Ladies and gentlemen, this is Christian Ludwig. A warm welcome on my side to AIXTRON's Q2 2026 conference call. I am very sorry for the technical delays that we had experienced and to keep you waiting. We had some major issues with our external provider. We are working on this, so next time, hopefully, we will have a smooth communication. With me in the room today is our CEO, Dr. Felix Grawert, and our CFO, Dr. Christian Danninger, who will guide you through today's presentation and then take your questions. 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 the recording. Please take note of the disclaimer that you find on page one of the presentation document as it applies throughout the conference call.
This call is not being broadcast by a webcast or any other medium. However, we will make a transcript available on our website after the call. I would now like to hand you over to our CEO for the opening remarks. Felix, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Christian. Let me also welcome you to our Q2 2026 results presentation. Again, also from my side, from the board, apologies for the delay with our external provider. Thanks a lot for everybody who kept waiting. I will start now with an overview of the highlights of the quarter and then hand over to our CFO, Christian, for more details on our financial figures. Finally, I will give you an update on the development of our business and guidance. Let me start by giving you an update on the key business developments of the second quarter on slide two. The key messages are: We have received strong new orders of EUR 215 million, predominantly driven by optoelectronics.
Revenues came out at EUR 115 million, in line with our guidance for the quarter, reflecting the ongoing ramp of the photonics business and coming out of the trough in power electronics in Q1. We also generated a very strong cash flow. Operating cash flow reached EUR 119 million, and free cash flow came in at EUR 114 million. This was predominantly driven by higher customer advanced payments reflecting the strong order momentum and supporting the upcoming production ramp. Despite the soft start into the year, we are fully on track to achieve the full- year guidance with revenues of EUR 560 million ±EUR 30 million. We had a soft Q1 with revenues of EUR 59 million. We achieved EUR 115 million in Q2. We plan to further increase output in Q3 to EUR 180 million ±EUR 20 million . We target a very strong Q4 with a further increase in output beyond the Q3 level.
As you can see, we are ramping up our production with a steep ramp rate and significant increase of output every quarter of this year to serve the growing demand in optoelectronics. Finally, construction of our new site in Malaysia has started and is fully on track. Christian will now provide you a detailed look at our financials on the following pages before I take over again. Christian.
Thanks, Felix, and hello to all. Let me start with the highlights of our revenue development on slide four. Q2 revenues marked the next step in our planned production ramp, increasing to EUR 115 million from EUR 59 million in Q1. This was fully in line with our quarterly guidance of EUR 10 million ±EUR 10 million. Compared with the prior year quarter, revenues were 16% lower. For the first half, revenues amounted to EUR 174 million. The revenue mix already shows the growing importance of optoelectronics. 54% of the equipment revenues came from opto, 23% from LED and Micro LED, 22% from GaN and SiC power, and 2% from R&D tools. Our after-sales business contributed EUR 52 million and remained stable in absolute terms year-over-year. As a result, its share of group revenues increased to 30% from 21% a year ago.
Now, let's take a look at the financial KPIs of the income statement on slide five. Gross profit in Q2 was EUR 47 million, corresponding to a gross margin of 41%, unchanged from Q2 last year. This demonstrates a solid margin and performance as volumes began to recover. For the first half, gross profit was EUR 58 million, and gross margin was 33%, 3 percentage points below the prior- year period. The H1 margin reflects the lower production volume, particularly in Q1, as well as a mid-single-digit EUR million one-off expense related to the personnel reduction in operations. Operating expenses in Q2 were stable year-over-year at EUR 32 million. Higher R&D spending was offset mainly by increased R&D grants and significantly lower FX losses. The rise in R&D expenses primarily reflect higher depreciation and material costs as we continue to invest in our technology growth.
For the first six months, operating expenses were EUR 65 million, up 3% year-over-year. EBIT in Q2 was EUR 15 million, equivalent to an EBIT margin of 13%. This represents a clear turnaround from Q1 and reflects the higher revenue level and improved operating leverage. For the first half, EBIT was negative EUR 8 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of negative 4%, mainly due to low Q1 volume and the one-off expense already mentioned. Let me now turn to the key balance sheet and cash flow indicators on slide six. Working capital decreased by EUR 184 million compared with the end of 2025. This was primarily driven by strong customer advance payments and the conversion of receivables from last year's fourth quarter revenues into cash. Trade receivables declined to EUR 81 million at the end of June from EUR 131 million at year-end.
Strong order momentum resulted in a substantial increase in customer advance payments. The composition of current orders and individually agreed payment terms also provided a modest additional benefit. At the end of June, advanced payments stood at EUR 197 million, more than EUR 150 million above year-end 2025. They represented around 43% of the equipment order backlog and provide meaningful funding for the upcoming production ramp. At the same time, inventories increased to EUR 318 million from EUR 284 million at the year-end, mainly reflecting higher work in progress for shipments scheduled in the coming quarters. Trade payables rose to EUR 49 million from EUR 34 million, as purchasing activity increased to support the ramp. Both developments are consistent with the planned increase in output in the second half.
Overall, operating cash flow reached EUR 173 million in the first half, an increase of almost EUR 90 million from EUR 85 million in the prior- year period. In Q2 alone, operating cash flow was EUR 119 million. A key driver was the strong increase in customer advance payments, which supports the financing of the production line. Free cash flow was correspondingly strong at EUR 162 million in the first half, compared with EUR 74 million a year ago. In Q2 alone, free cash flow amounted to EUR 114 million. CapEx in the first half was close to EUR 11 million. For the full year, we expect CapEx of around EUR 55 million, comprising our baseline investments and approximately two-thirds of the announced EUR 40 million investment in the Malaysia expansion. The process to sell our site in Italy is ongoing.
Our liquidity, comprising cash equivalents, and other current financial assets, increased to EUR 816 million as of June 30th, 2026. After deducting the liability component of the convertible bond, net financial assets amounted to EUR 460 million, compared with EUR 222 million at year-end 2025. Our equity ratio remains strong at 61%, despite the increase in total assets following the bond issue. With that, let me hand you back over to Felix.
Thank you, Christian. I would like to continue with an update on key trends in our different markets. Overall, the picture in Q2 was very much in line what we described at the end of Q1. Optoelectronics remains very dynamic and is currently the clear growth driver for AIXTRON, while the power electronics and LED, Micro LED markets remain in different phases of recovery. I will start with optoelectronics. Momentum remained exceptionally strong in the second quarter. After the clear inflection point we saw in Q1, the market continued to accelerate in Q2, driven by strong demand from AI data center applications. In Q2 alone, optoelectronics accounted for 75% of equipment orders, making it by far the most important contributor to our order intake. Based on our current visibility, we expect order momentum in optoelectronics to remain at very high levels in the second half of the year.
The key driver remains the ongoing architectural shift in AI data centers. From copper-based connections and lower- speed optical links, towards high- speed optical connectivity at 800G, and eventually 1.6T and beyond. This transition requires a significant increase in the number and performance of optical links, and therefore, in the number of advanced lasers needed. In the near term, demand continues to be driven by indium phosphide-based EMLs and CW lasers for data center applications. At the same time, customers are already working on photonic integrated circuits, PICs, as the next step in technology roadmap. Importantly, the current investment wave is no longer limited to a few large players. We now see leading laser suppliers worldwide committing to capacity expansions, and the trend is also extending to smaller laser manufacturers.
Based on the current pipeline and customer discussions, we expect this investment wave to remain at very high levels over the coming quarters. This gives us strong visibility and supports our confidence in sustained momentum in optoelectronics well into 2027. As discussed previously, our G10-AsP platform is benefiting strongly from this trend. Customers are increasingly standardizing on this AIXTRON platform for advanced photonic devices. The reason is that yield, uniformity, and cost of ownership are critical in this application. Many systems are initially configured for 4-inch wafers but are already prepared for transition to 6-inch, giving customers the flexibility as the technology and supply chain evolves. Let me keep it therefore short on SiC and GaN power electronics, as there's not much new compared to the last quarter. In SiC, the installed base of equipment at customers remains underutilized, and customers remain cautious about new capacity investments.
At the same time, the underlying demand for silicon carbide chips continues to grow, and we are seeing utilization rates gradually increase at our key customers. When this leads to new tool orders is difficult to predict at the current point in time. In gallium nitride, demand for power equipment remains moderate. Here, customer utilization is gradually increasing. It remains too early to determine when this will translate into additional equipment demand. Strategically, our conviction around GaN remains unchanged. Recent announcements and discussions around Computex and PCIM have reinforced our view that gallium nitride has a strong opportunity to win designs in AI data centers, particularly for 800-volt DC- to- DC conversion. Over time, we also see the potential for GaN to move beyond the 48-volt level and into lower- voltage point-of-load applications.
In such architectures, GaN could replace multiple stages of silicon MOSFET-based power conversion, enabling more compact and efficient power delivery for AI infrastructure. AIXTRON remains very well positioned in GaN, yet we have not seen signals for the inflection point for significant new order momentum. Finally, a brief comment on LED and Micro LED. Both applications remain soft in the second quarter. We shipped systems for red, orange, yellow, Mini LED in previous quarters, and these systems are currently being installed and ramped up. The broader investment environment for Mini LEDs remains limited as of today. For Micro LED, most of the demand we see today is driven by AR glasses. We continue to believe in the long-term potential of this technology.
We see more and more focus of end customers on innovative products such as the AI glasses of Ray-Ban Meta, which may at some point generate stronger customer pull. The exact timing for such order uptake remains unclear as of today, but it may materialize as early as 2027. Let me now move to our footprint expansion. Our new site in Malaysia is set to become an important element of our global footprint and represents a key step in strengthening our manufacturing base. With the new facility in Penang, we are expanding our presence in one of the world's leading semiconductor ecosystems. The project is running fully as planned, and groundwork has already started. With that, let me now move on to our guidance. We confirm our increased guidance for 2026 as published in mid-April.
We expect revenues to come in at EUR 560 million in a range of ±EUR 30 million. We expect a gross margin of about 42% and an EBIT margin between 17% and 20%. The guidance for the gross margin and the EBIT margin includes one-off expenses in the mid-single-digit EUR million range related to the personnel reduction in operations. The measures will lead to annualized savings of a similar magnitude in the future. For Q3 2026, we expect revenues of EUR 180 million ±EUR 20 million. For Q4 2026, we target a further increase in output corresponding to the steep quarter-over-quarter ramp that characterizes our fiscal year 2026. We continue to monitor geopolitical developments closely, particularly in the Middle East. This includes potential impacts on energy prices, supply chains, financial markets, and investment and demand behavior.
At present, we do not see a significant impact on our business, but we will respond appropriately if the situation changes. With that, I'll pass it back to Christian before we take questions.
Thank you, Felix. Thank you, Christian. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star nine and pound key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to revoke your question, press star three and pound key. You can also use the dial-in function in the webcast and raise your hand if you would like to ask a question by phone. I repeat, star nine and pound key.
I have the first question live. I think we can start with the first, please.
Question is from Adithya Metuku from HSBC. The floor is yours.
Thank you, guys. Thank you for letting me on. Two questions, please. Firstly, just on optoelectronics demand, you talked about demand still accelerating. We've also seen similar commentary from your customers. I just wondered, based on your discussions, when do you see the supply demand coming into balance in the indium phosphide laser landscape? That's the first question, and I've got a follow-up.
What do you mean? Let me question back. What do you mean with the demand and supply coming into balance? I'm not sure.
As in
get behind the question.
Yeah. If you look at your customers, if you take Lumentum's comments, they made some commentary around being 30% below demand. They don't think they will be able to meet the demand that's out there in 2027. I just wondered, and that's clearly driving the investments which you're benefiting from. When do you see their supply, which is tied to these machines you're producing, coming in balance with the demand that they're seeing from their customers, if that makes sense? Is it 2028? Is it 2029? What are your customers telling you?
Thanks a lot. I cannot comment on individual customers, and also for us it is difficult to assess the situation, the demand-supply situation that our customers are in, because I am unable to see the demand pipeline that is behind my customers. Please understand I cannot comment on that particular aspect. What I can comment on is on the AIXTRON side of things. What we are seeing here is very clear, that we see that the demand for tools for laser for the optoelectronics is a very broad market momentum. It is not only two or three players, but rather we see a diversified set of, I would say, almost 15 laser companies. Many, of course, the big players from Europe and the U.S. A very big player also from Taiwan and from Japan. Also we see a very strong momentum from China.
I think, let's recall, we all know China has a very strong optoelectronics ecosystem, and this whole industry, I think almost at a global breadth, very well diversified. As I said, about 15 players who make up, we just analyzed that about 80% of our order intake is taking up quite a strong momentum. The customers are communicating to us also their forecast when they would like to have the tools for their individual ramp. That typically depends. They have some space left in existing factories. Customers start building new fab construction projects. Whatever the customer fab is scheduled to get online, let's say in the second quarter of next year, we make sure that we reserve for them slots so that in the second or third quarter of next year we can serve them.
We see here a broad and a continued long momentum ramping up and really building the capacity base that is needed. This is what we see to describe the demand behavior on the customer side. Maybe that is a bit helpful.
Yes, of course. Thank you. Just as a follow-up, I had a bit of a technical question. My understanding from recent developments is that when you go to CPOs or any other architectures that use an external laser source, you have a significant amount of losses before the light is actually fed into the fiber. That means there is a need for a lot of amplification lasers, et cetera. The question is, for a given optical link bandwidth, if you were to move from a pluggable to a CPO with an external laser source, do you see a significant increase in the indium phosphide die or die size that is needed?
For example, if I take a 1 Tbps transceiver and substitute that with a 1 Tbps CPO, do you need more indium phosphide die and more extra machines for that transition?
Without going too deep into the technical details and also every of the customers has a different architecture behind it, what we see is generally that with increasing speed, we see increasing die size and increasing wafer capacity needed. That comes simply as the speed goes up, modulation gets more lossy and more die size is needed. The overall trend, higher speed rates, is driving also further wafer demand.
Got it. Thank you.
Is from Mr. Martin Marandon-Carlhian, ODDO BHF. The floor is yours, Martin.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. My first one is on the 2026 guidance. Just a clarification there. There was no upgrade to the guidance, the order intake is very strong. I assume that a lot of orders are going into 2027. Would you say that the bottleneck for this year, it's more about execution than anything else? That's my first question.
That's a fair remark. We feel comfortable in hitting the guidance. As you see, as we have outlined, we are steepening and ramping up our output quarter-over-quarter. You saw around EUR 60 million in the first quarter, EUR 115 million in the second, 180. Oh, it's referring to the midpoints, right? EUR 180 million for the third, if you just do the math, a little over EUR 200 million for the third quarter. We're not limited by orders, as you see that also in the pie chart we had in the deck. We are rather now really doing everything to execute. To make sure that with this laser boom that has just started early in March, just not even three, four months out, to work to ramp up our own capacity, to work very closely with our suppliers. They'll be very good partners over the years.
Of course, the laser machines need some different parts than the power machines to ramp up the supply chain. Hence you see this steep quarter-over-quarter increase, that's really for the year the limiting factor. It's not raw. I think the good news is we are quite well to satisfy our customers' needs. To get the machines out as they need it. You can imagine such a steep ramp from 60 to 200, a 3x within a year in terms of output. That's quite some work behind it.
Helpful. The second question is on the photonics orders. You mentioned that the momentum is very strong and will continue to be very strong. Looking at the run rate today, it implies that sales could be around EUR 100 million next year. Do you think we are kind of at a high plateau in terms of orders? Do you think we'll go higher, or should we expect a little bit of volatility quarter-to-quarter for these orders?
Good question. Honestly, I think around EUR 200 million, what we have seen now as an order intake is for the next quarters, as much as we have visibility, what we are looking at. We think that's a fair assumption to see. Of course, with a bit of a delay time, the lead times for equipment shipments, we will then see that also translate into revenues. I think your guess is approximately right.
The last one, if I may, on GaN adoption in data centers. I understand that it's not in the order intake yet. What the discussion with customers are looking like at the moment? Is it normal that we don't see it yet, or do you think the timeline for mass adoption has somewhat moved?
I wouldn't say the timeline has moved. I think the capital markets in particular, has misunderstood the timeline, and is now just realizing how long it takes. Let's recap, right? We saw the new 800- volt architecture. Now the implementation of that architecture is going to come in steps. The first stage, where we see a silicon to switch to wide bandgap, is going to be on the very high voltage side for the silicon carbide front end. When you do the down conversion from the overland line from whatever 10 kV, 13 kV, all the way to 800- volt. It's going to be silicon carbide, and that part is coming first. Then second, the down conversion from 800- volt DC all the way to 1- volt.
Where the switching of the CPU or GPU is happening, the gallium nitride part, that will come later. I think the industry, especially the capital market, has overestimated how fast such a transition is going. I think we gradually see now the transition starting on the silicon carbide side, and then with a bit of delay coming on also on the gallium nitride side. It's a massive change in architecture, and this takes time.
Okay. Would you say that gallium nitride is still coming early 2027 or by 2027, at least?
As we said in the prepared remarks, it's too early to predict and to forecast. We see very clear technical discussions. Yeah. We see around trade shows like Computex and discussions that there's a hot momentum ongoing. We have not seen that yet translate into orders. Yeah. On our side, we don't have visibility and indications yet. We have no doubt that it is coming.
Just really the direct question, yeah.
We have no doubt that it is coming, and I hope you could see that also from my remarks.
Yeah. Just the last question is just to clarify, if the orders, let's say, would come in early 2027, would you know already by now, or is it normal that sometimes you don't have this kind of visibility and you know by a little bit later?
I think it would be normal that we get notification relatively short-term. Please recall that our systems are the tools of record across the whole market for the gallium nitride power. All the development work, all the pilot work, all the sampling and pre-production work of all the customers has been done on our systems, either the older Series G5+ or the newer Series G10-GaN. All the customers work with our system, which is they don't need us now to support in the preparation. At some point, I expect the customers to come along with multi-dozen tool orders and say, "AIXTRON, how fast can you ship, please?
Okay. That's very clear. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Next question is from Gustav Fröberg from Berenberg.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions as well. Two and a half, if I may. Firstly, just on Opto and the orders in Q2. Very strong, obviously, but is it correct to assume that the rest of the business has kind of stagnated or declined a little bit in Q2 versus Q1? Another way of asking it, do you have a sort of base-level view of orders excluding the extra order intake you're getting from the upcycle in Opto at the moment, that we can think about as a sort of base-level run rate, if you like? That's my first question. Then second, last quarter, we talked about 80-120 tools needed for the Opto market per year. It seems you're pretty much already there for H1.
I want to know in a little bit more detail if this preliminary view that you gave in Q1 has changed or if you're simply hitting that number a little bit sooner than you thought you would. Thank you.
Two very good questions, Gustav. Hello. I think, first question on the remainder of the business. I think as we have indicated, the power business continues to be stable at a low level. Yeah. silicon carbide, pretty slow because of the underutilization and overcapacity still in the market. The gallium nitride. Here and there are some orders, but still on a lower level before the next wave of investment kicks in, as we just discussed along the question of margin. Yeah. I think the two power segments are stable on a low level. At the same time, as I've indicated, we expect for the next quarter, the opto momentum to continue to be strong and upbeat. Yeah. We see that from the pipelines and the inquiry pipelines, and sometimes in many cases with the big guys, big customers also very clear forecast. Yeah.
We have a very healthy confidence on the opto momentum for the coming quarters, yeah. To your question about the tools, 80- 120, yeah. That was our initial forecast. We currently see a stronger momentum than that, yeah. It's too early to predict, yeah, where exactly that's coming from, yeah. Could be that the overall wave is bigger than we have expected, yeah. Let's see how it continues. We currently see a bit stronger momentum than these 80- 120.
Okay, super. Very clear. Thank you.
Very well. The next question, Bank of America, Oliver Wong. Please go ahead, Oliver.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. First question is on capacity. Understand that, I guess if you take the midpoint of the full- year guide and the Q3 guide, let's say Q4 at EUR 220 million. If this was to be stable going forward into next year, that would imply, let's say, EUR 880 million in full- year capacity. Is that the right way to think about it?
You should consider capacity not as a limiting factor. Please recall the equipment business is relatively CapEx light. For us, the situation is very different from that from our customers, right? Our customers need a fab, they need a clean room. The customers need our equipment, luckily. Yeah. For them, it is always they need all the CapEx, all the preparation with multiple months, if not several quarters of preparation time to create capacity. For us, on our end, we are relatively CapEx light, as you know, and we have a decent flexibility. Also to shift some of the assembly tasks. If you recall, what we do at AIXTRON is mostly assembly and test in our own premises, in our own clean room environment.
We have a big flexibility in times of upside swings as we are now realizing, to put some more of the work to our suppliers. Let's say the suppliers in demand peak times, take some more additional assembly steps, and we get, for example, it was partially half assembled already when it comes to our shop floor, means the tool is then not standing, whatever, I put arbitrary numbers, yeah, not taking whatever, 10 weeks on our shop floor, but rather taking six weeks on our shop floor because six weeks of the work has been already at an outsourced assembly space. Yeah, just to shine light on why this is such. Yeah. Therefore, capacities are not a limiting factor to us into third quarter.
Got it. My understanding is, lack of the full- year raise, in spite of strong orders, that was, I guess, somewhat related to some sort of supplier capacity constraint. Is that correct or not?
It's a ramp rate. It's not a capacity. It's a good one. Good question to clarify that. Thanks for following up on that one. It's a ramping rate constraint. It's not a capacity, right? It's the question within the given machines, premises, buildings, clean room space. What I consider capacity is how fast can we hire people on board, how fast can our suppliers hire people to operate the machines, which are then being used to manufacture the parts. Yeah. It's a purely limitation of the speed, how fast we can accelerate. Think about your car going on a highway. You have no Vmax, yeah? The question, how long does it take you to reach your travel speed?
Yeah. Makes sense. I guess like we can run rate the, let's say EUR 220 million Q4.
Yeah. No problem.
kind of ramp that tool.
Once you are at travel speed, you can cruise easily and comfortably.
Okay. Sounds good. Thank you very much.
Great. Next question is from BNP Paribas, Martin Jungfleisch.
Yeah. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. First one's on gross margin. I think the implied gross margin for the second half is around 46%. What is your view on phasing here? Should we expect more like 44%, 45% gross margin in the third quarter, maybe up to 47% in the fourth quarter? With that gross margin level of around 46%, let's say in the second half, is that sort of level you're kind of comfortable with for next year? Or would the Malaysian facility ramp have any impact on that in the short term?
Honestly, we haven't done the math on the details, but what we clearly see is that the laser systems carry of course a bit of a better margin profile. Simply coming from the fact that it's a highly, highly complex systems, yeah, and all our customers have their own differentiating features that they orders. They're very differentiated recipes, yeah. The laser systems are, I think, laser EPI is some of the most complicated stuff that customers make on our tools, yeah. Given from these technical requirements, of course, that translates then into a bit healthier margin profiles From that onwards, we would also expect in 2027 to clearly see an uptick in terms of the gross margins, as you rightfully said. Yeah. It will be a good year 2027 that we can already see ahead of us.
Okay. Is there any ramp cost for the Malaysian facilities that you're seeing in 2027? Is it meaningful?
There's some ramp cost, of course. There's also some fixed cost regression effects. The first order, consider this the one.
Okay, thanks. The second one is really on opto. Can you disclose what kind of configurations you're mainly shipping today? Is that still mainly 4-inch, and is it increasing level 6-inch? Also, have you received any data on how the EPI yields at your customers are progressing in both 4-inch and 6-inch ? Thank you.
Majority of system is shipping on 4-inch. I think probably 70%, 80% is on 4-inch, smaller one on 6-inch. All customers, of course, want to be ready for 6-inch for a conversion at a later point in time. I think the yields that our customers achieve are probably some of the best-kept secrets I could imagine, and we don't have that transparency into those. I wish I had those.
Yeah. No worries. Thank you.
Next question is from Deutsche Bank, Michael Kuhn.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Once more on orders, there was still, I think around EUR 95 million to be secured at H1, and I think you secured those in the meantime. Still, let's say if ramp speed is the constraint and not the customer willingness to buy, let's say, why the hesitance of customers to fill the remaining slots for this year?
Well, a quarter is always an arbitrary cutoff line, right? I think, as you rightfully state, quite a decent amount of orders has already been received. Yeah. We are already now one month into the quarter. Yeah. Also, we are, at this point in time, from the big guys, also receiving multiple multi-tool orders. Yeah. It is filling quite fast. Yeah. No concern on that one. Order coverage is good. Yeah. Also, we are well on track.
Understood. Thank you. Maybe on order backlog, I think there should be something like EUR 220 million now in already for next year. You mentioned opto is quite diversified, talking about around 15 customers. Would you be able to give a rough indication what the biggest customers make up in that order backlog?
Honestly, I don't have the data in front of me. That's a very specific question, maybe let me shine a little bit light on the order backlog. Yes, there's some going into 2027. There's already some going into 2028 also, to give a light in there. Also some part of the order backlog still relates to some power electronics where customers shifted something out. Yeah. It's not all optoelectronics. There's also some small portion of gallium nitride left, small portion of silicon carbide left, yeah, where some customers had placed orders, then at some point when the power wave collapsed, they didn't cancel, yeah, or we didn't let them to cancel. Both cases happened. They just say, "Look, AIXTRON, at some point, the market is coming back, then we will call the tools." Yeah. It's a small portion also of power left.
Understood. Thank you. Then, one more on gallium nitride. I think there's something in the presentation saying that the technological outperformance was confirmed. Maybe just to understand how that technological outperformance is, let's say, defined and where you stand with that tool, in the qualification processes.
Honestly, I don't get your question. What do you mean by technical outperformance? Which part do you refer to? I'm not fully understanding your question. Michael, are you still there?
Yeah. I'm still there. There is one bullet point actually in your presentation, under your Hyperion, which says, "Technological outperformance versus 200 mm platform confirmed by a leading customer." I was interested in how you define that technological outperformance. This is not my phrasing, this is actually from your presentation.
Oh, now I get it. Thanks. That was important to point to the right point. You're not referring to the update we have, but to some of the slides later on. My team helped me find it. What we mean is, we are able, as the 300 mm tool is a single wafer tool. We are able, compared to the 200 mm tool, which is a batch tool, as you can expect from the single wafer tool, where all metrology, measurements, temperature, optimization, target towards a single wafer, all the effort kind of is geared to one wafer instead of spread over five wafers. We are able to achieve an even better uniformity, particle performance in all the performance topics that you expect from an EPI.
We see that customers are very happy with that because it allows them to realize the next generation of gallium nitride devices. We get very positive feedback from customers.
Can you share with us, let's say, how many qualification processes, or with how many customers you're currently running this with the tool?
More than a handful.
More than a handful. Very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Craig McDowell from JP Morgan.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for letting me on. My first question is on Opto orders. I think the Opto order for Q2 is around EUR 160 million. I understand that you do not recognize Chinese orders without a corresponding export license. I was wondering whether you could give a color on what is the sort of additional Chinese ordering in Opto on top of that EUR 160 million. Is it an additional 20%, 30%, 44% on top that is not recognized in that Q2 Opto order number? Thank you.
A minor topic. Export licenses are no longer an issue. We get them relatively quick these days. In terms of when we receive the customer order, the export license timing delay is marginal. Yeah. Not a significant topic.
Okay. Understood. Thank you. My second question, just on the gallium nitride business, I looked back, and I think it was Q3 2024, nearly two years ago, that you first indicated a GaN market, maybe 3x-ing in the medium term, indicating around EUR 450 million of tool revenue. That was two years ago. I'm just wondering whether that view is still valid. I understand that orders aren't yet on the books. Whether your confidence has grown on that, or you think that forecast is still valid. Thank you.
No, that view fully holds. We can confirm. On the mid-term strategic value of the gallium nitride, we are fully convinced. Yeah. That holds. That's fully intact. It's just a question now, when is this next wave for the gallium nitride really starting after we see utilization rate increasing, at some point then, installed capacity is fully utilized, the next wave and the next momentum is starting.
Thank you. Just to follow up on the utilization rates, I think previously you were talking about utilization in your GaN installed base around 60%-70%. Is that still an accurate number, or has it edged up towards 70% at all?
I think it's gradually increasing, not a major shift as of now. I wouldn't expect this is now 90 or so.
Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Om Bakhda Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks for letting me on. Just had a question on capacity and pricing. If we were to look ahead, and I know that at the moment, you're not getting any signals on a GaN inflection, but if GaN was to inflect along with Opto within the next 12 months, and then you were able to deliver a quarterly order run rate of above EUR 250 million. In that case, within 2027, you'd be fully utilized on that EUR 1 billion for the year. Do you see there could potentially be scope and pricing if you become fully utilized in 2027?
Well, as I mentioned again, right, you shouldn't think about capacity limits. I would be very happy to get additional orders, and I would then simply just ship more. I'm not concerned of hitting any ceiling and then selling off remaining slots at a premium, as I understand your question a bit. I'd rather say I take all the orders and ship all the orders, and make sure that I fully benefit from the upswing. That's rather the strategy.
Got it. Perfect. Just on gross margin evolution, sort of over the medium term, if we assume that at some point within the next one to two years, both Opto and GaN, similarly in the first question, were to be very strong together, again, above EUR 250 million in revenues per quarter. Again now as customers are moving to higher diameter wafer sizes on their production lines, the G10 becomes increasingly part of the mix. Could we see your gross margins tending towards 50% over the sort of the mid to long term?
Oh, you're getting very bullish here. First of all, you get very bullish on the revenue side about projecting EUR 250 million per quarter. Clear message from my side, we have no capacity limit. I really want to say that. From the capacity standpoint, I'm not concerned. Also not concerned with your number. I think I've highlighted this several times on the call. However, also want to clearly say that we don't see any signs as of today to go to EUR 250 million per quarter. I think to really reiterate, we have a good confidence to see around EUR 200 million per quarter now for the next two quarters, then let's see what then happens. To really clarify out the assumptions. Because the numbers are gradually getting bigger the longer the call continues.
Regarding your question with the 50% on the gross margin, please recall that we are today at a 42%. Please also recall that getting a percentage point of gross margin is typically quite a decent amount of work. It just doesn't go so fast. There's many elements behind it. What you're asking for is a very big step. I don't know. This is quite a long way to go. I would say from the 42% where we are, we will clearly see a couple of percentage points in next year overall in gross margin. That's going to help us. I think the direction of gross margin increasing is clearly there. 50%, I think it's clearly too far. Maybe somewhere in between. Let's see where exactly we end up.
We are not there yet. We don't have detailed numbers. Just to give you an indication. Of course, please also take into account, I see that you're trying to build the numbers. As we continue to grow as a company, we will also, of course, pull up the OpEx a bit. We are a very innovative company. We obviously have many ideas on the R&D side. By investing in R&D, it was always good for us because the R&D investments we made, I think, in the past have been quite pointed. I think all the R&D investments we have made have realized or led very nicely a few years later to a nice revenue increase. Overall company growth. Value growth for our shareholders as an ultimate goal.
If we have more financial freedom, we, of course, will also continue to increase our R&D rate, and it will allow us to pull in some projects and to realize some ideas. As you can see, compound semiconductors are really at a very, very sweet spot now. The properties, optical properties are great. For the lasers, for communications. We need ever more communications with more data on the AI. Micro LED is coming back. There's some other optical applications lurking on the horizon, power electronics and so on and so forth. The stronghold and the sweet spot we are in, we will continue to grow that. I think we have demonstrated in multiple times that with our innovation ability, we can shape, we can create new markets, and we will continue to do that.
Great. Thank you.
The next question is from Veysel Taze, Metzler.
Yeah. Hi, Veysel Taze from Metzler. A question regarding your opto business. There were recently speculations that co-packaged optics, the TSMC COUPE platform, there might be delays for the NVIDIA platform and co-packaged optics potentially rather for 2029. That NVIDIA might take a similar approach like Google using more optical circuit switching as a transition step, so to say. What would that mean for your business in opto?
Honestly, I think you're on a detail level for the different architectures. We do not see that those optical architecture nuances affect our demand. What we rather see is that our customers are asking us to ship the tools, to provide the capability. In the end, the tools and the wafers made on our tools can then be utilized in all sorts of different architectures, whether this is a pluggable optics, whether this is a co-packaged optics or at a stage even after that, photonic integrated circuits, the PICs. Yeah. Whether this is a GPU to GPU rack to rack. Yeah. Communications, some customers are even experimenting, that's probably coming more towards the end of the decade. Yeah. To go to optical interconnect between the GPU and the high- bandwidth memory. Yeah.
I think the overall strategic direction or the strategic trend is very clear, which is more optical communication, more data, going from long distance to medium distance to short distances to very short distances. On our side, we do not look into the details of the architecture that our customer is using, but I'm not concerned that any of these architecture details that clearly our customers have to take into account has major impact on us, because our tools are very versatile and the customers can use them for each of these architectures. We are very robust.
Got it.
in respect to that.
Got it. An OCS type of architecture would not be negative for you.
No
At least not at this stage. A second question regarding the GaN opportunity. I mean, you mentioned that you are quite confident that this will ramp in volumes. My understanding is the larger GaN opportunity in terms of number of dies is rather on the board level, right? When voltage regulators shifting to GaNs or really the server board and then the GPUs and the compute there. Would you assume that with the 800- volt DC architecture, that the board level voltage regulators would be fully based on GaN? Or are you assuming a kind of mix that it will be also silicon and still not fully GaN? What is your take there?
A very good question. First of all, the wafer area scales inverse with voltage, means the lower the voltage, the more area is needed, wafer area, die area. That's simply Ohm's law, right? It means for a given power, the lower the voltage, the higher the current, and the higher the current, the more parallel devices I need to split the current over. That's just basic physics. That's a good thing. It will not be changed and also cannot be changed by any architectures relating to your first question on the optos. It's just what it is. Yes, the lower the voltage, the more dies are needed. Now to the second part of your question.
What we get back as signals from our customers is that they say, "Look, we will convert from silicon." The old architecture is fully silicon, from the big overland line and cable, all the way down to the CPU and GPU by silicon. The customer signal us, we'll start from the highest voltages first, at the entry point of the data center in the silicon carbide. I mentioned that in an earlier question here on this call. Then in the next step, going from the 800-volt DC to 200-volt, 100-volt intermediate voltages in the gallium nitride, and then 48-volt, 12-volt, 6-volt, 1-volt. Step by step.
That is very nice because it means that we look, once the conversion to gallium nitride has started, to a multi-year growth opportunity, likely starting somewhere on the 650-volt, then extending to the 100-volt, and later on then going down to the 20-volt, 12-volt, 6-volt devices. The penetration speed of gallium nitride displacing and pushing out silicon will likely depend, first of all, on the cost down curves that our customers are able to realize. The customers are working heavily on die size shrinks. They work on devices which are 30% smaller. Other customers are working on devices which is 50% smaller, so that out of a given wafer, you can get more dies and the die gets cheaper. Always, this is how the semiconductor industry works. As cost goes down, your market grows bigger because you can displace another technology, in this case, silicon.
This is roughly the perspective that we have on this market.
Got it. Really a very quick one on the down payments. I'm not sure if I have the right number for Q1, but my impression is down payments have shifted quite in second quarter. My understanding was, you require from Chinese customers a much higher down payment, right? For the orders they are placing. Would that imply that in Q2 you had a decent or a high number of orders in opto placed from Chinese customers? Or would that be a wrong assumption?
No, this is not. There's a misconception. We don't request a higher down payment from Chinese customers. The down payments and the payment terms vary strongly application segment by application segment and region by region. Now given that from, especially now with the opto boom, from many customers we have received multi-tool orders stretching over an extended period of time. Excuse me, please. We've been able to ask quite a number of our customers for a higher percentage of down payment, but this extends all across the globe.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Mr. Nigel van Putten from Morgan Stanley. Nigel, the floor is yours.
Hi, good afternoon. I have a question, a bit of a two-parter. From your commentary, I get the sense that historically, first quarter's been 10%-20% of revenue. There's no real expectation that will continue. Would it be fair to say that directionally we should look at the first quarter in 2027, as sort of a sequential increase relative to the fourth quarter? Or at least, at a similar level, not necessarily a big drop as we've seen before. The second part of that question would be, I can imagine that gross margins benefit from more stable or more predictable loading. Is that a major driver when you say 2027 gross margins look good? On the other hand, there's more detail in the mix, just trying to get a sense of what are the drivers of the gross margin into next year.
I think both good assumptions. Historically, for everyone here on the call, the Q1, that's from last, I think three, four years, has been always a very slow start of the year. We've always finished at a super high record towards the end of the year. Looking towards 2027, we can't see the full year of 2027 yet, that's clear. But we have a visibility also now in the beginning of 2027, of course, and we expect a very strong Q1. Probably somewhere on the level of what we can see right now for the Q4, I would say. Yes. To your second question on the gross margin, as mentioned and discussed a bit earlier, we expect clearly an uptick from the level where we stand. Clearly not the 50% that we had earlier.
Please, that number is, I think that will take a bit of work. I think it will be a mix of things coming together. As discussed, product mix will help. The laser systems are being more complex, more sophisticated, hence carrying a bit of a better margin. A big bit of fixed cost absorption. On the other hand, again, some ramp cost. With all these effects together, we expect a decent uptick on the gross margin. It's very difficult at this point in time now to tie that and split it out in the exact detailed cost. Yeah.
Understand. Maybe a quick question, switching gears a little bit. We've been talking, obviously, CW and the other high-power lasers are clearly the big opportunity, but what about VCSEL? Do you see any demand from customers for those tools? My understanding is there's quite a bit of capacity built already. If we see, let's say, a VCSEL growth as well for some applications, would that potentially benefit you, I can imagine that it could be a benefit, but relative to the more high-power side of lasers, it's probably much smaller. Is that a fair assumption to make?
A very good question. We see, in fact, most people are working now on the traditional devices that we discussed for most of the call. VCSEL, some customers work on VCSEL for the communication as an alternative because you can just take an optical fiber and bump it onto the VCSEL. Mode fiber, and then collect the light of it. Some customers are working on that, on the gallium arsenide systems. VCSEL is like we used in the same type of systems that we used for the 3D sensing a few years back. Interestingly, some customers are also experimenting with VCSELs on the gallium nitride systems. We talk about blue LEDs, if you want to say so, and see whether they can use that for doing die-to-die communication.
Heterogeneous integration, for example, to couple a GPU for high- bandwidth memory on a silicon carbide interposer and see whether they can replace a copper interconnect by optical interconnect. I would say at this stage, this is still research, but it gives us a good level of confidence that the trend of optical communication not only is a way for now 2026, 2027, 2028, but rather also has some technical ideas, new innovation ideas, but probably are kicking in towards the end of the decade.
Very interesting. Thanks so much.
With that, we have the last question from HSBC, Adithya. Please go ahead.
Actually, my last question was on VCSELs about it substituting indium phosphide in certain use cases, but that's been answered, so thank you.
Perfect. It sounds we are done. Apologies from our side for this little hiccup. We all had to wait for 15 minutes, hope we could make that up with a good discussion. It was a pleasure.
Yes. Thank you all from my side as well. Most of you, I guess, will be going to the summer break. We will be starting hitting the road end of August. We have a lot of conferences with different participants. Hopefully we'll meet a lot of you before we meet again for our Q3 results, which will be out end of October. Until then, have a great summer break and hope to see you soon. Thank you and goodbye.
Bye.