Hello and welcome to this Soitec FY 2022 Q3 sales call. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, later in the call, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, and this is done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If at any point you need assistance, please press star zero and you'll be connected to the operator. I'd now like to hand over to our host, Paul Boudre, CEO, to begin the call. Thank you.
Thank you, operator, and welcome to Soitec's conference call dedicated to the publications of the third quarter revenue of our fiscal year 2022. This is the quarter covering the period from the 1st of October to the end of December 2021. I'm Paul Boudre, Soitec CEO. Together with me on this call are Léa Alzingre, our CFO, and Steve Babirak, our SVP Strategic Office and Investor Relations. Our chairman, Eric Meurice, is also with us on the conference call today. We would like to take this opportunity to answer any governance-related questions during the Q&A. Let's focus on the business and the record quarter we have achieved in Q3. In Q3 2021, we achieved another very strong performance that further reinforces our confidence in our ability to deliver our fiscal year 2022 guidance.
I'm very pleased to report that we achieved EUR 208 million in revenues, or in other words, the highest quarter in Soitec's history. This year revenue was at 40% plus on a reported and on an organic basis over Q3 last year. On a sequential basis, it represents a 7% growth excluding currency impact over Q2 2022. Sequential growth was entirely driven by 300 mm sales, which went up by 13% over Q2 2022, driven by strong performance from FD-SOI, as well as other 300 mm products. This is our sixth consecutive quarter of sequential organic growth since the low point achieved in Q1 2021 at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. This record level in Q3 brings our first nine months 2022 revenue to EUR 581 million.
This is also a record in Soitec's history. Nine months 2022 revenues is at 48% on a like-for-like basis, or 44% on a reported basis compared to the first nine months of fiscal year 2021. 150 mm-200 mm wafer sales were up 26% at constant exchange rates. 300 mm wafer sales were up by 77% also at a constant exchange rate. Let's now look at the drivers behind this strong revenue performance. We continue to enjoy strong traction across all our three end markets. Mobile communications is still by far our largest end market and a key driver of our performance. Our revenue growth continued to be boosted by the deployment of 5G and the increase in Soitec's product content in every 5G smartphone, which enable highly efficient mobile communication.
This mainly benefits our RF-SOI, POI and FD-SOI products. We continue to leverage the recovery of the Automotive industry, which is very positive for both Power-SOI and FD-SOI products. Finally, our revenue in Smart Devices also increased, driven by strong sales in FD-SOI and Photonics-SOI wafers. To match higher customer demand across our end markets, we have further increased our production. As you know, we are progressively adding capacity in Bernin III in Singapore. The good news, therefore, came from a very satisfactory ramp-up of the production in these two sites: Bernin III for the production of 150 mm POI, in Singapore with higher production of 300 mm SOI wafers. In the meantime, our other facilities in Bernin I in 200 mm and Bernin II in 300 mm continue to operate at full capacity.
Let's now dive deeper in our Q3 figures and look at sales by revenue type. Sales of 150/ 200 mm wafers reached EUR 86 million. Compared to Q3 last year, this is an increase of 33% excluding currency impact. Revenue growth was driven by higher volumes. Sales of RF-SOI 200 mm have increased compared to Q3 last year. Sales of Power-SOI were much higher than in Q3 2021, as we continue to benefit from the rebound in the automotive market. In addition, we're recording a strong surge in 150 mm POI wafer sales, driven by the growing demand for 5G filters in smartphones. If we look now at our 300 mm business, we recorded sales of EUR 116 million in Q3 2022.
This represents a 51% increase excluding a currency effects compared to Q3 2021. Comes as a direct result of sharp volume increase in Singapore and a higher output in Bernin II. The developed RF-SOI 300 mm sales has been growing very fast, reflecting our strong leadership on this segment and highlighting the relevance of our anticipated capacity expansion plan. We also achieved a very strong quarter in FD-SOI, confirming the rebound initiated in Q3 2021. Our FD-SOI technology is expanding into our three end markets, i.e. Smart Devices, Automotive and Industrials, as well as Mobile Communications, especially in 5G mm wave modules. Regarding Imager- SOI for 3D sensing applications, sales remain almost at the same level as in Q3 2021.
Finally, sales of Photonics for data center were much higher than in Q3 2021, confirming the solid trends that we have experienced since Q4 2021. To complete the review of our sales revenue from royalties and other revenue, revenues went slightly down from EUR 7 million in Q3 2021 to EUR 6 million in Q3 2022. On the back of this strong performance, we are confidently confirming our guidance for fiscal year 2022. Expect fiscal year 2022 sales to reach around $975 million. It represents an annual growth of around 45% at constant exchange rates. We also expect our fiscal year 2022 EBITDA margin to reach around 34%, with a potential upside to reach 35%. Now that we have reviewed our numbers, let me highlight a few key events that took place recently.
First, we received our first purchase orders for SmartSiC prototypes from two tier 1 IDMs. Second event, which we already discussed in our previous call, was the acquisition of NOVASiC to strengthen our silicon carbide wafer technology. This company specializes in polishing and refreshing wafers, which will support our SmartSiC industry realization roadmap. We announced the acquisition at the end of November, and we fully completed the closing of the transactions at the end of December. The third event relates to our commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We aim to comply with the global warming limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in line with the objectives of the COP 21 Paris Agreement on climate change. Our commitment includes specific targets regarding our direct emissions, scope 1 and scope 2, as well as our indirect emissions, scope 3.
Early December, we received a Science Based Targets initiative certification, which attests that Soitec's CO2 emissions reduction targets are in line with the levels required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celcius. This designation is the most ambitious available under the SBTi process. Early January, we announced a research collaboration agreement with the Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore, which is part of Agency for Science, Technology and Research, so called A*STAR . The collaboration is designed to develop next-generation silicon carbide semiconductors to power electric vehicles and advanced high-voltage electronic devices. Finally, we also announced that our subsidiary, Dolphin Design, is going to open a processing center within our facilities in Singapore. Dolphin's branch will be dedicated to edge computing and artificial intelligence.
Now that we have covered the business, I want to say a few words about my succession plan. The announcement last week has prompted numerous questions from stakeholders. Let me clarify a number of points. The succession planning process was undertaken by the board of directors as part of its normal duties. The entire process began about two years ago in view of identifying potential candidates to take over the CEO role in 2022, when my current mandate would end. Internal candidates were identified with my help. I was indeed a candidate for my own succession. In parallel, and with my knowledge, the board of directors engaged an executive search firm to identify and recommend external candidates. At the end of that process, the board of directors decided that Pierre Barnabé was the best candidate to lead Soitec into the next era as CEO.
I fully respect the board decisions to prepare for the future. I'm very proud of our achievements under my leadership, the fantastic company that Soitec has become. Thanks to these accomplishments, a very promising growth story lies ahead, with the right people to drive it from inside, excellent supplier relationship, and great partnerships with our customers to support these ambitions. The board and I have always worked closely. Whatever our occasional divergences on tactics, we have always been completely aligned on Soitec strategy. We all have an overwhelming shared interest in the continuity of Soitec's strategy and its success. Together with the executive team, I will, of course, do everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition with Pierre Barnabé and position Soitec to continue delivering the kind of performance we have been sharing with you in recent years.
As you have heard from the board, the ambitious strategic targets we set during our last Capital Markets Day remain unchanged. We are on track to reach $2 billion revenue by fiscal year 2026, with an EBITDA margin above 35%. With this, I will leave the floor to Eric Meurice, who will join us for the call. Thank you, Eric, for being with us, and Eric, if you want to take the lead.
Oh, thank you very much.
The floor is yours.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul. First of all, I would like to start by congratulating you and the team for the great financial results. These are exceptional results. Regarding the question of succession, I confirm that the board followed a thorough two-year process of in-depth assessment of the three options available. The first option was renewal of Paul. Second option was the promotion of an internal candidate, and the third option was a hiring of an external. Result of the assessment led to the choice of Pierre Barnabé. The decision was approved by a large majority of the board members and unanimously among the independent directors. Pierre was considered the ideal choice to be the next CEO. He has the skills, the experience Soitec needs for this next stage of development.
Specifically, he has the experience needed to bring a company from sub $1 billion to a multi-billion dollar revenue company. He has an impressive track record of team building and an in-depth knowledge of semiconductor end markets, application end market, and complex ecosystem. He's certainly very, very complementary to the team. We are indeed, I am very much so sorry that the process which delivered this non-expected solution, compounded with emotion led to the overreaction that we've seen. Paul has been fundamental to Soitec's recent success and has done a fantastic job turning the company around and positioning it on a very ambitious growth path. Board is extremely confident that in Pierre Barnabé's ability to deliver on the trajectory.
Finally, Paul, I know it's a bit early, but we wanted to thank you very much for everything you've done, and for the commitment you have expressed to support the transition. On this, I give you back.
Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much, Eric, and this ends our opening remarks. We are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you very much. As a reminder, if you are wishing to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question today comes from the line of Aleksander Peterc from Societe Generale. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning and thank you for taking my question. I guess the first question would actually be on governance and the succession, if I may. If you could just give us a clear reason why for the timing of this change, which visibly took everyone by surprise, and I think the surprise element was quite negative to your share price development. You know, did you take this into account and why there was no external warning or explanation on this change, which was clearly a surprise.
The second issue is, what makes you think that it's good to hire someone who's actually seen, I don't know, right or wrong, as an outsider to the semiconductor industry? It's quite rare to have someone not from the industry heading a semiconductor company. If you could give us a reason why you didn't choose an industry insider? Thanks a lot.
Okay. Thank you, Aleksander. Yes, indeed, it was a surprise. We did this, as I said, thorough process. The thorough process was obviously done in a confidential manner. You cannot leak which candidate and that three candidates, in fact, the three possibilities were analyzed that could not be leaked or communicated. We probably thought that because it was obvious and we had made it public, that the CEO's contract would terminate naturally in July 2022. That was known probably a long time ago.
We thought that it was enough of a communication so that the market would know that if we do not announce something, it's because we are working on taking a decision on that subject. Again, our apology if we did not clarify again that we were working on that succession. Regarding the reason, the fundamental reason, and I know there are, you know, conspiracy theory that we are under influence or that we have a difference of view on strategy with Paul. Paul has clarified again and again that we share the same strategy, but we are proud of the strategy. We're proud of the board, that we hopefully have contributed a bit to a number of things on the strategy.
It's absolutely zero differences here. Second point is the issue of influence. We, you know, conspiracy theory again. We have a board of, in fact, where we have five independents, which I said have unanimously voted for this change. We have indeed two from the Bpi. We have one from the CEA. We have two members, two directors from the Chinese company, NSIG. We have one director from supplier, and we have two employees, and we have Paul. So you can imagine that it is difficult in such a diverse board to create a momentum of influence. It definitively was well thought through and debated for two years. So why Pierre?
In fact, again, very simple reason. We think thanks to Paul and his team, we have a trajectory in front of us of getting very big officially. The number is $2 billion FY 2026, but obviously there is more after FY 2026. This is a phase, five years or so, which will require somebody who we thought had done it already. The capability of growing a mid-sized company to a large-sized company, that is not an obvious skill. We wanted this person to be available at the beginning of the phase, not in the middle of the phase, so that he would have ownership of doing it. We wanted also to find somebody who was different, who could add value to the team, not subtract, add value.
Paul has been vocal in the newspapers explaining that we needed, you know, in his team, numbers of people with applications knowledge, market knowledge applications where, which semiconductor have to go. and then we found Pierre with these capabilities. Pierre is of proper age, Pierre is with proper experience in this applications market, Pierre with the experience of size growth. Pierre also with the absolutely significant personality of working with the teams. We thought it was the proper choice for the future. again, our apology that this was clearly misunderstood by the market or was misunderstood, I hope. was also misunderstood by the Executive Committee.
I believe as now they have started to work with him, they are starting to see the reasoning behind all that, and that at the end it will be a very good choice for Soitec. There was no rift with Paul on any of that. We just were very scientific as to evaluation of the three options. Long answer, Aleksander, but thought it was necessary.
Thank you very much for clarifying. Thanks.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Jerome Ramel from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have two question. One question is on business, and if you could come back on the announcements you made on the SmartSiC and the two first clients. So are we talking about MOSFET transistor? If you could give a little bit more detail. Second question is on the governance again. The market has been surprised. We saw the share price reaction. We also read in the press some problem maybe with the Comex. So the question I have is how is the situation today between the board, the Comex, the customers, the suppliers? How the ecosystem has reacted to this announcement and how you see the situation evolving in the coming months? Thank you.
Thank you, Jerome. Maybe I'll take the first questions and Eric, Mr. Chairman, you will comment on the second as well. First, yeah, I mean, I already told you that we had sequences of events regarding SmartSiC. You know, as we work with many partners around the world, we have studied two samples, our prototypes. Now, we are getting into a phase where these prototypes are getting real purchase order and it's a significant step moving forward, as we continue to confirm not only the value of our products, but also the quality of the product that we are shipping right now. That's a very first good news.
Confirming the trend and the beautiful work that the team is doing together with our partners and customers. Obviously, reinforcing this. I talked about the NOVASiC acquisitions, but I'm not going to come back too much on this, but it has been closed in by the end of December. Regarding the ecosystem, basically, I mean, clearly, we know the team has been working crazy like usual. I mean, there is no change in the way we interact with our customers. There is no change in the way we work with our supplier. This is very active and you don't achieve the performance we are achieving but because not doing anything.
A lot of hard work. Yes, everybody came through a bit of surprise on this announcement. It was not really prepared in advance. The first reaction was a surprise, and we are working on explanations.
Thank you, Paul. On my side, if I can comment on the relationship between the board and the company and the ExCom, Comex. Yeah, you know, we are human. I bet, I believe on both sides, there was a bit of bruising. One is surprise for the team, the ExCom, and on our side, you know, the reaction which was sometimes very personal. Yes, a bit of an issue here. But we are all committed to Soitec, and we are all committed extremely. In fact, it's probably why we got this overreaction. We've started to work together in contact. We had a number of personal contacts.
ExCom has obviously the commitment from the board and from myself to work on all the issues that they have raised. There is nothing hidden. If there are issues, we resolve them. The fundamental part was to bring Pierre into the equation. Pierre Barnabé has been in contact with the Comex, with members of the Comex, have done this number of times. He's working with Paul. At the end of the day, that is what is important is the relationship between Pierre and the Comex. At this moment, I have only heard positive from the members of the Comex. This is very good. Remember that the board and the Comex only have an indirect relationship.
Obviously, we would like both sides to be, you know, respectful of our function, and I think that is happening. We're not in direct management of the COMEX, so it is important that there is this direct relationship. Also, I was interested to hear of the employees, and you've seen that the CSE, the works council, has been supportive of the fact that we needed to work together with the external solution that we have chosen. That also have shown a support of this, the option of bringing somebody from outside and the fact that we anyway need to work the solution. I'm fairly comfortable that we've passed the bad time, and now we are in a positive rebuilding.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We now have a question from the line of Sébastien Sztabowicz from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my questions. Once again, partly linked to governance. Could you please come back on your M&A strategy? Or should we expect any change regarding your M&A strategy following the appointment of a new CEO? What kind of technology could be interesting for Soitec going forward? Do you have anything, I would say, already in the pipe? That would be the first one. The second one is more on the business side, because you mentioned on the press release traction from 5G mm wave. Could you please provide a little bit of outlook on what is happening with millimeter wave, the adoption of the technology and also specifically at Soitec, the ramps of millimeter wave volume for the coming quarters? Thank you.
I think.
Maybe.
Take.
I'll start.
I'll just start.
Okay. I may start, Eric, saying that maybe obviously on the M&A questions we don't comment because, you know, our plan is really our fiscal year 2026. The target we have you know shared with you is $2 billion targets, and it's clearly an organic growth basically right today. The board and as well as the management confirmed that what we have shared with you is really the plan that Soitec is working on. I'll continue, Eric, on the next questions, and if you want to comment, I will.
I fully agree with you. If we have to be cautious with M&As because they could be additive to the growth, which is clearly identified as being organic. Indeed, at some point in life, we still need to be capable of acquisitions of size. We believe that again, like with that we add the talent from different perspective will be helpful. Indeed, there is no short-term situation here.
On the millimeter wave, clearly, I mean, the positive sign, as you know, is that we were hard at work on it. I told you that for at least a year and a half. FD-SOI and not only RF-SOI with POI will be a very strong platform to sustain 5G and going into 5G mm wave. You know that last quarter, the Google phone was also equipped with millimeter wave based on FD-SOI and designed and manufactured by Samsung. We continue to confirm that the Soitec footprint per smartphone is growing 15%-20% per year.
Remember that 4G smartphone is in the range of 30 sq mm . You know that sub-6 GHz is in the range of 50 sq mm . Now, adding millimeter wave, I mean, if you look at the opportunity, you know that it's in the range of 80 sq mm . That's the key driver. But the good news is that clearly we continue to see that our product portfolios, our a la carte menu, as I said, because depending on which customer architecture, we have the solutions to deliver on the performance, the power and the cost of ownership for this new wave of innovations.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you are still wishing to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Emmanuel Matot from Oddo. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Emmanuel Matot speaking from Oddo . First, what the board of directors means about being determined to pursue the highest standards of governance? Does that mean that the board is ready to take further decisions following the share price overreaction? Second, on silicon carbide, when are you going to take a decision about the location of the fab for that new product? Third, why licensing and other revenue were declining so much during the last quarter? Thank you.
Paul, I can take the first question, I guess.
Okay.
Indeed, when we saw the list of complaints from the ExCom, we thought it absolutely necessary to review every point of that list and compare to what we do, compare to best practices and making sure that if ever there are issues to resolve, we resolve them. There are both sides, and we also need to clarify to the company what is governance. There is a bit of a communication work. That's what we have planned to do. We will do it in full focus.
Okay. Thank you, Eric, for the SiC decisions. I mean, as I told you, I mean, that the decision will be taken before the end of our fiscal year. I mean, clearly the location has been clearly identified and we are working now on the details. The decisions basically will be made before our fiscal year. Clearly the team, all the team is focused and working on, you know, making sure that the timeline, the timing of this new factory will be there for the customer.
Regarding the other revenues, basically, it's an impact on Dolphin, the timing of revenue between Q3 and Q4. This is just phasing issues, so not a big deal.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We now have a question from the line of Didier Scemama from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations to Paul Boudre for the amazing execution and track record. Also quite nice to hear Eric Meurice's voice from ASML conference calls. I've got three questions. First, on corporate governance for Eric, presumably when you interviewed the candidates for the CEO job, you asked them to lay out a strategic plan. Can you just elaborate a little bit on this, what is it in Mr. Barnabé's plan that really made it the top candidate? Do you anticipate a substantial deviation from the current strategy? Second, on the new fab location, whichever that location might be, do you expect any change in the margin targets that you've set?
Lastly, given the initial contracts in silicon carbide, are you of the view that the high single-digit percentage contribution to fiscal year 2026 revenue is appropriate? Thank you.
Didier, thank you for reminding me of the old historic time at ASML. Thank you. The discussion on the candidates, we had, of course, four external candidates that we looked at, two semiconductors, two without semiconductors. We did ask how they would see the future. Clearly, Pierre's answer is, in fact, very much what I just told you. He is not to add the value on the material part, and he trusts the team to be capable of that. But he spent a lot of time in explaining how you build a structured company with more people and everybody motivated, multi-divisions, type of thing.
The discussion was more on how to structure a growth rather than I want to do something special into the different segments of the material of semiconductors. Obviously, he then went into explaining the excitement of these supercomputer-type environment where you're talking about the chips that you know mainly entails and et cetera, where he knows it better, et cetera. But again, he mentioned that that was not the value that he would bring. Therefore, there was absolutely zero discussion as to changing the strategy of Paul's and his team.
Thank you, Eric. Regarding the question of SiC and the fabrications, I mean, we have obviously modeled different scenarios and clearly the choice we have made clearly matched not only the, you know, the margin that we are expecting and the margin on new products are always adding to what we are doing and not subtracting. I mean, minimizing the margin. On this side, we are clearly on the model we shared with you on our fiscal year 2026 trends. The impact is still today high single-digit in terms of the revenues.
You know that this is a market dynamic, so we revisit our strategy plan on a yearly basis. We will give you obviously more information in June timeframe, when we share with you our update on the trend. Very dynamic market. The most important for us was to stay on track with the timing. You know, the announcement of today show that this traction is there and the quality of the product that we are shipping today, as obviously for qualifications and evaluations are clearly on track with what we were expecting.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. As a final reminder, if you are still wishing to ask a question, please press star one. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Sanders from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. My first question is for Eric. Great to hear your voice again. I guess one thing would be interesting to get your perspective is on where Soitec has been lacking in the last couple of years. Obviously, the performance has been great. The strategy seems like no one is disagreeing with that. But it sounds like maybe there's a need for reorganization or there's been some kind of issue that the board felt with the, this thing, set up. I'd love to get your perspective on why you've gone for Pierre, because it seems like you're emphasizing his organizational skills more than anything to do with his industry expertise. Love to get your perspective on that.
The second thing is on FD-SOI, as it is that millimeter wave is adopting FD-SOI, there are discussions that potentially this could be a stepping stone technology for millimeter waves. I'd love to get your kind of idea about level of visibility at Qualcomm and Samsung, et cetera. The last question is just, is the board really of the view that the existing retention plan for key executives is sufficient, or does that need to be beefed up? Because obviously the worry in the market is we're gonna see massive turnover now in the Executive Committee. Thank you.
Paul, I can start on the question on the lacking bit.
I will.
Yeah.
You start first on the governance, Eric.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you, Paul.
Yes.
Yeah, the question of lacking. No, I don't think we should see it this way. There is no criticism, no punishment, no whatever. It's in the positive sense. We were concerned at the board that the task at hand is huge. And if we could slightly be concerned about something, it was the need for scale and bandwidth: not enough management. Not enough international managers. You know, because there is a conspiracy theory that says we chose Pierre because he was French. Well, we chose Pierre because we could bring potentially all his attention to building up more and bringing talent from outside and also international and also potentially outside for semiconductors. Again, which is what Paul wanted to do also.
I think Paul and I have a full agreement on what it is we need to do. It's just a question of how to do it and how to help the team do that. Really, bandwidth, scale, reorg, et cetera, is what we wanted to solve. A retention plan, I think Paul and I are working closely. We clearly have had discussion even before the little crisis with the internal candidate as to the ideas we share about promotion and increasing his scale, his job scale, his responsibilities, obviously his package, et cetera. All that has been already in the cards and is in the cards. It's not a problem. Then with this, we also discussed, in fact, as of yesterday with Paul.
When that is done, how do we ensure that the team understand next organization and how they fit in there? Everybody has in fact something positive I would say. But again, we haven't put together the work to ensure that they are aware.
Yeah. As maybe a complementary, I will say that Soitec has built a very strong management expertise and management team as well. You have seen it over the last few years, but it's based also on very strong processes. I think it's very solid, right? I do not see anything shaky on this side. Back to your questions on FD-SOI. Yeah, I mean, you and I, Rob, have been discussing this for a couple of years and yes, this is the time, right? I mean, we see now FD-SOI confirming here that for applications like smart devices, it's really the platform to integrate different functions on the same day.
Clearly a great value add for our customers when used, you know, as an ecosystem and not only on standalone devices. So we continue to foresee now multiple design wins on this side. On the auto, I mean, this is just the beginning. I mean, we have seen, you know, all the applications in the new dashboards, but we now also include millimeter wave with the latest roadmap that we have seen for radar, for example. That's also another great opportunity that is just at the beginning. Finally, also for millimeter wave, this Google Pixel 6, as I discussed and shared with you, that's the first smartphone integrated FD-SOI millimeter wave commercialized in December.
All in all, I mean, we clearly confirmed that the strategic positions for FD-SOI, I mean, as design, I mean, for FD-SOI, we have designed basically targets that are clearly untouched by other technology because we clearly, I mean, can check the box for our performance, cost of ownership, and clearly this is the beginning of something bigger.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much. We have one follow-up question from the line of Didier Scemama from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Actually, it's a bit of an odd question for Eric. When you were at ASML, one of the things you did was drastically improve the cash flow of the business. One could argue that sort of missing bit in the equity story of Soitec is free cash flow generation, and obviously we all understand why it's been lacking. The other bit that you've done is the co-investment program. Do you think any of the things you've done at ASML could be useful for Soitec in the future?
This is nice, Didier, to remind me of some successes. The cash flow management is clearly a responsibility of the CEO. I'm potentially here to help and advise and et cetera. I'm trying to avoid. Paul, at this moment, is using the cash for all these investments, which I think is very good. He has a very good set of negotiation with the customers to optimize. So far I think the issue is well managed in my view. I could not find a smart advice for him on that. For the co-investment program, I'm obviously very proud of that one.
It was not easy to get Intel, TSMC and Samsung to understand that ASML was so important that they had to co-invest, meaning paying the R&D. In fact, you allow me to explain again why we went for an external person, because we think that market power is a fundamental. And Soitec is now extremely powerful in this segment of market. And we need to get from powerful to be fundamentally necessary to the big guys. And so this is size, this is differentiation. And when you have size differentiation, uniqueness, huge market share, that's when you get to have this relationship on the first table of the customer, you know. And yeah, there is a bit of a dream of mine on that one.
As I said, I'm not the micromanager that you know sometimes the press will say, but I have shared these ideas with Paul, and we are all looking at that. Pierre will probably be taking that ambition. Market power, big company, usually recognized, admired by the big customer.
Yeah. The similarity is striking. Thank you, Eric.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you for all your questions. All questions have now been answered. I'd like to hand back to our host, Paul Boudre, for any closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. Thank you all. As a conclusion, obviously, thank you for your interest and your questions today. The next date in our agenda will be the release of our Q4 2022 revenue on the 27th of April after market close. This ends our call for today. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Eric, for participating with us. Thank you, Léa and Steve. I'll see you very soon. Obviously, we'll continue the roadshow with Steve as usual. Steve is always there to answer all your questions. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for joining today's Soitec conference call. You may now disconnect your lines, and we wish you a pleasant day.