Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the LPKF Conference Call for the First Quarter 2024. My name is Bettina Schäfer, I'm part of the investor relations team at LPKF, and your host today for this call. For the first part of the call, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a Q&A session. You can write your questions into the chat, or you can give me a hand signal in order to speak directly. The conference will be recorded and published for a period of two weeks on our website. Klaus Fiedler, CEO, and Christian Witt, CFO, will now give you an overview of our business development in the first three months of 2024. Before we start, I would like to point out that any forward-looking statements in today's presentation are based on information currently available.
These forward-looking statements are not to be understood as guarantees of future performance and results. Ladies and gentlemen, I now hand over to Klaus Fiedler.
Thank you very much, Bettina. Thank you, and welcome everybody to our Q1 conference call. Pleasure to have you. I want to lead in with a couple of takeaways from Q1, give you an overview of market developments, business developments, and operations, and then we'll hand over to Christian, who will present you the details of our financial figures. If we could come to the next slide, Bettina. Some key takeaways from Q1. Looking at our top line, we finished the quarter at EUR 25.4 million at the upper end of our guidance, and also significantly above the weak Q1 we had last year. And also on the EBIT, we are within our guidance and following the revenue with a better EBIT situation. Strategic progress in Q1 in several areas. I'll come to more details.
We see clearly a much stronger market activity in LIDE, and a leading Korean semiconductor manufacturer has opted now for LPKF and placed a first PO. We are now in the market. The product launch is done with our first product in the ARRALYZE segment, our CellShepherd, and we are happy with the opportunity pipeline that has built up so far. We continue to see a strong demand in our Solar segment, and also were able to win a large PO, but we see a broad customer interest driven by a new technology that is now entering the market. If we could come to the next slide, please. A bit more details, and I gave you an update a few weeks ago when we presented the results of 2023. Basically focusing on points where we see changes. Looking at the overall market situation.
We see a good sales pipeline in Electronics and prototyping. So the opportunities and how they are progressing towards a PO. That is where we say yes, on track, but we see a slow order conversion in Q1. That actually started in the second half of Q1. So we clearly see the effects that people are thinking about placing CapEx much closer before they place a PO. It's actually not surprising when we look at the overall economic situation now, but our order entry is below our expectations for Q1, while the deals and the opportunities are clearly where we want them to be. Looking at LIDE, there we see more and more players in the industry in advanced packaging now making proactive statements that this is the future. This is where they are going. So we benefit from that.
In terms of the whole ecosystem is now getting very active, and we benefit by being perfectly positioned here, and now also seeing an even stronger pipeline in people who say yes. We want to get the first machines into our factories and place POs. So this is counterbalancing the slow conversion we see in other areas. Markets in film, yes, clearly growing, and we see that new technologies attract investment. Established markets for laser welding, we see a slow market clearly in the automotive industry at the moment, but we see a good positioning in e-mobility where we basically see independent of overall economics a growing demand. Yes, and as mentioned, our first biotech product is out. A lot of activity, a lot of marketing tuning happening at the moment. Pipeline building up. And so far where we expected it to be. Business development, yes, Perovskite, no change here.
This is a hot topic in the thin-film solar industry, and we see a lot of players positioning themselves, building prototype lines, building first factory installations. We benefit from that. We see that our new products in Electronics, everything we do in the depaneling, that shows a good pipeline and clearly the foundations for further growth. Conversion is hopefully a short-term topic. Legacy products we have, that is a slow market at the moment, meaning capacity expansions are not on everybody's radar here at the moment. As mentioned, good traction for e-mobility. Automotive is slow at the moment. Semiconductor demand for LIDE, yes. Very good underlying demand. And also our display projects are under evaluation. We expect decisions within the coming months how we proceed there. And order entry.
Well, I would say slower than we would hoped for, but on track for our guidance and a large Solar order above EUR 15 million received in Q1. If we look at operations. Supply situation. Minor topic. There's not a perfect situation everywhere, but clearly no longer a front burner topic. This is not something we need to focus a lot on. But what we need to focus on very clearly. And where activities are running, but clearly more activities are now in the pipeline and will be brought on the road is efficiency. Operational bottlenecks cannot limit us, and we brought the improvements on the road. And we clearly need to watch, especially when conversion is slower than we expected it, that we put in additional measures to improve efficiency. And following from it, profitability. That is something very much on the front burner of the board right now.
That's the overall situation. If I would say, the big picture is we are well positioned with all our products, meaning that by and large we can build a very good sales pipeline. And we see that we win the deals because the value proposition is good. We see, driven by overall economics, certain hesitance in many areas to convert to orders as fast as in a normal situation. But we have counterbalancing effects that the new markets we are entering in advanced packaging in biotech are now on the road to convert. Biotech starting LIDE now benefiting from a very good overall industry dynamic. And with that, I want to hand over to Christian to give you more details on our financials.
Thanks very much, Klaus. Hello and welcome everyone also from my side. Let's have a look at the financial results of the first quarter. Starting at sales, as Klaus mentioned, 26% above prior year's first quarter. Which was clearly a slow quarter one. So that is okay now for Q1 and 2024. Looking at the EBIT side. We managed to improve by 33%. So looking at the total EBIT, it's -EUR 4.4 million. The adjusted EBIT is -EUR 4.3 million. We just had about EUR 100,000 of restructuring costs in the first quarter. We expect our cost reductions to start to kick in in terms of results as of the second half of 2024. And we will see the major part of the restructuring cost rather than the second half of the year, not in Q1 or Q2.
So that's rather what we also expected, that we see something, but not the bulk part or the main part in the first half year. Looking at incoming orders, as Klaus mentioned, the order situation in Q1 is below what we expected. For the reasons Klaus mentioned, and we'll go a little bit further into the situation of the business units in a minute. Looking at working capital and free cash flow. We still have a high working capital at the moment. And therefore a free cash flow, which is close to the EAT. Which is basically based on a lot of solar business we are doing at the moment on the receivables and inventory side. We also see that in a bit more detail in a second. Orders in hand in the end are also below last year. Basically in line with the order situation what Klaus mentioned.
Let's have a look at the different business units. Can you switch? Thank you. Starting with the Electronics. In Electronics, we have higher sales in the depaneling. But we have a clearly slow market in the stencil area. Stencil area is one of the smallest areas we have in Electronics. But it's one of the areas where we particularly see the slow Electronics market in China having its effect on what our customers need in additional capacity and order from us. In LIDE, we do see that there's a further increasing and specific interest in the LIDE technology. And there it is really not an issue that customers would hesitate to proceed with their projects. Yeah, it's not a day or two that they order a piece of equipment, but they go through their process as expected and there's no hesitance there at all.
As I said before, it's rather speeding up, intensifying, and broadening in who is interested to familiarize themselves and get really started on the LIDE technology, especially in the semiconductor sector. Looking at the EBIT side. Yes. More turnover, more EBIT. That's okay. That's expected. On the other hand, we are continuing to reduce cost here with selective structural measures. We've started that last year in Electronics, even early last year, step by step, and we are continuing. It's about an adjustment to where the market is. So as mentioned previously, there's a couple of positions we are taking out. And strengthening the organization in that sense to be more resilient. Looking at development. We have a relatively slow start into the year in development. And here you see the lower order intake basically converting very quickly into a lower revenue.
So that's not low, low, but it is slower than we expected. I think there's one particular item to be mentioned here in development. One of our key markets in the U.S., a lot of the budgets of the government budgets have been delayed and have been approved after the normal dates. So that has delayed some of the orders. So that is one of the areas where we see what's the reason and we also see the resolution. When you take, for example, electronics depaneling, it's okay. But there it's private customers ordering when they think they need it. While in development, for example, it is rather a delay. To a good part because of government budgets being delayed, but when you know that they're coming, then you know one or two quarters later we will have the sales respectively. ARRALYZE has a continued and growing funnel. That's good.
We just know and that's nothing new. I think I've reported that also a month ago. Conversion cycles when we talk about living cells. The new player on that field, ARRALYZE, is just a bit longer than what we normally see. But that is within our expectations that we will not have huge sales of ARRALYZE this year, but we will have an introduction and a first step into the market. On the other hand, the investment into ARRALYZE does affect our profitability. What's really good is that we have a first commercial use and order for CellShepherd. So the first customer spending money for our technology is in Q1 and we'll then probably in Q2 have the first small revenues there. But it's an important first step to have the first customer who says, I want it and I pay for it. Welding.
Here we've seen a recovery in sales. That's good. It's not to the level where we wanted to be, but it's good that we've recovered from previous levels. The sales here flow directly through into profits. That is the improved profits are due to the higher sales. In Solar, we have a significantly stronger quarter than last year. Looking at profitability, same thing. Here the higher sales result in the respective at least visible profitability of the business unit. Looking into free cash flow. Thank you. When you look at working capital, we see that we have about EUR 40 million of your working capital versus EUR 23 million last year. Very most of that is Solar.
It's the fact that we have lots of Solar projects running, either has been invoiced or coming in the year and we already have material and other stuff there in order to start manufacturing, start provisioning the material and so on, commissioning, all these things are starting. So that's one hand. On the other hand, we have a large down payment, which we expect in Q2. That's the two key reasons. And that's all Solar related. Why we have a relatively high working capital still in Q1. We expect that this gets significantly better in Q2 and then also in the second half of the year. Midterm targets remain the same. We see what we can do in working capital. We've seen that in the past. And we'll do exactly what we have done there. This is a peak at the moment. There's a reason.
There's measures to remediate that and then we should be back on track. Free cash flow, as I said before, follows EAT basically. When you look at a comparison of 31st of March versus 31st of December, which is the free cash flow relevant part. And the negative net cash is again due to the high working capital. Once we are back there where we should be, we will be in a neutral/plus position on the net cash and continue to have our solid balance sheet as we do have it now as well. Looking into our projections. For 2024 and for Q2. First, we are confirming our guidance for the full year 2024 of EUR 130 million-EUR 140 million revenues and 4%-8% of adjusted EBIT margin. And our guidance for second quarter is EUR 28 million-EUR 33 million in revenue.
An adjusted EBIT of - EUR 3 million to EUR 2 million. Looking at the midterm aspiration, I think what we are continuing to see, and that's very positive on our side, is on the one hand, the continued strong demand for our solutions in the core business. The fact that due to the current situations, the orders are a bit weaker, does not at all affect the midterm aspiration. The strong pipeline we have and that we see that new product innovations also in the core business like our stencil and depaneling is really giving us the result and the market position we want to have. That's good. Second one, Klaus has talked about the situation in LIDE. Very positive how the whole market, not only in Korea, is really taking on LIDE and the semiconductor industry. So that is happening.
It's been our aspiration for a number of years now. Now we see that this gets into reality as the big players have announced that they're moving this direction and they're really pulling the whole supply chain here as well. And number three, we see that ARRALYZE gains traction as it should. Still in the opportunity stage, but we see that stuff which is to happen to make our midterm aspiration happening is moving forward. So with that, thanks very much. And I'd hand back to Bettina and to you for Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready for your questions. Please click on the hand signal if you want to ask a question. Please click on the hand signal again if you want to withdraw your question. If you have dialed in by phone, you ask a question by pressing star key nine. To withdraw, star key six. You can also use the chat, as I said. I am looking out for hand signals. Yes, something here. Tim Wunderlich. I have unmuted you.
Thank you so much. Good morning and thank you for taking my question. I have one. On the LIDE business. So you talk about strong demand for LIDE in advanced packaging, but also other applications. And I'm just wondering, what does strong mean if you could give a bit more detail or maybe quantify it? And then also what is the timeline? Because when we talk about semiconductor applications or advanced packaging, I guess you're talking about glass interposers. And I think yes, the market is moving in that direction, but it should be a topic for maybe 2027, 2028, so still three, four years out. Is that the correct assumption? And then the last one on LIDE with display, you said decision within the coming month.
What is your confidence now that the decision is going to be positive given that you during the last conference call you said that the customer is still having some challenges and sounded a bit like it's quite binary, so make or break. Any update on the display applications with LIDE would be appreciated as well. Thank you so much.
Thank you for your question, Tim. Happy to answer as far as I can without violating any NDAs. Strong demand, what does it mean? Those of you who are following the industry will have seen that two large semiconductor OEMs have been proactively communicating their ambitions here. What do we see now? This is not just the OEM. There's a very big ecosystem behind it. In this ecosystem, we see players that have been observing the technology, maybe sampling it now, stepping up and saying, okay, we need machines in our factories. We need to qualify these processes. That is happening significantly stronger than we anticipated in our planning. I don't want to be too quantitative.
But what we expect is that what we will sell as true LIDE assets, so production machines this year and what we will have been selling at the end of the year, will be clearly higher than planned. And contributing in a significant way also to our business. That is what we see. The ecosystem is now in; we have to get it on the road mode. On the timing. Well, the timing depends when the large OEMs push the button. You saw the numbers that those have been putting out for their high volume ramp up targets. I consider one of the numbers that was put out rather conservative. I consider the other number rather aggressive. And I would guess the truth will likely be in the middle. Regarding display, there is now a clear application on the radar with a clear product behind on the radar.
We are now talking to the people who make decisions on operational use. And this internal assessment where it's now also about competing technologies and TCOs and so on is now running with the people who really push the button on operational use. I see us well positioned with this technology, but I will definitely give you updates when I say, okay, now it's on a clear visibility roadmap. I hope, Tim, that gave you some insights on where we stand here.
Yeah, maybe if I can just jump in before we come to the display, just a quick follow-up. So LIDE will be better than expected this year. And should that be, should the respective revenues come in the second half of the year? And then the question is when you talk about the ecosystems starting to invest into LIDE technology, is it that the semiconductor OEMs have made a clear decision for the LIDE technology and are now basically stipulating or forcing their suppliers to use LIDE? So is there a very clear decision for your technology? Thank you.
So to answer your question, a very large OEM in the semiconductor space would not go out with a bold statement that this is the future technology we see. And then withdraw a quarter later and say, oh no, sorry, it was just a technology evaluation. I do not have insights into detailed discussions between the OEMs and their supply chain. But what is happening here is basically a very clear message to the whole ecosystem. This is the technology we're going to use in the future. Get ready to operationally support this technology. And this is what we are seeing in the activities when we look into the players in the supply chain. I hope that answers your question, Tim. I cannot give you a statement on what's that now, a written agreement and guarantee and so on.
But we see the clear statement of this is where we are going, get ready.
Yeah, that's fine. Thank you.
Actually it is a good and strong position if the OEMs as well as the supply chain look into the stuff. And we work with both parts. That is the best which can happen. And that's where we are.
Okay. The next question comes from Adrian Pehl. I have unmuted you.
Yes, hi.
Yes, you can speak.
Okay, perfect. Thanks for having me. Actually, two, three questions from my side. To put a bit of numbers behind what we have just been saying on LIDE. Because I recall from the last conference call, there was a statement from you, Christian, I think, to expect something like high single digit revenues for LIDE. So it sounds like that you are in general a little bit more upbeat on that target probably. But any thoughts or background appreciated on any numbers. And then secondly, a bit associated to that, is there any implication for the foundry business from what we have just been saying or from other customers? So an update here would really help. And lastly, a bit kind of a, if you want so, associated question. I mean, last year in January, you announced this development contract.
Now that more than a year has now elapsed, would you please provide us an update where you stand and what kind of feedback you are getting from the customer on that? Thank you.
Of course, let me take that. So basically on the revenue, Christian was communicating high seven figures. It will be a number that is above our expectation. That is already clear. We have, of course, prepared our operations pipeline and tried to maximize also executing that, including revenue recognition in 2024. It will end up, I would say, at the break-even between seven and eight figures. That is very likely what we will see at the end of the year in asset sales. Regarding the foundry, the foundry runs a product business. Of course, we have been using it a lot to basically give customers access to a virtual production line to enable their decision to invest into a first and in the future more assets.
But we are focusing the foundry now a lot more on LIDE, there is also sustainable product business in many areas where people buy the product long term. They have no ambition to vertically integrate. And that is something we are strengthening now. While, of course, still supporting virtual line activities, but we see that now much more shifting to people saying, okay, I now got to get an asset in-house to prepare for scale up. And on the last one, the large contract we were announcing a year ago for a technology in advanced packaging in the semiconductor space is absolutely on track. We just were investing and opening into a new clean room facility in Garbsen and had basically the introduction party a few weeks ago. That is a project that was planned right from the beginning with a development phase and then putting first assets in.
It's completely on track. We cannot reveal more details here because it's a cutting-edge technology with strict confidentiality.
All right, thank you.
Thank you very much, Adrian.
The next question comes from Miguel Lago. You should be able to speak.
Yep. Do you hear me, guys?
Yes.
Yep, all good.
Okay, thank you very much. First question would be on the order situation. The pipeline looks good, but order conversion needs to improve. Obviously, in order to make your top line guidance at the lower end, in my opinion. Do you see any or what are your assumptions there that we see a massively improved conversion from your healthy pipeline? What are your thoughts on that?
Thank you, Miguel. That's a complicated one. So what do we see? We have a quantitative funnel management, meaning we have deals and they start from early opportunity down to we've negotiated price, we've negotiated everything. We have the samples done. It's a question of getting PO now. That one looks healthy and especially also with the number of deals that are basically done and dusted. And it's a question of the customer issuing PO. What we observed and that actually started in the beginning of March, roughly. That a lot of customers were saying, oh, okay, sorry, I need one more cross-check with my board before the CapEx is released. We stay on track, don't you worry, but it'll be a few weeks longer. Classic case of people saying, wait a minute, we need to check our CapEx budgets again and only board approval and blah, blah.
That's where we are. In terms of will the bubble burst, that is under very, very close observation by us. For the moment, I see positive signs in terms of on the government side, several governments have now said, look, we got to stimulate the economy and there are special budgets to really get things moving that will help us in the prototyping field. In other areas, for example, when we look at depaneling, we are observing. I do not expect people to change their overall operations and ramp up plans now for the year. But I clearly need to watch will this slowness in conversion continue and what effect does it have on our operations and still getting revenue recognition in 2024. Christian has mentioned working capital needs to go down and not up.
Therefore we are very cautious in saying, okay, let's pre-build in-house and then be faster when the PO is there. There we are basically monitoring in a very high frequency what is our best call. Then there are industries like currently automotive where we just say, oh, this is generally slow. And we see clearly, okay, there are a limited amount of deals that they are willing to really invest in the year. So basically there we say put best foot forward and put more focus on markets where we see a positive business development like medical to balance it out. Long story short, Miguel, this needs to be monitored per product line, fast decisions, quantitative inputs that give us the insight to take the right decision.
In several areas I see now basically things turning toward a better direction, but it's not something where we say, okay, back to normal. Very much under observation.
Different from BU to BU, from product line to product line.
Absolutely.
It's not one big knot. It is one knot here and another knot there. Many of them have the macro situation as a fundamental underlying. But as Klaus mentioned, it's very different if you have budgets in a couple of states delayed due to whatever reason and then they release it and it's there. Or if a final customer says, well, let me see when I launched the product. Not sure about the timing. Do we do it a few months later or what do we do? And then the whole chain gets delayed. So that's different. That's very different areas. And as you know, we have our business is so different. But that in this case is an advantage because it's to some degree risk mitigation.
Okay, understood. Then one on the examination of the fixed cost structure. Should we think of a specific segment that is more better suited for those measures or will we see measures across the board, meaning for all different segments?
We will see measures across the board. There's a couple of things we have started addressing. But it will be measures across the board. It's not only one or two business units. It is all business units.
Okay.
And the corporate overhead in the same way, of course.
Yeah. Last one then on the EBIT in electronics, which is slightly weaker than I at least me personally would have expected. Is there anything special you would like to mention? Is it like as you expected or weaker than you expected as well? Anything you want to highlight here?
No surprises on our side on the electronics EBIT. No special surprises. No, no special surprises there. We are working on a couple of specific measures there and we are doing it step by step.
All right. Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you, Miguel.
Thanks, Miguel.
Thank you. The next question comes from Robert- Jan van der Horst. You should be able to speak.
Hi, can you hear me all right?
Yes, yes, we can.
Good job, perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks for taking my question, only a very small one actually. Would you be able to comment a little bit on the visibility that your current order backlog provides? I mean, there are, I guess, EUR 15 million in there that are scheduled for next year. But just looking at that, are these mainly really short-term orders which will mainly be put into revenue in the current quarter? And how much of that is actually scheduled for delivery this year? So any specifics on when those orders will be generating sales would be great. Thanks.
I think the general structure of when the orders are to be converted into revenue. We have one big part, Solar, the order we have published. And we have published that as well is due to delivery in 2025. All the rest is pretty standard and pretty same as we always have it. In development, whatever we have in the books now, very little will be left by the end of the quarter. Because it's a few weeks normally from order to delivery. When you take Solar on the other hand, lead times six, nine months plus means that just a certain part will be done this quarter. But that's the same as all the time. So there's no difference in our structure of the reach of our orders in the different business units from what it normally is. Same reach, same timing, and so on.
I would say I don't have the exact number here, but estimate I would say ±30% should be for 2025, plus minus.
Okay, perfect. Perfect.
Not an exact figure, but plus minus.
Thanks for clarification.
Including the Solar order.
Okay, perfect. Thanks for the clarification.
There is another question here from Miguel Lago.
Yeah, it's Miguel. Can you hear me?
Yes, you can still speak, yes.
Yeah. You don't disclose order entry or order backlog by segment, do you?
No, we don't because it is too fluctuating. It will cause more confusion than it will give clarity. We are very happy to describe the situations in the different business units as we've done.
Okay, then I might put it differently. I mean, we have EUR 15 million for Solar coming in next year, which is in the order backlog. Do we see a substantial part for Solar that is coming in this year that is in the order backlog?
Yes, of course.
Of course. Of course. As you can assume that.
We have strong delivery planned.
Of the revenue of this year, ±80% are either in the order backlog or in the turnover. Plus minus. No exact figures, but we have very long lead times here.
All right, understood.
On the other hand, in development, if you just compare it, the lead time and the average reach of orders is anywhere between four to eight weeks.
Oh, yeah. No, that's clear. Thank you.
So I can't see any further questions at the moment. If you do still have questions, give me a hand signal. Or write it into the chat. But there don't seem to be any further questions. And in that case, I think thank you all very much for joining this call. Our next regular conference call will take place on July 25th at the release of our six-month report. Thank you very much. And goodbye.
Thank you, everybody.
Thanks for the time.
Bye-bye.