Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to AIXTRON's full year and fourth quarter 2019 results conference call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. Let me now hand the floor over to Mr. Guido. With that, Vice President of IR and Corporate Communications at AIXTRON for opening remarks and introductions.
Thank you, operator. Let me start by welcoming you all to AIXTRON's presentation of our full year and Q4 2019 results. I'd like to welcome our executive board represented by Dr. Felix Grawert and Dr. Bernd Schulte, as well as our VP of Finance and Administration, Charles Russell. As the operator indicated, this call is being recorded by AIXTRON and is considered copyright material. As such, it cannot be recorded or rebroadcasted without permission. Your participation in this call implies your consent to this recording. As with previous results conference calls, I trust that all participants have our results presentation slide deck, page two of which contains the usual safe harbor statement. I would like to point out that this applies throughout the conference call.
You may also wish to have a look at our latest IR Master presentation with additional information on AIXTRON's markets and technologies, also available on our website. This call is not being immediately presented via webcast or any other medium. However, we will place an audio file of the recording or a transcript on our website at some point after the call. I would now like to hand you over to Bernd Schulte for opening remarks. Bernd?
Many thanks, Guido, and a warm welcome to our 2019 results presentation. Let me start by giving you an overview of the key developments in last year. In Q4 2019, orders came in at EUR 81 million, which is more than 60% above the same figure in Q4 2019. Revenues in Q4 of 2019 were EUR 75 million, which was more than 40% higher than Q4 2019. This is to emphasize that we have seen a continuing improvement of the business after the challenging second quarter last year caused by the geo-political environment. In fiscal year 2019, we hit our full-year guidance with an order intake of EUR 232 million and revenues of EUR 260 million. Gross margin was at 42% and EBIT margin at 15%. The cash flow was higher than guided due to the substantially higher cash inflows towards the very end of the year.
We are progressing well with our next-generation product initiatives. These programs encompass all of our MOCVD products to be renewed during 2020 and 2021. Our target is to strengthen our leadership position and competitiveness. We will be offering improved cost of ownership for our customers to enable them to better address their targets and budgets. Our offerings will include improved material efficiency, lower maintenance requirements, and full automation, just to name a few of the new features. Our new silicon carbide tool, which we already launched in 2019, is making good progress at our customers. Let me quickly give you an update of the potential impact of the spread of the COVID-19 disease. We believe that we have not yet seen the maximum extent of infections worldwide. We will have to remain very cautious, especially when it comes to traveling into affected regions.
We have implemented strict travel policies for our employees, and we will monitor the development in order to protect our employees' health. Far, the impact to our business has been quite limited. However, at this point in time, it is difficult to judge how this might develop as the regional situations in Asia and Europe are changing on a daily basis. At this point, let me now hand you over to Charles for a more detailed overview on the full-year 2019 numbers. Charles?
Thanks, Bernd. Hello to everyone. Starting on slide four, our income statement. Total revenue for the year was EUR 260 million compared with EUR 269 million in 2018. Gross margin was 42% in 2019 against 44% in 2018. We shipped the same number of systems in each year. The cost of sales is flat year on year at EUR 161 million. The lower sales and margin is mainly attributable to the different sales mix, with more sales into the display market in the first part of 2019, partly offset by a favorable dollar exchange rate. Overall operating expense in the year fell from EUR 76 million in 2018 to EUR 70 million in 2019. SG&A expense fell by EUR 2 million to EUR 16.5 million in 2019. This is mainly the result of lower project-related costs and lower variable pay.
R&D expense was EUR 55 million, or EUR 3 million higher than 2018.
Product development for MOCVD systems, including power electronics for Micro LED and Mini LED, increased significantly over 2018. Related to the scoping of the development work, spending on the OLED development was substantially less than in 2018. Group operating income was EUR 12 million in 2019 compared to EUR 4 million in 2018, which mainly R&D grant income of EUR 8 million, currency gains, and contract settlements. We generated an EBIT of EUR 39 million for the year compared with EUR 41.5 million in 2018. The effective tax rate was just over 18% in 2019. In 2018, taxes were credited from the recognition of deferred tax assets. The net profit for 2019 was EUR 13 million compared to EUR 46 million in 2018. Turning to the balance sheet on the next slide. Inventories of EUR 79 million include around EUR 5 million of prototype systems.
We had very good cash collections in December, bringing receivables down to 30 days sales outstanding at the end of the year. This is six days better than at the end of 2018. Advance payments received from customers of EUR 61 million were similar to the end of 2018, but increased by EUR 7 million in the quarter, reflecting the good order intake. Advance payments were 44% of the order backlog. Because of the lower receivables and increased customer advance payments, our cash balance increased to EUR 298 million at the end of the year. Moving to slide six which shows our cash flow statement. Here you can see the improved operating cash flow in 2019 of EUR 42 million compared with EUR 12 million in 2018.
The relative improvement of EUR 31 million is because 2018 cash flow included both EUR 12 million of open payments related to the sale of ALD/CVD in 2017, as well as increases in inventories and receivables. With that, let me hand you over to Felix.
Thank you, Charles. I would like to give you some perspective on our development projects before concluding with the outlook for the rest of the year. Turning to the update of our development projects on slide seven. In silicon carbide, we continue to gain more traction with our new fully automated high temp system. We have obtained multiple orders for this platform from customers and are making performance demonstrations to additional customers. In gallium nitride power electronics, we continue to receive orders from customers addressing the trend towards more efficient power management devices in consumer electronics and IT infrastructure. Continued momentum in the area of gallium nitride power HEMT is driven by the 5G build-out. In optoelectronics, there is an ongoing momentum from the demand for lasers used in optical data communication.
We observe increased customer interest for lasers and 3D sensing, both for the display side of the smartphone, the so-called face side, as well as for 3D sensing on the back side, the so-called mirror side. In the area of Mini LED and Micro LED, we see progress towards the commercialization of LED displays. Those being either very large ones for TV or very small displays for wearables. At the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 Las Vegas, our customers showed very large and brilliant Micro LED displays defining a new ultra-high-end home entertainment segment. These very expensive displays are already being sold in low quantity. In our perspective, the transformation of the industry from pure R&D to the manufacturing feasibility mode is happening as we speak, resulting in demand for some Mini LED and Micro LED production tools.
With regards to OLED, our Gen2 tool is currently being operated by a team of engineers of our customers and our subsidiary, APEVA. Together, we are optimizing OLED produced with our OLED technology as well as deposition tools. As this procedure is still ongoing, we expect our customers to give us follow-on commitment for a larger tool at a later point. Despite the high success of this project, the interest of our customer in APEVA technology as an alternative for VCSEL remains unchanged. We continue to follow our mutual target of OLED mass production qualification. Let me now come to the outlook for 2020 on slide eight. We expect order levels in 2020 to increase year-on-year to a range between EUR 250 million and EUR 300 million. This expectation is based on healthy level of customer inquiries and broad customer interest in our technology offerings across all applications.
We expect revenue for 2020 in the range between EUR 260 million and EUR 300 million, starting with a backlog of EUR 117 million at the beginning of the year. We expect our gross margin to be around 40%, which means an EBIT expectation of between 10% and 15%. Important to note is that both orders and order backlog, as well as all our other guidance figures, are based on our budget exchange rate of $1.20 US dollars per euro. Revenue and profit margin will be re-polished based on actual exchange rates in the quarters to come. Please also note that these estimates fully include the results of APEVA from the top to bottom line. Another important point to mention is that, as Bernd explained before, we are not yet in a position to quantify the effect of the coronavirus spreading further.
We have made our guidance based on the assumption that the current COVID-19 outbreak will not have a significant impact on our business. Our focus in 2020 and 2021 is to complete renewal of our product portfolio. We have excellent technology already today, and our new products will support our customers to further enhance productivity and address high volume markets more efficiently. Finally, I would like to mention that the AIXTRON Supervisory Board and I agreed to renew my contract until 2025. I'm happy to be with AIXTRON in the next years. With that, I'll pass back to Guido before we take questions.
Thank you very much, Felix, Charles, Bernd. Operator, we will now take questions, please.
Yes, thank you. 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 cancel your question, press nine and star again. Please press one, nine, and star to state your questions. The first question comes from Andrew Gardiner at Berenberg. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the question. Two, if I could. One, on the COVID-19 situation, can you give us any indication as to whether you've had sort of pushback in terms of delivery from any of your customers? Are you seeing any change yet in terms of either their ability to take tools depending on where they're located or where they're at this point, just sort of any change on the margin there? On the guidance for 2020, Felix, you just sort of highlighted that again, it's based on a $1.20 budget rate. I'm just wondering why AIXTRON continue to use such a conservative rate. We haven't seen the exchange rate at that level for two years. It seems to make the guidance overly conservative when we look at it in euro terms relative to what the underlying is.
Why are you sticking with that? Why not a more realistic rate? Thank you.
Hi, Andrew. This is Bernd. Thanks for your question. Basically on the COVID situation, I can tell you that we are not seeing anything like cancellations. It is mainly to do currently with the logistics, meaning that customers, particularly in China, they have basically not worked. They had extended holidays during February time, and they're quoting certainly that we cannot execute installations and planning our tools to full operation. Certainly, we can expect that some new facilities in the course of the year, which are currently built, get some delay. So far we do not expect this to create an issue for the entire course of the year. This is maybe in between quarters, but so far we do not expect this really affecting the entire year.
Let me come to your second question, which was why we based our guidance at a $1.20 rate rather than I think today we are just below $1.10. The reason is very simple. We see a lot of analyst estimates with respect to the dollar actually even higher than $1.20, somewhere in the range between $1.20 and $1.30. In the end, nobody really knows where it develops and how it goes. I think you all out there know that we have about somewhere between 15% and 17% of our revenues based on U.S. dollar. I think everybody can make a very simple calculation and actually do the adjustment to whatever your assumption for the exposure for the year.
Yeah. Andrew, it is always difficult to exactly forecast what the dollar is going to be. At least staying consistently at one rate, and it's just $1.20 historically. At least give us the advantage, it makes it comparable year-on-year.
Okay, fine. Just perhaps sort of related question. Can you give us a sense as to how you expect the product mix to phase through the year? Last year in the first half, we had a lot of LED in the first half, which kept margins down, and then mix improved as we came through the year. Can you give us any sense as to how you're currently thinking about it for 2020?
Yeah, what we're currently seeing is that in the first half, we're going to see definitely more impact by systems from datacom, telecom, and power electronics. We might see some bounce back from systems for LED applications, in the latter half in terms of revenue and therefore margin impact.
Okay. Thank you, guys.
The next question comes from Uwe Schupp of Bank of America. With your question.
Yes. Good afternoon. Two questions for me, please. Firstly, you mentioned the stronger than expected cash flow, obviously, in Q4. I remember that you actually guided this figure down in November. Hence, I would be interested if, very simply, the business turned out stronger than you expected Q4 with higher prepayments, or what was really working against your base assumptions when you took down the cash flow guidance in November. Secondly, on the guidance, should we understand this pretty much like last year, i.e., the high end basically includes a certain amount of OLED revenue, while the low end basically includes zero revenue? What is the math behind? Thank you.
Okay. On the cash flow guidance, what improved was the receivables were a lot lower for the 30-day sales outstanding. That accounted for about half of the increase in the cash flow between the guidance and what it actually turned out to be. You're right, the other part of it is that the order intake and the % of advance payments that we received is higher than we expected.
Let me answer on the guidance. I think the range is a result of certain assumptions and different scenarios. It's unfortunately not so straightforward to say the upper case, that included or that included. It is basically a good discussion of the various scenarios we have looked into. Yeah, it is not a linear formula, let me say.
Just to follow up on the guidance and basically the OLED impact that you have calculated there, meaning how much, if anything, weighted revenue will be in there. Don't expect a number really. Maybe more on the R&D side, really, how much R&D burden did you put into that margin guidance of basically assuming OLED will have a full EUR 20 or EUR 25 million R&D burden for a full year, as well, pretty much like last year. Thank you.
I think on the top line for the OLED, as we mentioned last year for the follow-on order, we expect that to be somewhere on the order of a few tens of millions. Yeah. Depending on when exactly in timing the order comes to recognize a fraction of that in revenue. As for the R&D expenses, we expect to stay roughly flat year-over-year on the OLED side. The overall impact to be a resulting number out of those two effects.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jan Maennig, Berenberg. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple of follow-ups on top of previous questions. One is on the OLED. To recognize a few tens of millions EUR, would you need the order to come through in the first half of the year, or would you be able to value it in, say, the third quarter or something like that?
The order intake is recorded when the order comes. Right? That doesn't depend on whether we can recognize it. Right? This is clear. I think the fraction of that to recognize in revenue, that really depends then on the exact execution that come along with that and what conceptual work is to be done, what implementation is there to be done. That's not only a question, as you are indicating, of the timing of it, but it's also a topic of the exact R&D scope and the scope of work that comes along with that.
Understood. Overall, is that class of effects on the EBITDA side, R&D on the EBITDA side, overall OpEx for 2020, how should we think about it?
It's 15, 16, 17, something around that number.
As R&D, I mean OpEx.
OpEx.
Just sales. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Did you say that? 15, 16?
Yes, 15, 16 R&D, which is the majority, the vast majority of OpEx.
Okay. Your commentary is sounding increasingly positive on both GaN and on Micro LED. How would you see the trajectory of those two businesses specifically going through over the next two years? Is it a possibility that at the current rate of development, both of these, especially Micro LED, could be quite a material part of your revenue in 2021? Is it that it's still too early and these are still at early-stage development kind of things? The same sort of on the GaN side. You've been focusing quite a bit on the silicon carbide side of things. Is it possible that GaN could be even bigger than silicon carbide, say, in the 2021 timeframe?
Jan, let me get started with the question on GaN micro, how I am. As mentioned in our introduction, we do see a very nice momentum for both the power segment in gallium nitride and the RF segment. RF is driven by the 5G build-up, which apparently is just starting. There is much more to come. The same goes for the power electronics. Today, in these two segments combined, we are at a small percentage of our revenue, but towards 2021 and 2022, we really expect a nice momentum in the double-digit structures of our numbers. Yeah. You may have seen some announcements of some players in the industry. Be it STMicroelectronics, be it Navitas, which are now really moving from the R&D stage into a product or productization stage. The mass and volume ramp is ahead of us.
I think it's very difficult to predict the exact growth and the exact timing, but we clearly see the tipping point from R&D to volume production stage.
Okay. Thank you.
Hans-Jürgen.
Yeah. Let me comment on MicroLED. The situation has been moved on from formerly, there was a lot of work of customers done to show the feasibility, the technical feasibility, of a Micro LED display. You're seeing the results in shows like in CES in January. Where we see now the change is that now the question is always towards more the feasibility of high volume manufacturing. That's the next level. In order to prove feasibility of high volume manufacturing, you need to not only one tool, you need a few tools just to show the feasibility, to show the system-to-system performance, et cetera. We will see orders, are receiving orders for Mini LED and Micro LED, and we specifically say Mini LED and Micro LED because the tool can do both. There are applications for both.
We've seen orders this year and revenue this year for both, and it's increasing over the past simply because the move from R&D now to feasibility of high volume manufacturing.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Matti Taalas, Nordea Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon. Two questions. The first one is on OLED. Are you committed to take the decision later in the year, potentially maybe in the first quarter, or a bit later in case your customer decides to further postpone the decision?
Yes.
Okay. Aside from that, any indication this provides compared to maybe just three months ago or four months ago? Has anything changed from your side as a prospect to the potential success from the technical feasibility?
I get your question, whether there's any changes on our side with the evaluation or the assessment of the technical aspects. Did I get the question right?
Yeah. Right.
No. There is no change on that one. As I mentioned before in the introduction, we see very strong interest from the customers due to the value proposition of our products. Now it is about to sort out all the topics coming along with developing such a new technology, which is both fine-tuning the process, the process window, but also doing first pass on the tools to really get it to the maturity level that has been established as a benchmark by the incumbent LED technology.
Oh, okay. On the competitive situation, do you expect kind of a more difficult competitive situation, as one of your competitors launched a new arsenide phosphide platform?
Well, it has to be seen. So far, we have not really faced a direct competition. It is to be seen. As I said, so far, the situation remains that we have a very strong position in the market.
Okay, great.
Before I hand over to the next question here, I would like to repeat once more. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. With that, I hand it over to Julian Raab of MIFC Bank. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, thank you. A follow-up to the previous OLED question. How should we look at a procedure? Maybe asking another way, if there is a break or if you would then decide to break your OLED operations, what would happen to your strategy?
I'm not sure that I fully understand your question. Could you rephrase? Which phases?
In the previous question, you said, "Yes, we will do a make or break decision on OLED at some point this year." What would happen to your OLED operations, and would that change the overall strategy for AIXTRON if you decide not to continue those operations?
Well, first of all, let me mention that we are confident to get this thing up and running. Not to give people wrong communication, just because I had now two questions asking what if question. We are also currently, as mentioned before, confident about the high customer interest, it's now about getting things up and running. If for some reason, it is a hypothetical question at this point in time, things don't work out as planned, then I think at the moment of decision, it remains to be seen what exactly is the situation, what exactly are the reasons, and then to take the best course of action in the interest of our shareholders. I think I can't say now what exactly that is.
Coming back to your related question to our strategy, this is exactly our strategy, which we have started in 2017, that we looking in our product portfolio, looking what is the path and the duration to getting a product portfolio to market and to return of investment. Whatever we decide with OLED will fit exactly this strategy.
From a timing, like second half potential, what if?
I think that really depends on the technical progress. I wouldn't want now to point towards the second half. As the project is running and we continue to make progress, I wouldn't want to give any timing around that.
Okay. A potential order could be first half or second half as well then.
Exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Harald Schnitzer, DZ Bank. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes. Good afternoon. The share of your service revenue seems to be improvable. Do you see any starting points for increasing the shares? I'm wondering, because the share is even lower than in 2017. If 2019 revenue is the lowest threshold, and how do you see the service revenues? Is it recurring revenue for you?
Okay. Let me first comment on your question about improvable and not, let's comment on the ratios. We do have a very high share of consumable parts and of an after-sales business with our current product portfolio. While on some of the legacy parts or legacy tools that have been shipped in earlier years, we are seeing that customers have decommissioned those tools and taken them out of operation. We do see that on our current products, we have a very nice share, and therefore we expect the ratio and the total number over the years to be once again increasing. We do see that trend. In 2017, it was EUR 43 million, in 2018, EUR 47 million, in 2019, EUR 52 million. If you look at the absolute number, those numbers are increasing. We continue with that absolute increase to be continued.
In fact, the ratio is also increasing. In 2018, we had 17.5%, and in 2019, we had 20% by revenue from spares and service.
Okay. I mean, detailed on the service revenues and the share have declined.
Yeah.
You know, it is 20% this year. It was 18.5% the year before. I think it has increased.
Well, the service revenue in your report is about EUR 3.9 million.
In 2018, it was EUR 4.3 million, and in 2017, it was EUR 4 million.
Okay. We're talking about different things. I'm talking about spares and service, and you're talking about service. Service revenue depends on, typically, customers asking us to relocate machines, for example, and that depends on whether they've changed the configuration of their fab. It fluctuates up and down according to what the customer demand is. Actually, in terms of spares and service, we've increased our percentage year-on-year.
Exactly. The answers I gave you was relating to our what we call an after-sales business, which includes consumables, spare parts, and service as a product.
Okay.
Now it all fits together again.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Uwe Schupp. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks again. Two questions, please. First, for inaudible on the inaudible side and second for Felix is going to be on OLED to follow up. I am only seeing on the inaudible side of things these days. There are a few announcements of maybe smaller volume phones coming in the later part of the year with X-site and time-of-flight laser. I was just wondering where you see utilization levels of your major customers currently and at which level this might be triggering orders again. Secondly, I guess the reason you are getting so many questions on OLED, obviously, is, A, the situation seems to become a never-ending story. B, also, I guess we noticed that your longtime head of OLED has left the company somewhat surprisingly at the end of last year.
What, if anything, should we read into that, assuming that you are getting your order from your lead customer later in the year? The timing of that departure seems to be somewhat off. If you just summarize your earlier comments, you are as confident as ever that the situation will be leading to a successful finish. Is that correct? Thank you.
Let me comment on your questions for MOCVD. In the moment we're seeing that most of the MOCVD tools are heading at good utilization rates. There are some discussions. I'm not saying that we are at the point where we're really negotiating contracts, but we're starting to have discussions with customers asking potentially about what would be lead times, et cetera. This makes me more positive that some return for MOCVD business might happen in the course of the year.
Let me come to your second question about the OLED. We see the change in leadership team with an implementation of our long-term strategy. Our strategy is that our business will completely, over time, become or change from a pure Germany-driven business, given that the customers are in Korea, into a Korean company or Korean-German company. Therefore, we have one, a very strong leader for our inaudible Korea, which is another company of our German operation. His name is Jochen Linck, joined us from Applied Materials. He's a Korean guy, spent over a decade in the U.S., last part of a decade at Applied. Very long experience in the equipment and display industry. We have given now the leadership of the inaudible company group of companies, inaudible Korea, inaudible Germany, in his hands.
It was just a natural consequence that now, given that the leader of the group of companies is located in Korea, in Germany, we do not have a leader anymore, so to say, of that caliber. That's part of our strategy to gradually build up also more headcounts in Korea and become closer to the customer, both in geographic location as well as in culture and language.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from David O'Connor, Exane BNP Paribas. Please start with your question.
Great. Thanks. A quick question, maybe this is more on my side about new products coming in 2020. Can you give us an idea for the kind of investing and what kind of new products we can expect there, and if any, in 2020? Thank you.
Yeah, David, thank you for the question. As we mentioned in our presentation, we're basically working on the entire suite of products to get renewed in the course, say, from mid of 2019 to mid of 2021. Within 24 months, we are planning to renew our entire MOCVD suite of products. That includes a new platform for gallium nitride-based high-quality deposition, which is fully automated, which in the first place targets gallium nitride power markets, but also the gallium nitride-based Micro LED market. A new platform based for gallium arsenide layers for laser applications as well, in the second step, also for Micro LED applications. Currently, we're working on a new tool for higher volume, maybe slightly lower performance, red LED. We're just launching a new version of our R&D platform based on our Showerhead technology.
I think we mentioned earlier in the call our silicon carbide platform, which already came out end of last year. Basically, when you look in our markets and applications between from now, say, within the next 18 months, we're going to renew the entire portfolio.
That's helpful. Thank you.
The last question comes from Gustav Froberg from Berenberg. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Thank you. We see some gallium nitride on sapphire power product in devices out there. I was wondering, do you think this technology can accelerate the penetration of gallium nitride? Would that be a large potential market for you?
Excellent question. Yes, very much. I believe so. Gallium nitride as a material for power electronics has two distinct properties. The one property is that it has very low switching losses, which you can use either for driving more efficiency, especially in the IT infrastructure to reduce energy consumption in data centers or to go to very fast switching frequencies and make very compact fast chargers for mobile devices, for example. The other big property of gallium nitride as a material is that you can make a lateral device possible, so you can put several switches next to each other on one chip.
That allows the gallium nitride to do integrated power circuits as we have used from the integrated circuits in the silicon industry for the last 40 years, meaning you can put several transistors or several switches next to each other on one chip, like the IC integrated circuits. The challenge we have with power electronics is that you need to isolate these switches because they work at 600 volts, not like in the entire processor at one volt, but at 600. You have to make sure that the voltage from one switch doesn't go into the other switch. If you use sapphire as a substrate, you have perfect isolation. Therefore, yes, that can really help. We are very happy that now customers start exploring on the second key value proposition of gallium nitride as a material.
I personally believe that we will see two groups of products coming out of that. One is integrated switches with half switches, H-bridge switches on the driver, or alternatively, topics like motor drive, where in a motor drive controller, you need six switches, each with a driver. In order to study nitride, you can do that all in one single die or in one single switch rather than six switches. That is a technical explanation. In short, yes, we believe that can very much accelerate the market demand for our tools in the gallium nitride industry.
Mm-hmm. You see more than one customer working on this technology at the moment?
This is a topic, this is a trend, which is currently just starting. Yes, we do have several customers exploring the opportunities in that space.
Okay, great. Many thanks.
Thank you all. With this, I would like to conclude today's call. Thanks all of you for attending and listening. I assume to see some of you soon. We're also happy to do follow-up calls as you know. Please note that our next earnings call will be on April 30th, 2020. Q1 2020 quarterly results. Thank you and bye-bye.