Hello everyone, and welcome back after a refreshing lunch break. The next presentation today will be SÜSS MicroTec. Sven Köpsel, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communication, will run us through the presentation and the latest development of the company. As usual, some housekeeping. The presentation will last about 15-20 minutes, and it will be followed by a 10 minutes Q&A session. The presentation is being recorded and it will be available on our research hub later on, and questions can be asked using the chat box at the bottom right. We will have time to give answers to all these questions later on. To kick it off, I would like to hand over the word to you, Sven. The floor is yours.
Thank you so much for the introduction and thank you to all of you guys in the world. I do see some participants from Germany, from Europe, but even from the U.S., so it's a big pleasure to present our company here. I try to make this presentation as interesting as possible for all of you. I know there are people who are very, very familiar with SÜSS MicroTec already. Maybe there are some who are not, so I try to find a good way to suit all of you. Yeah. SÜSS MicroTec. This is a picture of our headquarters in Garching, which is very close to Munich. We've been founded 77 years ago right now, so we are not a startup anymore, although we are working on a very future-driven industry, which is the semiconductor industry.
You guys know the technological progress in our world. Let's talk about AI. Let's talk about very, very modern smartphones or other technological gadgets, robots. Everything is based on semiconductors, which create more power, more data storage for all those technological innovations. This is where we are part of, and this is where we are also proud of. In a nutshell, to the background of our company, it has been founded by Karl Süss, so it's from the origin, a family business, back in 1949 in Munich. The company did then expansion to the entire world, to Asia, to the U.S. We acquired more businesses like the coating business or the photomask equipment business over the next decades. We did the IPO in 1999 in Frankfurt, and we are listed now since then. We also opened our first production site in Asia in 2020.
Last year in October, we relocated the production to a larger site in Taiwan because this was really booming, and we've been able to onboard a couple of 100 people in the last five years. In order to prepare ourselves for the anticipated growth of the next years to come, and I will touch on this later, we decided to move to a larger location in order to prepare for that. This is what we did in October 2025. Let's continue on this page. What drives our future demand? What drives our future development? It's both. On the one hand, it's the progress in the so-called front end of the semiconductor value chain. This is where all those ASML things and machines are used.
Here, if you read about, there's an evolution that big companies like TSMC do the step from 5 nm - 3 nm, or now from 3 nm- 2 nm. This is the front-end world of semiconductors, where the most tiniest structures on wafers are put. It's really a very, very tiny structure. This is where we are involved with our Photomask Solutions business, where we try to support the cleanliness of those so-called photomasks, which are put in each and every lithography tool. Because why is that? You always have a light source, in this case, EUV light, so this is the best available technology, but in other technologies, this can also be LED lamps. You always have a mask which contains the pattern, so the structures that you want to print, let's say it in easy words, on a wafer.
The light shines through the photomask and is putting those structures and transferring those structures on a wafer. Those masks need to be cleaned regularly, first of all, in the initial mask manufacturing process, but then also as a maintenance cleaning step. The math is quite easy. If the world is purchasing more lithography equipment, predominantly from ASML, there's also increased demand for photomask equipment. This is where we can benefit from. There's also a lot of innovation taking place in the backend or the advanced backend or the advanced packaging of the semiconductor world. This is where different chips are being put together, stacked on top of each other, connected with each other in order to create more powerful chiplets.
A very prominent example is the AI chip, let's say the AI chip of NVIDIA, because what is happening there? Here you create a package of different chips, a GPU, which is designed by NVIDIA and produced by TSMC. Around this GPU, you put some memory chips, which are supplied by SK hynix, by Micron, by Samsung. Those chips are being put together to one chiplet, which in the end is the AI chip. Those steps are called advanced packaging, so where those are being put together, and here we are also deeply involved. We can benefit from both main drivers in the semiconductor world. Now, let's move on very quickly and look at our portfolio, which has not changed in the past 12 months.
We still have two operational businesses, the Photomask Solutions, as said, where we clean photomasks, which are used in the front end of the semiconductor value chain, and our Advanced Backend Solutions business unit, where we have imaging solutions, coating solutions, and bonding solutions. Here we also have different end markets. As said, the AI market is a very important driver also for our growth, for our future demand, and here we are involved with our temporary bonders and debonders, which are used in the manufacturing process of High Bandwidth Memory chips, and also our so-called UV projection scanner. This is part of our imaging product line, where we supply the so-called CoWoS process, where AI chips are being put together. Here in those businesses, we see now again since Q4 2025, definitely an increased demand.
I will leave out a more detailed look at our solutions. Where I continue with our operations setup, we still produce our solutions in Germany and in Taiwan, but also based on the operations employees number at the bottom of the page, you can also see that Taiwan now is almost as large as our German operations facilities. We do not only create additional capacity as we did now in Taiwan for just one solution, we want to create capacity for future growth. This means we want to be flexible where to produce what kind of solution, and it brings us into the position that if demand is going up, we can, for example, decide where to produce a coater. Is it only in Taiwan? Is it both in Taiwan and in Sternenfels in Germany? We can always base this decision on current demand levels.
The demand or the growth which we did in the past two years was driven also by our expansion in Taiwan, where we are very close to our end markets as we do 75%+ of our sales in Asia. This is a small overview of the official opening of our new Taiwan plant, where also very prominent customers were around, political representatives, and for sure our entire Management Board. We had more than 100 guests at the opening of this new fab. Since then, this is really up and running and we already delivered, I think, 10 tools out of this new fab only in Q1 2026. Let's look back to 2025. In a nutshell, our financial results of last year, we had a record year in terms of sales development.
For the first time of the company's history, we exceeded EUR 500 million in sales. That was again a plus of 12.6%. Within the past two years, since 2023, we increased our sales from roughly EUR 300 million to roughly EUR 500 million. This was really a big step forward. In terms of order intake, 2025 was somehow soft because predominantly the first three quarters were quite low in terms of order intake. Now Q4, and I can already say Q1, definitely see an improvement here in terms of demand. This picture has shifted to a more positive side since Q4 2025. Margins, a quick word on that. We were not able to confirm the margins which we achieved in this record year 2024. We had some one-offs last year.
We explained those one-offs very detailed in our Q3 conference call and also in our full-year conference call. I will not focus on this right now. If you have questions on that, please let me know. What I can say right now already is we are working on a shift in our product portfolio. We are working on the introduction of a lot of new tools and new innovative tools, but also the next generation of already existing tools. For example, in our Photomask Solutions division, we are working on the next-generation high-end mask cleaner, the next-generation mid-end mask cleaner, or in the Advanced Backend Solutions business, the next generations of the mask aligner and the UV scanner. With those next generations, which will be based on a modular platform, we clearly anticipate an expansion in our margin development.
We clearly need those new solutions in order to do the next step in margin development. A quick view on our outlook for 2026. We published this at the end of March. We expect a slight decline in sales at the midpoint, which is EUR 455. This would correspond to a decline of roughly 10% in sales. To be honest, this still needs to be materialized. We still can translate orders which we get in now or until the end of May, the end of June. Most of that can be produced this year and delivered to our customers this year, and thus also recorded as sales. The first half of 2026 will determine how sharp a potential decline in sales might become, or maybe this anticipated decline is only very, very small. We still need to wait for that.
As said, right now, the order momentum looks quite promising. In terms of gross profit margin, we do not really expect a big change versus 2025 as the portfolio that we sell to our customers still is more or less unchanged. We expect lower one-offs in 2026 versus 2025. If we really see this decline in sales, this for sure also has a negative impact, as the business volume is going down also on profitability. Here we expect a more or less sideways development. In terms of EBIT margin, we expect a decline to a level of 8%-10%. We clearly see this as an interim decline as business volume is going down. On the other side, we decided not to reduce our R&D spend because we want to safeguard our innovations which are in the pipeline.
We want to prepare ourselves for the new portfolio. We have so many product launches to be prepared for the next two years. We even expect an increase in R&D spend and only a slight increase in SG&A. We want to prepare the company for the future here. Now, a few words looking into 2030. In November 2025, we had our latest Capital Markets Day where we presented our Ambition 2030. One big driver for this is still AI as a major technological trend. AI, in a record time, 2024, we had roughly 1/3 of our total sales was connected to AI. Now, this again is a big driver for demand. This is a constant trend where we can benefit from. The entire industry is expected to grow. This was maybe still a quite conservative number of $1 trillion.
This always was a quite famous number for 2030. There are now even analysts out there predicting $1.5 trillion or $1.6 trillion or $1.7 trillion. In easy words, everybody is expecting a growth for the semiconductor industry. With that, we as a company that is providing equipment for the manufacturing of semiconductors, also can benefit from this bigger semiconductor demand. We expect our sales to grow between 8% and 12% as a CAGR rate until 2030. We want to become a larger company, which is then doing sales of EUR 750 million-EUR 900 million corresponding with an improved margin profile. We want to be at 43%-45% gross profit margin. This is at the midpoint, an improvement of roughly eight percentage points.
This is, as already said, based on a more profitable product portfolio, which is based on this modular platform approach, reduced complexity in the product design, and the designing of more commonalities across product lines. Here we want to get still a more professional and a more successful company. With that, we also expect the EBIT margin to increase to a level of 20%-22%. I already mentioned the big number of expected product launches of the next couple of years. 2026 and 2027 will be major years of new product introductions. This is what we also presented at our CMD 2025. Looking into 2030 and the regional sales markets, we expect Taiwan to remain the most important market in our regional sales development, with roughly 1/3 of sales contribution to our global sales.
China has always been a very, very strong market, still doing 25% last year, more than 1/3 in 2024. Here we expect a decline to a level of roughly 15%. China still is an important sales market, but not the dominant one anymore. A very quick view on our semi ecosystem where we play in. What I can say without confirming dedicated customer names, we are really working with the big chip guys around the world. To maybe as a very last slide, this is how it would look like if we are able to achieve our 2030 ambitions. If we compare this with 2025, I think it's quite easy to see that we really have ambitious plans, but we treat them as really realistic plans.
Our Management is ambitious, but we already have projects and products where we can achieve gross profit margins of 45% and beyond. We already have those ones. We also still have projects where we are clearly below this mark. If we are successful in introducing next generations with improved margin profiles, it's in our hands to get there. With those words, I want to stop now and yeah, ask you for your questions. We have 11 minutes left for that.
Thank you, Sven. As always with SÜSS, there are plenty of questions. We try to get through most of these questions. If we can't finish all of them, we will try to circulate the answers to these questions at a later stage. Let's focus on the first one. Which are the main competitors in the advanced packaging sectors? Marcus is asking.
Yeah. In the advanced packaging sector, we have different competitors for different products. If we look at the Advanced Backend Solutions area, as said, the UV projection scanner is part of the famous CoWoS process at the largest foundry in Taiwan. Here we compete with companies like Canon, but our technology here is really unique, so there's no direct competitor for that. In terms of temporary bonding, debonding, which is also an important step for the advanced packaging theme, competitors are companies like Tokyo Electron from Japan or EV Group from Austria. In the coating industry, our major competitor is, again, Tokyo Electron from Japan.
Perfect. Thank you. The next two questions are regarding your photomask business. Do you plan to switch photomask cleaning production to the plant in Taiwan as well?
Yeah. Right now, the photomask equipment is really purely produced in Germany. We feel quite okay with this setup. In order to create redundancies to produce those ones also in Taiwan, this would really mean also to maybe relocate some experts, to relocate the know-how. Right now, we feel quite happy with this setup, but you should never say no.
Fair enough. Christoph, he's also asking a question regarding the photomask business, and he's asking when this business will recover in terms of orders. ASML has shown better orders already. Is there a bigger timeline to book them into revenues?
Yeah. We already saw an improvement in the photomask order intake in Q4 2025. This is what you can see here with this number of EUR 25.5 million versus very low numbers in the two quarters before. Yes, here we already see an improvement. Also Q1 continued on, let's say, at least that way. You are absolutely right. If ASML is seeing stronger bookings, this should also be beneficial for ourselves, maybe not in the same quarter or in the same half-year, but in general, this is a driver. We see our customers preparing themselves for the next-generation lithography for the mass introduction, which is high-NA EUV.
We also want to penetrate markets with our new solutions, which are the next generation of our high-end mask cleaner, where we now collected the first order in Q1 2026, plus with our mid-end photomask cleaner, where we already have some bookings in our order book. Also portfolio-wise, we can create more demand, and this is what we do.
With that respect also, given that Photomask has the biggest contribution to EBIT margin, how much tailwind do you see on a group level if Photomask is performing better?
Yeah. Well, sales-wise, Photomask Solutions already was a record year in 2025. We did roughly EUR 150 million in sales. This is why Photomask was able to contribute that much to our group profitability. Here we also expect a sales decline for 2025 of roughly 10%, and this will also come with a reduction in profitability for this business unit in 2026. If this product line is able to grow, this should also be a good factor for our profitability. This should be in line with that.
Perfect. Thanks. The next question, you probably need to help me out with these abbreviations. Steven is asking, where is SÜSS in the qualification cycle with fabs and IDMs for W2W hybrid bonding? What are the most promising applications?
Yeah. Thanks, Steven, for this question. It's about wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding. I already saw there's one more question on hybrid bonding or even more than that. We are active in both so-called die-to-wafer hybrid bonding and wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding. Wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding is here pictured at the left-hand side of this page. We are in the market, so we can deliver if demand is there, and there are already applications which are served by our competitors like NAND memory or CMOS image sensors. We are in specific discussions with customers also in the memory field, but this is still ongoing and there's no real commercial success beyond very, let's say, single orders. Here we are still waiting for a mass adoption for some applications, but also memory can be attractive here. Please bear with us. We are working on that.
Maybe something to drill on in the next session with mwb research here. Sticking with Steven's question, he has a follow-up question. What exposure do your tools have to photonics or optics?
Today, very limited. We were already mentioned in one of those expert reports a couple of weeks ago. I also noticed that in this report it was said that one of our bonding solutions is already part of so-called a co-packaged optics process, but this is not the case. We treat co-packaged optics as one of our path-finding R&D projects. We are working on that. We are discussing with customers how to help them going forward, but this is not an ongoing or an existing driver for our business yet. This is just for the future, and also this has not been put into our models which was the basis for our Capital Markets Day 2025. This might be an add-on potential if it materializes for SÜSS.
Okay. Talking about add-on potential, Christoph, he's asking how are your new product launches performing right now? He's talking about wafer cleaner, mid-range photomasks, and when do you see substantial revenue contribution from these products?
Yeah. Thanks for this question, Christoph. We are still working on the official introduction of those solutions, of all of those. As said in my presentation, for the high-end mask cleaner, we already have now order number one from a global memory champion. We have already roughly five binding orders for our mid-end photomask cleaners, although the official launch of those solutions is still ongoing. We expect the official launches somewhere in the second half of 2026. In terms of wafer cleaning, we are now working on the installation of the first so-called beta version, so almost a ready version in our application center in Germany. We want to ship this first solution to a first customer for on-site evaluation, most likely in summer timeframe, also H2 2026.
Here, the first commercial business is expected to be a bit later than for high-end and mid-end mask cleaning. In high-end and mid-end mask cleaning, we already see first sales contribution in late 2026, and then to be continued in 2027.
Great. That also answers Florian's question because he's asking whether the 2026 product launches can deliver meaningful growth from 2027 onwards. I think that's more or less the same answer you gave. Therefore, let's go to the sticky part of your business. How much of revenues is service or aftermarket sales? This is Carson's question.
Service today contributes roughly 18% of total sales if you also include installation work, which is part of a normal project. We want to grow this number to 25% of our global sales by 2030, because we want to really treat the installed base of our customers, so the installed tools at our customer sites, as a potential revenue driver. How do we want to do that? We want to penetrate our customers and offer them upgrades, which can help to increase performance of our tools and improve KPIs. For sure, we would ask customers to pay for that. This is what we want to do more actively. We created a dedicated Service VP at the end of 2024, and now we are really working more strategically on that business.
Great. I think we have time for one last question. Sorry to rush through all these questions, but seems to be a lot of interest here. Is it true that order intake in Q1 is higher than orders in Q4 2025, which were already very strong? That's the question Roger is asking.
This is what our CEO said during our full year conference call, which was at the end of March. If he says yes, this number is larger than Q4, he's right.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Well, bang in time. It's 2:00 P.M. Sven, thank you very much, and sorry for rushing through all these questions. I'm sure we could have talked about another hour. Maybe it's time to have a round table at a later stage with more time. For all of you who are interested in the next presentation, it's Drägerwerk. You will find the link in the chat box. Sven, thanks again for your time and for the interesting insights, and see you soon again in the next German Select at mwb research.
Thank you.
Thank you.