Good evening and thank you for joining us. I'm with Stefano Beretta, our CFO, presenting the 1st quarter of 2026 results and the guidance for the second quarter of this year. As usual, Q&A session will follow at the end of the presentation. We are all extremely proud of results gain in this quarter. The highest ever in terms of revenues, both revenues and margins, stood at the high end of our guidance thanks to the production capacity optimization processes implemented since the end of 2025, and very good execution in the AI segment. The growth trend of the artificial intelligence is confirmed to be extremely strong. Revenues grew by a significant double-digit % year-over-year as adoption of AI across cloud, enterprise, sovereign, and supercomputing customers.
We are seeing strong momentum as customers move from pilot to large scale production deployments, particularly in inference. Data centers, GPUs are the main drivers for Technoprobe in terms of AI revenues. More consumer exposed market showed an highly heterogeneous performance while the traditional consumer segment remains under pressure. Premium segments are providing more resilient even if a true recovery in the mainstream consumer market is not expected before 2027. Automotive and industrials Q1 2026 was generally better than expected. The sector has entered in a phase of a gradual recovery although not yet the one of a full acceleration. Nearly all major players issued Q2 guidance better than previous estimates indicating that the trough of the cycle may have been passed. To date, the progress of production efficiency initiative is significantly ahead of expectations set at the beginning of the year.
The increase in production capacity together with the continued expansion volumes mainly driven by artificial intelligence leads us to upward our expectations for the rest of the year both in terms of revenues and margins. We will come back to this in a few slides ahead. Let me turn to Stefano Beretta who will give you more colors on our first figures.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. As you may have read in our press release, quarterly revenues were EUR 187 million at the high end of our out-outlook range, registering another all-time record for Technoprobe with an increase of 19% compared to the same quarter of prior year with a remarkable sequential increase of 15.6% compared to prior record revenue of Q4 2025. Gross profit increased 28.7% compared to the same period of 2025 for an amount of EUR 91.1 million and representing a 48.7% margin just over the high end of our guidance.
Consistently, the EBITDA increased 44.2% compared to the first quarter of 2025 up to EUR 69.2 million representing a 37% margin slightly below the high range guided during our prior call. On this page, you can see a summary comparison between the financials at the end of first quarter 2025 and 2026. Just to comment that further, revenue year-on-year increase of 19% was entirely driven by an organic growth of EUR 30 million, largely sustained by artificial intelligence volumes as well as a soft recovery of the consumer segment together with a slight recovery in automotive and industrial. The mentioned growth has been partially offset by the FX headwind.
In fact, the revenues expressed at the constant currency using the same average rate of Q1 2025 would have been approximately EUR 20 million higher than reported revenue, meaning an unfavorable impact close to 11% by using the three months average rate, 1.17 versus 1.052 for the same period of 2025. On a gross profit level, the increase in the margin of 370 basis points, as already mentioned in our prior press releases, confirms once again the recovery efficiency in our production processes together with the operating leverage that our business model allows us when certain volumes are achieved. All of these impacts have been partially compensated by the increase of depreciation following the investment in fixed assets made during the latest months to expand our capacity and increase the automation.
Gross profit at constant currency would have been approximately EUR 16 million higher by using the Q1 2025 average rate, so bringing the margin well above 51%. Consistently, the EBITDA reflected the same trend, showing an increase in the margin of 650 basis points from 30.5% to 37%, also favored by the stability of SG&A structure and R&D expenses, and even including a negative Forex impact for approximately EUR 15 million, which would have brought the margin above 40% threshold. Finally, net financial position is down for approximately EUR 24 million compared to the end of December 2025, with the variance mainly attributable to EUR 2 million generated through the operating activities. EUR 8 million theoretically generated by the unrealized FX impact on foreign currency bank accounts.
Both of them are more than offset by EUR 34 million absorbed by the investment of the period. The exceptional nature of the current semiconductor expansion cycle is making manufacturing capacity availability an increasingly critical factor in addressing market demand. When presenting our first nine months, 2025 results at the end of last year, we highlighted the need to accelerate a portion of the investment originally planned for 2026 in order to support the strong increase in demand expected across the semiconductor industry, particularly in application related to artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop, we launched a broad production capacity optimization and expansion program that is continuing throughout 2026 and involves our manufacturing footprint globally. The initiatives includes improvement across all stages of the production process, expansion of the machinery fleet, within existing facility, and the progressive strengthening of the workforce.
Importantly, these manufacturing efficiency initiatives are progressing both faster and more effectively than initially anticipated. The increase in production capacity, combined with the stronger than expected volume growth driven by AI-related demand, leads us to expect a second quarter with a strong sequential growth in both revenues and profitability, supported by a meaningful operating leverage effect. As shown in this chart, our investment mix is also evolving significantly. Compared to 2025, approximately 80% of the total investment are now concentrated in Italy, where the construction of the new greenfield manufacturing facility has already begun and planned to be concluded by the end of Q1 2027. This investment plan will further strengthen our manufacturing capabilities and allows the group to support the next phase of structural growth in the semiconductor testing driven by AI, advanced packaging and high-performance computing application.
Here you can see the main expansion project of our Cernusco Lombardone manufacturing hub. On the left-hand side, the chart highlights the current industrial site in blue, together with the area dedicated to the new development in red. On the right-hand side, you can see a rendering of the future facility. This project will add more than 4,000 sq m of additional manufacturing space, which is expected to become available, as is already said, in Q1 2027. Beyond this increase in physical capacity, the new facility will allow us also to further improve operational efficiency, optimizing production flows, and strengthen our ability to scale manufacturing in line with future market requirements. That said, second quarter of the year is expected to show another sequential record revenue, together with a robust growth in gross margin and EBITDA.
Revenue to be about EUR 266 million ± 3%. Gross margin in the range of 55% ±2 00 basis points. EBITDA margin in the range of 45% ± 200 basis points. Considering that we are essentially halfway through the year and based on the volume and capacity information currently available to us to date, we can proudly confirm that the previously shared revenue and EBITDA margin levels targeted for 2027 will not only be brought forward to 2026, but will also be revised upwards already in the current financial year. We target more or less a consolidated revenue in the region of EUR 950 million-EUR 1.05 billion. EBITDA margin in a range between 44% and 46%.
This is a result for which we are really proud. Thanks everyone for your attention. Now we can move to the Q&A session.
Thank you to the speakers today. We now have an opportunity for questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand function on your screen, or for those dialing in, it's star nine on your keypad. Once your name is announced, please unmute your line, state your company name before asking your question. Thank you. The first question today comes from Alberto Gegra. Please, the floor is to you
Good afternoon. I hope you can hear me.
Yes, very well.
My first question is on the GPU. If I'm not wrong, you mentioned that this is the main driver of this impressive growth. Which is the assumption in terms of market share in 2026 and 2027, also considering that your U.S. competitor is expecting some sales in the second half? Second question, if you can provide us an update with the opportunities in the new market. Specifically ASIC, HBM, silicon photonics. If you can tell us which kind of timing and market opportunity are you seeing compared to a couple of months ago? Then one last, if you can comment on the ongoing litigation with MPI in the U.S. and in Taiwan. Thank you.
[Non-English content], Alberto. Let me take the first point about GPU market share. We are currently still leading the entire market share for the best customers on the market. What we expect for the next months, there is not a loss of this market share. As we mentioned many times, this is something that sooner or later should change. This is also a matter of strategy, risk management strategy from our customers. You know, they love to be double supplied, and it's a matter of risk managing the tone. In that case, we will not scared because we have other source of revenues, and we can enter also to other markets.
For the moment, we don't see particular troubles on GPU market share. About ASICs, HBM and silicon photonics.
Yeah
introduce Stefano.
Maybe also comment on the market share. Of course, our numbers, I think are self-explain, explaining what is happening because it's really delivering a record for Q1 and incredible Q2 and strong projection for the year. I think, and you can tell what type of also the market share we have and what type of leadership we have in this market. Coming for new opportunities for CPO or silicon photonics, I can tell you that it's still for us. Of course, we see this, let's say this field of application coming alive in this year. In the past year was just considered engineering basically, but not really in production.
Now the speed required connect the chips is such that the silicon photonics is coming alive. Now the problem is how to make this test in volumes, because so far the solutions to test this type of chips in the market are mainly engineering solutions where you test one by one. It's very time-consuming with special equipment, not standard equipment. Our effort here for this year is to provide solution and architecture, a new architecture of the probe card for the CPO that can allow to use standard equipment. Okay. This is what we are doing. We have a very promising technology that we are developing.
We already deliver some of this to a few customers for qualifications, and we are planning to complete some of this qualification by this year. This is the status of the CPO. HBM is, I think we confirm what this will also be projected for for this year. It's a small, let's say business is about, will be about $10 million.
USD
USD . Also in this case, we are, as we also mentioned a few times already, We are approaching this market with a completely different technology. The technology that is leveraging the SoC and the logic technologies. With these technologies, with our technology that we use for logic, of course, is we see that will be much more powerful for, also for HBM, but still not a necessary for HBM4. Probably will be, is a necessity for the next generation.
The good thing is that we are already working to qualify this, our architecture for already for HBM4, and there is a good possibility that the business will increase once will be this, the new architecture will be adopted for the new generation.
Let me take the other, the other point about what you asked. Technoprobe consistently takes intellectual property enforcement actions against both companies and individuals, as recently occurred. Making or receiving legal claims is a normal part of any business, and those are disclosed only if relevant information are available and price sensitive. In this specific case you mentioned, we read the newspaper as you, as you do, but there are currently no notification at all from any U.S. authority, we are currently unable to comment on either the merits or the substance of the claim.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Okay.
Congratulations for the result.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alberto. The next question comes from Giovanni Selvetti. Please, go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Hope you can hear me well. First of all, congratulations for the amazing results. One question was partly answered already, meaning that I was kind of asking how much of memory was included in this upgrade in the guidance. You said you still expect EUR 10 million. I assume it's still related to the previous business. I was wondering because the last update was, let's just say, slightly more than a month ago. It was still pointing to, let's just say, an increase in revenues about 15%. With the new guidance, we are talking about more of an increase in revenues about 60%.
I was wondering, in this month, what kind of end market changed so much to, you know, make this important upgrade in the guidance? Thank you.
Thank you, Giovanni. Thank you. The answer to this question is more related to our internal capacity rather than an additional revenue from additional unexpected orders. Of course, the growth of the AI is contributing to our vision, but to be very clear, the expansion plan, which began last quarter of 2025, was based on two parallel tracks with two different development speeds. The first, quicker to achieve but more complex to execute, was focused on the current internal manufacturing processes. These were redesigned in detail to optimize, for example, machine times for each process, increase work shifts, up to three per day, and redesign some factory layouts to fill new spaces with new automation equipment.
Those involved in these processes are aware that the risk of failure and capacity compromise is quite high, which is why the group has preferred to consolidate certain achievement thresholds before disclosing to the market. By the way, this increase will be constant again month after month until the end of 2026. Once again, the increase we expect in the second quarter is the confirmation of the internal capacity realized in the last six months.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Giovanni. The next question comes from George Brown. Please, go ahead.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yes.
Perfect. Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the incredibly strong update. Just firstly on margins, I guess similar to the other questions, you know, what's driving the upside here versus, you know, one or two months ago when you last updated us? Is this just all, you know, the step up in revenues and your operating leverage, or is this, you know, a function of pricing, mix? Is it something else? You know, it's just such a huge step up. I just wanted to know, you know, if there's other dynamics there. Secondly, you know, on the capacity expansion you announced, I think you said you were doubling your capacity by the end of 2027, I believe. That was announced back in November 2025.
Today, I think you're suggesting, and correct me if you're wrong, you're sort of accelerating that further. I wonder if you can sort of quantify how much capacity you're actually adding here. Are you, I guess, more than doubling, but are you tripling or You know, any sort of quantification could be helpful as well.
Thank you. About your first question, as usual, the ask for the increase of profitability is a combination of many factors. The main one in this case is related to the operating leverage. If you consider that our fixed cost is really fixed, as G&A, R&D have been quite stable during the course of the last months, while the revenue growth contributed extremely to, you know, to the increase of operating leverage. The vast majority of this increase is due to the volumes we have delivered to our customer. There is a portion of price mix derived by a different customer mix rather than product mix, and this is thanks to our sales force.
We are able to, you know, to obtain a better price when selling a complete turnkey probe card rather than single components like single PCBs rather than single needles standalone. In that case, it's about more about the mix of customer rather than a mix of products. About the double capacity, we still confirm that the project we put in place starting from the last quarter of 2025 is to double that by the end of Q1 2027, and that will be completed once the fab we are realizing here in Italy will be completed. Now we are midway more or less, and we are, let me say, one quarter in advance to this plan. It doesn't mean we will triple the capacity.
It means that the double capacity will be reached in advance compared to the original plan. Now, after six months of implementation, we can consider we are more or less 50%-60% more than in December 2025. Where, at the beginning we thought that at this time, we could be in the range of 40% more or less. The increase was quicker, much quicker than expected.
Yes. Just one more comment, is that, again, as said by Stefano, the plan is basically confirmed. It was just accelerated. Meantime, we are also talking to our main customers about the long-term forecast because we might decide in the next quarters to increase even more if necessary. Now we don't have yet, let's say, this visibility for second half 2027, 2028. We are going to collect all the forecast and probably in the next calls update you if we decide to increase even more.
Perfect. Thank you so much. I have lots of questions, but I'll drop now and raise my hand again.
Thank you, George. The next question comes from Oliver Wong. Please, the floor to you.
Good afternoon. Thanks so much, and congrats on the great results. I was wondering about the operating leverage. You know, what should we expect for I guess, you know, you have given the guide pretty much for the year, but maybe going forward, you mentioned kind of, you know, SG&A and R&D being largely fixed. You know, should we expect kind of, you know, maybe only low single digit, mid single digit growth on an absolute basis for OpEx, as, you know, these revenues continue to go up? Is there just kind of not that much of a need to increase spending on either of those things? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. SG&A and R&D are not supposed to be flat. When I say stable, I mean they will grow continuously because R&D is our life, we live on R&D, we live on patents, we cannot give that away absolutely. It means that they will not grow proportionate to revenues. We currently spend more than the entire quarters on R&D. SG&A is a different matter, R&D is absolutely our central focus. We are investing in all the fields that are really promising for us. As mentioned already, memory, the silicon photonics, and go on. We're not giving up on them. Absolutely, the growth in R&D will continue. Again, will not be proportional to revenue, absolutely not. SG&A as well.
As a finance director, you know, I need support when the business grow in terms of controlling, in terms of administration. Again, the growth in these fields will not be at all proportional to revenues.
Got it. Got it. That makes sense. Thank you. Then just a second question, if I may. You know, with the rise of inference and agentic demand, there's a lot of talk of, you know, CPUs, being a lot more important than before. You know, curious if you've seen any step up in demand there or, you know, whether you have any thoughts on whether that could be sort of a, you know, another a new significant driver for your revenues.
For sure. Right now we see also the market is of the CPUs related to AI increasing instead. That is the reason why you see our strong guidance. One of the reason also why you see strong guidance for Q2 and for the rest of the year. It's, as you said, now it's, of course, GPU is still the main part, but you need also CPUs. That is exactly the reason why we see the CPU, let's say typically the CPU makers coming back stronger than before. We are a strong supplier for all these companies.
All right. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Oliver. The next question comes from Andrea Todeschini. Please, the floor to you.
Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you can hear me correctly. Well, first of all, of course, congratulations for the upgrade. I just have a little follow-up on one of the previous topics, mainly on visibility. If you guys can comment a little bit, is visibility of the orders with your clients maybe increasing as some of your competitors commented on or maybe, you know, the complexity into the testing segment, the complexity of the supply chain is forcing your clients to be a little bit more forward-thinking to share a little bit more with you about your plan. If you can speak a little bit more about that.
Also, if you can give us a little bit more color on the ASICs trend, if you are actually seeing, you know, the complexity of ASICs chips rising, the need for more advanced testing, which could definitely be positive for you. Thank you.
Yes. We can take the one about visibility. Visibility is equal from the pretty short, a quarter, more or less, a quarter and a half. What makes us pretty confident on the year-end trend is that volumes are continuously increasing in the next few months. We have now, of course, a good visibility on second quarter. We already see something introduced for Q3, some backlog we can run on Q3 as well. We see the third quarter also pretty busy, likely. Going on the fourth quarter has been seen as well in line with the Q3. Overall, second part of the year compared to first part of the year will be more or less 20% higher in the second part. This is again, thanks to our increased capacity.
This is the only way to deliver products to our customer. For the longer term, 2027, this is something we should revise in the next few months, to understand also with customer, which will be the volume expected for the new coming years.
Yeah. Yes. Stefano, what Stefano is correct. One thing that, a trend that we see also that right now, but this doesn't mean that we get any strong commitment or a real forecast. The trend we see, especially for the AI players, they very worried that they will not have enough capacity, especially from critical suppliers like us, like Technoprobe, and other critical suppliers. These players that now they're getting worried that not about pricing, not about, but to get enough allocation or make sure they will have enough capacity. These are the type of discussion that are going on right now that are before, a year ago when we couldn't have with these players. Okay.
ASIC's part is we see that are coming very stronger and stronger, and the reason, very simple, not enough GPUs in the market. It's these players, they let's say they take the leftover, but the leftover is huge, is a really huge business. And this is and the good thing is that as also said previously, the new ASICs, I mean the new NPIs, are more complex, not as at the level of the GPUs, but enough complex to require advanced technologies. This is a very good thing for us. This is this type of transition in advanced technologies is reflected in our guidance.
Perfect. Thank you very much, and congrats again.
Thank you, Andrea. We now have one follow-up question from George Brown. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Two quick questions. On the custom ASICs, obviously you saw FormFactor held their sort of investor day, I think this week, and basically said that this market, they expect to, you know, eventually consolidate to a two-supplier market being FormFactor, and they were sort of suggesting yourselves. This sort of smaller player that has high share today, you know, effectively loses that market over time. Do you share that view as well? Could you put maybe a timeline on that? For example, could you go from a relatively small share today to maybe 50% in the next year or two? Secondly, on HBM, you know, again, FormFactor said this week effectively confirmed that vertical MEMS is coming in, I think HBM4e, I think for custom solutions.
Again, they're sort of suggesting only you and FormFactor can really provide this solution was their suggestion. I think this is quite a big change in their messaging on their side. That would, you know, make sense why you're only seeing small revenues this year because HBM4e, that's obviously more of a 2027 story. Is this the sort of correct interpretation that 2027 could be the start of a much sort of stronger HBM sales at Technoprobe? You know, if so, could you help us try to size that opportunity?
For ASICs, of course, I mean, I can tell you right now we are already one of the main, supplier for custom, ASICs already right now. You mentioned, one of our competitor, they might be able, probably, but of course, this will this type of cost will require a more advanced technology, and we are already doing that. It's not even wait years. It's already happening right now.
For HBM is, this is again, we think that the custom HBM will be really the what will trigger the transition point from a technology standard, the memory technology, to a more advanced technology. It's difficult right now to say that this will happen in 2027 or exactly when. Okay, maybe sometimes in 2027, but now we don't have enough ability to tell you exactly, to predict this. Of course, I think we will not have any problem to update you once we get more visibility.
Perfect. Thank you, guys.
Thank you, George. Currently, we do not have any question queued. We will wait just a few moments to give everyone the opportunity to ask a question. As there are no question queued, I will now hand back to the speakers for any final comments before bringing this presentation to a close. Please go ahead.
Okay. I'd like just to thank everyone to join us, today. It's a very special day, very incredible results, and, I hope to see you next time. Thank you and, good night.
Thank you everyone for joining today. This presentation will now come to a close.