Good day. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q3 2021 Materialise Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during that session, you will need to press star one on your telephone keypad. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Harriet Fried of LHA. The floor is yours.
Thank you for joining us today for Materialise's quarterly conference call. With us on the call are Fried Vancraen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Materialise, Peter Leys, Executive Chairman, and Johan Albrecht, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call and webcast are being accompanied by a slide presentation that reviews Materialise's strategic, financial, and operational performance for the third quarter of 2021.
To access the slides, if you've not already done so, please go to the investor relations section of the company's website at www.materialise.com. The earnings release issued earlier this morning can also be found there. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements regarding the company's plans, expectations, and growth prospects, among other things.
These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed, including competitive dynamics and industry change. Any forward-looking statements, including those related to the company's future results and activities, represent management's estimates as of today and should not be relied upon as representing their estimates as of any subsequent day.
Management disclaims any duty to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or changes in expectations. A more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties and other factors that may impact the company's future business or financial results can be found in its most recent annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC. Finally, management will discuss certain non-IFRS measures on today's call.
A reconciliation table is contained in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation. With that introduction, I'd like to turn the call over to Peter Leys. Go ahead, please, Peter.
Thank you, Harriet. Harriet, before addressing the agenda of today's call, I would like to add just a small additional paragraph to the safe harbor language that you have, as always, read so eloquently. Fried, Johan, and myself are today just the messengers of the excellent results that we have the honor to report to you today. The true heroes of our third quarter, the only ones responsible for the results are our 2,200+ collaborators. Without the risk of spoiling the fun of the rest of this call, we would like to thank and congratulate each and every one of them for the record results, both at the top and at the bottom line, that they have achieved during this quarter. With that little additional message, I would now like to turn to slide three, which, as always, holds the agenda for today's call.
As a first item, I will summarize with great pleasure the highlights of our financial results for the third quarter. Then I will pass the floor to Fried, who will provide some insights into how we are creating value both for our customers and for our company in Materialise Manufacturing. After that, Johan will walk you, as always, through our third quarter numbers in much more detail. Finally, I will come back to give you some observations about what we currently believe the rest of 2021 will bring. When we have completed our prepared remarks, we will then, of course, open the call for any questions that you may have. Let's turn to slide four, the highlights. In the third quarter of 2021, Materialise posted all-time quarterly records, both in terms of revenues and in terms of earnings.
Driven by double-digit growth in each of our segments, our consolidated revenues increased by 28% to a quarterly record of EUR 52.195 million. Each of our segments realized very strong EBITDA margins. As a matter of fact, in the third quarter, each of our segments met or exceeded their long-term internal EBITDA margin benchmarks. Software realized an EBITDA margin of more than 35%. Medical came close to 28%, and Manufacturing posted an EBITDA margin of more than 15%. As a result, our consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased by 62% to a quarterly record, yet again, of EUR 9.700 million, representing almost 19% of total revenues. Net profit for the quarter of 2021 was EUR 8.662 million or EUR 0.15 per diluted share.
We believe that these numbers show that our strategy of continuing to invest throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in our people, in our existing businesses, such as the Magics and Mimics software platforms and our 3D printing manufacturing activities, as well as in our growth initiatives, including our MES, CMS, and wearable initiatives, was the right choice and is already paying off in the short term. An activity of Materialise that remained somewhat under the radar during the corona crisis is the continued and very selective search by our Materialise Manufacturing business developers for applications for which batches of end parts can be produced more effectively through 3D printing, including in metal. I would like to now pass the floor to Fried, who will give you some more insight in some of our recent accomplishments in that particular area. Fried.
Thank you, Peter. Good morning or good afternoon to all of you listening to this call. Let me go back to the roots of Materialise. Our mission, to enable a better and healthier world based on our deep competencies in hardware and software for additive manufacturing. From the very beginning of the industry, when it was still called stereolithography or rapid prototyping or freeform fabrication or any other name that was given to a subset of technologies that we call today additive manufacturing or 3D printing, it was our conviction that the key for the successful adoption of the technology did not exclusively lay in the development of a successful machine or a software, but in the smart use of the technology to enable meaningful applications. At Materialise, we have constantly focused on enabling these meaningful applications, because these are the applications that create most added value.
It's our strong belief that we help to create this better and healthier world by creating this added value for our customers, and that we can do well as a company by enjoying our fair share of the added value that we co-create with our customers. Since COVID, our medical business has been demonstrating on a quarterly basis that the medical devices that Materialise pioneers to help individual patients with customized solutions can generate solid growth at a healthy margin.
Our manufacturing segment has been suffering much longer from COVID. Today, we see that as the market rebounds, we are also able to generate healthy numbers in the manufacturing segment. This is largely due to the transition of our manufacturing segments towards the more and more certified manufacturing projects. This despite the continuing weakness in the automotive and aerospace markets.
In the past quarter, the revenue decrease that we still have in the classic automotive prototyping business and in the commercial airliner segment is largely offset by growth in areas such as the wearables business, medical instrumentation, and new activities in aerospace. This continued focus on meaningful applications resulted in a 61% revenue increase of our Manufacturing segment and a 15.5% EBITDA margin.
Let me try to make this more tangible for you with a concrete example. Slide five shows the picture of a HEXA aircraft from the company LIFT Aircraft. This ultralight vehicle represents one of multiple new mobility solutions to which Materialise Manufacturing is contributing. The HEXA aircraft is an electric vehicle that was built with a view to significantly lower the barrier for short commutes by air.
In order to be ultralight, the engineering team behind the HEXA relied on Materialise to help design and produce multiple components. As a result, each HEXA aircraft now contains 89 different 3D printed end-use parts. For example, the Y-bracket that is shown on slide six is a structural component that we co-developed together with the LIFT Aircraft team in titanium.
It was optimized and reduced in weight from 250 g to 150 g. Important for a component that is used six times in a plane that should remain below 115 kg. The optimization also reduced costs by reducing the build time and eliminating support structures, thus enabling LIFT Aircraft to reach its target pricing. The first prototype was produced and tested in flight in six weeks' time. The entire optimization process for production took not more than three months.
LIFT Aircraft has been the first company to produce an eVTOL vertical takeoff and landing vehicle in serial production in the United States. This story is another proof point that additive manufacturing can make entirely new types of value creation and new business concepts possible, provided that these are carefully chosen.
The chances that additive manufacturing becomes a successful and sustainable production method increase significantly if the technology is used for applications that require more complex design, smaller series, or even individualized parts. These types of applications take time to develop. If they prove to be meaningful, they will be sustainable in the future. Materialise strategy is to keep investing in those meaningful applications, not just by printing them as a subcontractor, but by getting under the skin of the application owner.
By being involved in the entire process from initial design to delivery at the customer, and by protecting some of the intellectual knowhow involved in that process. In the coming years, more and more meaningful applications we invest in today are likely to scale in the market. We feel confident that this will help ensure our long-term success.
On top of that, we are happy to inform our shareholders that we are combining good financial numbers with serious progress on the reduction of our carbon footprint. Since 2017, we provide a sustainability report to the UN Global Compact in the framework of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In this framework, we have taken multiple actions, among which the development of a structured measurement of the Materialise global carbon footprint.
Since 2020, we started taking structured actions to reduce our global carbon footprint with the aim to reach 50% reduction by 2025. We are proud to announce that we will have reached 33% reduction compared to 2019 by the end of 2021. We are implementing further measures to reach 40% reduction by the end of 2022. We are aware that we first focus on the low-hanging fruits, and further reductions will become more and more difficult. While our political leaders are going to meet at the COP26 in Glasgow, Materialise is once more taking the lead in the AM sector to show the way to a better and healthier world with tangible progress.
Thank you, Fried. I'll begin with a brief review of our consolidated revenue on slide seven. As a reminder, when we refer to sales in our presentation, we mean revenues plus deferred revenues. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, comparisons in this call are against our results for the third quarter of 2020. Revenue was EUR 52.2 million for the quarter, 28% above the level of the same period last year. The growth took place in all three segments.
Our Software and Medical segments grew by 10%, and revenue in Manufacturing bounced back by 61%. Deferred revenues from software license and maintenance fees increased by half a million EUR compared to the end of last year. For the third quarter of 2021, Materialise Software accounted for 20% of our total revenue, Materialise Manufacturing for 36%, and Materialise Medical for 44%.
Cross-segment revenue from software products represented 31% of our total revenue. Moving to slide eight, you will see our consolidated adjusted EBITDA numbers for the third quarter of 2021. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA grew to a new quarterly record of EUR 9,739,000 from EUR 6 million last year. Where our revenue grew 28%, EBITDA grew 62%. This increase was a result of a variety of positive factors. As shown, revenue growth and improved gross margin triggered by increased insourcing and continuous productivity improvements.
Disciplined spending, in particular, with respect to overhead. Importantly, the increase of our EBITDA did not come at the expense of our R&D spending, which actually increased by 13% compared to last year. In addition, the initiatives we previously described to enhance our internal business application platform continued and are on track.
Slide nine summarizes the results of our Materialise Software segment. Software revenue increased 10.4% to EUR 10.468 million. While recurring revenue was flat, non-recurring revenue grew 33.6%, driven by new perpetual license and compliance fees. EBITDA increased 19% to EUR 3.7 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin grew to 35.4%. This, as a result of the solid revenue growth and our operating expenses kept well under control, even as efforts in R&D and in our digital transformation project continued. Moving now to slide 10, you will see that total revenue in our Materialise Medical segment increased by 10.2% to EUR 18.9 million. Revenue from medical software sales grew 15%, while revenue from medical devices and services increased 8.5% compared to last year.
Revenue from medical software sales accounted for 31% of the segment's revenue. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 5.251 million compared to EUR 5.5 million last year. This quarter's adjusted EBITDA was negatively impacted by EUR 800,000 with respect to an accrual for the litigation that originated in 2014 and related to which we received the court decision this quarter.
Excluding the non-recurring expenditure, the segment's adjusted EBITDA margin was 31.8% at the same high level as last year. This was a combined result of continued top-line growth, production efficiency improvements, insourcing programs, and containment of operating expenses. This all while we accelerated the execution of our R&D programs and continued our digital transformation project. Now let's turn to slide 11 for an overview of the Q3 performance of our Materialise Manufacturing segment.
Revenue increased 61.2% or EUR 8.7 million - EUR 22.8 million. Importantly, revenue was approximately at a Q2 level and EUR 3.7 million higher than in the first quarter of this year when we first noted the positive signs from segments that had it hard during the Corona period in 2020. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter rose EUR 3.9 million - EUR 3.5 million.
The adjusted EBITDA margin grew to 15.5% as a result of the revenue growth, optimized capacity usage, and improved production efficiencies. The EBITDA was positively affected by a one-time fee of $900,000 that we received in the framework of the winding down of our partnership with Ditto. Slide 12 provides the highlights of our income statement for the third quarter.
Gross profit increased 33.4% to EUR 31.1 million, while the gross profit margin grew to 59.5% from 57.1% last year. This solid margin was due to the increased revenue, the higher level of capacity usage, and productivity improvement in all of our segments.
Operating expenses increased 11.3% compared to last year's quarter, when part of our remuneration costs were saved through various government support programs. Our sales and marketing spending increased 12.7%, G&A expenditures increased 8%, and R&D expenses grew 12.6%. This quarter's net operating income was EUR 355,000 compared to EUR 1.2 million last year.
As a result of these elements, the group's operating results grew EUR 4.2 million - EUR 4,529,000 compared to EUR 284,000 in last year's period. Our financial net income was positive EUR 4.2 million compared to a net cost of EUR 1.3 million in the previous year. This quarter's results included a positive EUR 3.7 million effect from recovering our borrowings positions, including interest from Ditto, and positive currency exchange gains of EUR 1.2 million, mainly from a dollar position we maintained from our June and July public offering proceeds. The third quarter of 2021 contained income tax expenses of EUR 80,000 compared to a tax income of EUR 764,000 in the third quarter of 2020.
Net profit for Q3 increased to a quarterly record of EUR 8,652,000. Compared to a net loss of EUR 282,000 for the 2020 period. For the first time in the company's history, reported earnings of EUR 0.15 per share. Now please turn to slide 12 for the recap of balance sheet and cash flow highlights. In July 2021, our balance sheet was further strengthened by the net capital increase of EUR 11.4 million from the issuance of 600,000 additional new shares following the exercise of the underwriter's option to purchase additional shares in connection with the public offering of 4 million shares issued in June 2021.
As of September 30, our cash amounted to EUR 194.9 million compared to EUR 111.5 million at the end of last year. Our borrowings position decreased by EUR 12.9 million - EUR 102.2 million. Only EUR 21 million of our debt was short-term at September 30th. Our net cash position further improved this quarter to EUR 92.8 million. Equity increased EUR 95.4 million to EUR 228.5 million as a combined result of the capital increase of EUR 85.8 million, the first nine months net profit amounting to EUR 8.4 million, and positive conversion differences of EUR 1.1 million. Total deferred revenue amounted to EUR 35 million.
Of this amount, EUR 13.8 million was related to annual software sales and maintenance contracts versus 13.2 million as of December 31, 2020. Cash flow from operating activities for the first nine months of 2021 were EUR 17.5 million compared to EUR 14.8 million in 2020. Capital expenditures for the quarter amounted to EUR 3.3 million and were not financed. Peter?
Thank you, Johan. Now, if you could please turn to slide 14. Before opening the floor to questions, we want to give you some insights into what we currently believe the remainder of 2021 will bring. Based on what we know today, we have comfort that our consolidated revenues for 2021 will be closer to the higher end of the EUR 197 million-EUR 200 million range that we provided during last quarter's earnings announcement. We intend to gradually increase our operational expenses with a view to boosting our growth initiatives. We expect that these accelerated efforts will impact our 2022 results much more than this year's results. Therefore, for 2021, we are increasing our adjusted EBITDA guidance by EUR 3 million to up to EUR 28 million. With that positive note, I would like to conclude our prepared remarks.
Operator, please go ahead and open the call to questions. Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Devon Ahl from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Hi, good afternoon. This is Devon on for Jason. Thanks for taking our questions. Just first one I have is, you mentioned automotive market was still relatively unstable due to supply chain disruptions last quarter. Have you seen any sort of signs of improvement from that market? And are there other markets that you're also experiencing supply chain interruptions?
I mentioned the weakness of the automotive market definitely in Europe, but we hear that it's also the case in on other continents. We expect this to continue this entire year at this moment. For Materialise, there is also a serious impact on the airliner market that is still weak at the level of the rate at which new aircraft are being constructed by the major companies such as Boeing and Airbus. These are the two segments where we experience difficulties, and the remainder of our activities is in segments where, at least for us, the impact of the supply chain disruption is quite limited.
Great. Yeah, that's very helpful. Just one more for me. On the Medical segment, you know, good quarter, growing 8% sequentially. Just wanna ask, you know, what kind of drove that growth there? Have you worked through all the pent-up demand or, and should we expect kinda like a more normalized level of demand going forward for that segment?
As you noticed, the s oftware grew by 15% in our medical segment, so that is not pent-up demand. That is actually just a continuation of the solid growth that the segment in general and that particular sub-segment of our medical segment has been showing over the last, I would say four to eight quarters. In our devices activity, I think the growth was between 8%-9%, and there I think it's more and more structural growth rather than recovering pent-up demand. I mean, the harder quarter was the second quarter of last year, now we're reporting already on the third quarter of 2021, so there's still some pent-up demand. These numbers basically also show a continued structural strength and growth within that segment.
Great. Thank you so much.
Sure. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Noelle Dilts from Stifel. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys, and congratulations on the strong quarter.
Thanks.
Hi. My first question just relates to guidance, and I understand, you know, there's a lot of kind of puts and takes in terms of one-time items in the quarter and what we just talked about in terms of some of the trends in the market. It does seem that historically your fourth quarter is, you know, meaningfully stronger than your third quarter, which would kind of get you above the high end of the EUR 200 million guidance that you're talking about. Also kind of your EBITDA guidance suggests a step down in margins. It's pretty substantial. I just wanna make sure I understand all of the elements there and.
Maybe you could comment on, you know, to what degree you might be being a little bit conservative, given the overall prevailing kind of economic uncertainty? Thanks.
Yeah. No, it's. Again, thank you for the question. It's a combination. Yes, there is still some economic uncertainty that we definitely want to factor into our vision into the future. On the other hand, what we have been trying to do year after year, and what we continue to do is give guidance over a full year period, and we know that in a full year period, there will be quarters and sometimes there are months that are stronger than expected, and quite often then there's also a quarter or a month that is just, for whatever reason, weaker than expected. Overall, we have learned we have a very good grip on where we think we will land on a one year's basis.
Obviously, it's comfortable if you have a good third quarter that takes some pressure away from the fourth quarter, but again, you're right, if you have a record quarter, then to some extent, that is. I think it's basically driven by an excellent recovery and by the strength of our products in the markets, but it's also partially driven because some deals that maybe would have fallen in Q4 now have fallen in Q3. Hence our comfort that we will be at the high end of the range in terms of revenues, but not sufficient comfort to suddenly, based on one record quarter, go beyond the guidance on revenue that we had given for the entire year.
On EBITDA, Noelle, as the crisis is gradually subsiding, we are increasing, as we also explained, we are increasing our efforts, in particular in the field of our growth initiatives, that also implies that you try to hire the right people, and that typically impacts more the next quarter than the quarter where you start hiring. As we are recovering in terms of revenues, we are also more and more trying to make sure that we have the right people in place to boost the growth of our growth initiatives. As you hire people, those people will have less impact on the quarter where you hire them, and they will have a bigger impact on the subsequent quarters.
Hence also, I think a strong message, increasing a guidance on EBITDA by more than 10%, I think is a strong sign of comfort, but we want to make sure that everybody remains realistic. This is a company that wants to continue to combine strong results with smart investments in the future, hence the EBITDA guidance of up to EUR 28 million for the full year.
Perfect. Great. Just wanted to make sure we all understood that.
Yeah.
Second, could you just give us a bit of an update on some of your key strategic priorities? Maybe if you could just touch on some of, you know, the investments that you're making in growth verticals, perhaps CMS and footwear and eyewear, if you could kind of give us a sense of where those stand and where you're seeing traction heading into 2022. Thanks.
Well, let me start by saying that we have reported growth in all three of them. CMS is, of course, the bulk of our devices business in medical, and it's definitely the growth engine of the medical devices business, where we anticipate to continue the growth into next year.
Yeah, the same is true for our footwear and eyewear initiatives. Our Materialise Motion business in footwear has a very heavy investment schedule in front of it that will enable the release of several new products and even product categories next year that should ensure serious long-term growth.
In eyewear, we want to be open that we closed the Ditto investment on favorable financial terms, but it's a drawback for the digital side of the eyewear development we had in mind. We are, at this moment, a little bit more cautious with the growth expectations of our eyewear at this very moment.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Noelle .
Next question is from Troy Jensen from Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, gentlemen. I'd also like to say congratulations. I just thought gross margins, operating margins, you know, everything looked spectacular this quarter with the exception of maybe the guidance. I'll take the over on that, Pieter. Congrats, gentlemen.
Yep.
Hey, so quickly, just on eyewear and footwear, and thank you for the update on the eyewear, Fried. Do those segments run through medical sales?
No.
Will they?
They are reported in manufacturing.
Okay. They're not enough to really, I know manufacturing had a huge quarter. That wasn't really anything to do with eyewear and footwear. That was really just manufacturing, correct?
Eyewear and footwear have performed very well, are part of manufacturing, but the real growth engine for the third quarter was our end parts additive manufacturing business within the entire segment. Not the prototyping part. The other parts performed well, but that's the engine for the growth in this year.
Gotcha. Okay. Pieter, I'd like to talk a little bit more about just manufacturing visibility. I guess it's my belief that, you know, with all these supply chain constraints that, you know, manufacturers around the globe, right, are just, you know, going to local machine shops and additive service bureaus and trying to get parts, right, to kind of, you know, fill up some of the, or bridge some of these supply constraints.
You know, it's definitely been a short-term benefit. I'm wondering, you know, do you see? Are you seeing more production applications? Are you seeing more conviction on, you know, this extending into long-term benefits? I brought this up last quarter too, and just would love to hear your thoughts if it's changed on, you know, Materialise being a broader digital manufacturing company.
You guys incubate new technologies in new areas, and this seems like something that would be right up your wheelhouse. Go ahead.
Thank you, Troy. I find this a very good question. That is why I stressed in my part of the presentation so much the focus of Materialise on specific, what we call meaningful applications, where we are not just jumping into temporary opportunities, but we are trying to focus on applications, on environments where we can sustainably produce parts that preferably cannot be produced by any other technology. They are also not just parts that have been in the past produced in Asian countries, in classical supply chains. No, our parts that are working on new, I could call it product categories. I gave the explicit example of the eVTOL.
It's a new breed of vehicles that is expected to be a growing market, really a market of the future, and a new mode of mobility that we will see appearing, and where the unique benefits of additive manufacturing are really crucial to build reliable systems that are so light they can take up passengers only with electric energy. This is the kind of markets where we really fundamentally believe in. I would say maybe some companies take advantage of those short-term supply chain disruptions, but I dare to say that is not at all the case in the revenue that Materialise is reporting.
Awesome. Love hearing it. How about just one for Johan or Jon, excuse me. Gross margins, I mean, they're huge this quarter, right? Even if you guide to, like, a flattish revenue level in the December quarter, would gross margins be flat? I just wonder what you think, just maybe what 2022 gross margins are. Just how they're trending. We're gonna continue to go higher now with better, you know, economies of scale or is this just an anomaly we're seeing?
Yeah. Because margins, as mentioned in our prepared remarks, the revenue grow. We have a better capacity usage, so our fixed costs are set off against a higher level of revenue. We have improvements by insourcing certain lines or activities in the production that we used to outsource. Of course, that will stay. As the revenue will grow, we also have other production efficiency that we are realizing by further optimizing our technology. Of course, we count on it, that will stay so. It will also depend on the product mix on a quarterly basis. The trend is that the margins will stay and will gradually further increase. That depends also on the pricing. Let's say that it will not go down.
Awesome. Sounds like it's all good news over there. Congrats, guys. Keep up the good work.
Yep. Hence the guidance to bring some balance into it all.
All right. Good luck with that, Pieter.
Okay. Thank you.
Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Gregory Ramirez from Bryan Garnier. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. Two, if I may. The first one, just to come back to the guidance. Do you confirm that the updated guidance on revenues excludes Link3D? So that you consider that the option has not been exercised yet in the guidance. My second question is to come back to the previous question regarding the gross margin. When we look at the outstanding margin on the manufacturing division, with EUR 19.3 million operating expenses, it's say around roughly EUR 2 million less than two years ago on a quarterly basis. Obviously, can imagine that you have some better utilization of the printers.
Obviously, that plays a positive role in improvement. Do you think that at current capacity utilization, this level of cost is sustainable, or you have to invest in new printers, hire more people, and gradually the 15.5% quarterly margin on manufacturing is not sustainable?
Okay. Yeah. I will give you comfort on your first question. It's very short. The option has not yet been exercised, so there's no revenue whatsoever of Link3D in the numbers that we have presented earlier. For the second part of the question, I will hand the floor to Fried.
Yeah, Gregory, regarding the gross margin of manufacturing, I want to say on one hand that we have always indicated that manufacturing is a more cyclic business. We have the advantage now to be in a more positive area of the cycle. That helps of course with the margin. On the other hand, I want to stress that it's not the aim of Materialise to over-invest in capacity because we have always seen that we need to focus our manufacturing to the high-end applications of 3D printing. Rather than filling it with volume, we prefer to go for, and I can frame this again in meaningful applications, those applications where we believe that serious value can be made.
There is no plan to expand the capacity in a big way. I do want to say that our metal activities are still in a growth mode and that we are going to expand that capacity in the future because we just have opened a new plant earlier this year in Bremen. In this plant, we will add gradually some extra machines in the coming years.
Maybe I didn't answer your question in full, Gregory, but also the guidance does not include any revenue from Link3D.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you very much.
Sure. Thank you.
That ends our question and answer session. I'll turn the call back over to Pieter for closing remarks.
Thank you so much, operator. Thank you again all for joining us today and for engaging in this interesting discussion. We hope to see some of you obviously at Formnext just a couple of weeks from now. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you again, and goodbye for now. Bye.
Goodbye. Bye.
That concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.