SUSS MicroTec SE (ETR:SMHN)
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May 13, 2026, 5:35 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2021
May 12, 2021
Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of Sysco Microtech SE. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. May I now hand you over to Doctor.
Gert Benderle, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you so much. Yes, this is Gert Banderle. It is my pleasure and my honor to lead Zoos since the beginning of May, which was We and a few days ago. For those of you who have not had any contact with me in the past, I'm a physicist by training, Spent a lot of my professional life in the semiconductor industry here in Europe, but also in the U.
S. And in Asia and Taiwan, the semiconductor industry is certainly what I'm passionate about and that is one 5 of what attracted me to ZEUS and which I enjoy very much now that I'm here. At the same time, I think, If I looked at ZEUS initially from the outside and now for the past week and a half also from the inside, I think it is a technology company with A very significant potential, which we've already seen to some extent in the development of the last roughly couple of years. So I'm very happy to take over Zoos at a time when it is performing well. And I certainly would like to build On that, together with my exec colleagues, Thomas Vohr, who joined as a COO With me at the same time at the beginning of May, week and a half ago and Oliver Albrecht, who has who is also still somewhat new, but has been This is, I think, now for at least a year and change.
And I think the 3 of us are together looking forward To unlock some of the potential some of the additional potential that we see that I see in Zoos in terms of growth, In terms of new business, in terms of operational excellence. It's definitely too soon to go into more details of how we want to accomplish some of those things. That will be for another time, but I very much look forward to meeting, I hope, some of you at some point in person again At various events as we hopefully see the tail end of the corona pandemic. In the meantime, I look forward to working with you in the way we've been used to over the last year or so. Before I give it over to hand over to Oliver, I would like to ask Thomas Rohr to say a few words and also introduce himself.
Thank you very much everybody.
Thank you, Jeff, and Hello to everybody on the call. Well, my name is Tom Rohrer. I'm joined, Keith, also in May has got We mentioned that as the COO, I'm also a physicist by training and have more we have now more than 20 Yes. I've experienced in different positions in development operations, also in the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry and also about other Manufacturing Industries. And I'm really happy to be here and I'm very excited also with to join GE, because I think There's a lot of potential in the company to drive and even improve operational excellence, which we will hopefully see very soon and We'll report also to you in the near future.
That's it from my side. Thank you very much. And I'm really also happy to meet you in person, Hopefully, soon and hand over to Oliver right now. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 conference Call today and before starting to present you the figures, I would also like to introduce to you Stefan Luther, Stefan Luther, he is the Head of our Business Unit for Bondur. He is with us. And we have also with us Franka Schiedke, Which is our Investor Relations Manager. Yes. Let's start this on Page 3 with Our figures at a glance, I can say compared to the previous year quarter, we have received strong improvements in sales and profitability.
Order entry increased by more than 17%. Sales went up by 26%. We see Strongly improved gross profit and EBIT margins compared to the previous year quarter. Free cash flow and net cash rose considerably. And in this year, we have no one off effects from the closure of our activities in corona.
Regarding our business segments, lithography, there we have a strong quarter, especially for coaters, developers and mask aligners With significant EBIT improvement in our bond business, there we have received good order entry in the Q1, But lower sales due to postponement of 2 shipments into Q2, I will explain this later on in my presentation. Photomass Equipment Business, you know it's a lumpy business quarter on quarter, but we have received also a good sales level in the Q1. Microoptics improved earnings margin at stable sales and order entries. I would like to highlight some more key figures on Page 4. Yes.
On Page 4 here, let's jump directly on into the sales of the group. So sales, as I mentioned already, Went up by 26% up to €52,600,000,000 so strong increase compared to last year. Our gross profit margin improved by 8.4 percentage points to 32.9 percent EBIT, €1,400,000 the EBIT margin, 2.7%, also a strong increase. If we compare it to the last year, so EBIT margin was not as good as in Q3 and Q4 2020. This is because one of the reason is that the Q1 normally is the weakest quarter In terms of sales, so the sales level was below the last two quarters in 2020.
And Finally, our quarterly EBIT margin also depends on how much sales is contributed by our Putnamask Equipment Business Unit. And as I already said, we had some postponements in shipment. We have some mask aligner tools ready for shipment, which we couldn't Ship out due to missing import license from our customers in China. The sales in Bonda business was below our expectations. This is due to the postponement of a large tool into April With a sales volume of about €4,000,000 and a decent margin, that is the major reason why The sales volume of bonder is below our expectation.
Yes. Regarding free cash flow, you can see from minus €8,300,000, free cash flow went up to €9,100,000 also a strong increase. Our net cash position increased to €39,200,000 so we have enough headroom available. Let's move over to Page 5. On Page 5, this slide Shows you our quarterly order entry.
And in the Q1, order intake was again on a very high level with in total €81,000,000 This is the 2nd highest order entry in Zoos' history. As you can see here from the chart, the Overall, the order entry level increased over the last years to a quarterly average of about €70,000,000 now And the order book amounted to €148,000,000 Advanced Packaging Applications and 5 She are the main business drivers. In lithography, order entry is up by 23.8 percent mainly driven by a high demand for coders, developers and mask aligners. The order entry in the bonder segment increased By 61 percent to €9,000,000 this is due to a higher demand, especially for temporary bonders. And as I said, Photomask Equipment is a lumpy business, which consists of few but high volume contracts.
Order entry decreased slightly in the 1st 3 months by 6% to €12,200,000 Yes. We have received some tool orders from our major customer in Taiwan, and we have also got A nice service contract. And in addition, we have got an order for another scanner from TSMC. Order entry at MicroOptics grew by 28% to €6,900,000 and the demand from our automotive customer It's recovering. Regarding the regional split, order intake from the Asia Pacific region The Asia Pacific region remains the dominant region with 60.8%.
We have increasing demand from Chinese customers. And for example, in February, we got another package deal of about €50,000,000 From one customer, this includes 11 ACS, 300 Gen 2 Coaters. It It's also one mask aligner and it also includes 4 manual bonder systems. So our order entry outlook remains strong. And let's move over to the next page and to have a closer look on our business segments.
Starting with lithography. Sales from mask aligners grew by 21% and up to €10,000,000 And sales from Codas grew by 27% up to €50,000,000 So in total, our sales in this business division Increased to €32,200,000 With this sales increase, our gross profit margin improved to 32.6 percent and the EBIT margin increased to 8.4%. Yes, compared to last year, Last year, we had closing costs. And in the Q1, we had closing costs of €3,700,000 This is now Finished. And these figures now are without any special effects from closing costs.
Regarding Photomask Equipment, order entry remains on a high level, but slightly decreased. The sales volume increased strongly to €11,300,000 The gross profit margin decreased slightly to 38.9%, but the EBIT margin increased to a higher sales volume with better fixed cost coverage. And as you know, here in especially in this business, our margins depend on 2 specifications on the one side, and it Depends also on country by country, in which country we are selling the equipment. Wonder. Order entry increased due to a high demand for temporary wonders, but sales Decreased and are lacking behind our budget due to the postponement of the tool shipment into April.
The tool is shipped in the meantime. And this tool had or has a sales price of around €4,000,000 with a gross profit margin About 50%. So this has a major impact on our sales and also profitability in the Q1. But our outlook regarding Bondur remains very positive. And MicroOptics, here we see a recovery of our order entry and sales.
We have received a slightly better gross profit margins and EBIT margins. And regarding the Completion of our clean room, I can say there's a slight delay of about 3 months. And at the moment, we are ramping up. We start to bring in our first production tools in the clean room, and we will start production then in the second half of this year. I will move over to Page 7.
And in order to give you Our market estimates and our and also the outlook of the market, Yes. I can say we expect a continuously strong order entry in the average of about €70,000,000 per quarter, But there is still some uncertainty due to the COVID pandemic, especially regarding the supplier Shane, here we see some impacts on the supplier chain. The forecast for the semiconductor market Growth for 2021 ranges from plus 4.1% up to 18%. So there's quite A good outlook for the future. The megatrends is fully intact, and We see future demand driven by emerging technologies like 5 gs, IoT, high performance computing, augmented reality, Artificial intelligence and autonomous driving, these factors are driving the demand for our products.
With this, yes, I would like to finalize my presentation, and We can confirm our guidance for 2021. So still our sales Expectations range between €270,000,000 up to €290,000,000 and the EBIT margin we expect here A range between 9% to 11%. And I see also it depends a little bit on the sales volume if we come up If you come out with on the upper level of the sales volume, then I also expect a positive impact on the EBIT margin. This is, I think, Those are goes parallel to the sales volume. Free cash flow ranges between €12,000,000 to €18,000,000 Yes.
That's all for the moment. And now we are happy to answer your questions. And I would like to hand back To the moderator, and yes, please, we are looking forward to answering questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. Now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial And the first question comes from Johannes Yee, Apus Capital, please go ahead.
Your line is now open.
Yes. Hello. Good morning. Hello. Mr.
Bendele now at the new position. We are happy you are there. Although we are both company shareholder and new. Maybe first starting with the overall situation also coming back what As Albers had said, is it right to assume that the strong demand has unshrent developed that April is also maybe has supported since there is no signs of weakness in the market because there is a structural growth. And the structural growth get also maybe a second leg despite all this technology drivers by This geopolitical things that should be built additional capacity in China.
That's always not Totally new, but also in Europe and especially in the U. S.
Well, so I mean, you summarized it, I think, in a way that I would probably report that The market has been strong, and it, at this point, appears to continue to be strong for a number of reasons, political, industrial. So what's important is, of course, for us that we continue to enjoy this and leverage this for our own growth Initially and of course at some point also go beyond that. I think that's it's probably not a surprise for you or anyone to hear that I do have growth Ambitions that go beyond simply going to the market. But again, how we want to accomplish that, we need to soon to talk about At this point, but if you ask me, do I see any indication of a weakness for the coming quarters? I don't see that.
And it is a question I've Obviously asked when I joined, whether people in the company see that. And so in that sense, I fully support what Oliver said. Oliver, I think you obviously have had more conversations than I've had with customers, with colleagues. You want to add to that? Yes.
I see also a continuous growth in the markets, And we see some bottlenecks in the market. We see that our customers are expanding their capacity. And As we already explained in the last conference calls that we see There's a strong demand for our coaters for muscular liners, especially in China at the moment. There's a strong demand for muscular liners, Which is from us in terms of margin and profitability, a very good situation. And also what our previous CEO said that we see also in bonder business, we see here For us, a strong market potential and a growth opportunity with our new systems.
And is it right to follow on maybe that MicroOptics, if you are ramping up your clean room now in The second half should also see a clear acceleration because of the orders which will come or your partly already received from the automobile industry.
Yes. We see here SMO or Micro Optics, our Micro Optics business unit last year has suffered a little bit From the COVID pandemic, especially automotive clients, they have reduced the demand. And SMO went into short time work for 2 months, but now we see that the demand is recovering. We have got Some nice contracts from the automotive We and we expect the growth in this year in this segment, of course. And therefore, we need this 2nd clean room, we need the capacity to focus with this increasing demand, especially for the automotive And this 2nd clean room is mainly dedicated to the demand from the automotive industry.
And here, we want to invest in more automatic tools, which Also will help us then to reduce our costs in this business segment.
Okay. That's also maybe the base for the Imprint business in the future At your equipment sales. But maybe another topic, which is also highlighted always is The shortage of components even for the suppliers like you, has you see any bottleneck of Maybe components or you feel anything as you handle it so far. Therefore, the sales have not been limited, in other words, even in In the Q1 by shortage of any component and it doesn't look at the moment that there is a risk?
I would not say that there is when we see in some cases, we see some bottlenecks. We see that Lead times extend a little bit. And therefore, we also set up a task force in our house To qualify second source, to qualify alternative suppliers And also what is very critical for us is the trade war or the trade barriers between U. S. And China.
And therefore, This task force, one of the main topics for this task force is to replace U. S. Parts or parts from U. S. Origin European or Asian part that we do not suffer too much from possible trade barriers.
Okay. Maybe a question to Mr. Rolfe, if he already can answer it. How much you see maybe potential to improve the efficiency of So production at Zoosvik was in some regard a bottleneck and maybe it was not always optimal in the past as you know. And how much opportunity you see in Taiwan?
You didn't nobody was mentioning of the Taiwan production, but if I learn it from the last call, it's also maybe One angle to handle the growth going forward.
Yes. Thank you very much for the question. Well, for sure, I see potential there, but I hope you can also understand that after 1.5 weeks, I cannot say, okay, how much potential. But for sure, there are some topics which should be addressed pretty soon. And also concerning the manufacturing In Taiwan, I've not had been I've not been the chance to go there.
And for sure, we will try after the COVID pandemic go there Pretty soon and have a look at that what we can do there. But for the moment, I cannot tell you exactly what we are planning to do in the next future. But What I can tell you, Dave, potentially, and we want to address the principle.
Yes. What I would like to add to this is, I think the setup of the Taiwan production is an important step for us. We need it To increase our capacities, this is one reason. For example, this year, we would like To assemble about 25 tools here, we started with the ACS 200. Now we also increased our product portfolio in Taiwan with the And in addition, as we already mentioned, we are going to transfer our scanner business, the production and assembly of the scanner into Taiwan.
1 is very important for us in terms of production capacities, but also in terms of proximity To be more to be close to our customers and also to extend the supplier basis for us
You mentioned 2 things, Mr. Albersch, in your statement. First, You expect an average €70,000,000 in orders per quarter. That would be a reduction compared to Q1. But is it only I think a rough maybe figure, which could be also fluctuate upwards or downwards, but it's Not a clear guidance, if I got it right.
And you mentioned this €50,000,000 deal in China. How much is in the Q1 figure? Or is it spread over Maybe a couple of quarters or so maybe only to see how much is one deal impacted Q1?
First of all, regarding the order entry, what I wanted to say is that, as you might remember, In the past, we said order entry is about €60,000,000 in coverage. Now we are saying that we see, How can I say, a continuous increase? And what I want to say is that we see now on average €70,000,000 And as you said, the order entry in the Q1 was €81,000,000 And if you look back to last year, we have last year, we have received 1 quarter was about €90,000,000 So it's not the exact guidance. It's more to say that this is a trend and the trend is increasing, of course. And the second question was regarding this Package deal, so it is last year, we have got some package deal from the Asia Pacific region.
And this is another package deal with €50,000,000 11 quotas. So this helps us also to benefit more from economies And the sales will be reconciled during the second and third In Q4, so it's you do not see it in the sales volume in the Q1.
But the order intake was fully booked in Q1 or was it
Yes.
The order intake is fully booked in Q1. It's fully included in this €81,000,000 Okay. Thanks a lot.
Our next question comes from Christian Santa, Haukund Aufreiser. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. And maybe first question, you also mentioned that you had some issues sending, I think, mask aligner to China. How big of an order was that? And so maybe how much of ready to use machines are still held back? And do you have any visibility I think This is a regular procedure.
So this means that the Chinese government updates We import license every year. And here we are talking mainly about customers like universities, Smaller customers, they have developed a number of tools. And here we have, I think, about 8 mask aligners, And the total volume is roughly €2,000,000 Okay. Cool. And then maybe second question on working capital.
You seem to have improved working capital sales ratio in Q1. Is it something that's sustainable? Or Do you expect a normalization over the next quarters? Regarding working capital, If I look, we have definitely, we have improved our working capital compared to last year. We are We're working hard to reduce, for example, trade receivables and also to reduce the contract assets.
And here we have got some progress. On the other side, if you look into the working capital of the Q1, you can see that Compared to the year end figures, our inventory increased, and this is mainly due to the fact that we have to build up some Stocks in Taiwan. We still purchase material for Taiwan over our site in Stellenfelds. We will change in the future the procedure and the approach. And we had also we started to stock and to increase The start of some critical parts because we don't want to lose time in the production in the assembly.
We have seen in some cases that we could not continuously assemble the tools because some critical parts were missing. And to avoid this debt, this was the reason why we increased our inventories. Right. Okay, perfectly. Thanks.
That's it for myself.
Our next question comes from Robert Sanders, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to address a bit more this whole Hybrid bonding opportunity at companies like TSMC. How much more dollar opportunity does this Give you and are you now qualified? I mean, I think TSMC is in a qualification year, but I presume you are now Exclusive.
But how should we think about this revenue opportunity from hybrid bonding versus, for example, wafer level concepts, which It seems like wafer level will stay in mobile and HPC will move to hybrid bonding. Thanks a lot.
Stefan, would you like to answer? Yes, I can. So to answer specifically for the customer, we did not yet sell or ship hybrid bombing equipment to TSMC. We are still mainly working with institutes To essentially develop, demonstrate and qualify the hybrid bonding process, one important institute It's Eimik in Belgium who is using our equipment. So we have sold the hybrid bonder that Oliver mentioned previously, The €4,000,000 tool to an institute customer.
On the institute level, we are qualified for hybrid bonding. We can demonstrate very good results. And the customer that you have mentioned, TSMC, we are certainly in discussions with them, But we cannot provide any further information at this point in time regarding that specific customer. What we do Going forward is indeed additional sales contributions from hybrid bonding, as we have also I described during the presentations that we have shown on last year's Capital Markets Day. So this is certainly one of the largest growth areas That we want to grab a share of.
Got it. And how should we think about the split between cyclical business And technology business within your mix. I mean, I think Basie talks about 15% of their business being pure technology business, Which is, for example, TSMC, Intel, E Mail and stuff like that. Because I guess when I look at your business and I contrast Colicarence Software and Besi, Colicarence Software guided down for fiscal 2022 because they see China pulling in Aggressively, but they don't expect that to sustain. Whereas You could take a view given the structural trend that the 2022 could be a better year than 2021.
Yes. We are seeing the qualification phase at customers like TSMC, and we are actually expecting additional growth For 2022, that's true. What we have to say is that for hybrid bonding, companies like Besi I'm mainly focusing on die to wafer hybrid bonding, whereas we are focusing on wafer to wafer On temporary bonding, and that is also to not necessarily competing, but complementary technologies that will be used at customers like TSMC. So the fact that Dye2 wafer bonded
Sorry, go ahead.
The fact that Dye2 Wafer bonding is going up or down does not necessarily mean that wafer to wafer bonding will follow the same trend.
But wafer to wafer is already in the In CMOS sensor and stuff like this, that's what you're referring to, what opposed to data wafer, which is the kind of key opportunity, which You are not currently leveraging. Okay. Fine.
That is correct. Yes. And TSMC is actually working on both. They are working on dye to wafer For their SOIC process, but they are also working on wafer to wafer, not only for CMOS image sensors, but also for future generations of SOIC.
Got it. So the Besi AMAT partnership, you are in that scope for you guys
at the moment. Okay, got it.
Thank you. Cheers then, Pavel.
Our next question comes from Jurgen Wagner, Schiefel. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you. I have a question on your full year guidance. Until what month this year can you turn orders Into sales and how is the reentry into the scanner business progressing? I mean, do you have enough people, enough material, etcetera?
Thank you. Normally, we I can say, if we get an order entry up To September, then we can bring it into sales. What we see here a little bit is Our delivery times are increasing in some cases regarding some specific tools. You also see that we have to rearrange some things in our production In order to accelerate the lead times, to reduce the lead times, so this is a little bit the bottleneck for us. So We see, for example, in our bond business that here the tools are quite specific and Highly complicated.
So this is here we have longer lead times. If these are, let's say, manual tools, smaller tools, Then there's no profit then to reconcile this order entry in up to September into the sales volume. I think this was the best part of your questions. The second part was Can you discuss a bit
in the other reentry?
Do you get enough people? And how is it? I think this is a good question because as we announced last year that we would like to close down our operations. And of course, we have dismissed some personnel, some stuff in the U. S.
And now we are transferring The assembly to Taiwan, this means we have to transfer also the Naho to Taiwan. In the meantime, we have identified Some of the key personnel, we could let's say, maybe reactivate some of the key personnel. And these people are also willing To travel to Taiwan and to stay at our Taiwan site for a certain time period. So at the moment, it's okay for us. So we are finding the right people, and I think we are It's doing it's like planned, so it's not at no difficulties.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Malte Schulman, Baboqu Research. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hello. My first question is on the temporary bundles. The order intake you saw in the Q1, was that placed from, yes, your lead customer? Was that kind of the newer guys?
And then what does the pipeline look like? So what is the market And especially in temporary bundling currently and for the upcoming quarters. So this is Stefan Lutte again. So the orders that we got in the Q1 Are from a new customer. This customer is coming from the 3.5 material segment, Silicon carbide to be specific, so power device related.
And for the existing customers, specifically for the 3 d memory area, We see a little bit of a recovery in the 3 d Memory segment. So we are expecting orders And we have planned later this year. But we also see new customers like the silicon carbide case, I mentioned, including other countries, to add to the order entry. And the new customers will also be kind of in the 3, 5 area application area? That and also an expansion of, let's say, memory technology into new countries like China.
I think we've talked about the activities in China. So Chinese customers are adding technology, and that includes 3 d memory as well. So we are expanding our footprint from the existing customers in Taiwan and Korea into the China region. Yes. And with respect to silicon carbide, Are you already in talks with additional players in that area?
We are currently talking to 1 main player only, but that is a leading company in that segment. Okay. And do you think that there's that the opportunity is larger so that you might enter other players as well? Or is that Mostly focus on the bonding. There certainly is an opportunity because our temporary bonding technology becomes attractive As scaling goes on from 6 to 8 inches wafers and this scaling is essentially what opens the window to introduce our temporary planning technology.
Yes. Okay. Good. And then on the scanner business on the time frame, was there I don't know if you'd like to elaborate On the potential time frame when order placements take place, I think we still expect it for the second half of this year and then revenue generation rather next year. So if anything has changed within the time frame of your lead customer with the scanners?
I do not see any changes From at the moment, from the time schedule of our customer, It's we have got a lot of interest. We have got an indication regarding What could be a potential volume for orders from this major customer? And in the meantime, I think nothing has changed at the moment. No. Okay.
Good. Thanks.
We see one more question from Johannes Vies, Akuv Capital. Your line is now open.
Yes. Maybe 2 or 3 follow on questions. 1st, on silicon carbide, can you a little bit explain how you use your temporary bondings And in what step of the protection?
Yes, I can explain that. So temporary bonding is used to basically thin down The silicon cardiac wafer. So in the beginning, customers start off with a relatively thick wafer material, 350 micron in thickness up to 500 micron in thickness. And then this silicon carbide Wafer is attached to a silicon carrier by temporary bonding using temporary bonding adhesive And then that wafer is thinned down to sub-one hundred micron.
Okay. I see. So for to use this expensive material more efficiently, more by making it thinner, Safra is your technology used, Okay.
Exactly. And also in the final device that wafer needs to be thinned in order to deliver the performance
And at 6 inches and smaller, it was done in another way, yes?
Yes, That's correct. So 6 inches and smaller wafers were still temporary bonded, but a different debonding method was used. So the debonding method For 6 inches wafers and smaller was thermal slide debonding. So essentially, the wafer stack was heated up so that the adhesive gets soft And then the 2 wafers could be slided off from each other. And now with the transfer to 80 inches wafers, The Valuver Technologies switch from slight debonding to mechanical debonding very much like we have also seen In the memory market, we have slight debonding was still used a little bit on the 200 millimeter wafer format.
But once the transfer to a 300 millimeter happened Quite a few years ago already, the technology has changed from slide debonding to mechanical debonding Because the mechanical stress of sliding the 2 wafers off of each other increases exponentially with the increasing wafer size. So there will always be inflection points where technology changes are necessary. The next inflection point for memory, for example, We'll be transitioning from mechanical to laser debonding as the memory devices are getting thinner. But also you can provide the inflection point and how it's from slightly wanting to mechanically wanting.
Okay. Was that always in your plans that it could be a new Because we hear the first time I think all listeners in the call or is it something It was clear, but you didn't talk about so far.
So we have to say that it was not a strategic plan to penetrate for 8 In silicon carbide wafers, it was basically that the opportunity came up and it was a perfect fit For the equipment that we had developed for the memory industry. So it's a new market that we can serve with existing product portfolio.
Okay. And how much machine you need there? Because to my knowledge, the silicon carbide market will go up 10 times in the next 5 years. So how many machines are needed? Is it very efficient what you are doing?
Or do you need comparably A number of machines to maybe so how is the throughput in some regard?
So in the temporary bonding process, that is typically a 3 step process. So the first process step is to bond the 2 wafers. Then the customer is taking that wafer and is going through the thinning process. And then after the thinning process, the wafers come back for a debonding step. So that is the 2nd machine.
And then the 3rd machine is a cleaning step where the adhesive residues need to be cleaned. So typically, 3 machines from Suez are needed to do the temporary bonding, debonding and cleaning. And one machine can do around 10 to 15 wafers an hour. So this customer that we are working with is essentially getting a first equipment set consisting of 3 machines, And they can run 10 wafers an hour through that process. And now the number of machines essentially scales with the demand The math that throughput will not scale.
It will always stay in the 10 to 15
wafer range. Okay. Super. That's very helpful. Maybe another technology question.
Imprint, the technology you're creating with your micro optic solution, Is it still the case that we can expect here a very interesting market coming starting in 2022?
Oliver, would you like to answer or should I? Yes. I can More or less only in general terms on this question, maybe you can give more insight, Yes. What I mean, what I can say is that we have on the road map to launch a fully automated imprint cluster for 2022, and we do speak to Customers that are very interested to get such a system. So the market is there and Sius will come up with a product offering for an automated tool next year.
Okay.
Maybe another question. I don't know I asked this question before, but I hear more and more we had just this announcement of IBM, this is to I know made a process and they thought that you only can really use this by using date all around Such as the front end technology, but also maybe related to back end, is a date all around also a driver for your business going forward? Have you ever Or is it something which is maybe you can handle with the traditional back end solutions?
It is a question I cannot answer. So we do not know the IBM process flow in that level of detail, And we have not seen specific questions. No, that
was more on the gate all around. It's not only For IBM, also TSMC looking at this for asset solutions as a packaging solution.
Yes. I mean, we do not expect the packages to change. If you look at TSMC's web page, they are They're still promoting the traditional processes like info or cobos, which they are going to combine with a new SOIC process technology. So any device that is produced with the new SOIC process, a new front end process technology We'll still reuse the same back end processes that TSMC has developed. And I would expect a similar situation for other front end technologies as well that they would still go into similar back end packages.
Nevertheless, it looks if we look to what Applied is doing with Besi and your Austrian Competitor, is that front end and back end coming closer to guess I said is a trend going forward and It's also something you're looking at now?
We are looking into that. We are closely watching what EDG and ASM And AMET and BC are doing and we have some strategy prepared on our side.
I expect this is thanks a lot.
There are no further questions. I will hand back to the speakers.
Yes. If there are no further questions, thank you very much Thank you for attending this call. And yes, we are looking forward to speaking to you soon, latest in August when we are presenting our Our second quarter results. Thank you very much to everybody.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.