differs on this.

speaker
Fredrik Littell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Okay, that's perfect. Another question is, I mean, you have quite distinct FX headwinds right now and your position on the precision side being the only vendor. Do you update your price plans every year or do you intend to update your prices and compensate for FX?

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

Basically, the pricing for the precision is it's a dollar market. It's a dollar dollar baseline. Of course, when we deliver a new machine, new features that comes in at a different price. different level it's very hard to say okay now the dollar went down 20% we need to increase the price in dollars with 20% that we that would distort the competitive landscape among our customers given our strong position so okay thank you

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Fredrik. And now we go to SEB and Ina Jypsen to see if you have any further questions.

speaker
Ina Jypsund
Analyst, SEB

I have one kind of high-level question. So which division do you expect to contribute most to growth in 2026, and where do you see kind of tough comparison going into next year?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

I think in general, I think we are, you have seen the development in global technologies and I think you can see also the backlog and the order intake in relation to the sales. So it's quite natural to believe that this will continue to contribute. And as Pierre said, the margins are also good in this division now. So that will be a good contribution. I think we will still have headwind on the market for PCB assembly systems for a while. Even though the show in Munich last year had generated a lot of leads. There's also a lot of hope in the markets. I think this will still be a struggle a little bit for us. Do you want to comment more on that?

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

I think we do expect also high volume to perform very well. We see very high interest from various markets in the products, and we start to get some maturity also outside China in what we do. So, I think those two divisions are probably the main growth engines for this year.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

And on the PATI generators you can see you have the backlog described and that's going normally according to plan. We have had changes in deliveries but they have all been driven by customer demands. A little bit but no significant difference and nothing that is moving out of the year. And as Pierre said, this will be a year of investing really in the final part of this new product program that we're launching.

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

And there you see, we will start the year strong. You see the deliveries in the first half of the year. So it will be a strong start. And should there be some Semicon equipment coming in towards the back end, that will also be supportive to patent generators.

speaker
Ina Jypsund
Analyst, SEB

Super. Thank you for this.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Ina. And now we move over to ABG Sundar Collier. And Henrik, do you have any further questions, Henrik?

speaker
Henrik Hindse
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

I think all my questions have been answered. Thank you.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Great. So then we move over to Anders Rokeblom at Nordea to see if you have any further questions.

speaker
Anders Åkerblom
Analyst, Nordea

I always do. Just a final one on global technologies. I mean, we've adjusted for acquisition-related costs. You've performed in the two most recent quarters at a 30% margin level. And I know you don't like to guide on margins. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you're saying that all divisions you want to have above 20% margin. I don't think one should interpret that as you expecting margins to trend down in GT from the current level into next year, particularly with the creative contribution from Surfix. Is that a correct assessment?

speaker
Pierre Brusson
CFO

Yes, I think you can look at the past quarters and take out the acquisition-related costs and look into the future.

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

There was nothing in the last two quarters that contributed more positively than expected, so it kind of was normal, I would say.

speaker
Anders Åkerblom
Analyst, Nordea

Very good. That's what I wanted to hear. Thank you.

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Anders. And now back to London again and Oliver Wong, Bank of America. Do you have any further questions?

speaker
Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Yeah, maybe just a question on the new inspection tools. You shared a TAM projection that's helpful. Maybe, like, you know, roughly, if you could give us a sense of what kind of market share do you think would be, you know, a good sort of achievable target for next year and kind of, you know, the years to come?

speaker
Anders Lindqvist
CEO

I think it's maybe a little bit early to talk. We will... We'll come with much more detailed information closer to the launch. I think we have that planned for the second half of this year. We believe that this market looks very much similar to the SLX market for us. Size and price and so on. Market share. We do have very capable competitors here. And we do have some benefits. We don't really have a point of view that we

speaker
Sven Tjatkovic
Director of Investor Relations

can share right now on how much but of course we spend a lot of money in doing this so we expect a good return of course makes sense thank you thank you Oliver well with that we have reached the end of today's presentation of Micronics Q4 report thank you very much for watching

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