Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Jenoptik conference call regarding the results of the first nine months 2025. 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, Dr. Stefan Traeger.
Thank you very much, and a very warm welcome to our Q3 earnings call. Our third quarter has been a quarter of light and shadows, as so many other companies report. We have some specialties that are worthwhile pointing out, and throughout the call, we are going to do that. With me today is, as usual, Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, our CFO. I will give some sort of color upfront, and then Prisca is going to lead us through the numbers. As I said, first quarter, a bit of a quarter of light and shadows. Revenue is down from prior year figures. If you take the third quarter 2024 versus third quarter 2023, our net sales are down by around -7%. As a result, EBITDA, our operating profit, is also down versus prior year. That goes for the quarter as well as for the full year- year to date.
On the other hand, though, free cash flow is very, very good. We have had a very good free cash flow, significantly improved versus prior year. Probably even more importantly, our order intake pattern has developed as expected, but yeah, very nicely. Our order intake in the third quarter is almost 14% higher than in the second quarter. The order intake in the third quarter 2025 is 18% higher than in the third quarter of 2024. As we always expected, order intake will strengthen in the second half of the year. We do see that pattern emerging, which is great and obviously helps us going forward. Nevertheless, we have implemented a program to reduce personnel and material expenses. I guess that's just prudent. We all do that. That's, yeah, just good management practice.
We expect to see a high single-digit number in terms of extra cost, one-time effects in our P&L this year. Let me just address that straight away. In our guidance that we are going to specify a bit more going forward, those numbers, the one-time effect, the special costs for structural cost takeout is already included. That is after the number that we are going to specify later is after those special costs. Overall, we do remain focused on our main growth opportunities. I'm very convinced that we have good opportunities to further growth. Even this year is challenging for all of us, but given not at least our order intake pattern in the third quarter, but overall the macro trends that we have, we're very convinced that we will see further growth in the years to come. There is ever more AI-driven demand in semiconductors.
There's optical communications for data centers, for defense applications in particular at the moment in Europe. We do see success in expanding our SMS business, in particular in the United States. At some point, and I'm really convinced about that, AR/VR applications are going to see an inflection point. It's hard to say exactly when, but there will be smarter ways of human and data interaction than just telephones in the future. If you take it all together, it's a bit of a mixed picture that we are going to report in detail now. A bit of disappointment in terms of net sales due to, yeah, the time it takes for us always to convert orders into sales. We have a relatively long lead time with our relatively complex products. As a result of that, operating profit for now is not where it should be.
More than just a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, there is a pretty strong order intake pattern. Again, Q3 this year, very strong in order intake, pointing to growth in future. We are committed to that. The restructuring project and program that we have implemented is ongoing. We have some of the numbers there already in our third quarter, but predominantly the cost will come in the fourth quarter and are already included in our forecast, which I am going to specify at the end of the call. With that said, I will hand over to Prisca to guide us and lead us through the numbers in more detail. Prisca, over to you.
Thank you, Stefan. Good morning to all of you on the call also from my side. As always, I would like to now cover our performance in the first three quarters of 2025 in greater detail, starting with order intake on page six. Looking at order intake on group level, we are pleased to report that overall demand has continued to pick up over the course of the year, with orders now in the third quarter being some 50% higher compared to the first quarter figure, and up, as Stefan has mentioned, approximately 18% year-on-year. If we take the first three quarters together, order intake was at EUR 777 million, and that is only marginally below prior year level. However, dynamics have been very different between our four strategic business units.
Starting with semiconductor and advanced manufacturing, as you know, development has been impacted by certain supply chain fluctuations in our lithography business, as well as an order cancellation in Q1, as we highlighted on our previous call. Thus, order intake for the first nine months period was down by around 18% year-on-year. From all we can judge, we believe this supply chain or inventory impact, if you will, was most pronounced in Q1. On the inspection side, however, demand from our key customers remained strong, including in Q3. Joining to our biophotonics business, order intake has been very strong for the first nine months, and particularly in the third quarter. While we saw positive momentum in both life sciences and medtech applications, order dynamics in our optical defense products was particularly strong.
With overall biophotonics order intake up by around 34% year-on-year, which of course is very good, I would like to also note that there is a certain lumpiness in the order pattern of this business, particularly in the defense-related parts. Let me explain. While major orders in this area were recognized last year in the fourth quarter, we saw them this year in Q3 already. Therefore, we currently expect some sort of normalization for the fourth quarter. Moving on to metrology, for our metrology and production solution business, as well as for smart mobility solutions, order intake was also strong overall, up at high single-digit rates, with MPS benefiting from higher orders, especially in the optical test and measurement arena.
As a result of all this, our book-to-bill ratio on a group level returned to above one, or 1.03 to be precise, and reached 1.2 when just looking at the third quarter. Our order backlog reduced slightly compared to prior year-end to around EUR 659 million. We anticipate turning approximately 35%-40% of this backlog into revenue this year 2025. Now, please follow me onto page seven. Revenue in the first nine months declined, as Stefan has already mentioned, by close to 8% year-on-year to around EUR 753 million. This reflects generally weaker order intake trends at the beginning of the year. I think we have talked about that, especially in the semi space. It also includes about 1 % point, so 100 basis points, negative impact from FX fluctuations, especially relating to the euro-U.S. dollar exchange rate.
Now, if we look into the businesses, with regards to the semi business, revenue was down 15% year-on-year. This was a result of what we already discussed several times in earlier calls, meaning softer demand in the lithography business, which, as you know, makes up for a big chunk of our business. On the contrary, however, revenue with customers in the semi inspection area developed very well in the first three quarters. Now, looking at biophotonics, here, the revenue was up by 13%, driven by a strong demand performance in our defense business, as well as in our medtech business. For metrology and production solutions, revenue development is lagging a bit behind the order intake dynamics that we just discussed before.
Revenue overall was down by around 11% in the first three quarters of the year, due, on the one hand, to the unchanged, difficult market environment that we are facing in automotive, on the other hand, influenced by some revenue shifts into the fourth quarter. Now, finally, revenue of our smart mobility solutions business was up almost 14% in the January to September timeframe, particularly as our efforts in the important U.S. market are gaining traction, in addition to some good momentum in the Middle East, Africa region. Before moving to profits, I would like to also note that negative FX impacts on revenues in the fourth quarter are expected to represent more of a headwind compared to what we have seen in the January to September timeframe. Moving on to profits on page eight.
As you can see on the left hand of this slide, the group EBITDA reached almost EUR 132 million, down by around 18% compared to last year. Absolute EBITDA, as well as EBITDA margins, improved sequentially every quarter this year. However, for the first three quarters in total, our EBITDA margin contracted by around 220 basis points year-on-year, including an about 40 basis points impact relating to the one-time move cost to our new FAB in Dresden, as you know, in the first quarter. On business unit level, influenced by the just mentioned one-off cost, as well as lower utilization and product mix effect, EBITDA in our semi business unit dropped by almost 30% year-on-year.
However, I'm pleased to report that while third quarter EBITDA margin in semi was still down somewhat year-on-year on the lower revenues, it was also at almost 28% at a very good level in our view. In our biophotonics business, strong top-line growth drove better utilization of our capacities. In combination with positive product mix effects, EBITDA margin substantially improved from 10.3% - 21.3%. As I've mentioned before, we continue to believe that this business is currently shipping a bit above normal profitability levels. When looking at our metrology and production solutions business, lower overall revenues impacted profitability with lower fixed cost absorption. As said before, considering our order intake and also our order backlog, we expect revenue development to improve in the fourth quarter. As a result, we also believe that margins will move back to better trajectories.
Finally, for our smart mobility business, we saw very good margin improvement of more than 400 basis points to 12.1% in the first three quarters, and this is based on the strong top-line development and the associated leverage of the functional cost. Moving on to page nine. Here, I would like to give you a little more color on the drivers behind the evolution of our margins. First of all, I would like to stress, as Stefan has also mentioned before, strict cost management remains a key priority for us at the moment, considering the lower revenue levels that we have alluded to before. We've started early on working on this subject, and as a result of that, we've been able to reduce material costs to some extent, and our headcount measured in FTEs is down by almost 4% compared to the same time last year.
Now, looking at margin development of our P&L in detail, in the first three quarters, we saw gross margin approximately 200 basis points down year-on-year, which was primarily influenced by the lack of fixed cost absorption and product mix effects. On a business unit level, of course, our semi business had the biggest impact here. On the functional expense side, as I said before, I think we remained very disciplined at those expenses. They declined by about 3% year-on-year, despite some general labor cost inflation impacts. Moving on to the EBIT line, you see a more pronounced decrease in both absolute terms as well as margin-wise as compared to the EBITDA, since depreciation and amortization was, as we had expected, slightly up year-on-year.
Further down the line, as you may recall from our Q2 call, we have recognized an income of a little more than EUR 2.5 million resulting from a settlement agreement regarding the sale of Incorium. That was our previous mechanical defense activities. Bottom line, our earnings per share reached EUR 0.80 versus EUR 1.15 last year. Now, turning finally to page 10, looking at cash flow and balance sheet data, and Stefan has mentioned it before, I think we are pleased with the development here, particularly considering the difficult trading environment some of our businesses are facing at the moment. Despite a decline in earnings, as you can see here, our operating cash flow pretax improved considerably year-over-year on lower cash inflows into our working capital. However, working capital intensity has increased somewhat year-over-year, reaching 30.3%.
Moving on to CapEx, as you know, in the beginning of the year, we stated very clearly our intention was to bring down CapEx compared to the somewhat elevated levels that we had during our investment phase in Dresden last year. Overall, CapEx in the first three quarters was down by almost 20%, basically in line with our expectations. Finally, our net debt position was down versus year-end at EUR 366 million, reflecting improved operating and free cash flow performance. Finally, our leverage was at 1.9 times at the end of the third quarter. With this, let me turn back to Stefan to cover our outlook.
Yeah, thank you, Prisca. If you could go to page 12, and follow me to page 12. When it comes to revenue, the rest of the year will be a sprint against time for us.
Essentially fighting hard to make sure that we can convert the increased order intake into as much revenue as possible in Q4. In some of our factories, where we used to have or have had short-term work, we're calling workers back into the factories to, yeah, as I say, run against time when it comes to sales and revenue recognition. Nevertheless, we do see that we will expect to see revenues for the year 2025 at the lower end of our guidance range. You know the figure used to our guidance range is between last year's figure and -5% of net sales, and we believe we're landing around the lower end of that range. We've talked a lot about our measures to reduce costs already. Prisca already mentioned we see FTEs down already. We will see further reduction in FTEs in the fourth quarter.
In particular, of course, in our admin organizations, we expect a really high single-digit million EUR number as expense for those structural cost takeouts. That included, we believe that our EBITDA margin will be at around the lower end of our guidance range. As you know, the guidance range is between 18%-19.5%. Last year, it was 19.9%, so if you would basically dial back in those numbers, yeah, you can do the math yourself, but essentially, including those really high single-digit million EUR, we believe we will be the lower end of that guidance range. Effects from current macroeconomic and political uncertainties that we all know and we all hear every day in the news and someplace else, as well as fundamentally very positive developments in the semiconductor industry and their effects on our 2026 business, is really hard to assess at the moment.
It still is very sort of liquid out there. It's very volatile. Despite the fact that we do see a good development in Q3, that's great, and we anticipate that that's going to carry into Q4. For a sort of more precise outlook into 2026, it's really too early. It's really, really hard to give us, to have sufficient certainty for that. We do think that the expected negative impacts from things like material cost increase and wage increase, we will basically offset by our 2025 cost-saving measures. The measures we talked about, we believe that will offset the cost increase that we anticipate, at least for next year. As a result of all of that, we expect an increase in both sales as well as EBITDA and an improved EBITDA margin in 2026.
The precise number for that, though, we can really not forecast at this point with sufficient certainty. With that, thank you very much for being with us, and we're more than happy to and expect a lot of questions from you. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question now, please press nine, followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, please press three, followed by the star key. Please press nine and star now to state that you have a question. The first question at the moment comes from Greg Abbott, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you both. Yeah, my first question, please. Just I realized clearly, as you said, too, I did not give a guidance for '26, but you're saying you expect a higher margin versus this year. I just want to be clear, I assume you're referring to a higher margin versus that, let's call it, adjusted EBITDA margin in '25, i.e., if we add back the high single-digit one-off cost, is that the basis from which we should be working? That's the first question.
We don't adjust our forecast. Obviously, as you know, we don't report. [crosstalk]
No, but we do
a djusted numbers. I'm trying to dance around the answer here, but look, let's see where we are at the end of the year, and then we give you a precise number. I think your assumption, by and large, is fair, but we really don't want to give any more guidance at this point.
Obviously, given what I just said or what we just said in terms of cost measures should offset cost increase, and then if you dial, of course, those restructuring extraordinary costs, those are one-time effects, and they will not show up next year. Essentially, I think the answer is yes. You're correct.
Okay. Okay. Thanks, Stefan. My second question is, and again, we know it's probably going to remain lumpy and all that for those of us that follow the reportings in the semi space. Nevertheless, could you give us some kind of feel, even if it's just a ballpark range of what your customers also in the lithospace are kind of indicating to you for '26? There is the expected growth in WFE CapEx next year, probably mid to high single digit, I think is the current consensus a re they kind of giving you indications to be ready, be ready to ramp? We just can't give you visibility yet on when the call-out rates are really going to materially start to increase. Just to kind of give us a feel of what the [crosstalk]dialogue is like there.
I would refrain from going into lithos versus inspection [crosstalk] too much. What I could say is, because, I mean, obviously, with Litho, there is essentially just one customer, and you'll understand that I can't really sort of [crosstalk] disclose that. Overall, if you take it overall, lithos and inspection together, then I think it's fair to say that at the moment, we do see actually a strong order intake or strong demand pattern in inspection. It's more the inspection side at the moment than the lithos side. For 2026, we really have to wait.
Okay. My last question, and I'll turn it over to the [crosstalk] others. Oh, yeah? Sorry, Stefan.
Is that fair enough?
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. [crosstalk]
No, I didn't quite answer your question.
B ut fair enough. Just looking at the other two divisions real quick, I mean, Prisca, you made clear that in biophotonics, there were some pull-forward effects that you would have thought normally would come in Q4. Fine. We get that. Nevertheless, a really good performance. On M&P, you said also strong order intake. You said it was optical measurements. It sounded like you were expecting things to gradually improve here. I just wonder what's behind that. Is that upgrade-type investment? Or was it a one-off order in that Q3 number? What's driving? What should drive this number to increase from here? Thank you.
Craig, just so that I get you right, your question was on biophotonics order intake dynamics. Is that [crosstalk] correct?
I danced around a little bit. Apologies for that. Actually, I was getting to both M&P and biophotonics. I mean, biophotonics, you said in your comment that there were some pull-ins. Do not expect that kind of dynamic for Q4. If you can maybe on both those divisions, just kind of give us a feel for how your pipeline's looking.
Yes. Yes. I think that, as I mentioned in going through the businesses, there are fairly different demand dynamics at this point across the four businesses. Please keep that in mind. On your question on biophotonics, I think what we have seen is, as Stefan also has alluded to, good medtech demand, but in particular, very good defense application demand in Q3. As I have mentioned in my comments, we see these orders in this area particularly lumpy, meaning hard to predict on the one side, but also sometimes it is also including multi-year demands. What we expect is that while we had some similar orders in Q4 last year, we have seen them in Q3 in this year. That is what we see. Therefore, we expect in biophotonics a certain normalization. Now, this is different from what we have seen in our MPS segment.
We have actually seen quite good order intake in MPS, I would say, across the year. We also had a good Q3. I think what we have seen there is that the measurement, so the optical test and measurement part, is actually relatively stronger. I have mentioned in my comments that in the automotive-related parts of the business, honestly, we still see a significant weakness. You can expect the driver of the good order dynamics comes more from the optical test and measurement. [crosstalk] Yeah.
Maybe to follow up on that, Prisca, real quick. As Prisca pointed out already, in the MPS segment, it is essentially the TRIOPTICS business. There is good order intake, and a humbled business, as Prisca mentioned, more automotive-related, is still somewhat lacking.
Okay. Not surprising. Okay. Thank you very much, both.
The next question comes from Michael Kuhn, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. One more on the one-offs and the expected savings. Firstly, on the one-offs, were those evenly split across the quarters, or were there quarters that were more heavily impacted? Just to have an idea in terms of what was underlying profitability across the quarters i nto next year, you mentioned you expect those savings measures to basically cover inflationary pressures. Could you also quantify that, so that we have an idea of what is the million euro number of savings you expect, and how does it compare to the one-off incurred this year?
Yeah. [crosstalk] Thank you very much. [crosstalk]
Oops. Prisca, sorry.
Yeah. I think, [crosstalk] Stefan, yes. I think thank you for your question, Michael. I think this is a very good question. Now, maybe let me clarify. The one-off effect in the amount of high single digits that we expect for this year has been in the second half of this year. You will see a very moderate impact in Q3, and we expect a higher impact in Q4.
That is because the program that is related to that is sort of underway right now, and therefore, you'll see basically the impact on the margin of the one-offs in this time period. Now, onto your question of the impact, broadly speaking, I think it would be a fair assumption to assume that the amount of the one-off costs is roughly equal to the amount of the full-year effect of, in this case, it's personnel cost reductions, of the personnel cost reductions that we expect. I would expect roughly a one-to-one relation on that. Maybe to the last part of your question, that will, of course, not fully impact this year as we are implementing towards the second half of the year. You'll see an incremental benefit coming as a full-year effect then in 2026. I hope [crosstalk] it was clear.
Yeah, yeah. That was very clear. Thank you. Then two, let's say, on business mix. Firstly, in biophotonics, obviously, defense driving that business right now. Would you be willing to give us an indication on the defense share of that business year to date and probably what you would expect into next year and then probably medium term because, obviously, defense is not kind of a one-hit wonder, but generally expected to stay strong?
I think in the last call, we specified that last year in 2024, defense for the overall group has been at around 3% of total sales in 2024. This year, it will grow over and above that. The share of defense in the overall group will be higher than 2023. We cannot give you a specific number at the very moment. Yeah, we do expect it to grow even further at this very moment, it's too hard to, it's not the right time to tell what's going on in 2027, 2028. It's hard to tell. What we can say is, again, last year, I think it has been 3% of overall group. It will be more this year, but we're not talking like 10% or so this year or next. It could come to that point in the future, but let's say we cross that bridge when we come to it.
Thank you.
Total group. Not biophotonics, but total group.
Yeah. No, no. That was clear. Thank you. One more mixed question. In metrology, what is the current share of automotive versus non-automotive? In automotive, also on the last call, we discussed some, let's say, efforts to move away from combustion engines and move into new areas like battery cells and so on, h ave you made further progress in the meantime, and what are the longer-term perspectives for that automotive-related metrology business?
Maybe let me [crosstalk] take the first question. [crosstalk]
Okay. Go ahead.
All means. Just on the numbers, maybe. Please bear in mind that the MPS business also includes the former Hummel business, including TRIOPTICS and some other smaller businesses. The rough guesstimate of the exposure to automotive is about 50% for this segment.
This will return to growth at some point, or what is the perspective?
I will [crosstalk] maybe start.
We do have. Prisca, [crosstalk] why do not you?
Please go ahead, Stefan. Sorry, my bad.
Okay. Yes, correct. We are working on additional applications and new applications for the technologies there. Not all of it, even if it is automotive, is combustion engine-related. I think that is important. We cover things like airbag solutions, m ost of you have heard about that. Regardless of whether we talk EVs or ICE engines, electric vehicles or others, it does not really matter to us. For that business, we have other new applications when it comes to certain light applications. It is a bit too much to go into all the details here. Interesting new applications that we have are based on laser technologies. Yeah, we certainly expect that to grow. What we do expect not to grow, at the moment at least, is the ICE internal combustion engine applications we have.
Overall, I think the automotive industry, as much as it is in difficulties, the applications that we serve are growing ones. I will give you another example. Evermore cars have cameras, head-up displays, and a lot of optics are cars these days. Here, we support our customers with metrology solutions, for example, with all these cameras that cars have these days and all these driver-assistant schemes that we have in our cars these days. Evermore optics, and that helps us in MPS quite significantly, actually. Very clear. Last one, any news on Prodomax or any active conversations going on, or was that more or less put on hold? The latter one, more or less put on hold. We do not have any active communications with potential acquirers at the very moment.
Strategy is still the same. In the long run, believe that there should be a better owner out there for Prodomax. The difficulties or the challenges or the discussions between Canada and the United States does not make it any easier at the moment. Given where this business currently is and where it actually should be, and we know it's a strong business, actually. I mean, last year, it was one of our most profitable units. We believe it's better at the moment to wait until the business is back at the point where it should be and then try again in an effort to dispose it. Strategically, no change. We still believe that there should be better owners out there. At this point in time, it's clearly not the right time to go for a sales process again.
Very clear. Thanks. [audio distortion]
The next question comes from Martin Jungfleisch, BNP Paribas. Your line is open.
Yes. Hello. Good morning. I have two questions on semis. Firstly, I mean, semi-autos were better year in year, but they were weaker sequentially. I mean, would you expect semi-autos to improve in Q4 sequentially, or is the visibility on semis and specifically litho not really improving from here? That's the first question.
I think the answer is yes.
Okay. That's good. Maybe a bit more in detail, right? I think you mentioned you're seeing lower demand in litho, right? Your main customer there sees DUV shipments to decline in 2026, while EUV shipments should be up. How does this mix impact you? I mean, is it financially really net neutral when you ship more into EUV and less into DUV due to higher SP? Is this, I don't know, net negative? Is [crosstalk] there any detail on that?
Yeah. Really, what matters to us is the number of machines sold. Now, for us, we do take more price for EUV versus DUV, but not as much, if that makes sense. What really matters for us is not the revenue growth, but the number of shipments growth at our main customer. It is good for us if there are more EUV machines sold than DUV machines. What really matters is the overall number of machines shipped to us.
Okay. The content in EUV is not higher than in DUV, right?
I mean, I can't go into very specifics here, but let's put it that way. Essentially, the technology is needed in both. Obviously, EUV is more complicated than DUV. Therefore, it costs a bit more, and it is a bit more expensive. It costs a bit more to produce, and it is a bit more expensive. It is not like you need 10 times more product for an EUV machine versus a DUV machine. That is what I am saying. By and large, at least, these are just sort of really back on the envelope figures. By and large, for us, it matters the number of machines shipped and not that much the number of revenues sold by our customer.
Yep. That makes sense. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Lasse Stüben Berenberg. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Just on guidance for this year, if I am just looking at the fourth quarter, if I take out that one-off effect, you are looking at basically stable margins on Q3. I am just wondering in terms of mix, does that capture biophotonics remaining at a similar level kind of in the fourth quarter, or should we expect that normalization to already take place in Q4? The second question would just be on defense orders within bio. Could you just help us understand the lead times here, or if that is materially different from the rest of the business, and also what that means in terms of profitability? Because we have heard from other businesses that defense customers tend to be, how should I put this, willing to pay a bit of a better price than others. Just wondering how you see that in terms of margin mix as well. Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe I will take the second question. Prisca, you can take the first one. The second one was the defense business. Yeah. The lead times in defense tend to be longer, or the time scales, I should say, tend to be longer. It is not necessarily always more profitable, actually, because often at times it is open book contracts. It really depends on the individual projects and the individual agreements. It is hard to say. Overall, the defense business is more profitable. I guess by and large, it probably is. There is pressure on price everywhere in defense as much as in other applications. If demand is so much higher than supply, then the supplier has a fairly good position when it comes to price negotiations. I think if that answers the question, I would hand over to Prisca for the first question.
Yes, of course, Lasse. Your question on the biophotonics margin level, I think I have mentioned it also in my comments earlier. We are having a really, really good year for biophotonics on a demand side. We just discussed it with particularly defense, but also on the top-line growth and margin expansion. I have cautioned already in the last call, and I will do that again. I do not expect this to be a run rate margin, and I would expect the margin somewhat to contract again, as also expected. That also includes the fourth quarter. Specifics now, biophotonics. On your second part of the question, when you said one-off effect, I assume you mean the one-off cost regarding the personnel reduction. Bear in mind that there is effect both in Q3 and in Q4. I would expect the effect in Q4 more pronounced, but of course, it is in both quarters.
Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Olivier Kovy, UBS. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. Good morning. A couple of questions. The first one on semis, could you remind us how to think about lead time for EUVs?
If your clients get an EUV order, when do you think you'll see the orders coming? That's the first one.
Typically, we do get frame contracts, Olivier, and we produce sort of level loaded and into stock, and then basically get a call off, and then we ship the product. Then we cut an invoice and then revenue recognize. Often, we have POC revenue recognition with that, but it does depend on the individual contract. It varies, shall we say. T hat's what I'm saying. Lead time, it's not as if we get an order, and then we start to produce the product, and therefore it can be shipped, I don't know, X weeks later. We have a frame, and we know roughly how many products over a period of, let's say, two years or so we need to produce.
That is what we balance, and then we ship whenever we get a call off. Lead time is a difficult term in that respect. Visibility is probably the better term. How much visibility do we have? I used to say in the past, we have a couple of quarters. That is shorter now. The visibility is much shorter. That is the point. More than lead time, it is the question of visibility for us. For us, at the moment, it is more like a quarter or so, and in the past, it was more like three quarters.
Yep. Makes sense. On the topic of visibility, I understand you do not have enough details from your customers to create a new 2026 formal guidance, but it is also when the current strategic period now lapses. I'm just wondering if you're thinking about a midterm update when that could come.
Yeah. I think that's fair. I think we need to do a midterm update sometime next year when we have more clarity. That's a very fair comment. We're not in a position as of now, but I think in the next year, you can expect a new midterm plan from us.
Okay. Okay. And finally, just on Prodomax, it's still within the other part, right? Not in the segments. Can you just give us a bit of color on how the business developed? We're comfortable in other [crosstalk] disclosures, so I just want to.
Yeah. It's in others because it doesn't really fit into any of the segments. We also want to highlight and signal that we still aim to, at least from a strategic point of view, find a better owner for and a better home for Prodomax since there is pretty much next to no synergies anymore to the rest of our business. How it develops while it is challenging for Prodomax at the moment. I mean, we're talking really challenging. Prodomax has lost significantly both in terms of orders and sales, and we really talk significant numbers here. As a result, of course, profits are down. They are still profitable, but given that it was used or used to be one of our most profitable units still until last year, me saying they are still profitable indicates the size of the issue. It is significant.
I mean, we do see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of now more requests for proposals, and that's good. There is activity going on again in Ontario, in the automotive industry around Toronto. In particular, now that it turns out that most of the products are actually what's called Kusma exempt. Kusma is basically what used to be NAFTA in the past. Therefore, now that the dust starts to settle on the tariffs, it turns out that most of the products of Prodomax are actually not—the tariffs are actually not applicable. The whole uncertainty in the region is what is so hard for Prodomax at the moment. I'll use the term significant when you ask me about the impact of it to the business.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Just a final one on the defense side of things, actually, c an you remind us about the kind of applications that you're supplying here, if you can?
Y eah. Sure. I mean, those are products that we have in the portfolio since we have a sense. It's optics, photonics-based products for range finding, for night visions, those type of stuff. Not new product developments, but products that we had in the portfolio all the time, but did not see much demand for it in the past, and now demand is increasing like big time. I mean, it's [crosstalk] going to.
You're selling a complete solution, or is that just a part of a?
No. Okay. Delay one. We sell optical components by and large.
Okay. Okay. Thanks.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, just as a reminder, if you would still like to register for a question at this point, please press nine followed by the star key. There is a question coming from Malte Schaumann, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. First question is on the OpEx. That had come down quite strongly into the third quarter of the year. I was wondering, having in mind the additional cost savings you're implementing, what's your target OpEx run rate for 2026? Maybe that was a bit artificially down in the third quarter, but maybe not. Maybe you can share some color on what your expectations on functional costs are for next year.
Yeah. [crosstalk] Malte, do you want to take that? Yeah. Exactly. Thank you, Malte, for your question. I cannot give you an expected OpEx run rate for next year, but what I can tell you is that, as Stefan has already mentioned, and then I as well, we've been very cautious on adding personnel wherever we have people leaving a ttrition, basically, we have used that to not hire again. On top of that, we've already talked about the cost-saving personnel reduction measures. Of course, that goes across both gross margin, but also several OPEX lines.
You'll see a positive impact from that. Now, labor cost inflation, I would expect to be broadly in line with what we've seen this year, what we have right now. Also bear in mind that there's a small part of amortizations in some of the OPEX lines that are also decreasing. It comes from the purchase price allocations of the previous acquisitions. If you take all of that, you get a few ups and downs in what happens in the OPEX. I can assure you that we will continue to be very, very strict on cost management across. Of course, that includes also the functional expenses.
Okay. Good. On MPS and the order intake, you indicated that it's mostly coming from TRIOPTICS. I was wondering which applications are driving the kind of uptake. We have recently seen some improvement maybe in the AR business with the recent launch of the new Meta glasses. Is that something that is also beneficial at TRIOPTICS, or do you actually see other applications driving the uptake? What's the sustainability of maybe a better business from what we have seen in the past?
I'd like to thank you for that question. I don't want to go into too many specifics in the product lines here, but it's the measurement of the quality of optical components for a number of applications. Yes, AR/VR is part of it, but there are also just classical optics production at the very high end. Other systems are growing strong at the moment. Others in terms of advanced driver assistance systems for the automotive industry. The combination of all of that is driving the demand in particular TRIOPTICS at the moment. [crosstalk] This is for business in Asia.
This is somehow sustainable, so you see kind of a better pipeline than going into next year?
It can be lumpy, but I do not want to forecast the rest of the year. Overall, yes, I would say it is sustainable. Do not take that as a guidance on Q4 or intake MPS, please. In the midterm, yes, I would think so.
Sure. On the biophotonics again, you indicated to expect a normalization of the order intake in the fourth quarter. We have seen quite significantly differentiation between order levels. Should we assume that maybe the second quarter order level we have seen is that kind of a normal level you would consider as normal going forward? I mean, Q1 has been significantly lower than that. Last year has been between €40 million and €70 million. Maybe you can add some more color on that.
Again, very difficult to answer the question. As Prisca already pointed out, that business is very lumpy. I mean, you can get big order intake swings from, in particular, defense contracts. Let's face it, that's what we're talking about. Therefore, it is very challenging to predict, shall we say, order patterns by quarter. I would rather not do it, but focus on the long run, on mid-range and long range. I would say the medical and life science industry is still under pressure overall. We all know that.
There is still the remaining post-COVID blues. There is the fact that research budgets are cut, NIH budgets are cut, and so on and so forth. That will have a negative impact on our biophotonics business in 2026 and maybe beyond, but particularly in 2026. On the other hand, defense budgets are growing, in particular in Europe, but also in other parts of the world. That should have a positive impact. Which one of those two factors is stronger is a bit hard to tell, but I would say life science healthcare more on the negative side and defense on the positive side. We will have to see what that means for 2026.
Yeah. Okay. Understood. On CME, the indication for kind of an improvement, sequential improvement in the order intake into the fourth quarter, is that also then mostly relating to the inspection side of the business?
Sorry. I got to place my words very carefully now, but no, I think I would say that goes overall for the total SEMI business.
Okay. Good. Okay. Thanks. Okay.
Thank you very much for those questions. Let me just wait a couple more seconds if there are any more questions coming in. That does not seem to be the case, so I'd like to hand it back to the speakers at this point.
Thank you very much for being with us today. As I think the discussion has shown, it's a bit of a bumpy ride at the moment. Most important for me, for us, is that we really have a sprint ahead of us for the next couple of weeks to make sure that we can turn as much as possible those nice order intake patterns that we have seen in Q3 into phase in Q4, and then have a good basis and a good foundation for 2026. With that said, thank you again for being with us and to our teams everywhere. Good luck and all the best for the rest of the year. No, it's a joke aside. I think we'll see a good closure of the year with all the challenges that we had throughout the year. We always indicated that the second half will be better.
Those of you who follow us for a bit longer, you'll probably know that the fourth quarter tends to be the strongest by far for you in optics. We will work hard to deliver that this year as well. Thank you very much.