Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us today, online or live in person. So glad to see people again after so many months or years of being away from one another. Really appreciate you guys coming in today, and, more importantly, you taking the time in your precious schedule to come spend this morning with us. I know time is the main resource we all have. It's very precious, so it's not lost on me that you guys prioritized us this morning as opposed to many, many other great tasks you have ahead of you. Thank you so much. Before we get into the financial results and what we plan to do next, I'll introduce myself. Since this is the first time we met, I'm gonna take a minute to share with you about my background. I came straight from California.
I spent the last 25 years in Silicon Valley, mostly. Been to Taiwan back. Essentially, my career has three different vectors. One, I graduate as an engineer in telecom and migrate from pure technical dude, if you will, to strategy and business. I understand products really well, especially when it comes to telecom. Second, I have moved throughout the ecosystem of electronics. I start my career in the handset business, working for companies like Nokia, Philips, Siemens, building full product as engineer. Went into systems with Skyworks, Qualcomm, and others. Went into chip design, then went into foundry at GlobalFoundries, where I spent the last 3 years, and now I'm into material space. Why this is important, every time I went back into the electronics node, I understand what my customers wanted. This is really key.
It gives me a unique perspective of what is needed for each of these critical steps in the industry. The third vector is I have moved a lot. I've been in Europe, I've been in the U.S., I've been in Asia. I've worked a lot in China. I spent the last 10 years, a lot of my time in China. Every 2 weeks before COVID, I would fly to China for business. I have a very deep understanding of that space, as well as Singapore, Taiwan, and other places in Asia. This is what my background is. In the last 15 years, I've been at Intel, Qualcomm, and GlobalFoundries, just to give you a snapshot of where I came from. Why this is important? When I come to IQE, I looked at how IQE can serve these different key customer nodes in the industry.
All of them drive innovation. Innovation today is coming from the handset suppliers or the OEMs to the system integrators, to chip manufacturers, to foundries. I'll be able to interact with each of these nodes as I go through my journey at IQE. The industry needs supply chain diversification. As we all know, the recent geopolitical issues demonstrate how critical it is to be diversified. Third, supply chain security. We got to a point in this, in the industry where it's no longer how much you pay for your wafers. The question comes as if you even have wafers, right? And products. And then all the industry needs is scale. Us building scale at IQE will help serve every single node. I bring with me to IQE that global experience, global understanding of the industry as a whole.
Frankly, most of the customers we have or potential customers I've come across in one shape or another in my career. Okay? In a nutshell, that's who's speaking with you, a global industry player, and I plan to take all that learning and make put it to work into IQE. Before I speak further with you, I'm gonna hand the floor to Tim to talk to you about our financials for 2021. Thank you.
Thank you, Americo, and good morning to you all. I'll echo the sentiment. It's certainly great to have some of our analysts and stakeholders with us in person today, and welcome to you all online as well. It's great to be transmitting this live. Let's talk about our financial results for 2021. Here we have the financial highlights, and as you can see at the top line, our revenue decreased by 7% year-on-year at constant currency. The reported variance is about double that. About half of our adverse variance on the revenue line is due to foreign exchange. That's just a reporting issue. We hedge our foreign exchange to mitigate the impact of that on the bottom line. We do have that reported variance where, of course, we can't hedge.
On a constant currency, though, 7% down, against what was a record year in 2020. We saw a huge deployment of massive MIMO base stations in 2020, particularly in Asia, that didn't repeat itself in 2021. Lots going on within there, and I'll come back in a moment to break that revenue performance down. First, on the bottom line, in terms of profitability, our EBITDA, 12% EBITDA margin on a constant currency basis. We have a high operational gearing within our business. That means that as we get a slight revenue reduction, as we did in 2021, our margins will go down.
Conversely, as volumes rise, that means we can increase profitability pretty quickly too. Our bottom line on the EBIT level is affected by certain adjusting items, one-off exceptionals, and I'll come on to explain those in a bit as well. Operating cash flow, strong cash conversion, 96% conversion of adjusted EBITDA into adjusted operating cash flow. Here you can see the three-year view, and this really demonstrates that record revenue performance that we saw in 2020. Whilst things have come down this year, you can see the three-year trend is still heading in the right direction up towards the top right-hand corner, both for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. What's going on within that revenue number?
Well, you can see here as we break down the wireless business unit that there's some big shifts going on in the mix of business for that segment. Gallium nitride, which is the material that goes into the antenna elements for base stations and small cells, down 49% year-on-year. As I say, record performance there in 2020 with huge amounts of massive MIMO being deployed, particularly in Asia. We didn't see that in 2021. There was more of a pause in the global rollout for 5G infrastructure. We certainly expect that will still be a multi-year cycle to come as we head towards that true high capacity, low latency, high-speed network of the future. Multi-year wave to come, but a reduction in 2021.
The great news is that was largely offset by growth in the handset and router side of our business. Gallium arsenide, which is the material that goes into the power amplifier for your mobile phone, or your router, Wi-Fi 6 standards now using the same material that's in the mobile handset. That grew by 19% year on year. Net, the wireless business unit, about 6% down. In terms of Photonics, our other key business unit, we saw a 19% reduction in VCSEL revenues. These are our vertical cavity surface emitting lasers. That's the 3D sensing unit that goes in your smartphone for things like facial recognition and time of flight for the world-facing camera.
There we saw smaller chip sizes during the year, but importantly, we maintained a very strong market position and market share within that supply chain. In particular, we are involved in some key technological development programs with both chip companies and the end customer, which will further cement our place in that supply chain and provide lots of future opportunity. Infrared, so this is our aerospace and security sector. This was down 8% year-on-year. Disappointing performance in Q4 with the rephasing of some big security programs into 2022, but no loss of market share. We still estimate that we have over 80% of market share in that market.
Indium phosphide technologies, which are the fiber optic technologies, lasers for datacom and telecom, and other sensing technologies, this grew by 16% year-on-year. Here we see a good diversification of future revenue streams. Overall, Photonics down about 11% year-on-year. Our smallest business unit is our silicon epitaxy business unit, which we refer to as CMOS++. Relatively small compared to the other businesses, but an interesting story here with 37% year-on-year growth. That's adding scale to a part of our business which is strategically important because it relates to the integration of compound semiconductors on silicon. Let's turn to CapEx, cash flow, and net debt. Our property, plant, and equipment CapEx was GBP 15 million, in line with previously guided.
This predominantly relates to our capacity expansion in Taiwan for gallium arsenide wireless. I mentioned there was 19% growth in revenues year-over-year in our gallium arsenide business. There our tool utilization is very strong. As announced last year, we're investing in further tool capacity, leveraging the space that we invested in our infrastructure expansion during 2018 and 2019. In terms of capitalized technology development, we continue to invest in R&D. That's really important for us as a technology company at the leading edge of innovation. GBP 3 million of capitalized intangible costs. In terms of cash flow, as I mentioned, 96% conversion of adjusted EBITDA into adjusted operating cash flow, about GBP 18 million.
That results in a net debt of just under GBP 6 million at the 31st of December. Importantly, we renewed our credit facility with HSBC in December, so we've got a strong balance sheet with which to move forward and continue to invest in tool capacity where we see the growth opportunities and we need extra capacity. I mentioned that the bottom line in terms of EBIT, we do have a bit of a loss there due to some exceptional items. This slide really explains the bridge of how we get there. You can see on the left-hand side the impact of foreign exchange on EBITDA. The adjusted EBITDA as reported at GBP 19 million. If we take depreciation and amortization off of that's about GBP 25 million for the year. Obviously, that's a non-cash item.
We've got about GBP 7 million of intangible impairments, and these relate to two technologies, the first being cREO and the second being quasi-photonic crystals. These are both very advanced technologies while still have future benefits. We have chosen in the short term to discontinue or to pause our investment in these technologies, and therefore, from an accounting perspective, are impaired within the 2021 results. When Americo comes on to talk about our strategy, what you'll see is that we are becoming much more markets-focused rather than a company that pushes technology to the market. This is a consequence then of becoming more focused as to where we invest our money to ensure we get the biggest bang for buck in terms of investment that leads to growth.
We've got restructuring costs, which obviously are a cash exceptional item, and these relate to our previously announced closures of both the Pennsylvania site in the U.S. and our Singapore site. Singapore will be closing by the middle of this year, 2022, and Pennsylvania will close by 2024. That's all part of our site optimization program, really designed to achieve an optimized global footprint. Another strategic theme Americo will talk about is the strength we have in operating in all three major continents, U.S., Europe, and Asia. Within there, optimizing that site footprint to make sure that we get the best operating leverage and production flexibility to get the profitability of the group up over time is really important to us. Typical share-based payment charge that you normally see in our accounts, and some taxation.
The large tax charge you'll see here of GBP 7 million-GBP 8 million, that relates to a real shift in where we anticipate to see our profits being generated in the future. As part of that global footprint, what we see is that we're seeing a real diversification in customers and revenue stream across the world, and also really intent to develop technologies globally as well as a U.K. headquartered company that operates in all three of those continents. That means that we tend to see over time that we'll be earning less profits in the U.S. where we had a large deferred tax asset. In accordance with accounting rules there, we've written that down due to lower probability of recovery. As well as the numbers, we've made strong strategic progress during 2021.
As I say, we continue to invest in the future of compound semiconductors, GBP 3 million invested in the year in intangible development. These things here are really very customer-focused with a strong markets pull as opposed to being technology push. The 200mm wafer development really key to shifting the economics of the industry. A huge gain in terms of economics for our customers as you move up through the wafer size. Many of you will know that we were the first to move VCSELs, for example, from 4-inch to 6-inch wafer. This move to an 8-inch wafer, really key to the industry.
Things like 5G small cells, where we announced last year a really strategic collaboration agreement with joint investment from a foundry partner, really forming the basis of the kind of deals that we want to do in the future. Scaling up the business for growth. I mentioned that Taiwan tool expansion. We're also developing our systems and processes to get greater consistency across the group. The aim is to increase our margins over time, and this includes all of the business growth, making the business more efficient and productive, but also those site closures with the associated restructuring costs that I referred to. That's 2021, and that leads me really to talk about the year ahead in financial terms before Americo comes back to talk about our strategy.
This year really is a year in which we will focus on building the platform for growth. It's great to have Americo in the business now with his huge experience from the global industry as he's just described. There are some changes that we'll be making to the business in terms of really building that commercial engine, and we'll be making that progress during the year, engaging with customers on a very strategic level to build longer-term collaborations. But during the year, we do see that there are some headwinds to navigate. I think all of us will see that the semiconductor industry has had its challenges with supply chain constraints. From a geopolitical perspective, of course, there are some challenges and risks in the external environment. That means that we're cautious about how we see the year.
We think we can continue to grow, but at a low level. We're calling low single-digit growth at constant currency, probably weighted towards H2. That's really because we see things being relatively solid, but not necessarily growing at pace during this year, ahead of much more growth in the future that we'll execute along with our strategy. This will give us an adjusted EBITDA margin similar to 2021 at constant currency. We'll continue to invest about GBP 10 million-GBP 15 million of property, plant, and equipment CapEx we anticipate, and that will be very much linear to the revenue opportunity that we see.
I often say, having completed the infrastructure expansion of the group, which has given us such a significant asset base in 2018, 2019, our go-forward property, plant, and equipment CapEx is much more about tools which are related in a linear fashion to the revenue opportunity that we see. In terms of CapEx, we'll continue to invest there as well. Between that and our IT transformation program, around GBP 6-8 million we'll invest during the year. That's it for our 2021 financial results, and it's my great pleasure to hand back to Americo to talk about our go-forward strategy. Thank you.
Thank you. My first day was January 10, 2022. I've been on the job about two and a half months, close to three. I'm still ramping up, so to speak. I spend a lot of time visiting customers, our teams, understanding what we do well, what we should change, et cetera. Before I get into that, it's important to understand the environment that we operate in. Any company in the tech sector, or I would even say any company that had a strategy, any global company that had a strategy three years ago or four years ago, had to throw that out the window. Do we agree? We have to restart. That's what we are going to do. Okay? Why? Because the world has changed, the industry has changed. Not in a tactical way, in a strategic way. Fundamental shift in the industry.
I'm gonna try to cover a few. There is a new geopolitical paradigm. We have created an industry that is based on global market, where people, goods, technology were moving freely, right? In 2019, we start decoupling, or even slightly before, we start decoupling very, very fast what we spent 50 years to build, so to speak. We need to copy that. I think we can all agree it's not gonna go back to where it was, where we operate in an open and global world. We need to put that into our strategy as we move forward. We are seeing a decoupling of the ecosystem between China and the West and maybe even more. We'll see how that plays out. That's a paradigm shift. The second one is the acceleration of the digital world.
It took maybe 2 years, maybe 1 year, what would have taken 10 years to happen in our industry. Therefore, the supply chain shortage and the amount of challenges that we face in the industry. That digitalization will continue to accelerate from my perspective. Every business, every company has to embrace the digital world, and that creates tremendous amount of opportunities for us as well as some challenges we need to cope with. The third shift in the new world is the definition of what we call innovation in the industry. For very long, innovation in semi was Moore's law. Moore's law is still needed for some of the compute, high-performance compute device. Some part of the high-performance compute we still need to move to advanced FinFET. Agree. By and large, the market needs something else. That something else include compound semiconductor industry.
The last new normal is the acceleration of mega trends. We were used to maybe one 4G to 5G, right? That was a big change. Now we have multiple mega trends that create tremendous opportunities for our industry. I'm gonna dive into that. The first one is the intelligent connected devices. There are many statistics out there calling for billions of connected devices, 100% connected to the clouds, generating data that is being processed on the data centers. That is a fundamental shift, and that is a great opportunity for IQE and for our technologies. The second one is the transportation industry. We talk about autonomous driving, electric vehicle, but it's much more than that. Every object on the road will be connected to one another, will be sensing, will be transmitting data.
That is a tremendous shift, and that also represent great opportunity for our technology moving forward. That is a global shift around the world as well. The third one is the AI on the edge. The devices we put on the edge will require a lot more capabilities and intelligence to process data. I've seen statistics saying 60%+ of the data will be processed at the edge. That require our technology, as Tim was saying earlier, to connect, to sense, and to display to some extent. That's what IQE does. Lastly, the metaverse. It is happening. A lot of investment going into that mega trend, and we are extremely well-positioned to capture the demand there, again, through display technologies, sensing technologies, connectivity technologies. Those mega trends will fuel tremendous business opportunity for us as long as we get ourself organized right.
Now, one of the changes we're gonna make in the company, as Tim says, is in addition to our technology strengths, we are going to bring a market approach to how we do business. We are going to be a lot more market-oriented, a lot more product-oriented on how we structure our business models moving forward. We have identified a few market segments. As you know with IQE, we power, we sense, we connect, and we display. Those are the core platforms we do, right? The smart consumer device market will require our technology, and we're gonna put a lot of focus into that market. Why? It's a growing market. The content is growing as well as the innovation in this market. The second market we are focusing on is communication and infrastructure. Wireless and wired infrastructure. We talked about 5G.
There is a pause, but we expect that deployment to continue. The data center architecture is evolving. The silicon photonics technologies will play a very, very big role into the new data center architecture. Our photonics products will be a key vector here for growth for us. I talked about transportation. Autonomous driving, electric vehicle represent a growth market. The content in cars is growing at a very, very fast pace. The sensing capabilities in vehicles is growing. The power electronics in vehicle is growing. Those are markets we're gonna go work into and grow our business. We're gonna do this through three different vectors. One, we'll take our existing products and platforms and expand into new markets and new customers. We are a global company. Markets are worldwide, so we will put strategies to go into Asia market, China market, U.S. market, and EU market, okay?
The market-oriented business. We'll also engage with new customers. We have a very solid customer base today, but my role is to expand that, to build a more resilient customer base for our industry, so that we can manage any cycle that may come ahead of us. Expand our roadmap into new market and new customers. That's very, very important. We will also develop new technologies and materials. Tim talked about scaling in geometry. This is fundamental. With 200mm, we have access to a whole new set of capacity out there and partners that can help us scale our business. The mega trend I just talked about before will also require new technology that we are investing in. What we do there is we build partnership with key market makers and tailor our roadmap to their product line.
That's the fastest way we have to get to market, okay? We do co-investment in R&D, and we do co-investment in capacity scaling as well. Last is on commercials. As we build those partnership with new customers, we will establish long-term relationship and long-term agreement that would build a solid revenue pipeline for the company while leveraging our investment and their capabilities to invest with us. We will make sure that we don't invest ahead of business, okay? We wanna make sure we secure the business, and then we invest to deliver the product for our customers as we move forward. Three vectors, existing roadmap, which is very, very competitive into new markets, new customers. Next wave of innovation, tailored to customer demand and market needs and mega trends that provide volume and growth.
Then new commercial terms that create more business certainties while we capture more value for what we do, okay? Now, we are part of an ecosystem, as we said, and it's very, very important for us to understand what role we play. I wanna pass that message into you because I'm not sure IQE has done a has conveyed a clear message on how it's positioned. Here's the way I see it. The entire economy is supported by the electronics industry. We agree? We are in a digital world, right? Those are the OEMs, the device manufacturer. I'm talking about hardware, okay? I know there's a whole services industry, but let me focus on hardware because that's what we do. They are supported by a set of device manufacturers, right? Chipset manufacturers.
Imagine you have a set of products that require a set of semiconductor to be able to support these products. There are many device manufacturers to support the economy, right? There are many OEMs to support the economy. There are fewer foundries, especially in the compound space, okay? Some are vertically integrated, some are not. When you look at the bottom of that pyramid, when you look for a global supplier of epitaxy in compound, there's only one. It's IQE. That is extremely important to understand, okay? As we go down the value chain, you get to a very, very select number of companies who know how to do that stuff, right? If I apply the same paradigm to the semiconductor world where I came from, and you look at how many companies can do 5 nanometer FinFET, you know the number. 2.
In the compound epitaxy business, we are the only global player. Okay? That has a strategic value, and our customers are beginning to understand that. Looking forward, in my first few months, I work with the team to put some strategic priorities that would guide our activities moving forward. What we do is highly complex, highly important to our customers. Therefore, in everything we do, our customers are at the center. From our roadmap definition to our scaling programs, to our business model, we put our customers in the middle of everything we do. They are at the center. As I said, in addition to our technology strength, we're gonna build a market-based business, a product-based business. We need to understand our customers as well as they understand themselves.
We need to align with our customers to make sure that we tailor our investment to what matters to them, so we get to market as quickly as possible. We need to maintain our technology leadership. We are a technology company, and the industry rewards innovation, not status quo. Okay? We have to continue, and we will continue to invest in our technological leadership, tailored towards our customers and the markets we go after. If we do all that, we're gonna put some long-term agreements in place with our key customers to make sure that we build business predictability, visibility, and capture value for what we are doing. Okay? Lastly, we touched on it earlier with Tim about our sites. We will continue to rationalize our footprint while building scale. Every fab we have today can grow in scale.
Being in the U.S., in Taiwan, in the U.S., we can grow in scale in our existing infrastructure. This is key because as the demand increases, our customers wanna make sure we have the potential to build at scale for them, right? The global footprint provide us the opportunity to stay very close to customers and to markets and serve them locally, being in Asia, in Europe, or in the United States. Okay? What are we doing for the short term? You may say all that is good, but what else, right? 2022, in my view, coming in new, is the year of transformation. I need to get my hands around the company, the business, the customers. What we do well, what we should change, what we should start doing. First action we need to do is to upgrade our commercial engine.
IQE has to become a lot more business-oriented in addition to being a technology company. Okay. It means bringing the right talent globally, not just in one geography, building the right business processes and the right customer engagement model. Talking about customers, we need to continue to improve our business model, as I said a few times, to long-term strategic partnership. That is the goal of 2022. Okay. We're gonna build the commercial engine that will allow us to capture the demand and the value for what we do. Once we do that, we will build a pillar for growth in 2023 and beyond. It's very, very important. 2022, we transform the business. We build the foundation for growth in 2022. Okay. In conclusion, I see the shift in the industry, the mega trends, being an incredible opportunity for the company.
Never before the industry has been so exciting, to be honest. I've been in there long enough. I have seen many cycles. I have seen many challenges. Today's industry, there's no better place to be than in the manufacturing services of semiconductor. I think where I came from was the silicon space. We did really well when you look at the numbers of my previous company. Today, we can do the same here. It is a tremendous opportunity ahead and the right timing for us. Our technology roadmap is what matters, and I believe we have the best in the industry. We will continue to invest and to capitalize on our technology roadmap to drive value. Value may mean different things for different customers. Could be specific technology, could be our strategic positioning, could be our scale.
Any of those represent a value proposition for different type of customers we can engage with. The mega trends I described before require our technology. Every object out there will be connected, will be intelligent. They need connectivity to our power amplifier technology. They need sensing. They need power. They need display. We have all that. We will focus on key markets, as I said, to create the momentum we need for long-term revenue streams and more predictability in the business. Okay? Our three key conclusions. We're gonna expand our market, and one example would be to take our GaN technology that we are very, very good at into. From RF, take it into power electronics and into MicroLED display, right? That's really how we're gonna go do it. Take our technology upstream in geometry to 200mm. We're gonna diversify our customer base.
Good enough. I know many of them throughout my career, so we need to go do the work of establishing the relationships at the right level. As you know, if the supply chain change, we need to redefine the way we work with our customers in the ecosystem. We need to continue to create value for our shareholders. Thank you so much for taking the time. Now the floor is yours.
Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a few, if you don't mind, mostly for Tim and one for Americo. Just on margins, and I know we talked offline on this. You've obviously got relatively low gross margin, but you clearly guided in the past for a very strong, much stronger variable margin. Could you just give us a bit of feel for that, sort of in public of where that is? 'Cause it's quite a big delta, I believe. You know, ultimately, I'm trying to get what the percentage of COGS is fixed, but I know you're not going to give me that number, but that's what I'm trying for. Also, sort of related question really is when you look at your new manufacturing footprint, where would you say utilization is?
Obviously that's another way of asking the same question. Another point related to that, what do you think your market share is? I mean, if you could just deal with the margin questions.
Yeah.
I can plug in my model.
No question. If we start with the margin question, first of all, yeah, our gross margins are low versus our peer group. If you compare it, say, to our customer group or perhaps to single site competitors. That's really because of our broad operational footprint, which comes with a high fixed cost base. Now, that footprint does give us huge strategic advantage versus the competition. We have a much broader portfolio of platforms, of technologies, and that very strong geographical differentiator that Americo talked about, particularly in this geopolitical situation. We do need to reduce the cost base, and that's why we're rationalizing that. We will continue to operate in three continents because we see a huge advantage in doing that. We will rationalize down to optimized strategic locations.
Now, within any site, you've then got quite a high proportion of fixed cost that goes into that COGS number. That includes our depreciation and amortization, for example, all of the manufacturing labor, that goes along with our manufacturing processes. That means you're spreading that fixed cost base across the wafer volume. When wafer volumes are relatively low, that means you've got a low gross profit. We're a highly operationally geared business, and that means that as the wafer volumes increase, the cost base doesn't increase proportionately because of those fixed costs. That means that what we call our contribution margin, drops down pretty much to the bottom line. Now, we don't disclose our contribution margins to the outside world for obvious commercial reasons. What I always say is that those contribution margins are very high.
As you can see, with a very high percentage drop through, the more volumes increase, the higher profitability, and by optimizing that site footprint and lowering costs, we will aim to get to industry standard margins. You asked about utilization as well. It is another way of asking the same question, and it varies around our site footprint. For example, in Taiwan, where we have very high levels of utilization, which is really a result of that strong growth in the gallium arsenide side of our wireless business. Those wafers going into the 5G handsets and Wi-Fi 6, there we're investing in further tool capacity because we have that high utilization. We have some strategic capacity. If you take Newport, for example, where we've built our mega foundry, you know, there we have 10 tools.
We're typically producing on about 5 or 6 of those in mass production, and we've got the infrastructure to go to up to 100 tools within there. You can really see the economies of scale that we could generate there. Elsewhere in the group, we've got lower levels of utilization, particularly within our MBE tools. Those familiar with the business might know that we've got two types of tool, MOCVD and MBE. I won't go too much into the science, but they're essentially two different ways of producing epitaxy. The MBE tools are more underutilized, and that's where if we are successful in developing more technologies such as long wavelength VCSEL or healthcare sensing that utilize those MBE technologies, then there would be a strong return on capital employed. There's this mix of utilization across the group.
Again, we don't disclose percentages for obvious commercial reasons, but it does help to explain again why our margins look low but have the capacity to expand beyond them.
Do you have a feel for market share that you can share with us? I know it's going to be different in different areas, but.
Yeah. Not a precise science. Certainly in terms of the you know the aerospace and security markets I referenced earlier on, we believe we have you know over 80% market share there, very strong market share. In VCSELs for 3D sensing, you know, we believe we have at least over half the market, possibly considerably more than that. We have a strong market share in wireless. Harder to estimate, but again, kind of probably near to 50% share, we believe, in the gallium arsenide side. When we were experiencing strong growth in gallium nitride, we think that was significantly more than 50% share. You can see we're the major player in the key markets in which we operate.
Just a final question for you before a more big picture one. I'll ask a stupid question early on. Is all the backlog and bookings a sensible sort of visibility metric for you? I noticed we don't talk about it in the presentation. Is that something we should maybe disclose, or is it not a good guide?
It's not been such a good guide for us in the past. We have relatively low visibility at our place in the supply chain. As Americo talked about, longer term strategic collaborations with greater commitment will increase our level of visibility. Possibly in the future, it could be a metric that we start to talk more about.
Just final question for Americo. If you look at the business, clearly buy into the uniqueness of it, and II-VI is quite acquisitive business, and I think Broadcom bought a small Edinburgh-based semiconductor, Perios, in the last few days. I mean, why do you think IQE hasn't been bought by someone else?
I don't know. Simple answer is, I don't know. I'm not. To be honest, I'm not focused on that. I joined because I see the value, I know the industry really well, and I know what we can do as a company. That's really my focus, is how to grow the business and to go back to the point, as we grow the scale, in scale, and we capture more value, you're gonna see improvement on the business performance.
Thank you. Andrew Gardiner from Citi. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
I wanted to come to the upside-down pyramid you showed us in terms of sort of where the customers sit. I know it's early, but do you feel that there's a real willingness to engage from you guys at the sort of where you are at the bottom of that pyramid in the food chain to the very top? I know in certain cases, IQE has had those kind of relationships with key customers, particularly on the VCSEL side, but perhaps more broadly across the business, do you know, is there that willingness to engage sort of through the supply chain, not just from you to your sort of direct customer?
Yeah, that's right. I think when I talk to these customers, being from the device to chipset to platforms, they all wanna engage with us for two reasons. One, to drive innovation. They all compete fiercely in terms of innovation, and they wanna make sure we build custom products for them. Innovation could mean different things, right? A platform may wanna integrate devices, and we can provide that. Some wanna have specific unique technology. Yes, they all wanna engage with us for innovation and to understand and manage supply chain security. It's no longer enough for the industry to rely on the next level to make sure they have those two things done.
I suppose, related to that, you know, your point that you're going to try and get customers to co-invest, be it in R&D or manufacturing. I suppose historically, the industry has had a, almost an approach of, "Well, you have to show me that you've got the capacity before I'll commit to the business." Right? "You need to be able to support 200 million smartphones a year before I'll even think about giving you a contract." Again, is that, you know, do you really sense that that's something that's changed given the current environment?
Oh, that changed completely. That was the world three years ago, four years ago. Today it's completely changed. I don't see many of the foundries or capital-intensive business, right? I came from Silicon Foundry. Foundry don't invest waiting for demand to come. We invest when there is demand guaranteed, and that's the business model moving forward. Absolutely true.
Do you think that's something you're going to be able to communicate to us, say, sort of later this year as the strategy comes together?
Yes. Still ramping up, and the goal I have with the team is to have a full-fledged strategy toward the second half of the year, share with you guys.
Sorry.
Thank you. Good morning. John Karidis from Numis. I just wondered, Americo, whether you can give us a little bit more information to understand practically what it means for you to go out and build a commercial machine. What are you missing? What are you looking for? How long do you think it will take you to put the pieces together? And then for Tim, I guess related to this is, are we likely to see the bump in SG&A costs before we see the revenue coming through as a consequence of this? And what sort of bump are we looking at, please?
The commercial engine is really the front end of the business. So far, we have been tailored to serve a certain market, and we have done that. As I open up the company to the global world, we need to upgrade that engine, so to speak. We need to have top-notch talent in Asia. We need to add talent in the United States and here in Europe. We need to bring people who come from the industry, who come from our customers, right? Who understand the model like myself. That's one piece of it. We also need to upgrade our processes on how we deal with long-term partnership, what this entails, okay? Those are the two things really I'm planning to do very quickly. How much time? I don't have much time. That's my priority.
I'm sorry, so practically, does that mean two people, 20 people? What does that mean?
I'm still working through that number.
Thank you.
Yeah. The right number.
Okay. Presumably, given that Americo's working through that number, you don't know what the bump's gonna be.
Sure. There'll be an increase in SG&A. That's contained within our guidance at the moment that we think we can hold our margins in line at a similar level of revenue. As well as investing in key talent as Americo and I will do, we're also very focused on optimizing the business that we have. It's not just about the incremental cost you need, it's what you have and how you get that really productive and efficient as well. Key to that is our systems transformation as well, which I referenced in the presentation earlier. As we scale the company, what nobody wants to be doing is just adding more and more people.
We're a low people-intensive business in general, but to scale that efficiently, we need really consistently scalable systems and processes, which also offer a competitive advantage in terms of the service we're able to provide to our customers as well. We're aiming, John, to keep this as efficient as we can, some increase, but you can expect that that's all part of our overall plan to get high efficiency and high profitability.
Thank you. Hi. Tammy Qiu from Berenberg. I just had a question, Americo. I think IQE for quite some time hasn't really added material new customers in a while, and it's good to hear you talk about diversifying the customer base. Does that mean winning customers away from other outsourced epi providers, or is there an opportunity to convince existing potential customers to actually outsource what is now insourced?
Both. We have to win new customers, as I said, on our existing product platform. That's one fast way to grow our business. It is also, you know, there is a certain amount of epi business today that's captive. Yeah, we'll go after that as well.
I think you kind of touched on this a few times now of answering various different questions. I mean, you talked about the right customer engagement model. I know probably we have to wait for the second half for you to kind of articulate on that. Are there any obvious things that you can point to right now where IQE could do better, if you will?
No, I'm, you know, I'm heavily engaged on that side, as you can imagine, right? For now, we need to protect the customer base we have, execute really well as we build the next set of critical engagement.
Yeah.
I will update you as soon as I have those things.
And lastly, I think, there was mention of MicroLEDs, and I guess there is also the fiber side that hasn't quite fired off for a while. Either Tim or Americo, I mean, have you seen any green shoots around the MicroLED side or the fiber side in the most recent set of results or in recent months?
Start with that. Yeah, I think certainly in Q4 last year, we saw some green shoots in indium phosphide. You know, we took a bit of a fall, as you remember, in 2019, with the loss of a significant customer, and we're starting to see that coming back at the end of last year. We're also engaged in some key development programs. It's a great example of how IQE does work up and down that supply chain with the ecosystem. You know, that's a really exciting new technology underpinning the metaverse trend that Americo talked about. Some very big players are looking at how they build a position within this market, and we're in funded development programs to start looking at those.
Not hugely material in those numbers, but green shoots nonetheless, I think to point to the future.
Just to be clear, did you say funded development just now?
Yeah.
Sorry, it's me again, Harvey at Panmure. Just a question on the innovation side and sort of cross-referencing with comments from people at Alphawave and others. If you look at some Moore's Law, and obviously there's been a long-term push on SoC, but it's becoming increasingly difficult. Does that, in many senses, create a real opportunity for you? You know, because these guys have all been trying to put more and more on one piece, but now obviously they're breaking it up into smaller pieces but connected. Is there a connectivity opportunity there, or is that a real sort of potential gap for you to explore?
Yeah, I think. Well, some part of a chip, as you said, would move to the next FinFET. Even on the silicon world, there's a concept of chiplet that kind of break the architecture, and you only migrate to core CPUs and pay to stay at the latest node for efficiency and cost. At the system level, though, there's a lot of opportunities for us because companies who understand systems are able to re-architect their product so that some of it no longer require to advance on FinFET. Some of it don't even require silicon, can be done in compound or like in power electronics, right? That whole wave of innovation would create opportunities for us. That's right.
I mean, is chiplets an opportunity for you as a connectivity node?
Could be. Very good. Thank you so much again for taking your time this morning. Folks online, thank you for watching and great conversation. I really appreciate. Nice to meet everybody, and let's continue the conversation. See you in the second half.
Thank you.