It's my pleasure to welcome you here as well. It's my first Capital Markets Day. I think we have some great stuff to show and to share with you. We have also, I think, created some reaction this morning that we are exceeding consensus expectations. You will probably see later on, after everybody is done with their presentations, that this plan is sound. It's backed up with real products, real developments, and we are really excited to get this show on the road. My role now is really to start off with the market, and I will give you a short overview on the semiconductor market we're playing in, the relevant technology trends which matter for us, and also how this playing field determines our product roadmap and the products we are going to launch.
We want to show how we fit into this market and how that connects then to the Ambitious 2030 we are also displaying very soon. First, let me just show how we create our market view and how we derive from those market developments our own strategy and our product lineup. This is quite important to spend a minute here because we are not reinventing the wheel. You are all familiar with this market setting. We have kind of sources, and we listed a few of those sources from industry peers like ASML. I happen to know that they have a quite good marketing department, even after I left. We do not really have to repaint that picture. It is known. It is the same canvas we are using. We also, of course, have key inputs of research institutes like IMEC.
They are more focusing on the device roadmaps the next 10, 20 years, which really comes through design matters of the semiconductor industry. Also, we work with them on the technology field because they have also our machines in their cleanrooms, and they are developing process solutions together with us, with our peers, and our competitors. We get really relevant inputs from there. We, of course, use the other sources like Gartner, like Meghna, and also, of course, the Yole Report to back up our market plans and so on and so forth. Lastly, we are working with industry leaders of our industry very closely to align with their roadmaps, our product portfolio. As you can imagine, if we wait that, for example, a customer tells us what they want, if we would start only then, it would be too late.
We have to start much earlier. Therefore, we also use the other sources. These insights help us to set the right priorities for us to move on. Now, one more marketing slide, which you're very familiar with. This is, of course, the market landscape and the technology trends and the ecosystem we are working in. All these items are well known. What happened in the last few years is, of course, AI accelerated those market trends tremendously. Since this acceleration also had an impact on us, we also managed to take advantage of that. This is a different picture of those end markets. You have the different end market segments: computing and data storage, communication, automotive, industrial, and consumer. This segmentation is well known, and you have the growth drivers mapped on the right side going along.
The EUR 1 trillion market for 2030 has been discussed already five years ago. Then there was a slowdown in the semiconductor industry, so that number was taken down, and AI accelerated it again, and we are back at EUR 1 trillion. Others size the market even higher. Usually, they are in the AI camp and see much more potential there. We go with this market trend and the CAGR of 7% in our own analysis, and that's also where we anchor our market view accordingly. I think so good. I mean, these are slides. You could put any company logo on this. It would be the same story. Now, we zoom in and look at what's really happening in the front and backend market segments. The first comment I'd like to make, and this is quite important, the boundaries are fading between front and backend activities.
They were quite distinct, separate markets. Of course, front end, many factors bigger than the backend. Also, they had their own purchasing teams, their own development teams on the customer side versus the backend activities. Now, these boundaries, they are fading simply because of some trends, and they are kind of mentioned on the slide. The geometrical shrink is slowing down somewhat. To keep Moore's Law alive, you have to come up with other means proving your roadmaps. What's happening there? Front end players are engaging with backend players to really work for or seek for innovative solutions. That's 2.5 and 3D packaging, which traditionally happened in the backend. Since that packaging, and especially wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding, has impacts on little performance, these parties have to work together.
In return on the backend side, there are ever-increasing accuracy needs and cleanliness needs, which really get us towards front end performance in some areas. Of course, everyone wants efficient and green process solutions, which connects us as well. On the bottom of the slide, we related with our two business units. Now we are zooming in, of course, on what does it mean for us. You have our photo mask business, where we bring in our front end photo expertise into wafer cleaning, which happens in the backend. For the advanced backend solutions, we are moving into this nanometer space of front end companies. Many front end companies are actively seeking the dialogue with companies like ours to really solve this collectively. We are very open for this dialogue.
The next five slides now, we go a bit into more detail and also correlate what does it mean for us. Back to the front end side, we all know Moore's Law is continuing. The shrink is on, the geometrical scaling continues, although it slows down a bit. That is the curve on the left side. The segmentation of those nodes is also well known. The advanced nodes, of course, carry the biggest value, but also the mid-end nodes continue to have a big potential. Now, on the right-hand side, you see also how we match our product portfolio accordingly. We are really covering the entire mid-end and high-end range with our photo mask equipment everywhere from sub 2 nanometers to 90 nanometers. Our new solutions we are launching, they are kind of also listed there, the Master Smart and also the new mid-end system addressing this quite well.
Yuta will later explain this in greater detail. Now, on the backend side, this is about really 2.5D and 3D packaging. Now, those markets, they grow with 10% CAGR. The market we play in even with 14% CAGR and the heterogeneous integration market with 32%. That is the fastest growing segment. On the right side also there, you see the application examples, how we play in those markets. That is probably also the fastest growing market for us to move forward. Depending on how good of a job we do there, we will benefit greatly there with our solutions. Now, even more detail, and no worries, I will not go into great detail here, but you see there a heterogeneous integration module in a systematic way depicted.
We are already involved in several production steps there, whether it's on the CoWoS side or on the HBM memory side with multiple solutions, which are listed on the left side. Even our front end photo mask business is involved because the dies for HBM, all the logic chips are running through our cleaning equipment, and they are later stacked here on this module. They also mentioned higher performance in terms of accuracy, but also cleanliness in the backend also drives us into sub-micron territory. We really have to have evolving product roadmaps to address this space. That is really important for all our solutions, for our temporary bonders, for hybrid bonders, and other equipment we have coming up. This is the drive where we are moving closer to the front end players. More on that later when our product units are presenting.
Now, everything, of course, talks also connects with having efficient and green processes. ESG plays a huge role in here, not only for us, but also for some of the industry players. On the left side, you see some of the initiatives of those players. They also ask us to join in and work with them on improving ESG performance and come up with various solutions. We are working actively also reducing our product carbon footprint for our systems from crate to cradle. We work on materials and efficient processes. That, I think, is also displayed later in the wafer cleaning equipment and in others. Of course, we want to have less harmful materials in our supply chain and also as used media for our systems. We are very actively engaged in this field as well. Now, back to the market.
Our served market, and that's the equipment market now. We moved from the end market to the semiconductor equipment market, is also growing with 7%. You see those areas we are actively engaged in, imaging, coating, bonding, the new area, wafer cleaning, and photo mask equipment are right there. We are basically in the right markets, and these markets are growing with 7%. We are picking the right place. On the right-hand side, you see some of those product details, but more of that we will see later when the product units are presenting. In terms of our market position, we can claim quite a number of market leader positions. That's in the full action scanning, where we have really 100% market share. On photo mask, high-end cleaning, it's even above 80%. The big develop, it's around 60%-65%.
Mask aligner also, we are the number one supplier. For temporary bonding and debonding with 45%, we are also the number one supplier. Of course, there are others which are coming close. Now, an important category for us is the first follower. That's where we have a share. We are kind of the number two in the market, but this is where we can gain. This gain potential will also make a big part of our growth potential we have envisioned. That's, of course, in the photo mask mid-end cleaning segment, where we are launching a brand new product where we have strong hopes that we pick up quite some share. Our coating equipment, where there's also some potential, and the permanent bonding, where we can also evolve further. On the right-hand side, we have market entry potential.
This is where we have categories like the inkjet, the wafer cleaning, where we really open new fields in the market for us. That also is a strong growth driver moving forward. Hybrid bonding is a market which is yet developing. Right now, the majority of hybrid bond sales is in the flip chip area, which we are not directly addressing because we do not have a flip chip mount in-house. We work on integrated solutions or combined systems or the wafer conditioning solutions. Now, I come to a stage now where I would like to show our product roadmap. I think the first thing you see here is we have a tremendous number of new product introductions. With that, we are gaining significant market share once these come online. We are also entering new product categories.
The years 2026 and 2027 will be pivotal for our further development. This is kind of the key engine of our growth underlying on that. New solutions will initiate the next growth phase for our company. Again, the business units will present how this in detail will look like. Now, with that, of course, it is very apparent that growing innovation, which also happens to be our brand claim, comes with a reason. We have a huge amount of products coming up, and these are either new products or evolving products of our existing portfolio. If we execute this well and we follow our customers' requirements, which happen to be quite challenging at times, we have quite a big potential. That potential is indicated here and also which we communicated earlier this morning. Our sales ambition is EUR 750 million-EUR 900 million.
That means a CAGR of 9%-13%. With that, we intend to grow faster than the market. That is both the semiconductor end market as well as the served equipment markets, which are both growing with 7%. We are equally ambitious when it comes to the margins, where we want to grow to 43%-45% on gross margin performance. For EBIT margins, we target 20%-22%. Quite some step up. It is 8 percentage points or 9 percentage points respectively. These are big numbers, and we are fully aware of that. We have the product pipeline. We have the potential to make this happen. We are very convinced that these are realistic numbers we can achieve. Now, a few words on the geographical split, because that is also important. In the past, we had a huge dependency on China sales.
That is shown on the left side. In 2030, we expect that this share is normalizing a bit to 15%. Quite an effort to de-risk China a bit. The other areas, they also perform well because we also expect Americas to grow relatively, simply because there are many chip initiatives we are actively engaged in. We think that areas like Southeast Asia, there in particular Singapore, will have a big impact because some of our customers are investing into large sites there. What remains about the same is our Taiwan share. Not without reason, we expand our facilities there, and we opened our new site two weeks ago. Thomas will talk about this later and share some impressions there.
Our customers in Taiwan, they're highly appreciating not only our presence there with production, but also application support, R&D, and customer service, which we are expanding there as we speak. That remains a strong share, and we intend to keep that share moving forward. Now, I'd like to go a little bit in the commercial arena. There, of course, we can only expand our reach if we team up with players in the industry. That sounds maybe trivial, but it is an ecosystem we are playing in. We are working very closely with OSATs, with IDMs, technology partners on various technology fields. These can be our suppliers or they come out of the material industries. Of course, with research industries, as I mentioned earlier when I started. These all give us inputs on how to operate.
We really have to make sure we are collaborating very closely. What we do in detail is, of course, we focus on strong industry leaders in the market. We really work on commercial and technology partnerships to drive innovation forward. Through presence in markets where our customers are, but also where other players are operating, we get access to insights and technology innovation. So far, we were talking about tool-related revenue. We have a huge installed base in the field because we are in this business for quite some time. That service and upgrade business, or installed base business, as we call it, has been kind of taken care of, but with very little focus. We really strengthened this in our new strategy, where we really put a lot of effort in driving service products into the markets.
That is not only spare parts and other things. It is extended service contracts, maintenance agreements, targeted upgrades, where also our service team acts as an extended sales team to really maximize the sales we can generate out of service. We want to grow our share in service from today, 15-18% to about 25%. That can be a huge number. If you look at 2030, that can be EUR 190 million-EUR 225 million in 2030. The other nice thing about service business is it comes usually at a high margin, as we are talking gross profit margins of 50%. Focus here is key. We have a dedicated team and a dedicated management in place since last year to drive these service product families, also with a distinct product roadmap. Now, I would like to come to my last slide of the introduction.
I think we talked about how the boundaries between front and back end are blurring and merging. We also have said that we will grow 9-13%. Our ambition is to grow faster than the market. We have a set place in the value chain of the semiconductor landscape. We intend to further emphasize that moving forward. Next, Yuta Nagaya and Robert Wanninger, our two business unit heads, will come and explain in greater detail what they have up and coming in their product units. I would like to first ask Yuta to come on the stage and share some of the details of what is happening in the photo mask business unit. Thank you very much.
My name is Yuta Nagaya. I am head of the business unit Photo Mask Solutions. I hope my strategy stands in contrast to those whether you find today.
First of all, I'd like to share how I evaluate our market environment, which Burkhardt has just shown to you, and also outline the strategy toward 2030. Next comes the financial highlights. Our goal is not to just explain to you in a short-term optimization, but sustainable growth with strong financial foundations. Then summary. This is actually the overall market dynamics and what the key takeaways from there, which actually has been explained very in a nice manner by Burkhardt. Basically, I'm responsible on the front-end area. In regards to the front-end area, I have to say the Moore's Law is definitely continuing. It's not ending. It's evolving toward an ongoing era. In parallel, due to the increased number of the layers demanding around the mature node, we'll be accelerating. Chiplet-based architecture in the back-end area are gaining attention, as you also know.
ABS, Advanced Backend Solution Robot, we'll present later on, is focusing on the 3D stacking and the packaging technologies. My BU also observed the growing diversity in the cleaning needs in the back-end applications as well. This dynamic requires strategies that address both advanced and mature node technology space in parallel. Let's look at the global lithography and the logic technology roadmap. Starting from the, let me see. Starting from U.S., Taiwan, Korea, they're definitely going toward one-nanometer logic device node by 2030. Meanwhile, Japan tried to catch up that one-nanometer also by 2030 as well. In terms of the logic device structures, it's shifting from traditional FinFET to the GAAFET structures, which integrates the transistor verticals. When I take a look into the leading lithography companies from Netherlands, they actually have a dominant market share starting from ArF emergence, EUV, low-NA EUV.
It's already launched back to 2000, early 2020. Then it's going to be implemented. I mean, high-NA would also be launched in productions around about 2027. Definitely, the common consensus from the market is saying that the Moore's Law will definitely continue, supported by high-NA EUV productions around 2027 and the release of the CFET vertical transistor technology around 2030. I would say that there would be the three technological pillars we definitely like to follow. One is a high-NA EUV, as mentioned earlier, and CFET transistors, and also the heterogeneous integration. We'll also be pursued based on the vertical 3D stacking and advanced packaging technologies. What does this mean for us? I mean, translating those technological pillars into a business unit context. High-NA EUV requires continuous innovations in a mask technology and also the materials.
The CFET increased the number of the lithography layers, hence leading to more mask capacity demands. The heterogeneous integration stimulates our demand for mature node masks and consequently drives refurbished needs as well. Overall, while front-end complexity increases, back-end integrations like a chiplet and 3D packaging are redefining the ecosystems. In summary of the market dynamics, while technical barriers for leading-edge photo masks remain extremely high, advanced mask capacity demands are very much limited. Total mask volume will continue to grow due to new ecosystems around the heterogeneous integrations. The demand growth from mature node will be particularly strong, supporting both photo mask mid-end and the wafer cleaning business. We are strategically positioned to capture the entire spectrum in the high-end area and also mature area driven by two product lines, photo mask and also the green tech.
By the way, green tech product line just has been established this year. We have an entire team dedicated for pursuing this wafer cleaning area. I'd like to move to our concrete strategy, how photo mask solutions will translate these market opportunities into the actions. Basically, the technology, market expansion, and sustainability are the key success factors for us, which will be driven by strategy initiatives. First one is maintaining a high market share in the area of the high-end photo mask cleanings. Next one is regaining our market share in the mid-end photo mask cleaning area by relaunching new products. Also, sadly, we'd like to penetrate into the new gen Z market by introducing the new wafer cleaning platforms. I'd like to touch this in more detail later on.
Looking into our product photo roadmap, the next year, 2026, would be our premium year in our product evolutions by introducing three platforms: Master Smart Cleaning for high-end area. Our legacy product called Master Pro covers technology nodes down to the 10 nanometers, and the 10 nanometer down to the 2 nanometer is covered by Master X systems. This will be completely shifted toward Master Smart Cleaners. We actually have already the evaluation partner to work on these tools. In the mid-end area, legacy ASX 5500, I'm sorry, is already launched to the industry more than two decades. Two decades, but with very minor updates so far. Therefore, I'd definitely like to relaunch these systems called ASX 9500 next year as well.
I didn't talk much about the Baked Developed system, but I do think that this Master Baked Developed system actually has shown very good storylines around this transition from old legacy tools to the new tools. Master Pro Baked Developer system was already shifted to the Master Smart system. Baked Developed system was announced back to 2023 with a higher margin. This actually helped us to gain a market share as well. In terms of the green tech, 200-millimeter low-volume manufacturing tool would be launched next year, followed by 300-millimeter HBM systems launched in 2027, and 200-millimeter HBM would be launched also in 2028 in three consecutive years. Let's look at the Master Smart Cleaning systems. Firstly, our market share of the Master Smart Cleaning system as of today, I'm sorry, Master Pro X system market share in 2025 is around about more than 80%.
We do think that we can reach out to the more than 90% market share by having Master Smart Cleaners available after 2026. I can maybe tell you what is actually our USPs. Our USP is basically that we have a very superior particle control. This means, for example, if you put a certain little droplet onto the substrate, this will completely damage and clean off the patterns. Therefore, what we have to do is we actually have to control the size of the patterns, I'm sorry, droplet. Also, we have to control cavitation, which actually is kind of force power to the outside to remove the particles. We are the only supplier in the mask industry who can control that droplet size and also the force power at the right point of the times.
This kind of explosion of the droplet has to be done on really the patterns. If this explosion is done above, let's say, pattern area, then this does not influence anything. We must control this very well. Also, as mentioned earlier, for high-NA EUV, a mask would use new materials such as tantalum boron nitride. This actually causes us to implement a new surface preparation technology called ICP Plasma Modules. Meanwhile, why we are calling Master Smart is because we definitely like to implement those AI software that can process real-time, like process optimizations and so on. EUV mask backside-only cleaning, this actually requires quite well due to those market, I mean, scanners have a problem to, let's say, detach the mask from the HVAC of the scanners. That causes lots of particles on the backside.
Therefore, we need a dedicated cleaner only for the backside of the mask. Master Smart Cleaning combines EV-specific process excellence with intelligence control to set a new benchmark for the industries. To achieve this capability, we must overcome the challenges like CD, overlay, and zero defects, and so on. We are confident in addressing all of them. Based on our current large install base worldwide as a leading supplier, our excellence is supporting the customers' today's process of record, POR. We are engaging in a joint development with multiple key partners to respond to next-generation requirements quickly. This collaboration will strengthen our roadmap to 2030 and make new market entry extremely difficult for the competitors. This is a landscape of ASX 9500 mid-end cleaners.
Unfortunately, our ASX 5500 has been already announced more than 20 years ago, and we did not do major functional change and so on. The new low-cost competitors based in Asia have been increasing their share. We do believe that we can actually regain the market share by introducing our ASX 9500 tool and reach out to the 50% market share by 2030. What is a USP around these mid-end tools is, first of all, we are knowing how we clean in a high-end area. Therefore, we would like to definitely use this kind of core competence at how to offer the scalable solutions that cover the wide range of the technology starting from 90 nanometer down to the 38 nanometers. This actually helps our customer to optimize the cost and performance as well.
Conventionally, this area relies heavily on the chemical cleanings, such as sulfuric acid combined with the hydrogen peroxide. We will apply our Institute of Technology, which is one of the state-of-the-art technologies we adopted for the high-end cleaners. This requires us to only use water to remove those organic materials and the particles, which helps to improve the mask lifetime and reduce the cost of waste. This actually is a chart showing the global photo mask market value versus technology node. This lighter color, lighter green, shows the market trend of the mature node area. This mature segment reached about EUR 2.5 billion in 2023 and is expected to surpass even high-end segments next year and grow toward EUR 7 billion by 2030. The key drivers are rapid expansion in the application, especially in the area of AI, automation, and IoT.
This growth makes the mid-end mature segment a highly attractive business domain for SUSS. I'm very much happy to also show you a green truck 200 mm wafer cleaning system, which will be installed in a SUSS application lab in just a few weeks from now. This video is shown to you as an industry first. The first unit uses a cassette-based loading system, and they're equipped with a fast, high-efficiency robot. The tab and strip modules, which is actually state-of-the-art technology that I'd like to explain to you later on, can load a wafer vertically, up to 50 wafers to be processed at the same time. Backend, you find very good, easy adaptations or integration to the factories. Backside rinse of the system is designed to be very easy to implement those photo mask front-side nozzle technologies.
This green tech system, uniqueness of the platform itself, is a hybrid approach. This combines single wafer cleaning processes and also the batch processing. This means batch processing is usually used for the higher productions, high throughput and high productivities. Single wafer cleaning is more for dedicated sensitive cleanings. We have a mix of those within the one platforms. Definitely, we'd like to get into this market starting from the scratch this year. I mean, we don't have the product yet, but we'd like to launch this product in 2026. We are launching the 200-millimeter application tools first and then gradually moving toward 300-millimeter tools. In the long term, we definitely like to address those tools into the different market segment, reaching out the average of the 40% market share.
They are equipped with two, let's say, two technological advantages that I can tell you later on. One is the cross-buster technologies, and then the other one is the tab and strip technology. Here, I'd like to show how the tool, I mean, has been actually equipped from concept to the reality. The cross-buster uses UV radiation to dissolve the water and remove organic residue progressively from top to down and without any damage to the layer underneath. This is very, very important, especially in the MEMS or power device application, because they have lots of metal layers underneath. They'd like to make sure those metal layers are not damaged while removing those particles. Tab and strip use a biodegradable and also water-based liquid that crusts and detaches a target material effectively and achieving a higher removal rate. Also for completely different geometry on the wafer.
We can use these fluids for different applications, starting from 200-millimeter, also 300-millimeter as well. 300-millimeter means such as, for example, after temporary bonding material removal, we can actually do the final cleanings. That would be our target. Based on the extensive customer evaluations so far we have done, this technology can completely replace traditional solvent or acid cleaning. That is very fantastic, I would say, while also eliminating the needs of additional steps before and after wet cleaning, such as vacuum plasma and so on. That is conventional use. We can also eliminate the vacuum plasma process as well. This reduces the complexity of the process. Also, at the end, this will impact the total cost of ownership for the customer.
In 2024, obviously, we do not have the product yet, but we actually checked that our total sub around the 200 mm, which was around EUR 300 million. With the expansion to the 300 mm market, with the 300 mm product launch in 2027, this will definitely help us to grow the market. Also, with the standard market growth, we expect that by 2030, with the 200 mm and 300 mm tools, the market will definitely expand to EUR 1.4 billion. What will this strategy initiative bring financially to SÜSS? I would just like to do some playback of what I presented in the Capital Market Day, February 2023. Our target was to double the revenue by 2030 compared to the 2023 baseline. As a matter of fact, we already achieved EUR 131 million in 2024, showing a stronger growth than expected.
This was achieved entirely with the legacy photo mask products without the launch of those new platforms like Master Smart Cleaning, ASX 9500, and also the green truck systems. Based on the solid momentum and the three success factors outlined earlier, technology, market expansion, and the sustainabilities, we now see the clear path to double the 2024 revenue by 2030. Here is actually our ambitious goal. In 2030, we would like to reach close to EUR 300 million and also the margin range of 45%. As shown earlier, 2024 performance has exceeded our internal expectations in terms of the growth speed predicted in 2023. However, 2026 will be a transition year. Transition year means for the high-end customer area, most of the foundries are switching technology nodes from the 2 nanometer to 1.4 nanometer logic device nodes.
Such as a Chinese government fund of the phase two to the phase three, this will actually cause a short pause in the market growth. However, starting from 2027, we expect renewed momentums. High-NA EUV adaptation for HBM, as mentioned earlier, will drive the demands on the Master Smart platforms. Also, for mature node demands, we do think that the phase three in the Chinese government fund will reactivate the investment in that area. Those replacement needs of the legacy tools from the conventional match and match shop will drive and stimulate the needs in the mid-end area. Green truck system will contribute to our revenue quite a bit after product launch and then 2028 onwards. This is a summary slide.
Toward 2030, we will continue to build our business based upon the three success factors: technology, market expansions, and sustainability to firmly secure a leadership position in the photo mask cleaning while establishing a new wafer cleaning business as a next-generation growing engine. Through continuous innovations and disciplined executions, we are confident, I'm also personally committed, that the photo mask solutions will definitely contribute to the next chapter of the SUSS success. With that, I'd like to close my speech. Thank you.
Yuta, thank you so much. Now we do have roughly 10 minutes' time for immediate questions to Yuta. If you raise your hands, I will get close to you. Please wait for the microphone that your question will also be recorded on our replay. Okay, we are going to start with Michael Kuhn from Deutsche Bank. Michael.
Yeah, thank you for the presentation.
On timelines, maybe quickly, you showed the product introductions 2026 to 2028. Maybe a rough idea by platform and let's say how you expect the sales to ramp up also based on the customer discussions and where you stand in terms of preparation phases. Thank you.
There will be some phase to introduce the platform into the world. I mean, firstly, we'd like to launch the system to the customer side to get the tool qualified. This would be time-consuming. It's going to take a year. After the product launch, the revenue contribution will start one year after the launch. Basically, what I'm saying is revenue contribution around the green truck 200-millimeter system will start after 2027. And 300-millimeter with the product launch in 2027, revenue contribution starts 2028 onwards.
The next question is Madeleine Jenkins from UBS. Just a very short one. Excuse me.
Thank you.
I just had a question on your mid-end photo mask cleaning. You said you had currently 20% share in that business. Who are your competitors? I guess, what gives you confidence that your tool can really kind of exceed the offerings they might give out in the next few years? Thank you.
Our competitor, by the way, thank you very much for your questions. I mean, our current competitors are based in Asia, China and Japan. Due to those depreciations of yen, I would say our competitor price is quite competitive. However, their USP is only producing the tool with the very cheapest solutions, which is actually usage of the chemicals. However, as mentioned earlier, our USP is we know how to, let's say, extend the capability down to even 2 nanometer and beyond. That's why we'd like to provide a scalable solution.
For example, okay, customer buys a very cost-optimized system for 90 nanometers, but in two to three years, they'd like to go into, let's say, 45 nanometers. This can be upgradable with a very reasonable cost. That actually makes us very unique in the positions. Thank you.
Next question, Janardan Menon from Jefferies.
Yeah, two questions. One is, I was just interested in your chart on slide 37, where the mature node is growing faster on the wafer cleaning, I mean, the photo mask cleaning, sorry, than the high-end. Just wondering what the dynamics there are. Is it because there are just more devices and therefore more mask sets for that?
For example, currently at the 5-nanometer technology or 2-nanometer technology, you know that how many layers are stuck on the logic device? This will run about 70 up to 80 layers.
The majority are actually coming from the mature node technologies. They like to optimize the cost they spend for high-end lithography. Therefore, the needs on the mature node are quite. If they come to the 1-angstrom, I'm sorry, 10-angstrom, 1-nanometer technology, the number of the layers will sum up to even 130 layers and beyond. Here, front-end leading-edge technology would require the more mature node mass to be processed. Around heterogeneous integrations, once those logic devices become smarter, they can manage more chip or device around, such as HBM and also power devices and so on. This will also be supported by mature node technologies for photo mask. That actually requires stimulating mature node dem ands.
When we think about your mature node new introduction, the 9500, one shouldn't think of just the China market.
This could be actually selling very well into a TSMC 1.4-nanometer node, basically. Correct. Understood. Would the market be bigger there than in what we consider as a traditional mature node? I mean, do you see the opportunity for the 9500 as being more in that advanced logic area than in, I don't know, STMicro or SMIC or something like that?
At least that the customers are not ready to pay beyond what we're actually preparing on the ASX 9500 toward, let's say, a smaller node. Therefore, I mean, our ASX 9500 solutions, which actually, let's say, are performing for the 38 nanometers, pretty well on the cost demands from the customer. I do think that the ASX 9500 can cover only down to the 38 nanometer.
The customer is actually ready to spend more money on the high-end area by having Master Smart Cleaners. That would be the landscape I'm expecting.
Got it. On your wafer cleaning, in other areas like your high-end solution, you're already in the market. You are sort of co-developing a solution with a customer. When the product is ready, you have a pretty easy entry, hopefully. I mean, not easy, but easier entry because you're already working very closely with the customer. In this case, do you already have such initial customers that you're working with? Or is it you get the product and then you start marketing it?
Definitely. That's how we actually penetrate into the market. We always like to tug up with those market leaders. We actually have reached out to more than 10 leading customers.
They actually send us a bunch of the samples. We actually serve the demo for the customer by having our Alpha system installed in Starnberg factories. We actually proved the concept. The customer is very happy to see the results. I think the key USP of this two technology is, for example, the customer has a 50-micron resist on the top of the metallic layers. 95% can be removed by a towel and strip within a few seconds. Then less sensitive area can be processed by the Cross Buster technologies. This actually gives very unique options for the customer to deal with very diverse conditions on the wafer. Thank you for your questions.
I'm going to continue here. Johannes was first.
Only one short clarification question. Cleaning is also very important for hybrid bonding. Is what in your forecast, in your figures.
Back-end opportunity included, or is it on top?
Yes. Basically, we'd like to catch up that the first lead 200-millimeter area, first of all, because this is more compact. Also, especially in the MEMS area, those hazardous fluids, chemicals that are used today in the industry, like NMP, have to be resolved, I mean, replaced. Therefore, the market needs our solutions to replace the current solutions. That would be our market entry. Gradually moving towards 300-millimeter advanced packaging area, making a final cleaning or, as you said, after temporary debonding, we remove all those residues and then make the final cleaning.
Next question is here. Shortcut, Namur.
Thanks. You broke down mature versus advanced. Can you break down memory versus logic in this segment? How big is memory?
Let me check. I don't think I have that breakdown.
My gut feeling is actually the demands for the memory, especially around the HBM, has been increased quite a bit. That is how I can see from those active memory customers from the U.S. and Korea.
I guess some people say that in advanced logic, you have more SKUs, so you have more masks. That is good for your business. Whereas in memory, there are less SKUs. Does that make sense?
Basically, no. The mask demands for memory are also quite high, equivalent to those logic devices as well. Therefore, there will be many challenges. Also, some of the customers are working to renew the structure of the HBM as well. This requires different mask needs as well.
Thank you. The next one is Veysel Taze from Metzler.
Yes. Thank you for the presentation. I have actually two questions.
The one would be, with all the new product launches, et cetera, what is on the manufacturing side happening to bring maybe the lead times shortened down? There are now different products and different platforms. Are there some areas where you can really use a platform strategy to build the same components, integrate that? I mean, your gross margin does not suggest too much on this side, but maybe I'm wrong.
Definitely, we'd like to reduce our OpEx by having extra tools. Especially for the wafer cleaning system, we outsource entire production to our partner companies. This will definitely help to reduce our OpEx. Meanwhile, we launched new platforms with a higher margin, I predict. Therefore, this mixed strategy would definitely help to increase our margins.
On the lead times and really on the manufacturing side, can you do there something as well to bring down the lead times?
Yes. The answer is yes, definitely. Master Smart System reduces actually the complexity in the manufacturing as well. This actually helps operational people to work on the lead time smoothly. Also, the GreenTech system, we actually outsource to our partner companies in Asia. They do commit that they can actually scale the productivities for the higher volumes, which actually helps to shorten the lead time as well.
Got it. On your GreenTech product, right? You said, I think, the last generation product was 20 years ago. Now you are coming with innovation to the market. Can you see from the early discussions with the customers, what is really the total cost of ownership?
Which benefit are you already, can you quantify that? What can you deliver there? I mean, I can imagine for 10% cost savings, people would not change their production lines, right?
In conventional ASX 5500, it covers only the technology node between 90 and 65 nanometers. The customers are forced because they do not have any other option to replace the platform from ASX 9500 to the Master Pro systems. That is how actually a customer has done. However, kind of a shifting period of the one technology node to the next one becomes very fast in the customer. The customer has no time actually to renew the system and get that to qualify. Therefore, scalable solutions are well accepted. I do think that our, let's say, 90-nanometer solution on ASX 9500 is very much cost-optimized, as well as also for the 38-nanometer as well.
The customer is payable across this technology node. Yeah. I hope I can answer you well. Maybe we can talk later on.
Maybe the last one, two, three questions. Malte Schaumann from Wahlbrock.
Yes. During the last capital markets day, you showed quite interesting slides about the potential savings in chemicals with the GreenTech technology. Does your actual tool live up to these initial expectations? What are your thoughts about gross margin contributions with respect to potential value-based pricing of the products?
Basically, yes. Those chemical consumption that we use out of the Cross Buster technologies, I'm sorry, maybe Cross Buster technologies, we just use the water to remove. There is actually no cost. I mean, there is a cost of the water, but that's it. That will largely impact the customers. Back then, we thought that we cannot meet the customer's throughput requirements.
However, we can compensate that with combining with the turbine and strip technologies. And turbine and strip technology, we do think that we can be at least in the same level, equivalent to the conventional cost of those chemicals that are used. Therefore, the customer has the advantage to reduce those usages of those hazardous chemicals, but then replace this to the green and also faster.
Is that then still saving in operational costs for the customer in total?
Yes, I do think so. This has to be proven in our production tools.
Do we have any more questions on Yuta? I don't think so. Yuta, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Welcome also from my side to the SUSS Capital Markets Day 2025. My name is Robert Wanninger. I am the Head of the Business Unit Advanced Backend Solution.
In the next 30-35 minutes, I'd like to guide you through the outlook for the Business Unit Advanced Backend Solutions. I will also use the abbreviation ABS on some slides to shorten my speech a little bit. Maybe for those of you attending the last Capital Markets Day in 2023, you may remember I announced the foundation of a new business unit combining three essential process blocks in advanced backend under one roof. With the combination of bonding systems, coating systems, and imaging systems under the roof of ABS, we have now a solution offering from one SUSS. With this offering, we address the target market as presented by Burkhardt at the beginning. Our target markets are heterogeneous devices, MEMS sensors, power and discrete devices, optoelectronics, including wafer-level optics. Last but not least, high-frequency devices.
To drive sustainable and profitable growth for ABS means focus. We have to enable focus. We do it by focusing on high-volume markets, offering the right applications, the right equipment at the right specification to the markets. Focus means focus on key customers. We need to address the industry leaders. I will give you a couple of examples later on in my speech. We identify the success factors of our customers and turn them into differentiating solutions. Focus also means modular equipment design, using modular versatile components to cut the development time, to bring down the cost, to have a very competitive product available. Last but not least, focus also means focus on the product portfolio. We will focus on streamlining the portfolio. We will consequently phase out low-volume products. We will keep an eye, keep focus on standardized equipment, addressing the high-volume markets.
When we look to the serviceable market for ABS equipment, and you see this on the left side here, you see significant growth from EUR 2.2 billion to EUR 3.5 billion. You also see at the same time, this is a strong market growth across the three product lines for bonding, coating, and imaging systems. If we change the view from the equipment view to a device point of view, the picture is different. You see MEMS, power, HF devices, optoelectronics, all combined, yes, this will remain a solid contributor to our serviceable market. There is a strong market tailwind coming from the heterogeneous devices. Here, we benefit from a strong demand in temporary bonding, a significant demand growth for our hybrid bonding solutions, a more and more increasing demand for our UV scanner.
Last but not least, also a demand for new substrate sizes, the demand for panel solutions. Let's have a short view on the portfolio optimization. As I said before, we concentrate on reducing our range of semi-automated equipment. You see this on the bright green colors here. In all the three product lines, we phase out products. We keep strategically important products in our portfolio available. The focus is on the automated products you see here on the dark green numbers, where we increase the number of products and where we also have a continuous transition from the existing generations to the upcoming ones. This reduces complexity in our portfolio. This gives us focus to our business, to our customers, to our markets. Let's give a first outlook on business numbers.
Similar to what Yuta presented before, when we look back to the Capital Markets Day, and even here, I summarized the numbers starting from 2018, the last long-term plan, yes, ABS delivered. We doubled the revenue by focusing on the key customers. We ended up in real outstanding performance in 2024, secured by a strong position in our AI ecosystem. We reached our all-time high numbers of revenue, but also all-time high numbers in terms of gross profit margin. If we look to the upcoming years until 2030, we project, and again, a doubling of our revenues. First, we will undergo softness in our revenue in 2026. We see that a couple of our key customers, especially for temporary bonding, but also in other areas, they are preparing for next-generation products. They are also digesting investments from 2024 and 2025.
Coming to 2027, we see a lot of new initiatives coming to the market, a lot of new initiatives gaining traction for UV scanner, for hybrid bonding, and also for inkjet. We will also see a recovery in the temporary bonding business. That also brings us to the profitability. Yes, 2025, there will definitely be a strong setback in the gross profit margin for ABS. That comes first. We did extraordinary efforts in the R&D investment. We did a large investment in our new site in Taiwan to prepare for the growth. Last but not least, also a change in the product mix. These three factors coming at the same time will create the setback in the gross profitability. It is a must-have. We have to do this right now in order to prepare for the upcoming years, as I said, 2027 and onwards.
Here, we also project again significantly improved gross profitability in the range of 43%-45%. That is the first outlook I'd like to present. Let's have a deep dive in the three product lines. If we start with the first product line, bonding systems, temporary bonding is and will remain the key revenue driver. Burkhardt emphasized our position in temporary bonding. Two out of three IDMs are using our temporary bonding and debonding equipment to do wafer thinning, especially for HBM. We expect that this market is continued to grow, continuously fueled by AI. There is a second pillar, the hybrid bonding. We are entering the market. You have seen it in the presentation before. We are new to this market. We are new to this market.
We will enter the market first by addressing advanced logic, followed as a second step by the HBM market. I will explain in the two, three minutes from now why we choose for this sequence. We will benefit from the strong market growth in hybrid bonding for wafer to wafer and die to wafer as well. I will not go into detail on our permanent bonding business for the matter of time. Here, we are number two, clearly behind the number one company. Also here, we expect a moderate growth in the market. Main applications here are MEMS bonding and engineered substrates. Let's focus more on temporary bonding. Clear market leader in a growing market fueled by AI and HBM.
When we see here on the left side, the majority of the market development comes from thinning of memory devices and combined with advanced packaging, especially for advanced logic. There are some ongoing activities in power and others. We emphasize, we focus first on memory, on HBM, and advanced packaging. The new upcoming products or product generations here, they give us a call, a call for ongoing improvements, especially to address cost of ownership, higher throughput, higher yield, as well as handling of ultra-thin wafers. Our equipment is prepared for HBM4 and even HBM5. We concentrate our next-generation products to improve cost of ownership for our customer. There is less a need to develop new features, new capabilities. Of course, we continuously enhance the product capabilities. There is no showstopper or something similar which hinders us to enter this market.
Today, we are the clear number one with 45% of market share. We still keep our activities to remain our position at the top IDMs and the number one foundry. There will be number twos. The demand, the capacity created or built by our customers for HBM is continuously growing. All these customers, they are preparing for a second source. This is a trend we already see or we already begin to observe right now. Why are we confident to keep our position in temporary bonding? I highlighted here four USPs. Starting from the left side, our equipment is able to achieve extremely high yield. We are talking on extreme high-cost products. Therefore, it is utmost important to achieve high yield with the temporary bonding and debonding. We do it with an extremely low TTV. TTV stands for total thickness variation.
That's one example you see here. Today, we are able to achieve a TTV below 1 micron. The requirement for HBM4 is 1.4 micron. The requirement for today's generation, HBM3, we are talking about 1.6 micron. You see here, we are already ahead of today's market and also tomorrow's market requirements with this performance. We also have a robust HBM-proven generation in place. The first SUS temporary bonding and debonding equipment was served to the market in 2012. 60% of the tool base is today used for HBM business. Similar to what I explained for the high yield is ultra-thin wafer handling. Today, the customers are using a device thickness of 40, 45 micron. Our equipment today is able to run 20 micron. We are preparing right now 10 micrometer and also layer transfer by using 2D materials where we work together in the EU Graphene project.
Here, we are ready for the next generation of devices. Last but not least, our seamless adoption across various HBM processes, the modular approach of our product is addressing this perfectly. If we look to hybrid bonding, the market outlooks project an extremely high growth rate here. Both die to wafer and wafer to wafer will grow significantly. As I said before, we address first the logic and second, the HBM area. Why is that? Our today's partner, the French company SCD, they are a perfect partner to address the highest accuracy for die to wafer. That is exactly the requirement coming from the advanced logic market. We are still catching up in terms of the throughput numbers. That is also the reason why we clearly decided first advanced logic and second HBM manufacturing. That is driving our sequence here.
If you look to our market assessment, if you remember my speech in 2023, I presented you the integrated die to wafer and wafer to wafer hybrid bonder. This is what is again confirmed by the market to be the necessity on the long term, where integrated solutions are in favor by the market with surface preparation and hybrid bonding modules together. We also recognize that the market today behaves differently. Market still prefers standalone versions for die to wafer, the traditional flip chip supplier, and for wafer to wafer, typically permanent bonder supplier.
That is also the reason why we have adjusted our strategy and why we have introduced an independent surface preparation tool to the market that the customer, that the market is able to choose what option he wants to go, either directly for an integrated one or for a standalone, an independent surface preparation in combination with a wafer to wafer or a die to wafer bonding tool. Also here, our confidence level to be successful in the market is driven by extremely positive and outstanding process performances. If you look to the left side here, we are leading in accuracy, which is ideal for the advanced logic. You see two results for wafer to wafer hybrid bonding, an average post-bond accuracy below 50 nanometers. You see for die to wafer hybrid bonding, an average post-placement accuracy of around 170 nanometers.
You also see in the second USP here, more and more, especially for future logic applications, the wafer distortion becomes more and more important. Also here, we could demonstrate with the IMEC partnership that we are able to achieve around 40 nanometers of post-bonding distortion with our existing production generation. One element for this is our IP for hybrid bonding, where especially our hybrid bonding pin SUSS proprietary IP is helping us to achieve these excellent performances. Last but not least, also here, you see the platform approach where we are able to offer from a die to wafer integrated hybrid bonding, a wafer to wafer bonding tool, the combined die to wafer and wafer to wafer hybrid bonding tool. Last but not least, what I just said, the surface preparation cluster and even up to a dedicated and independent metrology customer depending on the customer needs.
If we move on to the second product line, coating systems. In the past, coating systems were primarily driven by the traditional spin coating. You see that also spin coating, this is the dark green pillar here, it will continue to grow. These are SUS revenues by equipment type. You see the continuous growth until 2030, driven by advanced packaging, focusing on 300 millimeters as well as on MEMS and power, which are still running on 200 millimeters. I will not go into the detail for spin coating. I like to keep my focus on the inkjet part. This is a market where we are still at the early stage. With our technology in-house, we are able to shape this market. We do it. Let me switch to the slide here. It is a two-way approach for inkjet.
You see on the left side, inkjet as an alternative to traditional spin coating. There are use cases. There are customer needs to have an alternative to the conventional spin or even spray coating. Some use cases I highlight here, high topology applications, replacing of extremely high-cost materials in advanced packaging, thick resist coatings for metalization, and last but not least, also panel coating. We project that among the coating market, the traditional coating market, 25% of this market can or will be addressed by inkjet coating as an alternative. The second market is a new market. This is inkjet as an enabler for additive manufacturing. We see that new technologies, new processes will be introduced, will be needed. This is what we call additive manufacturing here with the potential for higher density, higher performances, better thermal management, and also more and better cost-efficient processes.
I highlight three examples here. The first one is ultra-precision deposition, which is an alternative to the traditional RDL manufacturing used for fan-out wafer level packaging and 2.5D advanced packaging. Second use case, electrohydrodynamic printing or coating, where we do a coating of high-resolution structures below 5 micrometer with high throughput. Last but not least, the deposition of conductive inks on 3D substrate, so to speak, metalization of system and packages. These inkjet or these additive manufacturing will bring additional EUR 180 million of service-able market. Let me show you three examples which support our confidence level, why we believe that inkjet will be successful at SUSS. The first one is a cost analysis for photoresist on RDL. Whereas the capital cost per wafer is the same, no major difference, the material cost per wafer is almost half compared to traditional spin coating.
The second example, inkjet as enabler for homogeneous coating of three-dimensional surfaces. With one process step, you can apply inkjet coating on a flat surface. You can apply inkjet on a slope area. You can even adjust the height of the inkjet without running two or three different process steps. You can do this in one process step with one equipment. This is a tremendous change, a tremendous reduction of complexity compared to the traditional approaches to do this on a 3D structured surface. Last but not least, also here, inkjet coating as a perfect example of how we foresee the future between wafer-level based and panel-level based markets. Inkjet is an example where we see that with almost the same, of course, the handling system has to be adjusted.
From the process itself, inkjet for wafer-level and panel-level based is the process itself, it's the same. The same material, the same print head, the same process recipe. The only difference is the substrate, which is being coated. Last but not least, the third product line, imaging solutions. We also have here a dual growth path. Burkhardt said, we are market leader in our mask aligner business, 60% market share. In the upcoming future, we will project even higher market share for mask aligner by introducing our next generation of mask aligner with some enhanced features, which allow us to expand our addressable market here. That's not the topic for today. Today, similar to inkjet, to the coating system, I'd like to focus on one equipment type, which is the UV scanner here. We are market leader.
We are the sole supplier for a full field projection UV scanner. We expect that this trend will continue, especially as we see more and more larger packages coming up in the area of advanced packaging used for heterogeneous devices and also for power. The market outlook, you see today, the addressable size here for our projection scanner is still limited, at least for the number in 2024. The picture looks different for 2030, where we compete for some of the applications, and I will explain this in a minute, with our full field projection scanner against the traditional stepper using GHI lines. In this area, we claim our 100% market share. We are the sole supplier. We can also say we are the exclusive supplier for certain process layers in the leading foundries for packaging packages like CoWoS or in future the CoWoS package.
Why is that? Three examples. Are you with a UV scanner, which is a contactless exposure system in combination with a stitchless exposing? The stepper, you always have the issue of stitching. Stitching costs you yield. You see three testimonials from one customer in Taiwan. Guess no. You have a customer from the U.S., and you also have a customer from Germany. Similar testimonials. They appreciate that with a UV scanner, they are able to achieve between 1%-5% of higher yield compared to a stepper. If you remember, we are talking on extremely cost-sensitive, on extremely high-priced products. This is a fortune the customer saves by using our UV scanner. The same is with the cost of ownership with respect to the throughput. The larger the packages will grow, the more comes the benefit of using a full field projection scanner to real life.
The throughput for, if we just take the one example here, the reticle size, if you increase the reticle size, the stepper has to go by one or two or even up to four steps. You can still use the same speed using the full field projection scanner. This is one-to-one cost of ownership benefit for our customer. Last but not least, also from an application perspective, the UV scanner has a significant advantage. Whereas the stepper typically has a fixed depth of focus, the UV scanner is a versatile tool. You can adjust the depth of focus because we are using an adjustable optics, which allows the customer to use, depending on the resolution, a different depth of focus on the same system. This benefit of our UV scanner, also you can see in our 2025 revenue numbers and also how we project the future here.
You see the significant increase from 2024 to 2025. These are, as we heard from Sven in the beginning, forecast numbers. What we did here, we translated the capacity ramp-up for wafer and panel-level based packages because here also panel-level packages play a more and more important role until 2030. We see a continuous growth in our projected revenue numbers here. First, we are the preferred partner by the one foundry in Taiwan. We do regularly align our roadmap together with them. Whenever there is a change planned in the process, in the product design, we check this with our roadmap. Third, our large install base. We have globally about 80 UV scanners already running. Majority of them, of course, is in Taiwan.
This is also the reason why this foundry decided to design in the UV Scanner for the upcoming 310 by 310 pilot line for panel-level packaging of heterogeneous devices, CoWoS, so to speak, where we do now the joint development together with them and come up with the first prototype within one year. Now we are at the topic of panel levels. Yes, the panel-level packaging is nothing new to the industry. In the past, typically simplified redistribution layers with resolution 10 micrometer and more have been used by the industry with a large variety of panel sizes where we clearly said, this is not in focus for SUSS. This has changed now. With the commitment of the one foundry to establish the 310 by 310 pilot line for their CoWoS manufacturing, this will change the entire ecosystem.
This is also why we decided that we are the best partner to address this new substrate standard. You see on the right side here, planned future products addressing the 310 by 310 market, the UV scanner I highlighted already, a dry film developer, and also the inkjet coater I have mentioned before. We expect that the customer will start ramping up these products on a volume level in 2028, maybe 2029, depending on the progress they achieve because they have to adjust the entire ecosystem, the entire supply chain. Our projection is that by 2030, panel solutions are expected to account for about 10% of our SUSS revenue, SUSS ABS revenue in that time. Panel-level packaging is a good example to show how we look into the future.
Yes, yes, of course, today's revenue is covered by our existing portfolio, but there are new trends coming up, especially in advanced packaging. New trends like backside power delivery, cool packaged optics, glass interposer, glass substrate, and panel-level packaging I just explained to you. What does this mean for us? We cover and we see that these trends can either be addressed with our existing products, for example, backside power delivery using our temporary bonding equipment, using our hybrid bonding equipment with no to little adoptions. Cool packaged optics today used on substrate using simple pick and place processes. The change to do cool packaged optics on interposer is changing the game tremendously. We are currently evaluating with a couple of partners how we could contribute to the cool packaged optics application on interposer. The same is with glass interposers.
We do process development and tool adaptation for glass processing, for example, through glass vias, where we work close in hand with material supplier, glass material supplier, and also end customers. The panel-level packaging I already mentioned before. This brings me to my last slide, to the summary slide. The number of EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million revenue you have already seen before. How does this revenue evolve? About 40%-45% comes with our existing, with our current portfolio. More than 50% will come with the new equipment. I said we will replace, we will transit our existing product portfolio with new generations. They will contribute with more than 50% here. Also emphasized by Burkhardt at the beginning, service.
The expansion of our service business will also contribute to almost doubling the revenue numbers from EUR 315 million up to EUR 500-EUR 600 million revenue for ABS, which is equal to a CAGR of 8%-11%. What does this mean for the product lines? Just to recap, temporary bonding, we remain the key supplier for HBM. Hybrid bonding, we enter the advanced logic first, followed by the HBM market midterm. Inkjet coating will be established as a cost-efficient alternative for traditional spin coating, and we will enter the additive manufacturing market and shape it accordingly. UV scanner, we scale advanced packaging business by leveraging our strong position at the number one foundry. This all comes together with our focus on the key customers, the leading foundries, IDMs and autosets. This closes my speech also with a continuous streamlining of our product portfolio.
With that, I'm happy to get your questions.
Thank you so much, Robert. We already do have some questions. Ruben?
Yes, thank you. Ruben Devos from Kepler Cheuvreux. I just had two questions on the temporary bonding. I think the first one was around the fact that you talked about having a 45% market share, but you see a bit of a dynamic where there's dual sourcing happening in the industry. I was wondering about your thoughts on how that's shaping up. I think maybe for the photomask division, there were some target market shares provided, not necessarily now for temporary bonding, but what have you sort of baked in for the 2030 scenario within bonding for this year?
The second sources, or the second sourcing, is nothing which creates a threat on our side.
We do observe this behavior, and it's just rational that customers prepare for a second sources. What does this mean for us? Yes, of course. We plan to defend our number one position at the two IDMs. There will be some market share going to other suppliers without taking us away from the number one. It also means that it creates new opportunities for us at the third IDM, which is also today using a single source, and where we are today qualified, but not in use. Also here, we expect that we have a high likelihood to gain market share at the third IDM. That brings us to the outlook you see here that we maintain the number one position for temporary bonding with good confidence.
All right. Just thinking about, obviously, you've got a very good setup in terms of the HBM3.
Now you've got qualified as well from one lead customer on HBM4. Just thinking about going forward with all these next generations, how should we think about sort of the balance between, let's say, reconversion? In terms of other process, lots of process change required, and you have an opportunity for reconversion and therefore for your aftermarket sales, or is it rather really a lot of greenfield capacity that you're seeing coming your way, lots of equipment sales?
Of course, the customer did huge investments in 2023 and 2024. This is one of their biggest pains. If we are now going to introduce new generations or if they are going to the next generation HBM4 and beyond, they still want to utilize these investments. That is one, let's say, guiding principle for us to have the product ready for upgrades.
Of course, sometimes there is a change in the product generation, which will in some cases also be the case, for example, when we introduce next temporary bonder in about 2027, there will be a change in the modular approach here. Still, the customer can upgrade the existing fleet, and they can move forward with a new generation again with the capability to upgrade the install fleet.
Okay, thank you.
We are going to continue in this row. Johannes Ries again.
Johannes Ries from Apus Capital GmbH. Maybe on hybrid bonding. How much of your sales forecast is based on hybrid bonding and how split between die-to-wafer and wafer-to-wafer and why you can win in these two parts? First, there is one clear market leader from the Netherlands, and there are a lot of other competitors entering the space, die-to-wafer. Wafer-to-wafer, you have Austrian stone competitors.
Therefore, maybe dive a little bit more into the hybrid bonding space and why you think you can win and how high is the contribution for the forecast from the hybrid bonding space?
I just saw this is the wrong slide. Yeah, this slide. The split in our revenue projection between wafer-to-wafer and die-to-wafer is almost 50-50. Yes, there is a strong number one for die-to-wafer. This is today their home turf, to be very, very frank here. Yes, they are the preferred partner for our customers to change from today's flip chip solution to a die-to-wafer hybrid bonding solution. We have to compete with them. We have to show that there is an advantage using SUS.
One of the advantages is when it comes to accuracy, post-bond accuracy for die-to-wafer hybrid bonding, we see that we can be at least on eye level with the one company from the Netherlands. It depends really on quarter by quarter. The number one position can change between the one and the other company. We have less fear of a new supplier coming up, especially Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. We believe that the customers we are talking, the industry leaders, they would like to have an extremely reliable and capable partner for this process. This also requires a long relationship, a good understanding in what they are doing and how we can help them to solve their problems, their next generation designs. It will be an ongoing competition with the one company from the Netherlands.
We do not project to overtake, at least not in the next five, six years. We have to be very honest here. On the wafer-to-wafer, the situation is different. We believe that here we can grow faster in the market because of the extremely importance of bonding accuracy for logic and also memory devices. The situation, the boundary is different here. Does this answer your question, or should I elaborate more? Happy to discuss.
Next question from Martin Marandon from Odo.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. The first one is on the slide 53 on temporary bonding. When we look at the revenue, it is not exactly the same number on the presentation there, but it is SUS revenues by equipment type on temporary bonding. Maybe it is slightly later. Exactly.
When we look at it for temporary bonding, it seems like it's flattish or slightly down. What's the main reason behind this? Is it because of CoWoS S not being there anymore? Is it because of a second source? Do you take the assumption that there will be a supplier also at the leading HBM supplier today?
Yeah. Excellent question. I like it. When we look to 2024, this was kind of over-investment by the market. And for two of the three IDMs, we have been single source. So we had 100% market share at these two IDMs. In 2030, the situation is different. We expect, as we just discussed, there will be second source players in place.
With that, we see this as an excellent transition from the single source position here to a market which is preparing for second source, but which still keeps us in the number one position. That explains that it looks flattish, or it is flattish between the two years. Again, this was an outstanding one-time investment in HBM capacity, whereas this is a running business with existing capacity in place at multiple sites of our customers. That is for us, yeah, I think that's quite a reasonable achievement we project here.
It also means that maybe it will not be linear. Maybe some years it will be higher than this, lower than this.
Yeah, especially in 2026, as you have seen here. In 2026, we forecast similar to others that the market will digest the initial investment from 2024.
There is still overcapacity in place, at least at some areas for some processes. You also see that at the end of the decade, the revenue growth will be again overproportional. In average, yes, CAGR of 8%-11%. Considering the flattish market development in 2026, there is overproportional growth in 2027 and onwards.
The second one is on hybrid bonding. I'm wondering how much you are dependent on SET's success there, meaning that I think on this slide, you say that the market favors independent surface preparation hybrid bonding tools. Does that mean that, for instance, with a big player in the Netherlands or other players in Korea, etc., for hybrid bonding tools, you can provide surface preparation tools, wafer cleaning tools?
Exactly. Exactly.
That is the reason why we adjusted our strategy, why we decided not only offering integrated solutions, but also the independent, the standalone version of a surface preparation cluster where the customer can choose to use a die-to-wafer module from the Netherlands, from Japan, from Korea. As long as they prefer the independent solution, they can combine it with a surface preparation tool from SUS. Of course, once they choose the integrated approach, the combinations are quite fixed.
Okay. Is this something that you are anticipating, or is it already the customer asking for this?
We already shipped the first tool to a customer.
Okay. Thank you.
Welcome.
Next question from Gernarden Menon from Jefferies.
Hi, thanks. Just maybe to follow up on that, in your 2030 hybrid bonding projection, how much will be on the surface preparation tool?
What proportion and how much will be on the flip chip? I mean, the bonder itself, just roughly here.
2030, we believe that, so let's put it in other words. We believe that the standalone or the independent approach will phase out over the next years. Today, this is definitely the preferred solution by the customers. Once they start going into high volume, there will be a continuous transition from independent approach to the integrated approach. Definitely 2030 onwards, I expect the majority will already be on integrated products.
Got it. In your last slide, you said in the short term, you see advanced logic, hybrid bonding growth. That will come predominantly from the independent. Later on, it'll go to the.
I mean, advanced logic is highest accuracy where also highest cleanliness requirements are key.
The situation here might be different depending on the customer capability. They might start right from the beginning with the integrated approach. That can be different from customer to customer.
Got it. Just on your comment, that 10% of your revenues can be from, sorry, from the panel packaging. I understand the UV scanner part of that. Can you just describe a little bit the dry film developer? What exactly are you referring to there?
I mean, the dry film coating is again used in the one foundry in Taiwan, using or replacing traditional spin coating with a dry film. After the processing, they also have to remove the dry film, which is a different process, which requires different materials compared to the typical liquid photoresist. Here we are the supplier for the one customer in Taiwan. Also they will use the same process.
They will simply transfer the processes they have today on a CoWoS. They will transfer it to the CoPOS, to the rectangular substrate. Also for that, they will use or they will have to have a product which is capable to remove from a rectangular substrate the dry film, which they have used for the audio layers.
That is not a market share gain as such.
It is a left pocket to right pocket.
Last question is on the gross margin. I mean, given that you are planning all the way till 2030 and you did 42% in 2024, and you have many back-end equipment vendors who are at higher levels than 44%. You have some which are lower as well, I agree, but you do have. What prevents you from aspiring to something higher than 4 4%?
There is one major contributor which comes from the die-to-wafer hybrid bonding.
This is to an extent of three to four percentage points diluting our margin. What we are doing is when we sell an integrated die-to-wafer hybrid bonder, we first get the die-to-wafer module from a third party, and we hand over this portion, this module, we integrate it in our product and transfer it to our customer. With this, we dilute the margin for our product itself. If we find a clever way to overcome this, let's say, business or cost situation, you can easily pump up the margin by 3-4%.
Otherwise, if you were to miss your revenue target because you did not do so much of integrated die-to-wafer, then your gross margin will surprise on the upside.
That is also a good understanding, yes. Thanks.
Let's continue with Madeleine. Thank you.
I guess my first question is just on the comment on the secondary supplier, the second Korean memory manufacturer. I guess what visibility do you have there and what share would you potentially expect at them? Also, kind of when do you expect to see sort of first revenues?
Important to mention, we are qualified at this second customer in Korea with our existing product. They did the ramp-up with the competitor. We believe that the market share split between first supplier and second supplier will be around 70-30 in that area to have a reasonable backup in place. This is, so to say, our stretch goal to achieve at this customer looking forward. I will be there again in two weeks, so it is not that far out. We are talking, we are doing some demo.
They are qualified, they know what we are able to do. We also share our roadmaps with them. It is not wishful thinking, it is not in five, seven years.
Are you competing with anyone else for that secondary supply position? No. Okay, thank you.
Usually, they have to find the right setup of the equipment supplier and the material. They do it to squeeze out the process performance to the maximum. There is simply no way to do this with three or even more parties. They concentrate on the most capable. Today, they have the one supplier from Japan. They know our performance, and that is the discussion with them.
Okay, thank you. On the hybrid bonding side, I know you mentioned that you can outperform on accuracy, but your Dutch competitor is kind of releasing a 50 nanometer tool next year.
Unless I'm mistaken, you guys are around 170 nanometer. Kind of what gives you that confidence to take share from them? A small follow-up on the surface preparation part. What roughly ASP do you sell that bit for? Thank you.
As I said before, when we talk with this Dutch supplier here, this is a result we confirmed with a couple of customer samples with different designs where we could show an average post-placement accuracy of 170 nanometer. Yes, there are champions data available for a specific design where they could show 150, 140. This is an average number, what you see here. Depending on what design you take, there can be differences.
That's the typical way how customers approach us or how we do customer evaluation, customers doing customer samples to find out what is the right setup, what is the right combination. Yes, that's a typical example. For the surface preparation cluster, it heavily depends on the configuration. ASP can be considered in the range of EUR 3.5 million-EUR 5 million in that ballpark. Again, very much depending on the configuration.
On the temporary bonder side, you said the overcapacity situation. I mean, when we entered 2025, the projections for HBM memory were much lower. During Q3, we have seen massive new announcements where you can say that the HBM memory capacity is probably growing by another 50% faster. The question is, why do we think that there is still so much overcapacity in the HBM market?
Is it because the yields are improving much faster at the memory vendors? Is your throughput much higher? Why do you still believe that there is such a huge or such a big overcapacity in the market?
Yes. You already mentioned the most important ones: continuous yield improvement, continuous uptime improvement of the installed equipment. That is one big contribution. Another is that before ramping HBM4 or before they are doing right now HBM3, they still have equipment from the HBM2 portion. They are still running on the former HBM2 products or the equipment they used for HBM2. They are still running HBM3. We see this, and HBM2 will be phased out in the next quarter. There will be installed capacity coming on top of the investment they did for the HBM3 and what they need for HBM4. It is a continuous shift of generation.
This is exactly the question we had before. What is the importance of having an equipment, a temporary bonder, debonder capable to serve certain product generation at the same time? Maybe with some upgrades. We do this, for example, we continuously increase the throughput of our wafer bonder.
Where is currently your throughput for the?
That heavily depends on the process. Not all the customers are doing the temporary bonding with the same adhesive layer. They have different designs. It can vary between, boy, that is a huge bandwidth, from 8 up to 18. Where do you position now the throughput? It is re
ally, really a big bandwidth. Related to this, I mean, if you go now to HBM4 and it looks like the IO count will double, so the silicon size has to grow by a factor of two times.
Does that play a role for your throughput in terms of the yield or the higher IO count? It's not a material. And then the final one on the second Korean HBM maker. I mean, there are quite good news flow in the industry that they will be qualified, at least also with AMD, basically getting this 6 gigawatt project from OpenAI. And we know that Samsung is a market leader for them. Can you give a little bit color? What are the latest discussions you have with them? Are they already going also with the second source? Or what is the situation there? If you believe that they can win back the NVIDIA stack on HBM4, would that change your overcapacity situation?
This I cannot comment. Okay.
But do they have a second one there or? You mean this customer?
Yeah, Samsung.
It will be also a second source, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I am not allowed to talk on this customer confidential topics.
What is the China local HBM makers? Is that an opportunity or is that something outside of your scope?
Of course, there is a huge market in China. We see occasionally some opportunities. As you have seen in the split presented by Burkhardt, that is not our focus. We cancel our products to China. I mean, on the temporary bonder, the bonder with the CX, MT, etc. Usually they have their local supplier.
Thank you. Is there one final question? It is for Malte Schaumann from Warburg.
Actually, sorry, first on the coaters and panel packaging, how do you see your competitive positioning in the market?
Then with respect to the market share and panel level packaging, would you expect that to evolve in comparison to wafer level?
The second one is more easy to answer because it's more concrete. Yes, our projection to have about 10% of our SAM running on 310 by 310 in 2030 gives you the number what we expect on the wafer level. Of course, the years beyond 2030, you might consider a transition of about 10% year by year coming from wafer to the panel level. There is a clear trend that for all these large packages, like the CoWoS package, at the end, they will all run on 310 by 310.
Would you say, do you see different market share of your product in comparison to your positioning in wafer level technology?
I mean, for the scanner, no.
We still have the same USPs as for the wafer level. They still are valid USPs appreciated by our customers. That is also the reason why they have chosen us to be one of the very few suppliers to join this pilot production and to develop this product together with us. 85% of the equipment is identical between the wafer and the panel UV scanner.
Okay. Another question on imprint. During the last CMD, you were quite upbeat about prospects and imprint. I have not seen any slide on that. Any comments from your side on prospects in that market.
Yes, there is a good reason why you do not see it because the market simply does not materialize. What we discussed two years ago with AR, VR, where is this market gone? Nowhere. This is for SUSS and same for competitors.
There is not a real imprint market. Yes, there are some niche applications. Customers use imprint for specific applications, one product here, one product there. There is no clear trend towards nano imprint. The situation might be changing. That is also one reason why I show this slide here when we talk about co-packaged optics. We already do sampling with customers using nano imprint for co-packaged optics. As you can see, this is still two, three years down the road. I guess I can give an update on the next CMD. For the time being, this is the next thing. Yes, you're absolutely right. Everything we have projected in the last CMD did not materialize because this market is simply dead. Unfortunately.
Robert, thank you so much for answering all those questions. This shows how big the interest in your business unit is.
Welcome back. I hope you had some insightful discussions with our experts during the coffee break. I saw lots of very engaged discussions at the posters with our technology experts. That is good to see. I like to open the second part of our presentation session. Before I hand over to Thomas and Cornelia, who are covering operations, R&D, and the finance part, I like to give a few insights on our corporate strategy and the approach we took there. Maybe I can quickly tell a story. When I joined two years ago, there was a rudimentary strategy developed by my predecessor, who is here today. We were since then really busy implementing this strategy and putting this into concrete projects, breaking it down, and also really putting this into action.
At the previous Capital Markets Day, which I missed, the kind of the cornerstones of this strategy have been developed, but it was not really underpinned with real projects, allocated resources, clear timelines, milestones, and all what it takes for a strategy implementation. That is what we did in the last two years. We did it pretty internal focused because there were so many areas which we addressed and had to address. We are by far not done with that, but this is now a well-moving activity where we see the first benefits already coming up. When I ask what is the most important thing really when you talk strategy and when you also want to get this into motion, that is really having focus. I think several people mentioned this already, also Robert in his presentation. Focus is not only important for imaging applications.
It is also important for really rolling out a strategy and concentrating on the key elements which matter in this case for us to be successful. A few examples. We divested our microoptics business at the beginning of 2024. And that was really a good step because that was distracting us from our key and core business, which is semiconductor equipment. We are now a pure-play semi-equipment company and can concentrate us on our core markets. We also went through our portfolio. Also, I think Robert also mentioned this. We took out about 25% of our slow-moving products, which were mainly manual or semi-automated tools. That made only less than 1% impact on our revenue. It was a huge destruction potential. Also there, focus is key. We keep doing this. We also introduced new products, but never took out products.
That is how we cleaned up our portfolio. Portfolio management also requires focus. Focus alone does not help you. There are more elements you have to do. I spare you all those quotes about culture and strategy, which you probably all know. We did spend quite some time really getting the entire company into motion. It does not help if you develop a strategy in a boardroom and think, "Okay, now everybody starts running." You really have to break it down. You have to communicate this. You have to really address your employees in any department, every level, that they understand what you are trying to accomplish and put this into motion. We did this because this success we are projecting now has to be realized by people, by our people.
There have been strategies at SUSS before, but they often rarely left the boardroom. We spent about a year to break down our strategy into comprehensive blocks, building blocks. We embarked on a cultural journey also to take everybody along on this journey. That takes time and effort. It's not only a communication game. It's also establishing the values in a company. It's also the first time we show this externally. We defined four core values, which are kind of behavioral values, if you say so. Some might sound generic, but they are really important. Lead by example and take ownership is really important if you want to get things done. Change for success is also important because we have to change things. We are in a transition phase.
You also saw it from our roadmaps and the number of launches we have, the way we want to do things differently. We are playing in the big league now with the big boys and girls. We really have to address the change and also get people moving in the right direction. The last value is team up as one SUSE, which is really breaking down silos, really work together. If you see something which has to be done, but it does not happen to be in your department, you still want that person to pick things up. We really spent quite some time driving this, also having our targets in mind. Having all that said, we had, of course, folders of strategic initiatives. We thought, "Okay, we have to break it down to something really simple." That is this. It is a house.
It might sound also a bit naive, but if you can't put it on a single page, people don't understand it, what you're trying to do. Bear with me for one second when I walk you through this house. This is our house. On the sides, you see very strong pillars, which are our two business units. Robert and Yuta explained to you what's happening in these business units and how we want to drive the company forward. On the horizontal levels, you have the functional departments of SUSE. We already talked about some of those things. At the beginning, I talked about sales and service and mentioned a few strategic elements, focus on large customers, developing the service business as a real, more profitable business with more focus.
I mentioned just a minute ago the HR activities to move in the HR department from a HR, typical generic HR department to a people and culture department. We have in each of those levels, we have highlighted only three key initiatives. There are, of course, many more than that, but usually people cannot remember more than three things. That is why we are sticking to three things. This we have discussed, debated dozens of times. I think it landed now also in our entire company in all regions, in all departments. People see this as the blueprint of our strategy now. On the left and right side, you, of course, see the financial parameters, where do we want to go from, which is the current guidance, which we unfortunately had to adjust twice this year.
Sorry for that, but we had a lot of other things to do. You see also the ambitions we communicated today on the right-hand side. Everybody knows what to do. It is also the first time we share this externally. Internally, we are working with this graphical depiction for more than a year, I would say. With that, I'd like to hand over to my two board colleagues. I think Thomas is next, who will walk us through operations and R&D, followed by Cornelia, who will touch on the financial performance. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Talking about the easy stuff, about operations and R&D. It's easy stuff. You can relax a little bit, lay it back, and enjoy.
Starting with a short recap, because I recognize that some people really looked into the slides of the last CMD in 2023. This was my summary at that time, so two and a half years ago. The summary for operations was, well, we have to focus on modular product design, which takes a few years to really have this implemented and really in place. I talked about outsourcing on the short term, lean production, logistics on short term, procurement, and also our process landscape. These were the pillars which we defined will make our success in operations in the next years. When I talk about success, I would like to show this slide. Because in these recent years, 2020 to 2022, we were quite a boring company. No big revenue growth, boring, stable, but not very nice. In 2023, we grew up a little bit.
I think we showed also and demonstrated that we can be very successful with almost 50% revenue growth within one year. I showed this slide with a lot of pride, to be honest, because I think those of you who know us already for a long time never expected this to happen within SUSS. We do not stop here. We still have our ambition also for this year, and we will stay in our guidance, probably pretty much. We will continue on this success path. Perhaps you will ask yourself, "Okay, what has changed? What do we want to do to continue on this path?" This is what I would like to show you in the next slides. How did we really achieve this growth? It's mainly by introducing a lot of flexibility. Flexibility in our workforce.
As you can see here on the different sites which we have in Starnberg, Garching, and Hsinchu in Taiwan, the flexibility was between 15% and more than 30%. This was the status of July 2025, where we had around 27% of flexible workforce in our factories. Before the question comes, "What's the status today?" it is way lower because our order intake is a little bit going down. We need less flexibility. We are breathing with our workforce really according to our order intake. This is really a big step forward, being more flexible. The other point of really gaining more flexibility is outsourcing. Outsourcing means we are really giving complete modules or basic modules to our suppliers, training them.
We have, for example, for the different product lines, deep bonded, temporary bonder, mask cleaning, mask bake and develop system, we outsource some modules which are worth 38 FTEs, full-time equivalents. Again, 38 people which are working outside of SUSS for SUSS. Again, a really big step in making us more and more flexible. How do we do it? How does it look like? For example, take this IRTF module. We went there starting with 22 different suppliers. We went through the real good and dedicated process to select the right ones by asking for quotes, having a technical analysis, feasibility study, process audit. We talk about the golden sample. It means we are asking the supplier to build one of these modules.
We test it, get it into our factory, check it, look for the quality, and only then we decide if we go into a frame contract and finalize the documentation. By this, we reduce the number of qualified outsourcing suppliers to only 10. Only to demonstrate, because perhaps you ask yourself, "Okay, what's the gain on it?" The gain is very simple. Before, we sourced 3,104 items. We had to buy them. We have to ask for quotes. We have to store them. We have to do incoming inspection, all these kind of things. Today, we're doing only one. This is a huge reduction. Effect of 3,104, I think you don't experience too often in daily business. This reduction of 3,104 is a reduction in the complexity of our supply chain. This continues also for other modules.
We will continue on our path to really reduce complexity. What else did we do, especially concerning procurement? Because at that time, our supply chain was not stable enough, not solid, not flexible, and also not global and sustainable enough. We did a lot of efforts to improve here. You can see some measures which we took, reduction of single sources. We had a lot of single sources suppliers who only supplied one tool, and we got it only from that company. We were relying 100% on one supplier. We added second sources. We identified more of them to get more independent of single sources. This has been reduced by 40%. We implemented long-lasting frame contracts so that our suppliers know what we want in the next years and the next months to have really, again, a reliable supply chain.
This number increased by 60%. Last but not least, I think this is also. Remember, we are talking about the time when we ramped up by almost 50%. During that time, we also localized our supply chain to a really large extent in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, where we produced it also. We increased the localization in Asia by a factor of three. Factor of three, no wow. Hey, come on, this was incredible. It took us a lot of work and effort to qualify suppliers in Asia to really see, get best quotes, and really implement this supply chain in Taiwan. This was really a lot of work. Nevertheless, we succeeded to really have now about 50% of our sourcing for Taiwan done in Southeast Asia. Still no wow. Okay, let's continue. ESG conform.
This is also something which we take into account because we want to select suppliers who are ESG conform. We have for sure implemented the code of conduct. That's the easy stuff. We are regularly auditing also our suppliers in case of what are you doing in terms of ESG. How do you want to get climate neutral and so on? This is also part of our selection to improve our supply chain even there. We need more space. As you can imagine, during the ramp-up, factor of 50, factor of 1.5, 50% more, we need more space for more tools to really put them on the shop floor, getting the people on it and work on it. What we did, this was our main building in Hsinchu. We added a warehouse here, a warehouse there, here a warehouse.
There are also manufacturing and testing and here sales and service warehousing. A lot of different sizes, eight in total. The largest, the furthest, or the site which has the longest distance to the main building was more than 30 km. Can you imagine what a logistical nightmare? It's really a logistical nightmare to get all this thing under one hat and bring the right material at the right timing to the right location. Therefore, we decided one and a half years ago to move into one new building. This building is located in Zhubei, only 10 km from Hsinchu away. I would like to give you a little bit more flavor of how it looks like. I have a nice video of the opening of Zhubei two weeks ago. Please enjoy.
We have created a super modern and functional building for production, research and development, service, training, and administration.
We are ready to meet any challenging target for our customer.
The growth, I think you see here impressively by this new site, which is not driven by ourselves. It is driven by our customers. It is driven by the markets which demand our solutions.
For innovation, SUSS MicroTec Taiwan.
Isn't it amazing? Wow. Only to inform you, because we are talking sometimes about the German new speed, this has been done within one and a half years. Come on, come on. I was amazed, really impressed. So fast we got it done. We have now 6,300 sq m of production clean room with ISO 7 standard, even a small portion with ISO 6 standard for our optical manufacturing of the UV Scanner.
We have 3,000 sq m warehousing, heavy duty racks, which you see here, and office space and modern plazas, so a canteen also for 310 employees. Really a nice big facility which we have, modern, and we are prepared for even more orders. This is at least what I always tell our customers, "Please give me more orders." We are prepared for this. We are also prepared for our growth and for our ambition, which has been presented by Burkhardt. With this, our global footprint of operations looks like this: we still have the Garching facility where we're still manufacturing the mask aligners. We have put the two large sites Starnberg and Hsinchu, or from now on in Zhubei, where we do all the photomask equipment is produced in Starnberg. Debonders are produced in Starnberg. Bonders have been moved to Taiwan completely.
With the quotas, depending on the load of our production, we can really switch between Starnberg and Zhubei. Again, more flexibility to really respond to the demands of our markets. Finally, we have the, sorry, it was too fast, with the UV projection scanner, which we still produce in Zhubei. From the numbers of the employees which we have at the different sites, you see Taiwan is now as big as Starnberg. We have these two really large sites in Germany and Zhubei, and we are really flexible in using both sites in different ways. Now, after operational stuff, we talk also a little bit about R&D, because as I said and mentioned before, we talked about modularization, standardization. Here you see just, let's say, a scheme, how we think about modularization and standardization.
It means that we think about our products in terms of building bricks or building blocks, which we combine. Might be a cleaner module or bonder module, also with an equipment front-end module. Different modules which we can combine in different ways. Therefore, we need standardized modules. For example, the equipment front-end module called EFEM, which also contains then standard components like robots for the automation. What we achieved so far, again, we are still in the process of developing this step by step. It's not coming all at once, but we made progress. Here you see an example of what I mean by progress. Take the equipment front-end module. In the past, we had for each and every tool a single front-end module.
It means if you have two, one, three load pods, whatever you need, it looked different because every product line used a different EFEM to implement this. This resulted that the MA200 looks completely different than the XBC300 and so on. We had, for example, a large variety of components. We had up to six different robot systems from three suppliers with three different controllers, with three different software packages. Can you imagine how much effort this is to maintain this? It's a lot. What we said, "Okay, we would like to standardize it." We developed this one. These are three EFEMs, but they are not different in terms of technology. It's only in terms of size. Size is small, medium, large. As if you buy a T-shirt. Small means two load pods, M three load pods, L four load pods. This fixes all.
You can take this one for an MA200. You could also take this one for an MA200. It means with these three types of EFEMs, we can fulfill the needs of all product lines in the future. This means we do not need to configure it. We do not need any engineering. We do not need this high number of robot variants. We will reduce it. Right now, we're playing with only one supplier and two different robots with one controller and one software. Huge reduction of complexity and hopefully also a real increase in our performance and also in our gross profit margins. We have flexible supply chain due to this outsourcing because this tool is completely outsourced. We buy it as one product. Again, a huge reduction of our operational complexity. This product, this first prototype is right now in-house. We are testing it.
We are really doing the quality inspection, also the minor changes which we have to discuss with our suppliers. You will see this EFEM in the future from now on for all new products which are not launched next year because we have already a lot of this designed. For the UV scanner, the next generation, you will see exactly this EFEM. One step in the right direction, I guess. We are also really going into the next step also for the software because software we also have for all the product lines, different software packages and solutions. Here we have the quarter bonder mask aligner, and we combined it via a web app to one software solution, which is now a uniform cross-platform user interface so that if you use our tools, the operator will always see more or less the same interface.
Gets more familiar with it, knows immediately what to do. It's a workflow-oriented software, and it's extended display to include graphical control overviews, which makes it also easier for the operators. Again, also, let's say, an easier way for the operator to operate our tools and also to cross-train people, which is heavily really demanded also by our customers. With this said, it's a very short presentation. I want to say I think we have executed partially already the modernization platform strategy, at least for one big product. We are prepared for high-margin new product innovations, which have been showed by the business units with new products which we have in place, which are coming next year and the year after. We are prepared for cost-optimized production network within the two large sizes.
We have the increased flexibility to adjust production capacity to the demand which is coming from the market. With this, I think I hope I could convince you that from operations and R&D point of view, we are prepared for our big ambition, which has been presented by Burkhardt. I think I want to just to say, I'll give you one message. Operations will not be the bottleneck. That's it. Thank you very much.
I would like to present the financials for the whole SÜSS Group for our ambition 2030 that have been outlined in detail for the two segments and operations and R&D by the previous speakers. Sorry. I think it has become very clear SÜSS is moving forward. I would like to briefly summarize the drivers of our financial plan, and I would like to start with sales.
We have identified three key sales drivers to achieve a CAGR of 9%-13% over the next five years and thereby growing faster than the semiconductor market. The first of the three drivers is to grow with our existing portfolio. It aims to defend our leading market position in the areas of photomask equipment, temporary bonding and debonding, and UV scanners. Second, we want to grow with innovation, primarily wafer cleaning, hybrid bonding, and in-check printing. The three named technologies account for the majority of the sales target. The third driver is our service business, a more strategically managed installed-based business. Let's come to the margin drivers. I would like to summarize also these drivers we heard today. Here we want to improve on an expected 35-37% in 2025 to 43-45% in 2030. And how?
Firstly, through positive momentum generated by the execution of the modernization and platform strategy, as Thomas explained a few minutes before. Secondly, through the new products and innovations with margins above the average of the corporate margin. Thirdly, a cost-optimized production network and increased flexibility to be able to adjust our production capacity to demand. Fourthly, the strategic management of our installed-based business. Ultimately, all the drivers will be reflected in the gross profit margins of our two segments. The current portfolio, new solutions, and services are expected to contribute to margin improvement in roughly equal measure. The overview of the revenue and margin drivers has shown that SÜSS's future success depends largely on innovation. This means in financial terms, R&D spend with focus on innovative solutions and follow-up products generations, as well as investments in particular for modern infrastructure.
I'd like to ask you to pay attention to the upper part of the illustration. You can ignore the text below. I will guide you through the illustration. The text is just for your backup information afterwards. First, let's take a look back at the past few years. I'm starting with 2018 because that was a year in which the latest medium-term targets for 2025 were communicated. It's long ago, but that is fact. Over this eight-year period, we spent around EUR 225 million on R&D, and capital expenditures amounted to EUR 75 million. Until 2024, the CapEx level of the current core business without this microoptics business was at a level of EUR 5-6 million, a relatively low level.
Especially with regards to the existing infrastructure, I have to say the low CapEx has led to a certain degree of underinvestment, and there is a need to catch up. In 2025, we invested in the new site in Taiwan with around EUR 15 million. Nevertheless, over the shown whole period of time, the average CapEx sales ratio is at 3% of sales, and that's not that high. R&D spending, on the other hand, has always accounted for the significantly higher proportion of the whole spend into future-related topics in terms here in its CapEx and R&D. This total was around 75% of the future-oriented cumulated expenditure. However, this is or was at an average of 9% of sales, and this is a level that we consider as too low for our future projects. Now let's look to the future.
Between 2026 and 2030, we intend to spend a total of EUR 360 million-EUR 380 million on R&D. In 2030, the level is expected to be at 11% of sales. This spend is needed to support further growth with innovative solutions and to realize our product roadmap. CapEx is expected to amount roughly to EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million in this period of time, which is an average of EUR 20 million-EUR 24 million per year and an average CapEx sales ratio of 3.3%. This includes a major investment in a new state-of-the-art application center, which is currently planned primarily for 2027 and 2028. We are also investing, of course, in the existing infrastructure. This includes also investments to achieve our target of becoming carbon neutral for Scope 1 and 2 in 2020-2030.
Now let's have a closer look at how the R&D spend and CapEx will positively impact our sales growth and margin expansion. Here, I just want also to start with a review of the long period since 2018 and up to and including the back up to and including year 2022. You can see the sales figures for the core business in green and for the sold microoptics business in yellow. Good news here is that we have already achieved our revenue target of 2025 in 2024, namely EUR 400 million. In 2024, it was without the contribution of microoptics. Microoptics was factored in in this target at the time back. In 2023, here you can see clearly we were able to compensate the lost revenue from the sold business with our core business.
That was what Burkhardt also said, the focus on our core business and semiconductor equipment business. It was a great achievement that we achieved these targets one year earlier. The organic CAGR, excluding microoptics, was 9.8% between 2018 and 2023. The CAGR between 2023 and 2025 is significantly more dynamic. We talked a lot about this today. In the mid-high of 20% range, it is driven, of course, by the enormous AI-related demand and growth we had in 2024 and also 2025. In future, let's have a look here. Between 2025 and the end of the decade, we want to continue growing at a CAGR of 9-13%. It is important to note, and I think most of you are aware of this. Again, the year 2026 will be a transitional year.
We heard this today several times, and we expect a decline in sales, or we have to expect this. The current sell-side analyst consensus already reflects this, but we have to wait how this will turn out. Of course, from 2027 onwards, we want to grow again, partly through the already announced launches of various solutions that are expected to positively impact our order intake, and we expect that this will turn out in sales in 2027. Now let's move on to the gross profit margin. Here we see with the focus on the semi-equipment business and, of course, due to an increased business volume with a good product and customer mix and operational improvements, we managed to improve the margin profile even though 2024 can be considered as an exceptional year due to the very high proportion of the AI-related orders.
Here you can see, based on the midpoint of the 2025 forecast and the 2030 ambition, we see a potential of 8 percentage points in terms of gross profit improvement and 9 percentage points in terms of EBIT margin. The main drivers have already been outlined, and as also already mentioned in our last earnings call, our ambition is to achieve a slight improvement of gross profit in the transition year 2026 compared to 2025, followed by a more significant improvement from 2027 onwards. In case of a sales decline, the EBIT margin could be more negatively impacted in 2026 due to less coverage of OpEx. Here is some additional information on how we intend to achieve our EBIT margin of 20-22% by 2030. The biggest driver, of course, will be the significantly improved gross profit.
Even though we have a decline in SG&A sales ratio of 2-3 percentage points, we see an EBIT margin improvement of 1 percentage point due to our continued high R&D expenses. R&D is key and innovation for our future success. Let's come to cash flow. We plan to significantly improve operating cash flow as well as free cash flow in the coming years with a significant improvement at the end of the decade. Also here, just a short look into the past. In the past, the operating cash flow and free cash flow showed strong fluctuations in 2019 and 2020 and stabilized in the following years. By the end of the decade, significantly higher levels can be reached. This picture is a possible scenario with a CapEx focus in the years 2027 and 2028, mainly of a new application center.
In 2019 and 2030, CapEx will reach a normalized level. Operating cash flow will increase significantly and, as a consequence, free cash flow. In 2030, a free cash flow level of approximately EUR 90 million could be achieved. This provides sufficient room to finance further growth beyond 2030. The light green section here, here and here just indicates what this could look like with further growth prospects. It is our clear target to generate shareholder value, which is reflected in earnings per share and free cash flow per share. In terms of capital allocation, our primary goal remains to finance our future growth and maintain a solid balance sheet structure. Just have a look at the dividend payments. SÜSS MicroTec distributed dividends since 2022 for fiscal year 2021 for the very first time. For the years 2021 to 2024, dividend payments totaled EUR 16.4 million.
Based on our dividend policy that refers to consolidated free cash flow, we will continue to distribute dividends, of course. Regarding earnings per share and free cash flow per share, at the end of the decade, we see a potential of earnings per share of EUR 6.5 and free cash flow per share of EUR 4.7. This means earnings per share could more than double and free cash flow per share can more than triple by 2030. Furthermore, some words on financial position. We want to maintain sufficient liquidity to safeguard our targeted business growth and to buffer cash flow volatility. This is typical in our industry. This means around 25% of annual sales is for liquidity. In addition, we want to maintain a solid capital structure and improve our credit score. Now let me please summarize our top priority for capital allocation.
First, we invest to support targeted organic growth with focus on R&D and infrastructure, so CapEx infrastructure. Second, we want to build finance capacity and flexibility for inorganic growth. Third, we want to maintain and further strengthen our balance sheet structure. Of course, we want our shareholders to participate in our success. Here you find our ambition for 2030 detailed in numbers at a glance. A comparison of the years 2024 and 2030 clearly shows that SÜSS will be a significantly larger and more profitable company than it is today. SÜSS will be at a different level in terms of size and in terms of profitability. Thank you.
I have the honor to do the last bit of this presentation. After my presentation, I will ask my two board colleagues to come on stage and be available for your questions you certainly have.
I'd like to just quickly go through a summary part. You've seen that we have a clear plan how to achieve our ambitions. As you see on the picture, yes, there are some mountains to climb. We are living close to the Alps here. We know how to do this, even although I come from the Baltic Sea in the north, but I've been there. I studied in Munich, so we know how to climb. Quickly going through the different messages which were delivered. Just now you heard from Cornelia, our financial performance. We highlighted where we were coming from, but also we delivered early and we indicated where we want to go. I think this was very clearly illustrated in the last bit. We achieved significant growth since 2018, and we really have a plan now for the next five years to grow further.
You see the buckets. We did it once. Nothing should stop us to do this again. On the right side, you see the ambitions we set out. No need to repeat those. On the growth, and I'm talking about the revenue growth, we discussed the different drivers we have to grow our revenue. It's based on the existing portfolio where we want to defend and further increase our positions. That's, of course, on the photomask cleaning, on the temporary bonding, and the UV scanner. We defend that base and grow. There are new product categories, and since we are entering new areas here, they will contribute in big step functions and further growth potential. Finally, the service and install-based business, which hasn't been fully utilized in the past, we want to put more emphasis on that.
These are kind of our key revenue growth drivers. I think I went too fast here. Nope. We also detailed a bit that we are growing faster than the market. This is, of course, has to be explained, and I think my colleagues did this reasonably well. We get tailwind from the market, which grows with 7%. We have new market entries, and here are the growth impact drivers, how much impact they make. We also expand market share and expand. On top, again, the service contribution we are making. This is kind of breaking this down a bit in the different buckets, why we think we are growing faster than the market. In terms of margin expansion, yes, we are going towards a dip right now. We need to first stabilize and then grow the margins moving forward.
Towards the end of 2030, we want to grow by 8 percentage points. Quite a steep growth, especially if you start counting from next year onwards. This is based on improvements of the evolving product portfolio, which has stronger contribution and better margin structure, as well as on install-based management. Again, the three buckets of growth. As Thomas, I think impressively, with many wow effects, where we had to kind of motivate you guys a bit to cheer in, operational improvements will also contribute to the growth of our gross margin development. Our two business unit leaders, I think impressively showed you what they have coming. We have a huge transition coming up in the next two years where we renew our portfolio. We are launching brand new categories. We are upgrading, updating our existing products, and we are entering new areas here.
This will have really a positive impact on the margin, as just said. We do selective R&D outsourcing activities, as highlighted by Thomas. We are also heavily spending in R&D because a semiconductor tech company needs to be above 10% to really defend its place. We have to save elsewhere to manage this balance, as Cornelia mentioned, but we think we can do that. Of course, we also have to look into know-how acquisition because we want to accelerate our time to market. Having said that, the plan so far was based on organic growth of the company. Some of you asked that during the break. We, of course, look actively into also other means of inorganic growth. There are two types of possibilities, at least in our judgment. One is really to enhance strategically our portfolio.
That means a carve-out or a certain product area which is of interest, which is complementary to our portfolio. There again, we need to be cautious because I said focus is also our strong driver. We just not want any random shop to be acquired because we do not want to increase our portfolio unnecessarily. We will do this when we clearly see this is fitting in our portfolio and enabling us to grow further and faster. The other type of acquisition is know-how acquisition. That is to gain a certain R&D competence or some IP, which helps us to leapfrog our innovation process. There we can gain time to market. This costs us money and will not immediately contribute in margin, but we will make up for that later. These two categories we are looking into to really improve our growth speed.
As you can see in this graph, this will obviously, especially if this is a product-type acquisition, add to the revenue. We, of course, try to see that it does not dilute our margin. We are looking very carefully and not just acquire something just because we can. I think this is the last content slide. I think over the last few hours, and I think four hours in total, congratulations for your endurance and your patience with us. I think we managed to show and present our ambitions to answer as many questions as possible as you might have. We have shown how we can grow as a company and become more significant, a player in the ecosystem, and become larger. You also had the opportunity to speak to some of our experts.
We're still sitting there in the last row and still live and kicking, so they will be also available for further questions. In the back, you see employees and colleagues of us from Starnberg and Garching. I like to highlight that our employees are really standing behind us. They are embarked on this mission with us. They believe in our strategy. Of course, I hope also we could convince that we have something real here and that you are also behind us in terms of our strategy and our ambition plans.
Now it's the moment for additional questions. I start in this row. Lucas, your first question today.
Thank you, Sven. I have two questions. The first one is related to the CapEx. You showed us that you expect EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million in total until 2030.
You mentioned the, let's say, peak years of CapEx in 2027 and 2028 for the application center. How much would be needed for this application center that we could model, let's say, the other years around? On the revenue path, you showed us to 2030. You mentioned that from today's perspective, there's a high probability that 2026 revenues will be lower than this year. A lot of products or new products will come in 2026, 2027, and 2028. There seems to be a kind of back-end-loaded growth projection. Can you comment on this, please? Thanks.
Okay. I can start with the second question. We just got the answer for the first question. You can brainstorm on the first question. You're absolutely right. It's back-end-loaded. We expect a dip in the next year in terms of revenue.
Of course, at the same time, we are trying to stabilize the margins so that the top-line dip will not print through also our margin profile. This is, as said, a temporary effect. We do not want to throttle down our R&D efforts because they are behind all these new products we are launching. We are anticipating and we are preparing for a pause, a dip. You probably ask me now, what is the size of the dip? I will not give you any exact numbers, but I think most of you guys are already modeling in a 10% range of a revenue dip. This is probably not that wrong. Of course, we are trying to compensate with also new orders. We are getting already the first HBM4 orders, as I also mentioned in our revenue call in Q3.
The first orders actually did come in. We, of course, have to see how many more of those we get. We can also limit those dipping effects. It is necessarily we have to go through this before the new products we are launching next year are showing traction. That traction we see from 2027 onwards. Now on the CapEx for the application center?
Yeah. We planned for the application center mainly in the years 2027 and 2028, as I said, and it is around EUR 45 million. Thomas said to me, "Okay, it can be EUR 30-EUR 50 million." We planned with EUR 45 million. Our CapEx level in the years 2029 and 2030 could be between EUR 10-EUR 13 million just to run the company on this level.
Thirteen, thirteen. For the application center, it is just a rough estimation because we have no plans right now in place.
We have not decided where to implement this and about the complete size of it. It is only a very, very rough estimation.
Yes. As I said, a scenario. It is more placeholder right now. Yes.
Next question or questions from Michael Kuhn, Deutsche Bank.
Thank you. Yeah, indeed, more than one. Firstly, on modularization. I mean, this is something that obviously now kicks in more and more with all the new products launching. Let's say on a scale from 0 to 100, where are we now? And let's say, by when do you expect the whole portfolio to be modularized and accordingly contribute to the gross margin positively?
Very good question. I do not know if I have a very good answer for this because it for sure also depends on the roadmaps which we have in place right now.
You saw a lot of new products coming in 2026 and 2027, which are already in the pipeline. We have to see for which new products we can introduce new modules, if it's a cleaner or bond or whatever. My personal guess would be it takes several years, unfortunately. With each and every new tool, we would like to implement new modules with it, really implementing it from the beginning, but not really reinventing the existing products because this makes no sense. It's a waste of time because they also have an end of life somewhere in the next, let's say, four or five years or something like this. From that point of view, and you saw also in the roadmaps, a lot of new products are coming next year and the year after.
These products live for a long time, at least five to ten years, I would say, something like this. The very new products which really benefit from this modularization strategy take a few years. I cannot tell you the exact number, to be honest. We will continue on this, definitely.
All right, fair enough. Thank you. On two cost items. Firstly, SG&A. Based on my back of the envelope math, this will roughly grow from EUR 70 million to EUR 100 million. Is there a bigger portion reserved for a bigger services organization, for example? Is there any other, let's say, major moving parts worth pointing out within that cost increase?
It follows our, to a certain degree, in terms of sales, selling expenses, our growth path. There are some amounts reserved for projects, let's say it this way.
All right, thank you.
The last one, R&D. I think this is quite a significant increase from mid-40s towards 90, so doubling until the end of the decade. Is there any, let's say, expansion into new areas penciled in already in that number? Or is that just a reflection of your product portfolio growing and, let's say, more products needing an update going forward?
It's the latter one. We are really trying to invest, which is right now the organic growth, which we really envision and are targeting for. This means really more R&D in the existing portfolio, also the existing business units, not something completely new. At least it's not the plan right now. As Burkhardt already mentioned with M&A activities, for sure there can be something else in the future, but it has to fit into the organization, into our strategy.
This is not really encountered in these numbers.
That is not.
The plan was modeled with purely organic growth. If some of these leapfrogging actions make good sense, then this portion we internally have to invest is less. It is just swapping from left to right pocket.
Thank you. Let's move on with the next questions. Jornarden, please.
I have two questions. One on the services. You seem to be forecasting quite strong growth, but you did not spend too much time on that today. Just wondering, what is the change in strategy? Is it like ASML went to per wafer services or UV or value, I mean, end result-based services? Is there some distinct change in strategy which will help you accelerate the growth in services and on the margin?
Secondly, just on the capacity that you have, you might have said this and I might have missed it, but is your current building facility sufficient for EUR 900 million of revenue?
Thanks. Let's start with the service part. Yes, it is a change in strategy. We split our sales and service teams into distinct teams. We hired a VP of Service who's really driving this as a business with a product roadmap with very concrete products, not just parts management, but kind of targeted upgrades. We also want to approach upgrades really as a very active activity. As always, when you focus on something, you get more out of it. This is really a measure of focusing on service.
We expect then also with this roadmap, and these roadmaps entail not only upgrades, but also maintenance contracts, extended warranty contracts, which you can position and actively pursue with customers. It works differently in different regions. In some regions, people really request these service contracts, and others, they just want it for free. We have to make sure that we can monetize it in a smart way. It is really about having a dedicated team focusing on that. We will grow both revenue and margin.
Have you already started implementing it? Can you see success in a higher run rate?
We see already today the portion is already 18%. It used to be 15% or even lower. We see first inroads. As always, if you put really dedicated focus and management on something, you get something out. This is already happening.
Coming to the other question concerning capacity, the short answer is yes. Long answer is for sure we have some spare area also in Zhubei right now, which we can also change into clean room space, for example. We also have the shift, which we can really add going from two shifts right now to three shifts. In general, we have the capacity to really fulfill this demand or this growth ambition. We are always looking for improving or really optimizing our global footprint. Nevertheless, the short answer again is yes.
Thank you so much. I saw Martin again with a question. Martin, please.
Thank you. Yeah, coming back to the revenue guidance, and you split it by current portfolio, new equipment, etc. I'm more interested in the new equipment.
Can you maybe help us rank the main new equipment as contributors, the main one, the second one, etc.? Not giving precise numbers, but what are the main contributors between wafer cleaning, hybrid bonders, etc. in that new equipment segment?
You mean within the new equipment part?
Yes.
I think, first of all, the new equipment part is the biggest growth driver. I think we made this reasonably clear. I think the wafer cleaner was, I think, a EUR 100 million part, which this can occupy by the end of the decade. Hybrid bonding, I think we did not spell it out what we do, but we reduced our dependence on hybrid bonding because of all the challenges which are out there currently. We increased the focus on our installed base temporary bonding footprint because that is for us a safer bet right now.
I don't want to put a number to the hybrid bonding part because it depends really if you go die to wafer, wafer to wafer, or even in the surface activation clusters, which can be paired with third-party hybrid bonders. It's to a lesser extent a contributor.
Okay, thank you. Just to follow up on the wafer to wafer hybrid bonding, is the 3D DRAM opportunity in wafer to wafer hybrid bonding included in the guidance, or 2030 is maybe a bit too soon to see that opportunity?
I think, I'm not the expert there, but I think it's too soon. Right now, I think wafer to wafer bonding, I mean, this was outlined also by IMEC as the CMOS 2.0 campaign. I think this will take more place in logic scaling.
Thank you so much. Next questions from the audience. It's Frank Siebrecht.
It's more or less a follow-on of the previous question. I just want to know your growth for 2027 is very much aligned to the new launches you're anticipating. To which extent do you have confidence that you will receive significant orders along with your new launches? Are there any pre-orders already or commitments? Maybe you can allude a bit and give us a bit of insight on that.
That's a crystal ball question, which I like. Thank you. I mean, obviously, we don't develop things and then look for customers. It's the other way around. We develop things because customers ask us, you really should do something there. For the mid-end cleaner, for example, there was such a case. We had a really aging product there, which was losing market share.
Of course, we had also China customers buying very expensive EUV tools, although they do not have EUV. There was a gap in the portfolio, and there was an increasing gap. We started addressing it by kind of brainstorming this product. All of a sudden, we got lots of customer interest. Funny enough, not only from China, but also many of the installed mid-end users were really interested in that. I think Yuta explained that well. It really brings in the benefits of high-end wafer, high-end cleaning for mask into a mid-end segment. This one got quite some interest, and we have quite some pre-orders, although we have not received the first prototype yet. There is quite some interest for wafer cleaning.
Since we are launching a new category, there is a lot of interest, but we start with a launching customer who runs an evaluation on site. We received wafers from other interested customers, which we process in our application center, and we have very good cleaning removal rates. These customers are also very interested. I think that's also why we changed the strategy a little bit because initially it was a pure MEMS play for 200 millimeter. In this whole noise, we got lots of other customers in logic and memory interested in this. That is why we are now expediting the 300 millimeter tool as well, because there is quite some interest. These are two products which we expect quite some high demand. There is the Inkjet story, I think Robert alluded to.
There is a shift really from conventional spin coating to selective coating, as we call it, with many benefits which Robert explained. That is just starting off now. We sold the first inkjet machines to semiconductor customers. I think this is just at a very early starting phase. Also there, towards the end of the decade, we expect major growth for these selective coating techniques, especially when you manage line widths of 5 micron, which then solves a lot of problems. You do not need an exposure machine. You do not need coaters. You can do this with one machine, and you can print those tiny lines in a very selective mode.
Thank you. Let's continue with Johannes Ries and afterwards Malte Schomann. Maybe a total other question.
The topic AI, you mentioned it primarily from the demand side, but how you use AI internally, maybe going forward projects, maybe to improve your processes and how much AI is also maybe going into software maybe in the future to make your products more efficient or better or more.
All the presentations were AI-generated. No, I'm kidding. No, of course, we have this as part of our IT strategy to also implement AI. I would be lying when I said we are advanced in the AI application for our internal processes because you can put AI in everything, but if some base things are not in place, you will not gain much by AI. We have lots of consultancy firms approaching us, offering AI support, but you can waste also a lot of time with that.
In the product development side, there, I think we do more on that side. I think also Yuta mentioned this. I mean, we call the Master Smart for any reason. There are AI applications we are building in and we are considering in our design process. Maybe Thomas and Cornelia want to add.
Not much to add, but we are partially using AI right now already, but not really extensively, to be very honest. As you mentioned, Yuta mentioned it also in this talk for the Master Smart, we have an AI tool included, which really takes a lot of data and tries to find out what's going on there with the machine during the installation of the service.
First question on the gross margin.
I mean, given that you have, even in the near term, quite significant changes in the product portfolio and then on top of all of the shared platform, etc. What do you expect maybe beyond 2026, already a step up in the gross margin in 2027, or would you expect rather a linear development towards 2030?
I would expect more rather really linear development over the time because we cannot say it's not a jump function. It will not be a jump function because we will take one product after the other, one module after the other, one platform after the other to implement this. This will be more or less a steady development over the next years.
Of course, it is linked with the new launches because some tools we will launch, they will completely replace the previous tool.
You have small step functions there. I think overall, if you integrate this, it will look more linear. Every new product we are phasing in, every improved modular project we are implementing within a project will have a small step, which we will start seeing from the end of 2026 onwards.
On the top line target, the deviation between the high end and the low end of the guidance. I mean, you are in a dynamic environment, that's for sure. Would you expect that the risk is rather the variation in the individual end markets? Or do you rather see the risk that one of the new applications might fail, hybrid bonding, whatever?
I think the biggest risk is the latter, Malte. This is very clear because some of those new applications have a big contribution.
If you lose EUR 100 million in a single project because it doesn't get off the starting block, I mean, worst case, then it has a big impact. We have a number of those launches planned. The initial plans of our business units were more positive. We kind of started to factor this in a bit, not to expose ourselves too much. The plan we presented today is an achievable plan, which considers already some of those risks you mentioned. Okay.
Do we have any more questions? Shortcut again.
Given these targets, why not do a buyback? I mean, you have a lot of cash. You sold the microoptics, so.
We do not rule out this in principle, but it's not planned at the moment.
We need some money for the application center. We need some money for investments here and there.
Also, the market is very volatile. We feel more safe if we have some money in the pocket.
It's funny that you say that. Before we had that cash, we were told you should have three months' revenue of cash. Now we have it. The question is, what are you going to do with that? It's, of course, a give and take. Just keeping it for bad times alone is not good enough. I agree with you. We should either go for a targeted acquisition. It can also be a smaller one. There are other means as well. I think we want to stay flexible, but it shouldn't remain for a long time.
I think I showed the priorities with capital allocation. Yeah, it's not ruled out in principle.
Okay. Any more questions? Yes.
Ruben Devos, Kepler Cheuvreux again.
Yeah, thank you. I just had one, obviously, on the fact that you're geared up for growth. That's clear. Let's say, whatever, you have an extended down cycle, things are not going like you like it to be. Would you have sort of a framework in mind where you'd say, all right, we would narrow the portfolio, you would just spend along the way? I mean, you've been talking about focus and simplification, but you're still trying to be active in 11 markets, I think, in one of the earlier slides that you showed. Yeah, so that's basically my question, right? If things are going against you, would you have sort of a framework in place at which you would? Because obviously, I mean, you've returned on capital employed. You've got a target of 40%.
That suggests you've got a quietly you're managing it quite tightly. That's where my question comes from.
We need to see how our business evolves. If we are really hitting difficult times, we have to take structural measures. I think every company has to do that. You cannot get around that. We try to avoid it by outgrow ourselves and moving forward, and then rather planning for the worst. Somebody said, plan for the worst and hope for the best. I think it was Lee Child, the author of Jack Reacher. We have certain scenarios considered in that sense. We have to see. Obviously, our portfolio is still pretty wide despite the measures we took. We have now two business units.
Just relying only on one business unit, if you, for example, would decide to focus only on back end or only on front end, that's too risky. We need some risk catching also by the diversity of our portfolio. Within the portfolio, we can do still a lot of cleaning up. Discontinuing of aging or slow-moving products, as Robert said, we are doing this actively. We are not such a super narrow company like an ASML, who's Litho, Litho, and Litho. We will not get there on short notice. We are focusing on really volume products. We try to standardize. We are trying to have a platform approach. If we kind of consequently introduce that, this alone will give us a safer standing.
Now I move on to the other side again, Veysel.
To the dark side?
No, no, no, no, no.
We appreciate the questions. Keep the busy sweater.
The question is a little bit dark, maybe.
Oh, no.
How much revenue do you plan in your Asia, yeah, manufacturing setup from this EUR 900 million or EUR 800 million sales? The question, and that's probably the dark question, if you really think a company of EUR 800 million and you have three manufacturing sites, right? It looks a little bit from the outside too diverse, too big. Can you give a little bit your idea, for example, why you have certain products still in Europe, like the photo mask cleaning, where your customers sit in Asia? Yeah, just a little bit strategic thinking around that would be.
Before it almost starts, maybe more than 80% of our customers sits in Asia. I mean, for legacy reasons, we are a company founded here in Munich.
Obviously, the company started off here. With the acquisition of our photo mask business, which was in Starnberg, that's also a legacy situation that photo mask products are made in Starnberg. Having said that, nothing stops us from also moving products across our product sites. This is, I think, part of the flexibility Thomas mentioned earlier.
Sorry, if you say it's a little bit too much of different sites which we have, okay, we have three sites, two large ones, one small one, okay? Nevertheless, I never would go beyond or below two sites just for disaster recovery. Think of a typhoon, think of an earthquake in Taiwan, okay? It happens pretty often, but happily, we are not really affected by this because the buildings are very stable.
Nevertheless, I would always like to have two different sites where they can be independently used in case of something. From that point of view, I think I can imagine or can imagine the next question, why do we still produce in Germany? It is also historically because, well, we are a German company. We have our two sites in Garching and Starnberg. For the time being, we use it and we will keep it also in the next years. You never know. No one knows what happens in five to ten years from now.
Fair enough. Maybe the first part of the question. How much revenues do you plan in this from Asia?
I mean, maybe I'm wrong on this, but I think we have seen historically from other equipment vendors when they move to Asia, it comes with a cost advantage of at least 30%. Can you see that a little bit? Or can you tell today when you have your target for the Asian manufacturing in mind, what would be the cost benefits there?
We see it also on our side because I mentioned it before, we source a lot of our material right now in Asia. Also, the working workforce is cheaper in Asia than compared to Germany, for sure. I wouldn't say 30%. Right now, I would say about 20%, something like this. From the share between Taiwan and Germany, we are right now between, say, 30-40% in Asia and the rest in Germany.
If this keeps for the next decade, no, definitely not. I can't tell you right now when we want to shift what to where. Final one, really a quick one. You said during the presentation that you received HBM4 orders for temporary bonder, debonder. Any quantitative statement there?
Nope. Nice try, though. I think we do hope, of course, that's just the start. It was important for us to make that step because every generation change opens the door for other people to step in. This is really a positive sign that this did not happen. Of course, the running fleet we have at those customers is also being currently upgraded or updated to also switch from HBM3 to HBM4, at least a portion of that. That's a nice thing of having this installed base.
It gives you a strong standing. Of course, since you're involved, you also get all the nasty things coming with that. We have so many people in those sites to make sure that our equipment is up and running and we meet our customers' expectations. That is a lot of effort. To your earlier question in terms of Asia versus Germany, I mean, you see where we are growing the most. We started in Asia in 2020 with 50 people. We have now 400 people, 170 in operations. You also see it is not only a production site, it is also an application and R&D site. The next generation UV scanner is being designed in Taiwan, not only made in Taiwan. If you ask for priorities where we grow faster, then it is in Asia.
The share of business which is coming out of Asia is most likely to increase, yes.
Thank you so much for the questions. Also, in order to be respectful with your individual plans in terms of travels home, I think we now have completed the Q&A session. Thank you so much for joining this CMD today. For sure, we will be some minutes around in order to answer some very final questions in a smaller group. Thank you so much.