Welcome to Soitec third quarter sales presentation for fiscal year 2025/2026. Today's conference will be hosted by Pierre Barnabé, Chief Executive Officer, Albin Jacquemont, Chief Financial Officer, Steve Babureck, EVP Chief Strategy Officer, and Alexandre Pedovari, Head of Investor Relations. For the first part of the conference, the participants will be on listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants will be able to ask questions by dialing hashtag five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to Pierre Barnabé to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Soitec's third quarter 2026 fiscal year sales conference call. I'm Pierre Barnabé, Chief Executive Officer of Soitec. I'm joined today by Albin Jacquemont, our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Babureck, our EVP Strategy, and Alexandre Pedovari, Head of Investor Relations. But first, I would like to step back and reflect for a moment on where the company stands today. As you all know, I'm preparing to step down in just under 2 months when my successor, Laurent Rémont, takes over as the Chief Executive Officer. This leadership handover come at a time when Soitec is stabilized, successfully diversified into new growth areas, and well-prepared for the new phase of development ahead. The acceleration of our diversification has been enabled by our sustained, yet targeted investment in R&D.
Today, Soitec is focused on operational excellence and cash generation, supported by a very healthy balance sheet. This gives the company the resilience to navigate diverse market dynamics, and the flexibility to be well-positioned for the next growth cycle. In light of this, the third quarter reflects a high level of rigor in execution in a challenging market environment. It should be seen as confirmation that Soitec is operating with discipline, using the strategic and operational levers at its disposal. In this context, our priorities are very clear. We are focused on execution, operational excellence, disciplined cost and cash management, and on aligning capacity with actual demand. At the same time, we continue to invest selectively in areas that are critical to our long-term technology roadmap without compromising financial rigor. The overall picture remained broadly in line with our expectations.
At a business level, this translated into the following trends: Sustained activity in artificial intelligence for edge and cloud, where demand remains supported across data centers and edge environments. At the same time, other parts of the business are still adjusting. In mobile communication, customer engagement remains active around advanced RF solution and next-generation platforms, despite constrained volumes with RF- SOI demand still impacted by customer inventory correction. In automotive and industrial, while the environment remains challenging, our technologies are well-positioned to support future applications once demand recovers. I will now walk you through the third quarter sales figures and our outlook in more detail. Starting with the headline numbers, third quarter revenue reached EUR 160 million. On a year-on-year basis, revenue remains down, reflecting a 22% decline at constant scope and foreign exchange, and a negative currency impact of 7%.
This top-line performance is driven by different dynamics, strong trend in artificial intelligence, offset by ongoing RF customers inventory correction in an uncertain smartphone market and weak automotive demand. Sequentially, revenue increased 18% organically compared with the second quarter, coming in above our guidance. This improvement reflects the strong commitment of our teams. Looking at revenue dynamics by end market, mobile communication generated revenue at EUR 90 million in the third quarter, down 36% year-over-year organically. As expected, RF-SOI volumes remain impacted by customer inventory correction, which is improving but not yet complete. 5G activity was slightly down year-over-year, while showing an improvement from Q2. Higher demand from tier one US fabless was offset by softer activity in Asia. FD-SOI adoption in 5G millimeter wave is still ongoing, with a major recent design win for US flagship smartphone.
Edge and Cloud AI revenue amounted to EUR 54 million, showing 27% organic growth year-on-year and improving from Q2 2026. Activity continues to be supported by AI-related demand across edge and cloud environments, with contributions from both Photonics-SOI and FD-SOI. Specifically, Photonics-SOI remains very dynamic. As the technology continues to enable a growing number of high-speed, high-bandwidth optical interconnect applications, including pluggable transceivers and co-packaged optics CPOs. And we continue to strengthen our differentiation with new materials, addressing growing interest for LNOI, lithium niobate on insulator, for ultra-wideband data communication. This product will complement our silicon photonics offering to cover optical transceivers beyond 1.6 terabits. Automotive and industrial revenue reached EUR 16 million, improving sequentially versus the second quarter, but remaining down 32% organically year-on-year. Market conditions are still weak.
Our SOI volumes remained low during the quarter, reflecting both market weakness and delivery phasing that is skewed towards Q4 under a long-term agreement with a key customer. Looking at the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, revenue reached EUR 390 million, down 26% year-on-year, organically. Performance over this period reflects significant RF- SOI undershipment, prolonged inventory corrections, and contrasted end market dynamics. Edge and Cloud AI showed strong resilience, especially excluding the anticipated phase out of Imager-SOI, bringing the performance of this segment up 29% year-on-year. Mobile communication and automotive and industrial remain more exposed to market adjustment as expected. For the last quarter of the year, we expect around 20% organic revenue growth versus Q3.
We maintain our cautious stance on the market environment and are closely monitoring the evolution of the smartphone market outlook and its potential impact on the ongoing customer inventory correction. Mobile communications should improve sequentially. Edge and Cloud AI should continue to show strong momentum, driven by demand for Photonics-SOI and FD-SOI. Automotive and industrial is expected to remain soft overall, but Q4 will benefit from seasonal deliveries for a specific customer. In this still challenging environment, we remain focused on disciplined cost management and cash generation, while continuing to execute our strategy through targeted R&D, technology leadership, and product diversification. This concludes my comment on our Q3 2026 performance and Q4 2026 outlook. Then, after more than four years, this is my last call with you.
When I joined, Soitec was in a very fragile situation, an unprecedented governance crisis, dependence on a single product, more than two years of RF- SOI inventories concentrated with a few customers, with deeply damaged relationship and a heavy cost structure. Year after year, we managed the depletion carefully, while giving ourselves the time and the resources to accelerate four new product lines, which have all reached critical mass. We have doubled R&D investment and restore the balance sheet. Today, the company is getting ready to turn a corner, driven by a successful diversification of product aligned with AI and energy efficiency megatrends. RF and Power-SOI demand will resume as customers clear their inventories. Our innovation remains dynamic, with increased investment to strengthen our positioning in our current SOI market and to prepare our expansion into new markets.
Our innovation capabilities will be critical to meet the industry's most promising developments, with key players now exploring SOI for advanced computing applications and memory. Our relationships with customers and partners has been rebuilt and strengthened from the US to China, where we executed a new set strategic reset with NSIG . Looking back at these last four years, what I am most proud of is having recruited, developed, and retained outstanding professionals and teams. We have made Soitec stronger and ready for a solid and sustainable rebound, because my extended team and the board of directors trusted me, understood the plan, and executed it with discipline. I'm deeply grateful. I now hand over a solid platform to Laurent. I would like to pay a tribute to the ExCom members, to our diverse leaders across the organization, and to all employees for this successful journey.
With that, we are now happy with the team to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial hashtag five on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial hashtag six. The next question comes from Aleksander Peterc from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you, thank you, Pierre, and all the best wishes for your future endeavors.
Thank you.
Can you give us a little bit of a color on how you're doing with progress on the rationalization of working capital? What kind of levels you have in place to drive a positive free cash flow into next year? And if you could give us an idea of how we should think about capital going into fiscal 2027 as well. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you very much. Then, I propose for everything regarding cash discipline and working capital containment, to leave the mic to Albin, who could comment on the progress he's made so far and what's the trends for end of the year and some colors for the next year to come.
Ah, sure. Alex, look, we said in Q2 that we're working towards free cash flow positive in fiscal year 2026, and that remains true today. We are making progress on that front. What we have been doing is managing costs in a stringent manner while maintaining selective and strategic investment in R&D. As for inventory reduction, which is another priority, we're aligning production with actual demand. Of course, the downside of this is that it brings a temporary hit on margins and profitability.
On the receivables front, we have renegotiated, or we are in process of renegotiating some contracts to lower receivables, that will bring that yield results in this year and in fiscal year 2027. The way to think about our capital expenditure is moderation, I would say. We are guiding towards CapEx of EUR 114 million cash this year, and we—there is a little bit of flexibility built into this number, and capital expenditure will be much lower in fiscal year 2027. And that was, we have already invested a lot to build capacity for the company, so there is no need to expand our facilities.
You remember that we changed the free cash flow definition in Q2 this year, and this was to align with the market practice, and now our free cash flow mirrors the debt variance in the absence of buybacks, dividends, and M&A. Yeah, so we're making-
Okay, very clear.
progress on working capital and free cash flow.
That's great. Thank you very much. That's very clear. Can I just have a quick follow-up on your mobile business? I have a couple of questions. The first one is: Are you concerned about the health of the mobile phone market? We've seen some forecasts now pointing to a decline in calendar 2026, given the tensions we see in memory prices in particular. And the second part of the question is: Could you give us an idea by how much you're under shipping into the channel? What's the kind of order of magnitude there in your RF-SOI product line? Thank you so much.
Okay, Alex, and on the smartphone market, we are observing, listening, like you and reading like you, that there are some tensions coming from memories prices and availabilities that could weigh on the dynamic of this market. Then we're gonna revise or not our forecast during the Mobile World Congress. We were expecting a growth around 2% of this market in volumes for this calendar 2026 year. We might revise maybe this trend looking at the different analyst view. That said, what is weighing the most, of course, for us, is the inventory depletion that is going in the right direction.
Then we continue to undership, and we are accelerating this undershipment over the last quarters. Then from, you remember the 2.5 million estimated inventories in 8 inches equivalent RF-SOI by our customers, on September, we moved to 2.3. End of December, we were around 2 million. Then if we continue to undership between 200-300K wafers per quarter, we could imagine that by end of this year, calendar 2026, we're gonna be in the range of 1 million. We don't know if this 1 million is the right momentum and turning point, but it does correspond to the volumes of our customer's inventories before the COVID event than 5-6 years ago.
That's what we see. Then we undershipped quite significantly since the last quarter, and for the next four quarters to come, to be sure that we're gonna reach a level that is close to what we were observing five, six years ago before the COVID. That's what we can tell you.
That's very clear. Thank you so much, and good luck. Thank you, Pierre.
Welcome. Welcome, Alex.
The next question comes from Emmanuel Matot from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Hello, Pierre and the team. Of course, Pierre, all the best for the future.
Thank you very much.
I have three question, three questions. First, Pierre, so this is your, your last publication, your last call with, with us. Do you think you, you are leaving Soitec at the, the low point of, of the cycle? Second, are you able to, to keep up with the strong demand for, for Photonics-SOI, or are you facing, any constraints, constraints in terms of, industrial capacities, your suppliers? And my last question, maybe for Albin, to, to what extent are you hedged on the euro-dollar for, for the next financial year? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Emmanuel. Then, Soitec obviously is reaching step by step, step by step, an inflection point. What is clear is that we are building a platform that is ready to rebound in the near future. It's too early to tell you exactly when it gonna come, but it's clear that the growth machine has been totally reinforced with these 5 new products today. 4 new products on top of the RF-SOI, that are critical masses, and many of them are growing. And namely, Photonics, I will come back on it, of course, FD-SOI and POI, and the two others, RF and Power, are in an inventory depletion mode.
Then, of course, as we said, by end of this calendar year, we're gonna have reached the pre-COVID level of inventories by our customer. Then you can, you can imagine that, step by step, we're gonna reach this, inflection point to growing again. And what is also very important, to my point of view, and, we, we need to also to think on the future beyond the quarters, for which we give guidance, is that we have, we have doubled the R&D investment, and from around EUR 60 million to EUR 120 million today. Also, to prepare the future and to add, add new products on top of the five I was, I was mentioning. And to underline what you said, and what you asked on Photonics. Today, Photonics is in a very dynamic momentum.
We have no specific limitation, but to be sure, we organize properly our factories, because of course, we are sharing the same factories for the 200 and particularly the 300 millimeters. Then it's a matter of anticipation. But we have access to the right level of bulks. As you know, we diversified also our sources of silicon bulk in terms of the quality, and particularly the one able to correspond to Photonics' requirements and demands. We have today more and more customers asking for Photonics and more and more in volumes, 200 and 300 millimeters. We are working on enhancing-...
Thanks to the LNOI technology, the capabilities of our photonics portfolio by extending the bandwidth and the capacity to reduce latency. Then now it's really a question of anticipation. It's a question of signing LTAs with some of these customers to better anticipate what's going on and to manage the allocation. But today, there is no specific limits to take the ride and to accompany a market that is growing by around 25%-30% per year. Albin, do you have any point on the third question, please?
Yeah, absolutely. It's clear that foreign exchange continues to be a significant external headwind for Soitec. And the reason for that is that we have a significant US dollar exposure on our top line. So this makes us sensitive to exchange rate fluctuations. The one thing I would like to point out is that we guided for fiscal year 2026 on the 1.14 euro per dollar, and this number has remained constant throughout the year. So we had hedged quite effectively our transactional exposure in fiscal year 2026 or fiscal year 2027. We will give you the number you should factor at the next call.
Nevertheless, what I can tell you at this point is that we have hedged 70% of our exposure at 1.90 at this time. And so there is 30%, which remains to be hedged. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, William.
The next question comes from Robert Sanders from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi there. Most of my questions have been asked, but maybe you could just talk a bit more about the quantum computing opportunity. It seems like a lot of the initial quantum is using a PIC and an EIC. How much of those PICs are using SOI today? Look at that recent SkyWater deal, for example, and are you at a sort of nascent stage? Thanks.
Hello, then on quantum, of course, and this part of some press release we issued recently. It's a market we are, of course, working on. We are observing very cautiously, and SOI is bringing some capabilities very interesting for qubit generations, including, of course, low power consumptions. It remains exploratory. We are working R&D mode in these areas. And for the moment, the volumes expected, even midterm, are quite limited, as long as, of course, this technology is not spreading out massively and becoming a mass market application. We are not yet at that stage.
But, you know, there are some hypotheses it could become, of course, in a hybridization with binary calculation, the mass market features and the mass market application. Then we are in SOI is presenting some technological interest. We are working in cooperation with some labs and a few emerging companies, but still not in our, let's say, radar screen for in a midterm point. But in the long term, we're gonna see step by step, and of course, we're gonna update you on the different progresses made.
Got it. And just a quick question on the loading. Maybe you said this already, but I couldn't hear it. But what is the plan for fiscal 2027 from a loading point of view? Are you just gonna take the hit on the profit, run down inventory on hand, which is very high still, and basically in a year's time start with a clean slate? Is that the goal? And what loading percentage are you targeting?
Albin, perhaps you can maybe complement.
Yeah. So as far as the loading is concerned, I think one of the key action for us is to really match procurement with manufacturing, with delivery, with end market needs. So that's a priority for us. We're not guiding on fiscal year 2027 revenue. You understood from Pierre that we see a lot of tailwind for some of our products. You also understand from Pierre that there is still some inventories on the RF market. So from that you can infer that our loading will remain at a level which is below normal level in fiscal year 2027.
And the impact on the profitability will be pretty much the same as to what we indicated at the end of Q2. But again, what is important for us is to act sequentially. Now we are concentrating on free cash flow, working cap, our own inventories. Then at some point, we see revenue stabilization and before a rebound. And when we see a rebound, the loading will go up, and obviously, hopefully, where we will be in this place, profitability will be, will go up. But in a context where we have lower G&A and a working capital, which will be closer to what we should have on our balance sheet.
Got it. Thanks a lot.
Welcome.
The next question comes from Daniel Shafee from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Pierre, thank you again for everything, and wish you also all the best in your future endeavors.
Thank you, Daniel.
So I would have two questions, or maybe I'll just start off with RF-SOI. So on the inventory digestion that you mentioned through 2027, is it fair to assume that the first half, which it would be more on the higher end of this 200-300K range, or will it be more even throughout the year? And then also just on overall goal levels, you mentioned the 1 million level that would be aspirational. Just factoring in, let's say, the midpoint, 250K per quarter, that puts us at 12-month high inventory levels as basically expectation. Pre-COVID, the levels at customers were roughly 6-9 months.
I'm just wondering, is there any reason why the aspirational goal is now higher than the previous level? Or yeah, that would be just great to understand.
It's difficult to say. We give you points of comparisons compared to what we are experiencing and what we experienced in the past. Then the 200K-300K per quarter is an average, then of course, it can, it depends on quarter after quarter, but over one year, we can say that depletion is around 800K-1.2 million per within the course of twelve months. It's an average, and that's the reason why from 2 million end of December 2026, with the under-shipment we are doing right now, we should be in the range of 1 million by end of this year. The 1 million correspond to what was in the inventories customers in RF-SOI before COVID.
Is it the right, let's say, turning point to see customers, let's say, investing again, buying again, and to see the RF-SOI business for us growing again? We don't know. This, it's of course an assumption we share with you. Will it be before? Will it be later? That's really an observation, an assumptions, and comparisons. We're gonna see within the course of one year the need for, of course, our customers. We're gonna see if some also breaks to innovation might accelerate some, some, let's say, investment and some requirements, and ask for RF-SOI specific volumes. That's that's point of comparisons we give you and a trajectory. That's what... That's very important, and to give you figures that are as reliable as possible.
But of course, we can imagine that calendar 27 should be a year of growth for RF-SOI, but we don't know exactly when.
Okay, perfect. And then just quickly also on edge and cloudy, I just given now throughout the last quarter, there were a few photonics players mentioning different targets in terms of growth, which yes, fairly from a lower base, sound more aggressive. And so I just wanted to ask, are you still comfortable with the 20%-30% CAGR range for this business? Are you slightly more bullish, and is there potential to come even more above this range, or are you, let's say, comfortable with the midpoint for right now?
The term comfortable doesn't exist in our world. But are we confident, and are we, let's say, working hard to build the growth of this market? Of course. And today, we have positioned our silicon photonic solutions everywhere we can. We have more than five customers today engaged in our silicon photonic solutions, and more and more are coming.... And each of these customer asking for more and more volumes, then it clearly there is a dynamic. I'm confident that this dynamic should last, because the need for AI are very important. I mean, the demand for AI is higher than what the industry today can provide.
And of course, we are part of this components of this industry, because the silicon photonics is today the only solution, viable solutions, that is allowing, first of all, for next generation AI data centers, transfer control, to transform, electron into photons for high bandwidth. Particularly if you move up to 1.6 giga. Not only for the data centers, but tomorrow to interconnect the GPU, and particularly with the co-packaged optic solutions. And on top of it, we are enhancing our photonics layers with the lithium niobate, let's say, add-on, that is helping the industry to move beyond the 1.6 giga tera, sorry.
That means that we have today a plan, a clear plan, and the industry have a clear plan to fuel the silicon photonics growth, for the coming 4-5 years, without any doubt. And our market shares, positionings, relationships with our customers, is making us confident. Now we need to, as I said, to Emmanuel, to anticipate this development, this growth, to prepare the industry to have enough rooms for, delivering, on time, on quality, and, even to build the growth of this market, that, as I said, is around 25%-30% per year.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Very clear.
Welcome.
The next question comes from Sébastien Sztabowicz from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. One, on the competition, in the SOI market, have you seen any kind of change in the competitive landscape with new players, reinforcing position, being a little bit more aggressive and thinking about the GlobalWafers plans that is building up in the US? Do you see them gaining a little bit more market share in your key market? And the second question is coming back to Photonics-SOI. Can you remind us a little bit the difference in terms of content between pluggable optics and the co-packaged optics? Is this a big step up when we are moving to CPOs going forward? Thank you.
Yes, Sebastian, on the overall SOI market, of course, there is. We always say that there is competition, starting with our only licensee today, with SEH. But we don't see big changes in the segment shares we are observing, and particularly for us, regarding the 200 and the 300 millimeters. Of course, players are claiming to have SOI solution, and some SOI solutions are not using our technology like Smart Cut. You can have also other ways to do SOI, a silicon insulator, namely BSOI, that is quite well adapted for power application in the cars. But even the domains, competition, and our positioning, it's quite strong.
Then today, we don't see segment shares, significant evolution, and the competition is far away from what we are doing. All the more that we continue to invest in our SOI technology. As I said, we have doubled our gross R&D investment from EUR 60 billion to EUR 120 billion over the last 4 years, and of course, it is fueling our advance from an innovation point of view. We are filing more and more patents every year, more and more. This year we're gonna even beat what we did last year. That was quite exceptional. Then we continue to run ahead. And talking about GlobalWafers, as I just said, we have only today one licensees, only SEH.
Because, as you know, we have decided, in 2024, to terminate, the license contract, with, GlobalWafers. And, of course, that means that, GlobalWafers is no longer authorized to use any Soitec IP in any form. And they have a two years, kind of, transition time in, July 2027, to adapt themselves, because at this time we will be in a position, of course, to infringe them for any, copy or any use of our patents and IP. Of course, it is coming, years and years after they've decided to build a factory in 2021, and then, of course, they will have to manage, these huge changes for us. But that's, of course, the name of the game. Then that's, really the situation.
If we look at the, at the Photonics-SOI content. Then if you look at the transceivers today that are used to interconnect servers to servers in the data centers, are using a classical architecture that is a first architecture that is allowing to use 400, 800, up to 1.2, 1.2 tera. Now the industry is looking for more bandwidth. And also to reduce latency. If you want to reduce latency, you need to insert, let's say, interconnections at the substrate level. And this is a co-packaged optics in some architectures, that gonna help the boards, the graphics processing unit boards to interconnect each other.
Then the co-packaged optics is, is really a new architecture, for which we see, some, pull forward, because, it was expecting to come in 2028, then 2027s, and today we, we have heard that, some, first, let's say, design gonna be, gonna be commercially available by end of, of this year. Then there is a clear accelerations. And on top of it, we are developing and accelerating the development of, LNOI, that gonna, gonna enhance the capability of, data throughput and data bandwidth. And we clearly see a very strong evolution in the architecture, of, of the, of the photonics, let's say, capabilities. And the transceivers are really at the beginning, and we are selling a lot of wafers, particularly to serve these needs.
But the next waves that are gonna come will serve the co-packaged optics first wave, and then we're gonna have some evolutions, particularly with miniaturization and concentration of the signal, plus LNOI. Then, of course, it is part of the 25%-30% growth we will observe in this market for the coming five years. Then, of course, the volumes of wafers asked by the market gonna grow more and more, but it is also part, and it is translations of the co-packaged optic adoption, then the evolution and the LNOI adoption at the same time. Then it's really correlated with what we see, volumes versus technological evolution and new design wins.
In terms of content in millimeter square, do you have some data for pluggable and co-packaged optics, or this is not something that you have in mind?
We have, of course, some data, but we prefer to speak in volumes of-
Okay.
- wafers.
No problem.
Because, of course, you know, millimeter-
Mm-hmm.
- Millimeter wave evolution is, is changing, particularly with new, new packaging, new 3D packagings. That is also,
Mm.
modifying a bit the way to see the footprint in a planar way. Of course, things are changing. It's better to think wafers volumes, and-
Mm-hmm.
- type of wafers volumes. That's, that's more accurate.
Very clear. Thank you.
You're welcome, Sergio.
The next question comes from Oliver Wong from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys, and thank you, Pierre, for your work and wishing you all the very best for your future endeavors. A couple-
Thank you, Oliver.
Questions from me. First question is, I believe you said by the end of calendar 2026, we'll reach—customers will reach about 1 million wafers and inventories. I was wondering what kind of, you know, in terms of the smartphone growth assumptions, what are you assuming for this? Are you assuming, you know, closer to your existing sort of, you know, +2% smartphone unit growth, or are you assuming closer to, you know, what some analysts are now baking in, in terms of, you know, a decline for this year? That would be my first question.
Then, Oliver, the impact of the growth rate is not significant. 1% correspond to few, few 10,000, a few thousands wafer. Again, talking 8 inches equivalent, to be sure that it's very clear. Then the impact is quite limited. What we are really working on is to continue under shipping, to reach this 1 million, that correspond to what was the case, what was the level of entries before the COVID. Then the growth rate, whatever it is, positive or negative, in of course a single-digit mode, will have a limited impact in terms of volumes effect for us, and might change for some weeks this inflection point, if 1 million is an inflection point.
Got it. And then, also just wondering how margins are trending for the second half of this fiscal year. You know, you guys did around 34% EBITDA margins in the first half. Just wondering from, you know, both the gross margins and OpEx, how things are trending and what we should be aware of for the second half?
... well, we don't communicate, of course, precisely on the margin evolution, but maybe Albin can give you some, let's say, trends and colors.
Absolutely. So just on gross margin, the thing to keep in mind is that there are several drivers. There is currency, there is a mix, a price, and there is the loading of a fab. And the loading of a fab is by far the most potent driver of margins. So we don't guide on gross margin, but think of the fab loading as a drag on the gross margin of somewhere around 600 basis points. I hope that helps. And in addition to that, in addition to that, there is a foreign exchange which should be a drag and of approximately 300 basis points. And this is half on half? Yeah. Got it.
Of course, it works both ways, huh? When we're reloading, when fab loading, we will see operational gearing.
Works particularly after the effort we made.
Yeah. Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.
Welcome, Oliver.
This concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to hand the program back to Pierre Barnabé for closing comments.
Thank you very much, sorry for your interest in Soitec, and for the depth and quality of your questions. The next date in our agenda will be the release of our fiscal year 2026 results on May 27th, with Laurent, after market close, and a presentation held in Paris on May the 28th. In the meantime, we will be very happy to meet with you on the road and at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona very soon. This ends our call for today. Thank you.
This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.