Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call regarding Q1 2023 results of AIXTRON SE. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Guido Pickert.
Thank you very much, operator. Welcome to our presentation of the first quarter of 2023 results. I'd like to welcome our CEO, Dr. Felix Grawert, and our CFO, Dr. Christian Danninger. As the operator indicated, this call is being recorded by AIXTRON and is considered copyright material. As such, it cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without permission. Your participation in this call implies your consent to this recording. Please take note of our safe harbor statement, which can be found on page 2 of our results presentation slide deck as it applies throughout the conference call. We will place an audio file of the recording or transcript on our website at some point after the call. I would now like to hand you over to our CEO for opening remarks. Felix?
Thank you, Guido. Let me also welcome you all to our results presentation. I will start with an overview of the highlights of the quarter and then hand over to Christian for more details on our financial figures. Finally, I will give you an update on the development of our business and our full year guidance. Let me now give you an overview of the key business developments in Q1 2023 on slide two. Demand for our equipment remains strong, with an order intake of EUR 140 million, 7% year-over-year, driven in particular by the strength of demand for wide bandgap power electronics based on GaN and SiC. The vast majority of orders in the quarter were driven by demand from this area.
We have a number of very large customers that are building high volume manufacturing capacities and are placing orders to build up the respective volume capacities step by step. From a regional point of view, the largest demand was recorded from customers with production sites in Europe. We see further adoption of the gallium nitride material system in medium voltage application as well as residential solar applications. Our growth in the area of silicon carbide is mainly driven by the increasing adoption in electromobility as well as by us winning additional new customers. The positive development in silicon carbide is clearly supported by the great acceptance of our new G10-SiC dual wafer size production tool, which we expect to become our top selling product for 2023.
Demand for tools to produce optoelectronics as well as tools to produce LEDs, including Micro LEDs, continue to contribute to our overall strength in orders. As a result of all that, we can report a strong order backlog of EUR 418 million, up 60% year-on-year. Our Q1 2023 revenues have been affected by the delayed granting of export licenses. For a number of units, the licenses had not been issued by quarter end. We are in close exchange with the government and have received clear signals that the licenses will be issued shortly. Hence, we expect that the tool deliveries can be executed in subsequent quarters. I will hand over to our CFO, Christian Danninger. He will take you through the Q1 2023 financials. Christian?
Thanks, Felix. Hello to everyone. Let me start with the financial highlights of our income statement on slide 3. As Felix mentioned, orders in the quarter continued to be strong and our backlog was up driven by the mentioned strength in demand. Revenues at EUR 77 million were slightly lower compared to EUR 89 million last year. To a large part, this was due to the mentioned delayed export licenses, which pushed shipments of finished tools out of the quarter. Gross profit was at EUR 31 million. EBIT was at EUR 3.5 million. Net profit also was at EUR 3.5 million for the quarter. These amounts are below the prior year quarter, mainly due to the mentioned timing effects resulting in the shift of tool deliveries. Gross margin was at 40% compared to 41% the year before.
OpEx in the quarter went up to EUR 28 million, predominantly driven by higher R&D spending and higher personnel expenses compared to the previous year. Now to our balance sheet on slide 4. Inventories increased from EUR 224 million at the end of 2022 to EUR 295 million end of March. Which is mainly due to the inventory build up in preparation for the higher expected business volumes in the upcoming quarters, and to a smaller degree, to the previously mentioned delayed issuance of export licenses. Our strategy to prepare our complete supply chain well in advance for further growth has proved highly effective over the last two years. We are very consciously managing our inventories to enable us to offer acceptable delivery times to our customers.
Our ability to ship is highly appreciated by our customers and has repeatedly enabled us to win against competitors. Trade receivables were at EUR 63 million at the end of March. Down from EUR 120 million at the end of 2022, mainly due to the collection of receivables from Q4 2022 shipments. The advanced payments received from customers at quarter end were EUR 160 million, representing about 39% of order backlog. This led to a total cash balance, including other current financial assets of EUR 328 million. Out of this, EUR 237 million were invested into funds following a very conservative diversification strategy. Just a quick word on our free cash flow on the next slide before I turn back to Felix.
Free cash flow in the first quarter was EUR 2 million, down from EUR 22 million last year. Free cash flow was basically generated from current earnings of the period. The strong cash inflows from receivables and down payments were mostly compensated by the mentioned increase in inventories. Let me hand you back over to Felix. Felix?
Thank you, Christian. Before giving you overview on the outlook for the remainder of the year 2023, I would like to share with you some highlights on our market development. As stated at the very beginning, the order momentum, in particular in most of our address end markets, remains very healthy. In the area of power electronics, based on the material systems of gallium nitride and silicon carbide, the momentum has accelerated further. The order momentum for GaN epi tools continues to grow due to the increasing use of this novel material in power electronics. Orders for GaN power accounted for more than 1/3 of order intake in Q1 2023. The reason for this is that customers are addressing more and more applications with GaN. Most recently, with fast-growing volumes in the medium voltage class and then also in photovoltaic PV applications.
To create the required capacities, several major customers systematically build high volume manufacturing facilities, relying on AIXTRON as their core supplier. AIXTRON was recently awarded the Supplier Excellence Award by one of these leading producers in the semiconductor industry. Award was given in recognition of AIXTRON's close partnership in setting up their volume production and the new AIXTRON GaN deposition tool, G10-GaN, which the customer is already using. This new system will be widely launched later in the year end. In addition to improved performance, will offer increasingly higher productivity with lower cost per wafer, as well as a completely new design with significantly reduced clean room footprint. The silicon carbide business also continues to experience strong growth, driven by the ongoing expansion of electromobility. Several of AIXTRON's customers continue to build their high volume production with AIXTRON equipment.
The new G10-SiC system, which was introduced in Q3 2022, is proving to be very successful, also in ongoing operations with our customers. It is already apparent today that this silicon carbide device manufacturing tool will clearly become the top-selling product in 2023. AIXTRON continues to win new customers with this product. In the area of optoelectronics, demand for lasers, whether for 3D sensing or for optical data communication, remains healthy. In Micro LEDs, we see the research activities to develop next generation displays based on Micro LEDs continuing worldwide with strong momentum. With that, let me now give you the update on our full year guidance 2023 on slide 6. As mentioned before, due to the lack of export licenses, a number of tools could not be shipped in the first quarter. We are in close exchange with the authorities.
We have obtained the request from the government to add an additional layer of protection in our tools that makes sure that they can only be used for the targeted end usage. This additional mechanism has been implemented in Q1 2023, and based on this, we expect to receive the outstanding licenses shortly. We are planning to ship the respective backlog of tools in the course of the subsequent quarters. We continue to expect total orders for the year in a range between EUR 600 million and EUR 680 million, and revenues to be in a range between EUR 580 million and EUR 640 million. We continue to expect a gross margin of around 45% and an EBIT margin in the range of 25%-27%. With that, I'll pass it back to Guido before we take questions.
Thank you very much. Operator, please open the Q&A session.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, press nine and star again. The first question comes from Martin Marandon-Carlhian, ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. My first question on the export licenses issue, can you maybe give us more color on what is exactly the issue here? Could it become more recurring? That's the first part of my question. The second part is, when do you expect export licenses to come, should we expect it to come all at the same time or more as the year goes on? Thank you.
Excuse me, I didn't fully get your first part of that question. Could you repeat that, please?
Yeah. The first part is to know, what exactly is the issue, and is this issue, with export licenses could become more recurring, in the future.
I didn't get it, sorry.
Can you-
Could you repeat the question, please?
Can you hear me better now? Yeah. Yeah. My, my question is on the export licenses issue, and I wanted to know, what is exactly the issue here? Can we have maybe a bit more color, and do you know if it will become more recurring also in the future?
Okay. I get the first part of that one. What exactly is the issue? What I mentioned already upfront is that we have asked by the authorities to add an additional level of protection, which ensures that our tools can only be used for the end applications that export licenses are requested for. That means whenever you apply for an export license, you have to tell in the license application what is the usage, what exactly are you using that for? We have been requested now to introduce in the tool, in our tools, a mechanism to say the tool is only doing what it should be for. We have implemented this mechanism within the first quarter of 2023. This is done.
Given that this is now completed, we expect that the licenses which are outstanding will now be issued shortly. The topic of having a request of an additional restriction or an additional specialty is nothing unusual. We have received that in many cases also in the past. It is a normal procedure within the proceeding of export licenses. This would be my answer to the first part of your question. I come to the second part of your question, which is whether we expect, which I understood, whether we expect to receive the licenses all in one big chunk, in one place, or whether this would be rather spread out. For this one, I would say we don't know exactly. We don't expect it to be in one big chunk.
I would expect rather that it comes step by step, probably a big part of that within one quarter, at most stretching over, two quarters. That is my expectation.
Okay. Thank you. Just maybe a quick follow-up on Wolfspeed. It seems that the ramp-up of their fab is slower than previously expected, and some of the investment schedule for H1 this year will be postponed to H2 this year and H1 next year. Did you notice any change in the order intake momentum, and does it change your expectations for silicon carbide this year?
It does not change our expectation for silicon carbide. It neither changes the expectation for this year, nor does it exchange or change our expectation in the long run. Let me explain why. We have by now a relatively broad base of customers in silicon carbide. Wolfspeed is not the only customer that we have and that we serve. Given that there is an overall very strong momentum, potential shifts from one customer from one year to another don't affect the overall trend. Our guidance is clearly unaffected by this topic.
Okay. Thank you.
Six to nine months due to those delays. Second one on inventories. We're already high in December.
March, you reached close to EUR 300 million, and you mentioned your inventory management to fulfill, say relatively short delivery times for customers. What absolute amount of inventory do you think is realistic to model for year end? The last question, on a Bloomberg article today, there was a report that Germany is in talks to limit the export of chip chemicals to China. Have you heard anything about that topic, and could that have any implications on your business as well? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Kuhn. I took four questions that I noted down. We're happy to take them. I take your number one, two, and four, and my colleague, Christian Danninger takes number three on the inventory. Let me get started. Your first question, let me repeat. I understood that there's two elements. The adding of an additional mechanism, and an overall personnel shortage in the authorities and making or having the effect that all of the granting of licenses takes longer. This is an absolutely correct statement that you have made. It's in fact these two effects. Now, we believe that for both aspects, we have an approach to deal with them. To address them, to remedy these ones.
I mentioned already upfront that this mechanism has been developed. We could complete that within relatively short time and install that topic should be off the table. We can tick it off. The topic about shortages of personnel and an overall longer time period for granting the licenses, that topic unfortunately remains. We remedy that topic by making sure that as soon as a customer order comes in, we work very closely with the customer in getting together all the supporting documents. You can imagine such an application has a lot of documentation required about dimensions of the application, about the customer and so on. We have been very clear and very transparent to our customers about this whole procedure.
Given now that everybody has this topic apparently on their radar, you as investors, we as a company, but also our customers, those documentations is now essentially immediately submitted to the authorities as soon as an order is placed. While in the past, where the critical path was essentially, the lead time for manufacturing our tool. In the history, that took much longer than getting the license. Now that the license takes so long, we make sure that they are submitted.
Based on that, we expect that this topic that we are currently now discussing, and that for the 1st quarter had a very big effect on us, that this topic will go away, and we will then come again to a steady state, a predictable, steady state, and this can be forgotten in a couple of quarters. Yeah. I think we have a very clear roadmap how to address and get this topic out of the way. That I think was the 1st part of your question. The further two questions from you. Like the ASML case, which recently, maybe one month, two months ago, went through the media. We clearly see that our case is very different, for the following reasons.
Both in the ASML case and also as I understand it, I'm not a specialist in that, as I understand the chips, chip chemicals case. It is a case as part of the trade war, where some Western governments or Japan are trying to withhold something and prevent something to go into China. Yeah. Our case is different in as much as that in China, we have a very strong local equipment industry. Yeah. The respective trade agreements, yeah, Wassenaar and so on, they talk about local availability, which is fully given for MOCVD equipment in China. We all know there's a bunch of quite a large number of local equipment makers for epitaxy equipment. Our competitors who are also able to reach the most advanced performance specs, so they have all the capabilities, yeah.
Also we know that in China there is already today the largest installed base of epi tools. Again, completely different from like the ASML case where there's no EUV or deep UV system in China. Therefore, there is absolutely no point in restricting MOCVD shipments into China. I hope that addressed your last point and gives you the understanding why our case is different. With that, I hand over to Christian about the inventories topic.
Thanks, Felix. A few words on the inventory. If we look a little bit back into the history, 2021 and 2022, we, and you know from our reporting and the quarterly calls, we come out of an area of material shortages, supply chain restrictions, where which required a lot of operational efforts to serve our customers on time and satisfy our customers. We are finally reaching a state now where we get into the range of inventory levels that are actually required for the actual business performance, but also for the further growth that we are seeing. Just to give you a few numbers.
If you take a look at our inventory level at the moment and the development from last year, from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023, our inventory pretty much doubled, and at the same time, our down payment also doubled. Big portion of that is already financed by our customers. It's all very well backed up by the order backlog that we have. That also has pretty much developed in the same direction. Going forward, your question was, of course, what to expect at the end of the year. I cannot really give you that number because that would basically be guiding into the next year, which we cannot do at this point, yeah? It basically depends on the order backlog at the end of the year. That's the primary driver.
I mean, if you take a look at the relationships, yeah, our inventories as a percentage of backlog is like 50%-60% seems to be a reasonable range. Down payment is also like 50%-60% of inventories. Then you need to take your assumption on the development going forward and what the backlog is at the end of the year. We can only say we are preparing.
In the quarter, on the orders side. Are you expecting that to remain the largest driver of orders for the current year and beyond going forward? I know you've previously spoken about a split within power of 60 to 40 in favor of silicon carbide this year, but just wondering if the outlook there has changed, in light of that strength that you've seen in GaN, in Q1. My second question is on the 2023 guidance. You're sounding very positive on the hope and expectation that these license issues resolve within the full year.
If that happens and we consider the strength that you're seeing in power and GaN and SiC specifically, would you say that there's scope for you to upgrade that 2023 guidance later down the line through the remainder of this year, as you have done in previous years? Thank you.
Felix? Felix, you're on mute.
No, I think I was on mute. Thank you very much for these 2 questions. The first one that talked about the split between GaN and silicon carbide. In fact, we see the momentum in silicon carbide unfolding exactly as we have expected and as we have reported. We see the momentum in gallium nitride increasing further or faster than we had expected before. In fact, gallium nitride really gets a faster and bigger momentum than thought before. Based on that, the 60/40, I think this no longer applies. I'm just thinking what the correct numbers would be. Silicon carbide is still ahead of the gallium nitride. I think that's a very clear one. Gallium nitride is getting an acceleration here.
I take it that's well noted. The second part of your question, what it means to our guidance. In fact, we expect that this export license topic, as indicated before, will resolve with the next quarter or next two, three quarters for sure, but definitely by year-end. With that, if that is resolved and given an accelerating momentum as we observed in gallium nitride, it could well be that there might be even further upgrades throughout the year. Let's discuss that when we are really there. As you have clearly noted and identified a positive trend. That's absolutely correct.
That's really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Gustav Fröberg, Berenberg. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions as well. I just have one really on new customer wins. Could you maybe just give us a little bit more color around new customer wins, sort of in what end market or for what applications are you seeing those new customer wins? How far along in their own manufacturing process are these new customers that you're winning?
That's a very good question. We see the new customer wins and of course we all know new customer wins today is the driving revenue of tomorrow. We see that along multiple dimensions. Let me go step-by-step. First off, in silicon carbide, we see the momentum for the overall market continuing as mentioned. Also we indicated before, we see our G10-SiC tools very, very successful in the market. It's the material of choice for this one.
For many of these new entrants into this field, beyond the established power IDMs, we continue to win and we continue to win even new and additional ones also throughout the first quarter of 2023, customers around the world. Let me put it this way. Around the world is the right thing. Across all geographies, both in Europe, both in the U.S., but also in Taiwan and in China. That is the basis for a further acceleration of this momentum on the silicon carbide side. Yeah. It's a continuing of a trend which we have been spoken, but in fact there is a number of additional ticks, quite significant ticks, that we can make and that we have made in the first quarter. That's silicon carbide.
Now I move over to gallium nitride. As I indicated in gallium nitride, we see an additional momentum coming from the low voltage, from the photovoltaic. In gallium nitride, we see that some existing customers who have already our platform qualified and maybe who have now three, four, five or maybe seven, eight systems, they now say go on expanding and really building large facilities, meaning literally customers are planning a complete fab. Yeah. You know, the sizes of fab and really, with the objective, pardon. Sorry, with the objective of dedicating that fab for gallium nitride power chips. Yet they're sharing with us a long-term plans, long-term growth plans, how so to say, such fabs will be equipped.
This is not only one customer, this is a very decent number of customers. Yeah. That's the expansion plans of existing customers. At the same time, you were asking about new customer wins. Also in gallium nitride, we continue to see new entrants, or customers who maybe had a, I would say A-style, R&D-style effort, now starting to go very serious, and really entering this field. We also have been able to convert some players who have not been our customers yet, but in the field of gallium nitride to become customers. It's a positive trend across the market.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
The next question comes from David O'Connor, BNP Paribas. Please go ahead with your question.
Great, thanks for taking my question. Maybe first on the silicon carbide side, just to follow up to the prior question. Among the top five power device manufacturers in CELEX, any further wins at these customers? I know you talked about new entrants and some other wins in Asia, but just specifically the top five, the big five, power device manufacturers.
Well, I can tell you that across the whole industry, both in the silicon carbide segment and in the gallium nitride segment, as well as in the Micro LED segment, we have seen over the last, 12, 18 months, customers building fabs across all our end applications. Due to supply chain and material shortages, some customers, be it North American, be it European customers, be it Asian customers, had to shift here and there their plans by a quarter or a couple of quarters even, and we had to react in a flexible manner. The fact that some factory constructions of customers take no longer, I think is a very normal thing in this overall massively growing market for compound semiconductors that we see.
If you take into account, it's a very different thing, whether you have an existing shell, an existing fab, and you just need to put some additional electricity, water, and gas lines, and then move in some tools, or whether you really have to build a complete new shell from the ground up with everything that comes together. We have seen that across the board. As you can see, we have very well managed each such allocated slots in such case from one customer to another. I would say that's part of our daily business. Nothing.
Sorry, I'm sorry.
Go ahead. Carry on.
Okay. Understood. maybe a follow-up, just on the orders. What was power in total in Q1? Lastly, can you just give us an update on Micro LEDs? Thank you.
Yeah. Power in total in Q1 was around, just look at my numbers here. It was around three quarters of the total order intake garnered power electronics for the orders. Coming to the second part of your question, Micro LEDs, we continue to be engaged, very strongly engaged with customers on Micro LEDs. The overall plans of our customers remain unchanged, meaning the big volume ramp, meaning the ambition to make Micro LEDs the next big display application. As reported previously, in order to secure the mass transfer step, so the epi step and also the processing of the LED is working fine. There's no major obstacles.
However, the mass transfer step remains a hurdle in combination of technical and commercial challenges, yeah. It can be done on a technical level, but not at commercial scale. Those things which are commercially viable are not technically feasible, yeah. Therefore, our customers probably need, I don't know, two, four, six quarters more to resolve those topics before the big volume ramp kicks in. Nevertheless, we see many customers now as always taking, so to say, smart compromises, meaning not aiming for the highest volume applications in one shot, but rather taking a step-by-step approach, meaning to really go for some high-end applications which are able to carry a premium and do the ramp up.
We need an export license for all of China, all of Korea, all of Taiwan, all of Malaysia, and all rest of world, yeah. Just to remind everybody. I'm just now looking here what that makes up in numbers. I think in numbers that means we need an export license roughly for 40% to 50% of our revenue, as our revenue split currently is for the year 2023.
Yeah. Got it. It's for all tools to those geographies. It's not restricted to certain ones.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. Okay. That's great. Thanks. Secondly, I was wondering on your power electronics orders, obviously been very strong, so curious to know, you know, do you view the order strength as sustainable, let's say into 2024, or is it a case of, you know, certainly the, or potentially some orders ahead of, you know, large fab build out, the orders are coming in now and maybe would slow down later?
I think that's a very good question. No, we do see that as a, this is sustainable and continuous and steady trend because the customer base in these markets is following a dynamic where they build their fabs step by step, yeah. Meaning, adding the tools roughly on a quarterly basis as the customer expects the revenue to come and the revenue ramp to come. That revenue ramp, given that we speak about the megatrend here, I call it the electrification of everything, yeah, both for the very efficient electric power electronics, yeah, which simply allows to cut down the energy wasted and convert it into heat, yeah.
In silicon carbide, where the benefit is that you get more mileage out of the battery, it's a continuous and steady trend. We don't have any customers among these, yeah, which are either driven, subsidy driven, making, filling a complete fab, yeah, and the fab is then standing empty. We have had that, if you remember, in the blue LED boom about a decade ago, yeah, where Chinese subsidies triggered that. This is a very steady, very, very able trend, according to our customer behavior.
Okay, got it. They're basically ordering as they build all the ones that have the fab. Is that the right way to read it?
Exactly. That's exactly how it goes.
Okay. I correct that. Last one for me, just on competition in silicon carbide and to a lesser extent, gallium nitride. I think in silicon carbide, it's interesting that you know, most of your peers are all speaking very positively about new customer wins and also the 200 millimeter transition. Just curious, firstly, how do you, how do you read that really? Is it.
Please go ahead with the question.
Yes, good afternoon. Three for me, please. The first one is about accounting on the backlog. Basically, to clarify if the orders you got signed from your clients but still doesn't have the export license, these are all in your backlog or not? Basically, if you recognize them when you get the order signed or when you have the basically export license? Second question is about the lead time. Forget about the export license. What's your normal lead time at the moment from, let's say, ordering to shipment? Related to this, looking at your chart on the revenue guidance on page 7. Considering your EUR 370 million of backlog plus the Q1 revenue plus the after-sales, to reach your guidance, you need less than one quarter of new orders. I'm just wondering why is that?
Basically with the orders you will get in Q2, you will probably even overachieve this guidance. If you can clarify this point. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Yes, 3 questions I took. The first one, I took about accounting, about a booking of orders. As you know, we have a very strict internal procedure for recording and booking equipment orders. The rules for that one have been detailed out also in our annual report. According to our policies, each order we undergo an individual risk assessment for several risk factors. One of these is especially also the topic of granting of export licenses. Whenever we see a risk here in place, we don't record the order until an export license is granted. Yes, in fact, for part of those order, this is in place. I hope this addresses your first question.
To your second question, the lead time for our tools is today between eight and 12 months. That already leads now to your third question about the revenue guidance. Yes, in effect, we need less than one quarter of new orders in order to achieve our revenue guidance. However, if you bring that in relation to the lead time of shipments, you understand that an order that we get in the first of July, I go now to the beginning of the third quarter, is kind of falling out of the year 2023 simply due to the lead time topic. I hope that clarifies the second and third question that you had.
Yes. Thank you. Just to follow up. Basically, considering the orders in Q2 will likely be shipped at the end of the year, and you have the EUR 70 million you mentioned before of basically, machines which you built, but you didn't have the license. Part of the EUR 70 million is not in the bank. The EUR 370 probably if you get the export license is bigger. It means that your real, let's say, sales power for this year probably is bigger than this pie chart. If you get the licenses and if you get, let's say, different order in the Q2, is that fair?
I think I didn't get the question.
Okay. Sorry. The question just to follow up. If I understand correctly, the EUR 370 million of backlog is not including all of these EUR 70 million of machines which you produced but.
Don't forget also about the point in time when the customer wants to have the tool. Yeah. Two, three questions ago, we were asked about, you know, some North American silicon carbide customers pushing orders out because their factories is not ready. Yeah. Overall, it depends on multiple factors. It's not as easy as just adding the numbers. I would like to put that up front. Yeah. However, if several of these positive factors, which you have just outlined in your question, come together, customer wants it fast because they have demand and their factory is ready. Second, all these export licenses are coming on time. Plus third, all the components and the materials are there and so on.
In that positive case, if it all comes together, yes, then it could very well be that overall the numbers look better even at the end of the year.
Okay.
It's too early to say that today.
Yeah.
You know, as I highlighted, it's external factors out of the control of AIXTRON. You know, and, what's out of our control, we can't take in.
Okay. Just to conclude, sorry, out of this EUR 70 million of revenue which will be postponed because of the ex-export licenses, can we assume that, I don't know, half of these are not recognized in the backlog or is the minority the majority of this figure?
Probably something in the upper half, I would say.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Malte Schaumann, Warburg Research. Please go ahead with your question. Malte Schaumann, your line is open. You may ask your question now.
Yes, two quick ones. First is on the export licenses again. Is it the case that once these customers place orders and later in the year that, when approval times will be shorter than what they're currently seeing independent from the fact of the additional security layer which you have implemented?
Definitely. That is what we expect. Simply also due to the fact that for repeat orders, repeat customer orders, typically the approval goes faster than for new customer orders. Simply because the customer is known, due diligence has been conducted on the customer, and then it's just an easier repeat. Yes, that's the function.
Yeah. Good. Okay. Then on the customers, could you provide the number, how many customers have actively ordered, or are currently actively ordering, Carbide and GaN tools for each of the technologies?
Oh, I wouldn't have the number. Many. By the way your support for our upcoming annual general meeting where the lines are open. This meeting takes place on May seventeenth, any support would be appreciated. Thank you very much and bye-bye.