Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sebastian Goncio. I am Manager Investor Relations here at PVA TePla. On behalf of the entire team, let me welcome you in here, but also on our livestream to today's Capital Markets Day. We're really excited about this event. Before we start, let me just briefly thank the team here at Berenberg for hosting us and for their logistical support. Let me also introduce you to today's speakers. Our Management Board, CEO Jalin Ketter, and our CFO, Karl Markus Grohs, will also be joined today by our Vice Presidents' team, who have deep knowledge about the technologies we provide and also the markets we serve. That's Dr. Jan Pfeiffer, who's responsible for research and development, Dr. Peter Tsourates for metrology, and Dr. Udo Beuth for material solutions. Let me just give you a brief run-through of the agenda for today.
After a brief overview of the company where we are today, Jalin Ketter will provide you with an update on our strategy before we will move into a quick coffee break. After that, our Vice Presidents will provide you with a deep dive into the markets, where we are, what kind of technologies we provide to that. After that, Markus Grohs will conclude with a quick, or with a deep dive actually, through our financials before we move into the Q&A session. That being said, please, I'm sure there will be a lot of questions, but please hold your questions until the Q&A session. We will have plenty of time for that. You are, of course, also free to ask questions during the coffee break, and we will also have plenty of time during the get-together and lunch to answer any unanswered questions that you may have.
Also, one quick note: we will upload the entire presentation with even more details to our website later today. I know there will be some small fonts in there, but don't worry, we will provide it on our website. That being said, let me now hand over to our CEO, Jalin Ketter.
Thanks, Sebastian. Does everyone hear me? Okay, perfect. Welcome also from my side to our second Capital Markets Day. Last time, we have met each other in a different setup in Berenberg, had a Capital Markets Day, which was very technology-based, product-based, and you saw also our newly opened R&D center onsite. This year is different, we are in London today, but the team did not change. We have an add-on with Markus Grohs, who joined the team from the beginning of the year, so we are happy to have him with us today. Today, we will talk about our strategic targets, which is on the one hand side, of course, the financial side, but also what's around that, and about markets and the financials. I'm looking forward to a very exciting day today.
Most of you already know the basics of our company, so I don't go too much into the introduction part. We will focus more on the strategy, markets, and financials today. Since last year and the Capital Markets Day in... Let's wait for them. Morning! Since our Capital Markets Day last year, when we introduced our strategy 2028, there already have been a lot of changes. We are on a way of transformation with the company. On the technology side, we streamlined our portfolio and are now working in two true product lines with material solutions and metrology. This has also brought us to identify a lot of synergies between that product lines and also to connect these technologies exactly to growing market potentials that we identified.
In terms of how we are supporting or how we are going with our technologies to the market, we changed our sales and service approach from a more reactive way to address the market to an active way to address the market, combined with also concepts of having showrooms onsite at our customer site to be near at customers, but also including a 24/7 support level, which we are actually setting up, especially for our customers in the semiconductor industry. We centralized our R&D approach. In the past, we have been very oriented in our single technology lines, connected to projects with our customers. This is something that's happening still in the company in our single DMBHs.
With the technology hub that we founded last year, we now have a long-term-oriented R&D concept, not only looking into the next one to three years, but in the next three to five years and ahead. This is going across all of our technology lines and working with partnerships and external resources. Very exciting changes within the company already, and we are having a lot that we want to do in front of us. Just a quick overview on the markets that we are focusing on. The semiconductor market is for us the most important market and also will stay very important in the future. It has an overweight of 60% to 70% of our activities, and we are working with our technologies across the whole value chain, starting from the raw material side until the packaging area with both of our technology lines, material solutions and metrology.
The most exciting growth potential in that market is coming from our metrology business, and this is also where we are focusing on in the presentation today. When we are going for the market session, semiconductor will be mostly metrology related. The energy market is a very exciting market segment for us. We all need already today a lot of energy, and that even will grow in the future. With topics like energy transition, renewables, we are participating in that production processes with our products, especially in the area of material solutions, where we see nice potentials to grow as well. The aerospace market is something where we are having exciting opportunities as well, and this is at the very beginning.
We already have an amount of customers which we are working with in that market, but there is still a possibility to further develop customers in that area and qualify our technologies for this market. Nice potentials that we will see later on. The automotive industry is of interest for us in the long run. For us, it's not only focused on Europe, it's a worldwide market that we are supporting, especially with metrology solutions, but this is not in the focus of the presentation today. Let's go quickly through our product portfolio. In the area of metrology, today we are having three technologies that we are providing to the market. Most relevant is here the semiconductor market. In acoustic, it's a technology which is a non-destructive testing method and doing a 3D inspection of production steps in the semiconductor value chain.
This is the most exciting technology in the area of organic growth that we will see more later on. The optical technology is also non-destructive and is detecting, for example, tensions in a way where in the front end of the semiconductor industry. It's about surface inspection and layer inspection with already existing and already new technologies that we got on our portfolio recently. Chemical is about the detection of contaminations of vapor level in the front end of the semiconductor industry. This is a destructive method and is used to test samples in the semiconductor industry. Material solutions is working in four technology fields: synthesis technology, most of you know already our crystal growth business for silicon and silicon carbide, but there are also other exciting technologies like chemical vapor deposition, infiltration, or powder synthesis, which are more related to the energy and aerospace market.
Enjoining technology is about the creation of complex structures and solid connections with brazing and bonding technologies, which is having nice potentials in the energy sector. These two technologies will also be the focus of the market presentation today. Refining technology is about the purification of, for example, graphite parts, which are used in the semiconductor industry for the hot zone materials in the crystal growing system, but also for epitaxy systems where really pure graphite is used in the process and to reclean that or in the production process of that graphite. Surface treatment is about the treatment of surfaces with plasma technology to prepare them for the next production steps. We are in the front and back end of the semiconductor industry with our technology. These two technologies will not be further commented in the market part today. Let's move to our strategy.
We introduced that strategy in 2024, and I today would like to remind you on our goals, not only on the financial side, but also on the way of transformation of the company and the relevant activities that we need to do to fulfill our strategy and also the things that already happened on the way through over the last year. In general, we can divide our strategy into four cornerstones: segment growth, which is about winning market shares, creating more balanced contribution in our revenue streams, and the improvement of our margins in the long run. Regional focus is very important for us as we are present in all regions, Europe, Asia, and North America. These regions are working in a different way, so there are different things necessary to really address customers there, and we are working in different markets in that region.
We are having clear concepts on how to address that. To support the growth and the development of the company, we are also focusing on strategic investments, which is on the one-hand side coming with further improvement of our organization, but also with M&A and partnerships on the technology side, which are very important for us. Last but not least, innovation is key. Sustainable growth always comes with innovation, and this is an area of focus as well. You have seen our R&D center last year, and we are developing a lot of new technology since then and already in the past. Let's start with the first cornerstone, the segment growth, and I would like to lead you a little bit more through our single technology lines and give you more color on what's behind that single areas and what we need to do to be successful with our technologies.
Out of the acoustic area, most of the organic growth is generated. What we are focusing here is on increasing our market share. This is our clear aim, and this is supported by new developments in the semiconductor production processes, especially in the area of advanced packaging. This is something that you will learn more about later on. What we really need to have availability or potentials to produce that higher volumes that we are expecting out of the market is scaling our clean room capacity. The second area, which is mostly important, is a ramp-up of a 24/7 support level worldwide in North America and Asia to support this kind of semiconductor customers that we are aiming to win market shares in. In our optical technology, we have been working a lot with semiconductor clients in the front end.
With a clear R&D roadmap for our technology focused on throughput and also new materials like silicon carbide, we are extending our footprint in that area, but also expanding our product portfolio with further solutions going more in the direction of back-end packaging to have a possibility of a broader base of customers to address with our portfolio. In chemical technology, we are also focused on front-end solutions and having a clear R&D roadmap which is going on the throughput of the technology. We are extending this technology also to new applications in the value chain over the long run. Consolidated, we are talking about gaining market shares, scaling efficiency, and expanding our product portfolio on the metrology side. Let's see what already happened. There is a year past now, and we already made huge steps forward.
We just learned that in the acoustic area, expanding our production line is most significant to be successful. What we did in the very beginning of 2025 was the acquisition of Descompo Engineering, which is supporting our organic growth. Since we included that company in our portfolio, we started to scale our clean room capacity. At year-end 2025, we are prepared to handle higher volumes, which we are expecting coming starting from 2026. On the optical side, you learned that new technologies in the portfolio and extending our portfolio is something that we are focusing on. This is exactly what happened already in two cases in 2025. With the cooperation of Sentech Instruments, we expanded our portfolio with a technology called ellipsometry. It's also non-destructive, measuring the thickness and uniformity of semiconductor coatings. It's an established method in the semiconductor market already.
Customers do know that method, and it has an existing market. With that cooperation, we are having a technology which is already developed, which we are bringing to a higher level of automation, and then winning market shares in that area. In additional acquisition, we did with Dive Imaging Systems, already renamed in PVA Vision, with a technology which is extending our product portfolio as well. It's a new method, also non-destructive, and it's patented. This is a method which is not yet introduced in the semiconductor value chain, but addressing needs that we are seeing coming with the semiconductor metrology roadmap that we are closely following when we are talking about adding technology in our portfolio. Additionally to that, we entered into a new field of technology with X-ray technology. With that technology, we have a patented solution with a qualified team on board.
This is a technology which is in an R&D status and will give us further potentials in the semiconductor industry on the long run. More for that later. What you should take in mind is with the expanding of our product portfolio with further solutions, we are addressing the same customers as we are already having as clients with existing technologies. This means that an increasing team on the service side for availability of 24/7 support also is able to support these new technologies. It's also helping to scale the resources in a broader way. Let's come to material solutions. Here, we are addressing new markets, expanding our regional footprint, and scaling our after-sales business. This is the area of focus for these technologies. In synthesis, joining and refining, we are aiming to balance our revenue streams compared to the past.
This is coming with an increase of recurring revenue streams, but supported with a different sales approach. We are going from a more reactive way to a more active way. This is added also with team capacity, which is the expertise for this market. These are complex markets where we are talking about. It's in need of high-qualified people to really address the customers where they are and get clearness about what the exact need for our technology is. We are opening these new markets for us and also working on a higher volume of after-sales work and revenue streams with this area of technology. Especially the North American market is something where we see a lot of growth potential for our technology. Here, we are also increasing our local presence.
Being onsite at customers, having concepts for local sourcing and assembly capacity in this area is something which is in the field of focus for us in the development of the next years. On surface treatment, I just said that this is related to the semiconductor industry as well. We see an expansion of our product portfolio related to applications in the area of back-end and packaging, which are also fast-growing areas. It's a qualification process of our technology in that area where we see potentials to further grow that segment as well and step into that new applications. Coming to the regional side, it's needed to have the right concepts for every region available as we are talking about different markets and products. In North America, we are having actually currently 13% of our revenues.
We see strong growth perspectives coming from material solutions connected to the aerospace and energy market and pharmacology in the semiconductor market. Our local presence is steadily increasing. You can see that already on the yellow dots. With a sales and service presence in Canada and Mexico, we already increased also how we are addressing the market. With all that yellow dots in the U.S., you can already see how we extended our team capacity to support our customers onsite and starting to implement a 24/7 support level. There is already team capacity which we increased. There is still a way to go, and we are now also focusing on the qualification of these people to get them introduced to our technology to support that. Europe is the center of innovation.
Here, we are very focused on our R&D work, developing our product lines, developing new products, and all markets are very balanced happening in Europe. There is no special market that is having a higher share over here. Asia is the strongest region where we are in. For material solutions, the energy sector is the most important area which we are addressing, and in metrology, it's the semiconductor industry. With our 24/7 support, we especially increased our capacity in Taiwan and Korea already. Here, it's still a way to go, also in qualification of the team, but we are on a good way to further implement this new structure. We expanded our footprint in Asia already with a new office that we opened in Japan just a few days ago.
We got the announcement that finally there is a registration happened, and we are closely following India as there are more potentials for us in the future available, and we will work on a local presence there as well. On the strategic investment side, we are preparing the organization for sustainable growth. This means, on the one-hand side, strengthening our R&D capacity, working or investing in our operational excellence for new tool solutions, for example, like a new CRM tool, implementing and improving our processes. It also means that we have to have the right company culture all over the world. You see that we have started our strategy with nearly 900 people, and we will come to at least 1,400 people in 2028.
We are very closely focused also on developing the people, getting them to their responsibilities, involving them in the processes to have that growth, to develop this company, and yeah, getting everyone on the right mindset to do so. For example, we just recently, in the end of June, had a very big PVA summit with inviting all the people worldwide to learn more about our strategy, about our aims, about the products, and yeah, this was added with workshops and sales and service to get everyone on the same path. On the other side, M&A is something that is happening also on the way of our strategic goals. You already see some samples for that with companies that we got on our portfolio. This is pretty much also how we are thinking about M&A in PVA.
First of all, the most important thing is the technology fit, and it has to support our regional development. Of course, there has to be a potential to scale activities with our M&A activities. This can be, for example, retirement concepts like we have had with MPA industry in the past already, which we included and involved into PVA TePla, but also things like startup companies, new technologies like Dive Imaging Systems. We are prepared for both of that. For the fourth cornerstone, I would like to give you the opportunity to hear that directly from Dr. Jan Pfeiffer, our Vice President of R&D, to get you more color on his thoughts as well for the R&D part.
Thank you, Jalin. In contrast to last year's Capital Markets Days, the R&D side will be a little bit shorter today because we have a focus on more the monetary side and more the strategy side. Anyways, I cannot emphasize enough that R&D is one of the most important pillars for, let's say, our strategic development in the future because obviously everything rotates around the central point here, which means evolve into a solution provider. What does that mean?
That does mean that our heritage from, let's say, a very specialized and very qualified, with a high excellence of design capacity, machine and tools designing company has to move a little bit in order to adapt to, let's say, the market challenges we have, like shorter time to markets, complex market structures, but also the demand from customers that want to be us as a tool provider to become a partner. For that, we have to not only understand how to design tools, how to make the tools, how to make excellent metrology and materials equipment, we have to understand how they operate, how they work, where the applications are, how to use them because that's the expectation on us. I mean, this was always kind of a part of our agenda from the beginning of PVA TePla, but it was not completely part of our strategic agenda.
This changed in 2024 with the introduction of the technology hub. It's been now more or less 18 months, which were very exciting, especially for me, but also for all PVA TePla and all the teams. Now we are counting a group or organization which is counting 15 people from all over science, be it chemistry, material science, but also computational sciences, all working on more strategic development topics which are not completely addressing like design of tools. Of course, it's always a discourse when you're working with equipment, when you're working on process design, materials design, you end up having the discussion with the designing tools, which also helps the improvement of the applications and also of the solutions we provide. Another benefit, I talked about the faster time to market, that's more or less obvious.
If somebody wants to start with a complex metrology task or a complex synthesis task like crystal growing, of course, it is more helpful if you, as a system provider, can also help with the introduction of the processes onsite, starting growing faster, starting measuring faster. I think the time to market is just easier because this reduces, of course, the investment risk of our customers. There are also other points, like, of course, the synergy. I mentioned that we're doing research not only in our small group or in the small technology hub groups, but we are catching up all R&D people, all design people, and also sales people, obviously, and service people as well. This generates internal cross-company synergies, which are already coming up with fruits. We will see that in a later slide.
We are becoming a focal point, like a pivot point for a contact between larger scale research and development institutes and companies to get in touch with us, to have a reasonable connection with PVA TePla, and everything is a little bit more coordinated on that. This is the point on the left side. We are talking about R&D partnerships here. A very interesting one already. We thought we've been busy in the last year. A very interesting one is the partnership with the Leibniz Institute in Berlin, which is connected to growing aluminum nitride. I think in the last year, and I will also show you a little bit about silicon carbide, aluminum nitride is a rather interesting material, especially from the properties point of view. It has a few properties which are even superior to silicon carbide.
The challenge here with this material is you can see it on the size. It's like 4" on is a little bit on the fringe. There is a little bit of movement to go until you end up with a size you can use for normal fabs to create devices and come to the, let's say, high commercialization. This is something which is rather fitting to our strategy because this is something on the scope of two, three, five years, which might become interesting. We are involved in more or less all European initiatives connected to aluminum nitride. Also, very interesting about aluminum nitride, of course, it's the device side. It has the properties which might be a good complementary to silicon carbide.
A very interesting strategic point of view of aluminum nitride is that it also can be used for UV diodes. It's generating UV light, which can be also not only used for power applications, but also medical, disinfection. It's another market which might become potentially interesting. Another partnership, more, I would say, more intense partnership. You can see it in the second bullet points. IMEC is an old partner, I would say. Dr. Peter Tsourates could tell stories about that. It's like 20 years we are working with them, especially on the scanning acoustic microscopy side. In the last year, we ended to identify our work with them. We're not only looking at the sum, we are having a look of all the wide portfolio of metrology solutions because that makes sense. These guys are working on nano and microelectronics.
They know what the devices need, what the manufacturing chains are. It makes complete sense to go into this course and find out what the potential applications of the new technologies can come up with. Another additional point is, of course, the last bullet point. Out of these discussions, you come up with new ideas going a little bit away from the normal semi-materials like silicon or also silicon carbide for power electronics. An idea which came out, which is not completely new, it has been presented by many companies before, is highly pure silicon carbide, which is transparent and can be used for optical applications, but also defense and high frequency and quantum computing as a, let's say, as a stepping stone between now available technologies and the aimed-on technologies, which might become very challenging later on. That's for the outside.
Internal, I was saying it was 18 months of hard work, and we are very happy and very pleased that also since we have seen ourselves one year ago, there was a lot of movement. Our facility is completely operational. I would have loved to welcome you to PVA TePla, but of course, London is not bad at all. Everything is running. We are moving on a fast pace, so the project plans on the silicon carbide initiative, that's how we call it right now, are more than fulfilled. We are moving faster on all sizes. We're looking at 6" growing process. I mentioned that during your visit in Berenberg. 6" is the baseline. 6" silicon carbide material. I have a sample here from our lab. I would like to show it around. It's not completely polished.
That's for some reason because we want to have proof that it's from our lab. You cannot buy not completely polished packs, so that's really a one which came out of our machines. That's the baseline. The aim was actually to be finished by the end of this year with the process. I can state at the moment that we have a baseline process. We can commercialize together with the equipment by this summer. We're complete. The pack you can see is already something a partner could use to start his operational work on the PVT growth process. Also, on the 8" side, the very interesting side for larger devices, high-end devices, and also in the utilization of fabs, we are growing the first crystals, more or less one year earlier than planned.
The first five crystals have been grown this summer and are expected to be completed early next year with the growth runs. The reason why we are moving that fast is rather obvious. With all the infrastructure we set up and with the teams we set up, we are capable of running 20 crystals- 25 crystals a month, which is helping us to move fast and also with simulation paths. Talking about synergies and cross-references, when you start developing these things, operating equipment, you find out that there are potentials for other applications and other systems when you talk to designers. What we find out, powder synthesis is a topic. Silicon carbide powder as a feedstock for the growth is available. That's not the biggest issue, but in distinct purity, you need for special silicon carbide qualities, there is still room to improve. That's something we implemented in our work.
The first powder synthesis system is being designed right now and will be available. That's something which came out of the development. Also, annealing systems, you can see the crystal, it seems very sturdy, but when it comes out of the growth, there are stresses inherent. You want to release the stresses, heat it up again without compromising the quality. That's maybe one of the tasks for annealing system. The first crystal has to be analyzed. What should we do to analyze them? We have scanning acoustic microscopy in-house. Why not try that? That became a very nice solution for the bulk inspection. The bulk inspection for silicon carbide is rather important because the usual inspection methods before starting the epitaxy, the device manufacturing, are BEFA level-based.
You have the growth, which takes four months, you have the cutting, you have the grinding, you have all the cost-generating factors, and then you start checking, which might mean that you have a lot of money because the quality is not completely right. You can check that in advance using a scanning acoustic bulk analyzing. Also, the laser-based, optical-based methods, which are able to detect stresses, which is an established method for silicon, we have been able to adapt for silicon carbide as well. It was not completely easy, but we managed that as well. There are existing metrology solutions which are adapted to the applications, to the supply chain for silicon carbide, which is a rather interesting development and proof for the work we are moving on here. Nevertheless, we are here to talk about markets.
We thought that this is maybe a good jumping point to the silicon carbide because I showed you what silicon carbide is, how it works, where we're standing. The question is, what is the market doing? What are our expectations? Where should we move on? The key advantages of silicon carbide, I think I cannot talk too much about that because it's just everywhere it can be popped up. It's a far superior material when it comes to transferring high energies. If you want to charge electric vehicles, you want to charge them fast. That's where silicon carbide comes into place. If you have also an electrical car, there are also silicon carbide components inside it. If you want to store energy, high amounts of energy storing into a battery, of course, you need something to transverse this. Silicon carbide is as well also for stationary.
Of course, defense is always interested in silicon carbide as well. The material is intriguing and it was highly dynamic. Depending on what time of the year and what analysts you see, the annual growth rates vary a little bit and also the distribution between 6" and 8" materials. We are always looking with a very, very interested eye on, let's say, what the developments here are. The latest developments show us a very interesting picture. We have an expected growth on silicon carbide devices, so the final product, of 22% until 2029. We can see that the vapor fab equipment will not grow too much. That's what, let's say, the analyzer says.
That might be a little bit concerning, but when we look at the physical vapor transfer system, which is, let's say, the product we would like to introduce into the market, the situation is a little bit different. It's still growing. It will continue to grow. The reason for that is rather obvious. Of course, I've been talking about the yield. Still, despite the fact that there is a lot of capacity to create silicon carbide crystals, the yield is not very high. People are working on improving that. There will still be demand. If the yield doesn't go up, more machines have to be set up.
Additionally, talking about special qualities, high purity silicon carbide, special crystal structure silicon carbide, larger crystals, it's been presented as a semicon, will require that you need to improve also on the systems level and replace all their smaller systems in order to have the possibility to be more flexible on the silicon carbide quality. That is the explanation why the systems are still expecting to grow slightly. There is another upside for PVA TePla, as I mentioned, the metrology side. Of course, as the industrialization of the devices moves on and the amount of devices we move on, there will still be a rising demand of measuring solutions, quality assurance, and also analysis. That's an upside we can see here as well. In our U.S.
pieces, now we have not only the machine, we have the feedstock production know-how, we have the feedstock machine, we know how to grow crystals and support that to our customers, and we have the entire value chain. We are in discussions with also post-processing providers. That's a nice partnership we can provide to our customers, especially across the value chain. That means right now, it is not always easy to say. We are looking at the open PVT market. Of course, there are some closed areas where companies have their own machines. We are talking now about 16% of market share with the aim. The midterm aim is around 25%. That would be the aim for the silicon carbide. Examples, I think the players are well known to the group here, at least. That's our expectation. I will get back to Jalin then.
Thanks, Jan, for that great run through our R&D activities that we were running over the last year. I think that gave you a little insight about what also came out of that and that we are not just wasting money with R&D. We are really focusing on market potentials. Now I would like to summarize a little bit. As you, as investors and analysts, are very number-focused, we thought this might be a very great overview for you to see what we just explained on the qualitative side and how growth is happening in these single areas, how we are working to finally achieve our targets to transport that a little bit into a picture, which is very well understandable for you. You've seen that all our technologies are having or contributing to that development.
There's nothing which we are doing which is not having a benefit into that picture. The strongest driver of growth for that timeframe is the metrology business on the short and midterm. With acoustic, we are having the most organic growth. With optical technology, we are having a combination of mix in actual technologies which are contributing organically, but also new technologies which we got on board. In the area of material solutions, it's more about balancing our revenue streams in the certain areas. Solid development in synthesis and refining technology and a nice growth in joining and surface treatment that will come up. Altogether, we are aiming to achieve $500 million in sales with that setup. I think that gives you the transparency of what you already heard over the last few minutes. This is the right time to now end this section.
Have a coffee, have discussions with our experts. We are meeting here in 30 minutes again to go on with the market part.
you, gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming. It's a great pleasure for me to give you today an overview about our metrology's activities in the field of semiconductor. We can say that PVA TePla is well positioned along the entire semiconductor value chain. We have metrology, material solutions, and inside metrology, scanning acoustic technology, optical measurement technology, scanning infrared, and chemical VPD technology. If you look to the different areas of the value chain, if you look for acoustic into raw materials, we can provide solutions to scan silicon ingots with acoustic microscopy to detect volume defects, the same as we do for silicon carbide. In the front end, we have 2D, 3D inspection solutions for bonded wafers, for TSVs, for HBM, for hybrid bonding solutions. In the back end, we have solutions for complete 3D inspection of IC packages, modules, DCB, IGBTs, for an example, for e-vehicles.
The focus for acoustic microscopy is we have tools for failure analysis research. We have fully automated wafer scanning tools compatible to E84. In the back end, we have also complete fully automated solutions available. In the field of optical inspection, you can also inspect raw materials with optical systems, for an example, if the doping of the material is not so strong, you can also detect defects in silicon ingots or in silicon carbide. Of course, surface inspection is an issue, even in the front end and in the back end, of course, surface inspection. Regarding chemical methods, VPD systems are very well established in semiconductor fabs, for an example, to measure on wafer blanks, organic, non-organic, metallic contaminations. This is important for the quality of a process line. That's why we will also continue to develop chemical VPD systems for contamination inspection in semiconductor fabs.
If you look from the traditional devices to today's advanced architectures, we can say in the past we had a simple CPU in the field of logic, inspect for packaging defects, for memories, we had DRAM flash for the inspection, for power devices, MOSFETs, IGBTs, and for sensors, MEMS, and pressure sensors. Today, everything is getting more complex, more complicated. Next to the CPU, we have a GPU. We have to inspect complete chiplets for AI. In the field of memory, this is at the moment the most exciting way of inspection. We have stacks of eight devices, in the future, 16 devices, and we have to inspect the interfaces between the eight and the 16 devices in a high-resolution way to detect the interface defects, to detect the interconnectors, and this is in principle a big task for the company to make this possible and enable this.
In the field of power, we have to inspect silicon carbide devices, gallium nitride, high-doped silicon, DCBs, IGBTs, sintering areas and layers. In the field of sensor, we have LIDAR sensors for autonomous driving. We have LED sensors for advanced LED solutions. Last but not least, ways of inspection. This is always the two-dimensional way for staining, contamination, surface bow, and the volume inspection way for full depths, layer interfaces, interconnects, TSVs, and volume defects. If you look to devices and packaging methods, we can say that scanning acoustic microscopy is getting more and more important. This is the case for AI chiplets. We are looking into heterogeneous integration structures, high interconnect density. The risk is in the bonding field. We have packaging methods like fusion bonding, hybrid bonding, which needs to inspect wafer-to-wafer, die-to-wafer architecture. In the HBM field, this is what I mentioned before.
We have to inspect up to 16 layers for hybrid memory chips and the packaging methods. This is fan-out packaging, wafer-level packaging. For 3D NAND, we have the same story. The layer scaling is larger than 200. We have to look to structural integrity. We have risks like bar page defect in the interfaces and the packaging methods, for an example, panel technology. If you look to our portfolio, we can say that in the current 3D and system integration world, acoustic microscopy offers the highest flexibility and accuracy at competitive prices against other technologies. If we compare methods for surface inspection with volumetric inspection, we have in the world of surface inspection the optical microscopy, where we can resolve structures in the sub-micrometer range. We have scanning electron microscopy, which can provide images from surfaces in the range up to 2nm .
We have laser scanning microscopy for sub-micrometer range detection. We have X-ray for sub-micrometer range detection in 2D. Even ultrasound can be used for optical inspection or for inspection of surfaces, even if you look to surface bow, surface inclusions, and other surface defects. If you look to volumetric inspection, if you want to look into the volume of a package, a device or IGBT module or a wafer, you have only three options. One option is infrared technology. The second option is 3D X-ray technology. The third option is scanning acoustic technology. For laser infrared, the problem is if you have metallic layers in the package, X-ray inspection will not be possible. That means this is a very limited case. For 3D X-ray systems, you can only look to a smaller area.
The time for set up an image and set up a 3D reconstruction can be up to 10 hours. That means it's very small, very time-consuming. In scanning acoustic technology, you are more or less free. You have the best balance of resolution, depth, and speed. Resolution from 5µm- 50µm in XY. The set resolution is the most important in acoustic microscopy. You can also detect gaps with 10nm . This is 100 angström, which is not possible with optical microscopy or with 3D X-ray. From this point of view, we focus on the detection of voids, cracks, delaminations, bonded interfaces, die-to-wafer, wafer-to-wafer, and TSV structures. If we look to the market of scanning acoustic inspection systems, the general market for metrology wafer fab equipment will grow with 6% from 2025 to 2031. For acoustic microscopy, the market will grow with 9% from 2025 to 2031.
We have other factors which can influence the market. This is our new requirement for high-end packaging. That's why we believe that acoustic microscopy is our primary growth driver. At the moment, in acoustic microscopy, we have 22% market share. In the next two years, we hope to get 40% market share with our inline tools, with our failure analysis tools, and the unique selling points we have in acoustic microscopy. This is certainly our transducer business. We produce our own acoustic lenses from 20 megahertz up to 1,000 megahertz. We produce more than 2,000 lenses for our tools. We have new technologies in mind that we integrate in one transducer, two lenses or four lenses, to reduce the inspection time. We call this array transducer. We want to also introduce to the market array transducers with two focus points to penetrate HBM packages.
That means last but not least, we have a lot of unique selling points, also the pulse receiver, multifocus transducer, backend transmission that will keep us dominant in the market and will prepare PVA TePla to enter a market share up to 40% in about two years. If you look to, sorry, if you look to optical metrology, we entered in a collaboration with Sentech for a fully automated ellipsometry tool for 200mm and 300mm silicon, silicon carbide, and gallium nitride wafer market. The market of ellipsometry is more or less established. It's primarily used in epitaxy, chip processing, potential, and packaging. We will get in about two years 10% of the market. For us, it's an additional entry barrier in the optical inspection.
We can, in principle, introduce for these tools high throughput, high accuracy, competitive pricing, and high level of automation, which is coming from our auto wafer systems and our auto tray systems. We will present a prototype in November 2025. The first production system will be ready in quarter one, 2026. We will expect low seven-digit revenues in 2027. Another interesting technology, we will never copy existing technologies. That's why we enter into new hyperspectral vision inspection. This is a new technology, which is in principle an ellipsometer plus. We have thickness measurements on board. We can detect scratches, surface inclusions, staining. That means it's a kind of new technology in the field of optical inspection. The market we see, this is a semiconductor, with a 59%. This is PCB, this is 37% of the market share and bipolar plates.
Thanks to the speed and advantage of this new technology, it could be the future of fast optical wafer inspection in a few years. If you look to the growth rate of the inspection and measuring metrology market, with 8%, we have good chances to place a good product at the right time to the market. The next step in the development of our metrology field, we want to enter the X-ray market. The market growth of X-ray from 2025 to 2023 is about 8%. We want to introduce a system to the market which will provide better penetration, higher source energy, with a unique patent-protected objective lens, that we can achieve resolution below 100nm . The idea for this market, if you scan a 3D package on a 300mm wafer, you can produce a high-resolution analysis with a scanning acoustic microscopy tool.
You can also then highlight certain areas where you expect defects smaller than 1µm . We can combine complementary scanning acoustic microscopy with X-ray microscopy. This machine will be designed as a failure analysis tool with a six-axis eccentric stage in about two years. We will also introduce to the market a system with a 300 mm wafer stage in about three years. Thank you very much for your attention.
A warm welcome also from my side. I have the honor to introduce you to our core markets, which we serve into with our product portfolio and where we see growth potential for the next years. You learned a lot about the semiconductor market from Dr. Peter Tsourates. I would concentrate on the remaining markets which are of interest. It is energy and aerospace.
Looking at the energy market, we see a very dynamic, developing market, which is driven by a rising global energy demand. This rising global energy demand is related to data centers, to the transforming of mobility from fossil energies to electric vehicles. A global demand is increasing very strongly. At the same time, the energy industry has decarbonization targets. That means the energy industry is on the transition from the fossil energies to the renewable energies. This comes along with huge investments in that field of technology to integrate renewable energies within the energy sector. Up to 2025, this study suggests that or says that we have a global energy investment in the range of $3.3 million. Due to the net zero target, which is given for 2030, further investments have to be done to achieve finally $4.5 trillion. Where are the investments taking place?
Most of the investments are taking place in implementation and integration of renewable energies. You cannot think renewable energies without having storage capacity. It means storage is a huge point of investments. It's all about battery technology, but it's also about hydrogen technology, which is a center pillar for storage capacity extension within energy. Also, we have semiconductors. We learned about this with Dr. Peter Tsourates. What are the potentials for PVA TePla? We see ourselves well positioned with our product portfolio to serve the energy market. Here you have a slight overview of all our technologies that have potential to serve into energy. First, we have our crystal growth technology, silicon carbide crystal growth, silicon crystal growth, which is essential for power electronic devices that are needed in energy distribution and energy sector in general.
Then we have high temperature vacuum systems, which are mainly covering the joining technologies, diffusion bonding, and brazing that have special suitability for hydrogen technology, for vacuum interrupters. I come to that point later. Of course, systems for synthesis, new materials, which are relevant for the battery industry in particular. Plasma technology, which is a surface technology, contributes to the power electronic product in the energy sector. Finally, the quality control via scanning acoustic microscopy, which is relevant and increasingly used for inspecting critical components, as battery modules and semiconductor or high-power electronic devices. Let me focus now on the, let me highlight in more detail the technologies that are relevant for the energy sector. The first technology class I would like to emphasize is joining technology. Here, in particular, our diffusion bonding technology. I would not step too much into detail about the process details of diffusion bonding.
Just want to say that the main characteristic of diffusion bonding is that it's a solid state joining process. That means there is no filler material involved. Thus, the joints have a very perfect microstructure, and you can create with that technology high-integrity joints that, because of the specific microstructure, have very high strengths, have high temperature stability, and corrosion resistance. That means that this type of joining technology has a special suitability in those applications where other joining technologies fail because the joining technology of diffusion bonding provides such extraordinary high qualities in joining. The major applications we are focusing, especially within the energy sector, are heat exchangers that are arranged as multi-layer components that have microchannels and that are used for cooling tasks, especially in the green hydrogen electrolysis technology and in waste heat recovery.
Those technologies have a demand for cooling devices that can withstand most severe service conditions. What does it mean? It does mean that in those applications of hydrogen electrolysis and waste heat recovery, heat exchangers are exposed to extremely high pressures, high temperatures, and corrosion atmospheres and corrosion liquids. That's the major application we have here and where the beneficial properties of diffusion bonding can be applied in a very beneficial way. In order that you can imagine a little bit about what I'm talking about when I talk about microchannel heat exchangers, I have a slight sample that gives you a section and an idea about the complexity of the multi-layered parts. This is a typical example of application of diffusion bonding. If you look at the market and our market share in diffusion bonding, we have first to state that the diffusion bonding market is highly fragmented.
This is the reason why we have, with our special application in that field of technology, a market share of a minor market share of 5% in the overall global vacuum diffusion bonding system market. Considering the, let's say, specific application of special high-pressure resistant, high-temperature resistant heat exchangers, our market share, of course, is significantly higher, because we are there focused on this application. We have achieved an established, strong leading technological position and, over the years, have gained significant references in the market, dealing with those types of heat exchangers for energy application. The growth potential for this joining technology in this energy market can be derived and is driven by the green hydrogen technology, of course, and the energy-saving technologies like waste heat recovery. What are our USPs in that field of technology? We are at the forefront of diffusion bonding technology.
We have, for many years now, an R&D center within PVA TePla where we develop processes in diffusion bonding, where we do contract services for small and medium-sized customers. We have a lot of process know-how within this type of technology. We have very advanced machines developed over the years in that type of technology so that we can really offer a comprehensive solution, technology solution to our customers, really starting from the R&D side, over the process development to the tool and to the equipment and finally also to metrology solutions that are of essence for quality inspection of diffusion-bonded parts as well. Nice synergy also to our colleagues from the metrology side. Apart from that, we are continuously setting new standards, new solutions on the equipment side, developing new tools with increased utilization, efficiency, and also performance in that field of technology.
Looking at the projections for the market, we see for 2028, or let's say on the medium-term market, on the medium-term timescale, a market share of 15% of our technologies, because of the strong growth potential within this new energies and hydrogen technology. Another joining technology I want to focus on that has also strong relevance to the energy market is vacuum brazing technology. In vacuum brazing, technically speaking, the difference or the main characteristic is that the joint is performed by using filler materials, low-melting filler materials that in the end create the joint. The major advantage of using vacuum brazing technology is that with this technology, we enable the realization of really complex shaped components and also multimaterial configurations. That is probably the most important favor of using vacuum brazing technology.
One part, which is probably the most highly sophisticated one, if we look at brazing technology, is this vacuum interrupter, which I'll show it around, which consists of numbers of different materials. You can identify ceramic materials, copper materials, stainless steel, contact materials. All these materials, complex shaped, design is realized in a one-shot brazing process. This shows really very perfectly the capabilities of this high advanced technology. What is the story about vacuum interrupters? These vacuum interrupters are essential components of the grid infrastructure. They are used to ensure safe transmission and distribution of electrical energy. It's a core product for modernization of grids, for extension of grids, and for transmission of electrical power in the future. Over the years, PVA TePla has established to a leading player in that specific field of application, vacuum interrupters. We have a strong market presence in that section.
You see here some specific and possible companies that need this technology. These are energy companies, electrical power companies that are engaged in this vacuum interrupter business. Again here, same story as with diffusion bonding. The market is very fragmented. The market share on high-temperature vacuum brazing equipment of PVA TePla is in the range of 7%. Looking again into the specific application of vacuum interrupters, the market share is significantly higher. We can say that in that field of technology, we are close to, well, we are a market-leading company. For the future, we look forward to growth in this market significantly. This is, of course, supported by the driving forces for this component. As I said, it's an essential part of the grid infrastructure. The growth perspectives are driven by the energy transition and the related grid expansion and the modernization of the grid infrastructure.
There's another topic which fosters the application or which fosters the technology of vacuum interrupters, vacuum-based vacuum interrupters, which is regulatory implications of the ban of climate-harmful gases like SF6, which are banned, or will be banned in the next years. This gives another, let's say, boost to the vacuum interrupter business as especially the high-voltage interrupters are still insulated with this climate-active gas. By banning this harmful gas, vacuum interrupter comes into focus or the vacuum brazing technology comes into focus. Indeed, we have already established a new product within this special new application of vacuum interrupters, the high-voltage vacuum interrupters. We are partnering with a strong industrial partner or a strong customer that is the benchmark in that technology, who is the first player who made the transition from the SF6 insulated interrupters to the vacuum-brazed interrupters. The perspective, as I said, growth perspectives are excellent.
We will participate in the growth potential of this product and see a medium-term market share of 8%. It's a rather small increase, but the reason behind is that we have already the major market share in this specific business. It's difficult to outgrow the market, but it's a slight growth within the overall market share of the overall high-temperature vacuum brazing equipment. A third topic, which is relevant for the energy market, of course, is the batteries. When we talk about batteries, public discussion about batteries is always about mobility. It's always about electrical vehicles. Batteries are essential, crucial parts for energy application as well. If you want to integrate renewable energies, you need to have storage capacity. The storage capacity can be generated by or can be built up by using power-to-gas scenarios like hydrogen technology.
Batteries are an essential part of this concept because batteries can immediately store electrical power and can release electrical power to the grid. Very important for the grid shaving topic, the batteries. Within batteries, we see a midterm opportunity for us at PVA TePla on the battery material side, especially on the anode side of the batteries, which typically, or nowadays, is mainly designed with graphite as anode materials. Today, about 90% of anode materials in lithium-ion batteries are made of graphites or synthetic graphites and also natural graphites. As we are, for many years, involved in graphite treatment, graphite purification, it was said this morning, semi-grade graphite purification is one of our major targets. Yes, it is that. We have some access to that technology, but we are very much looking on the next generation of materials on the battery side.
What we observe is a trend to alternative anode materials to achieve higher energy density. This trend goes into silicon-based compound materials that have significantly higher energy densities than graphite, pure graphite anode materials. The second topic, very important for us as well, is the integration of nanomaterials, like nanowires or nanotubes, into battery anode materials design. Especially here, we have a strong potential for participation in that field of technology as we have, with our product portfolio, synergetic potential to contribute to this very specific technology. The second trend we can observe is that supply chain resilience is explored by many players, as most of the graphites are coming from the Chinese market. China is the biggest player in graphite market. All the natural graphite mines or most of the natural graphite mines are located in China.
There is a strong demand for becoming more resilient for China being the supplier. One strategy to do that is synthesizing graphite or carbon-based material out of organic feedstock. That is something which is becoming more and more important and where we have some very interesting initial contacts to relevant players exploring this technology to get more resilient on the supply chain on graphite. What is our growth potential here and our approach? How do we want to participate in this emerging market of batteries? First of all, we have decades of experience in semi-grade graphite purification, which is important for this field of application in highly customized solutions. We are not the battery experts, but we are experts in designing tools according to the needs of customers.
Our major target for participating in this technology is the identification and cooperation with leading technology players that have new materials under R&D that are close to market entry. To be in contact with those players in a very early stage of market entry is our core way, or beneficial way, to enter this specific market. For this, we have established a battery competence team within PVA TePla that is dealing with the business development in that specific application. Yeah, we can say today that this approach is really valid because we already have established strong partnerships with relevant players here that are at the, let's say, at the edge from the prototype to the production scale. The last market I'd like to focus on is the aerospace market, which also has some great potential for us to serve in that special field of technology market.
What is the major challenge of the aerospace industry? It's, of course, cost reduction. It's the reduction of fuel consumption, and that leads to the demand to have airplanes with lightweight construction and very high-efficient fuel combustion processes. One group of materials which perfectly serves to the needs of aerospace technology is the so-called CMC materials. CMC stands for ceramic matrix composites. In easy words, it's a fiber network part that is infiltrated by a matrix component, a ceramic matrix component, to form a composite material. It's very difficult to explain.
The essence out of this is that those special materials, CMC ceramic materials, combine the beneficial properties of high-temperature metals on the one side with the beneficial properties of solid ceramics on the other side. This means materials with very high temperature stability, very high corrosion resistance, but at the same time, very lightweight, or it's a small density, and a very good fracture toughness. That is why these material types are ideally suited for aerospace applications, especially in aero engines, and there, especially in the hot section of the aero engine and in the area of the combustion chamber of the aero engine. We see here that the growth potential of CMC materials is really huge. There is 13% CAGR growth potential.
Most of this growth is generated by aerospace revenue, but also in defense, there is significant growth potential for this type of material, as also here there are applications for high-temperature heat shield protection, for example, in hypersonic vehicles, re-entry vehicles, missiles, and so on. This is why also in this area, CMC materials are of great interest and will grow significantly over the next years. What does this have to do with PVA? At PVA TePla, we have the production equipment to synthesize the ceramic matrix composites within the so-called chemical vapor infiltration or chemical vapor deposition technology. This is the core process for this type of material. In very simple words, we have a fiber preform, which is put into the reaction chamber of a CVI equipment.
Then a precursor gas, which is let into this reaction chamber, decomposes at high temperature, coats or establishes a coating around the fibers, filling those pores between the fibers, and then generating a ceramic matrix between the fiber network. PVA TePla, with its subsidiary NTA, has a strong leading market position in this specific field of technology, which is 20% of the total market of CVD, CVI, vacuum furnaces. Strong growth potentials are given in the future by aerospace and defense applications, especially aircraft engine components, thermal protection systems, and so on. What do we aim at for this type of technology? What we want to focus on is increasing the market share for CVI, CVD systems, participate in the growth potential of CMC materials, which I showed in the last slide.
By doing so, we are confident to achieve a 30% market share on the midterm scale, mainly driven by CMC materials. There are also other applications in that field of technology, but CMC is probably the most potential one and the most interesting one for the future. To achieve this, we need to increase our regional focus, especially in North America. North America is the most attractive region for CMC material and the application for CMC material because it's the most important market for aerospace and defense. This is the region where the market is growing very fast. If we want to participate in that market growth, we need to increase our footprint in North America. As Jalin Ketter already explained this morning, we are on the way to improve our setup there and to better serve the markets in that area of application.
Last but not least, we would try to get better access to governmental contracts in North America, which are especially relevant for defense applications. This is also something we are targeting for the future. Finally, our R&D hub is continually exploring promising new applications in that field of technology, CVD, CVI. We never stand still. Always working on new applications, optimizing tools, and trying to deliver the best equipment available for this application. Thank you so far. That's from my side. Thank you.
Thanks, Udo and Peter, for that nice view on the market side. I would like to close that chapter a little bit for you. This is a consolidation on the highlights that you just saw, reminding you how that's connected to our strategy. On the metrology side, we have a strong focus on the semiconductor market. On the one hand, with the development of our acoustic metrology, which has a lot of organic growth potential, we are addressing the potential that Peter explained, especially in the semiconductor backend coming with new applications and processes that we are supporting in that field. On the optical side, it's a combination of organic growth and new technologies that we are developing, which are also addressing further needs that you just see on the market view.
In the material solutions area, there are exciting technologies in addition to the base technologies that we did not include in that presentation today that are coming with fast-growing markets and are giving long-term perspectives with technology which is improving production processes at the customer side. This is giving a benefit to customers, also saving costs in their production processes, which we are providing to the market. Now let's see how that all fits into the financials. Markus, I would now hand over to you to give us an overview on the financial side.
Thank you very much, Jalin. Yeah, warm welcome also from my side. Since the Capital Markets Day in 2024, where we announced the strategy for midterm $500 million in sales, we received many questions from you. What are the drivers to go to $500 million? How will the margins look like when you're there? What are the CapEx required to double your sales? Today, we already gave you some color on the strategy and markets, and I would like to show you how this all reflects into our financials. Before we take a look at the future, let's take a moment to look back where we are coming from. Over the last 10 years, you can see that we showed a tremendous growth. Looking at 2020 with $137 million to 2024 with $270 million, we more or less doubled our revenues. This has been achieved with growth in both segments.
In semiconductor, metrology also played an important role with this growth path. Growth alone isn't what we're achieving or looking for. We were pursuing a profitable growth strategy and not only doubled our sales, we also doubled our gross profit from $43 million in 2020 to $88 million last year. At the same time, we not only kept our gross margin around 30% stable. In 2024, it increased to 33%, and since then, it has been confirmed in Q1 and Q2. The same goes for EBITDA. It has been doubled from 2020 with $22.7 million- $47.7 million or $48 million in 2024. For 2025, we confirmed our guidance to be at the lower end of the bandwidth of $260- $280 million in sales and an EBITDA of $34 million- $39 million, which is impacted by strategic investments in sales and R&D.
What are the building blocks to increase our sales from last year's $270 million- $500 million in 2028? There are three important drivers here. The first one is market growth. We've shown you what we are expecting in the individual markets, how they are developing. Here, we especially want to grow in our established markets, and that goes especially for metrology, where we want to qualify with new and existing customers with a focus on North America and Asia. We also discussed new technologies coming from R&D and M&A, and that's also a very important part for us. We expect significant contributions to our revenue growth coming from new technologies. Here, we are showing our engineering excellence by building prototypes for the energy sector and scaling with our customers to production. Also in metrology, we discussed new exciting technologies like the hyperspectral vision and ellipsometry.
The third important part is sales and service expansion. We've shown you that we want to grow our market share in many markets. This is to be achieved by becoming more proactive, as Jalin explained, by hiring more people who are working in the market, supportive IT tools, and also by being closer. We have already showrooms in North America, and we're extending this to be very close to our customers, which gives us the possibility to showcase the capabilities of our systems right where our customers are without the need that they have to come to us to Germany. We also want to increase the revenues from recurrent after-sales business from 15%- 20% by, again, hiring more people working in the market, being closer with our customers, having the right tools included in our CRM.
We will directly have a service module, but also with our PVA portal as an Internet of Things, which gives us the direct connection to our systems with our customers and gives us the possibility to work more proactively in after-sales. Let's take a closer look at how the growth opportunities are by segment. Before we go into the details, I would like to make a quick announcement. In the past, our reporting segments have been semiconductor and industrial systems. In the course of 2026, we will change our reporting segments to metrology and material solutions to give you better information and better view in our development over the application or realization of our strategy. In metrology, we're aiming to double or more than double our sales from $98 million to midpoint $235 million.
Doing so, we will balance the revenue streams coming from both segments to have a more stable business in the future because material solutions are a little bit more cyclical than in the metrology business. We want to grow, especially with the acoustic metrology, because we are seeing here a growing market due to more and more complex production technologies with a need for more metrology. We want to increase our market share to up to 40%. In the optical metrology, we're already on our R&D roadmap active to extend our technology from the front end to the back end and packaging. We'll also add new technologies like the already mentioned hyperspectral vision and ellipsometry to contribute to our growth here. For the chemical metrology, we will, in 2026, based on our R&D roadmap, increase throughput and automation, which will help us grow the business.
In the midterm, post the growth phase, we're looking at gross margin between 50% and 55% in metrology. In material solutions, we have four different technology clusters we've spoken today about. The biggest one is synthesis, where we have systems for crystal growing, for silicon, silicon carbide, and other compound materials. We also have the powder synthesis for our node materials, where we want to grow from prototype to production scale. You just mentioned CVD, CVI technology, which is relevant for aerospace and defense in particular. In joining, we want to participate in the grid transformation with our brazing technology for mid and high voltage vacuum interrupters. In diffusion bonding with the liquefication of hydrogen, waste heat recovery, and green hydrogen. In total, we are expecting here, in the midterm, after the post-growth phase, a gross margin between 28% and 33%.
In total, for our consolidated statement, this means an increase from 32.6% in gross margin to 38%- 43%. In the EBITDA, from 7.7%- 20%- 25%. Let's close the gap between the gross profit and the EBITDA by taking a closer look at our overheads. We believe in the past, we had a rather low R&D intensity with 4.7% last year. We believe that our technology has the potential that it's worth to invest more in R&D here. We are aiming at an R&D intensity of up to 10% in 2028, which translates in the midpoint to $50 million. It's a slight difference in the margins. In the distribution costs, we're seeing an increase from $18.5 million-$ 30 million, which on the other hand is a decrease in comparison to the sales from 6.8%- 6%.
The main drivers here are the investments in salespeople for our systems and after-sales, the supportive IT tools, but also variable costs for packaging and shipping. In the administrative costs, we're expecting a decrease from 7.6% down to 5%. In total, we're looking at overhead costs at the rate of 21% or $105 million, which is highly impacted by our investments in R&D. Before we go into the details of the CAPEX, I would like to take the chance to say a couple of words about our business model, because it's important to understand our CAPEX strategy and development. Our business model has a rather low capital intensity. More or less what we need is a production hall, a crane, and a clean room facility. The value creation comes from engineering and assembly, so it's quite easy to scale.
Looking at the historical and future CAPEX investments, you can see that we're currently in the middle of a CAPEX cycle, which is ending next year and then returning to a more sustainable maintenance level, which more or less reflects the depreciation and amortization we're expecting. What have we done so far? We created two new production halls in Wittenberg, where our HQ is, and we opened a new facility in Italy to produce our vessels. We set up the technology hub with our comprehensive approach to R&D. This year, we will extend our production in Jena and invest in the crystal growing process for 8" . In the future, we will expand our production in France for the CVD and CVI technology and in North America. What we're seeing here in all three different phases are demo systems.
We talked about the showrooms, and it's important that we're having our systems close to the customers to showcase under real-world conditions what's possible with our systems. In the past, they had to travel to somewhere in Germany to see what's possible, and now we're bringing the systems to where our customers are, especially in North America and Asia. CAPEX is closely connected to cash flows. Before we go into the details, we thought it's maybe a good idea to give a more general explanation of how cash flow works in our material solutions business. Because when we're looking at the cash flow visualization on the next slide, you will see that it's very hard to read and very easy to misinterpret. Looking here at a typical project in material solutions, you can say there are three distinctive phases.
First is an engineering phase, followed by a sourcing of material and assembly phase, which is then finalized with an onsite installation at the customer. Usually, these three phases take 12 to 18 months. Over the 18 months, or 12 to 18 months, we're receiving three payments in a structure of 30-60-10 in general for individual systems. Larger projects have tailored payment plans, so we're always there cash positive. With this structure, we're starting with the first prepayment and order intake. We're here net working capital negative. Then we're sourcing the material until we receive the payment of 60% shortly before delivery. This means we're then a bit cash negative here. If you look at one individual project, it looks like, okay, you need financing.
If you look at all the projects in their different phases, in the past, we were always able to finance our working capital with the operational cash flow. Now let's take what I was referring to when I said it looks a little bit cyclical and volatile. It might look volatile from the outside, but it's very predictable from the inside because it's following a clear contractual structure. It's not that we're earning money and then we're wasting money. It's like we're getting the money from our customers, building the systems for them, and then recognizing the revenue over the time or at the moment in time. You can see the EBIT or net income increasing, but the payments in large chunks have already been received to finance the business. Metrology, on the other hand, is very different to that.
We're looking here at faster turning projects with four to six months. Often there are no prepayments because the customers just don't want to do the prepayments here. We're looking at high margins at the same time. We have a fast turning business with high margins. At the same time, to ensure critical components are available, we have different requirements for our working capital that critical parts are on stock. That's different to material solutions where almost all parts are sourced individually for the project. With the increase in metrology and the alignment we expect in the free cash flow in metrology to the EBIT, we're seeing a more stabilized and balanced cash flow in the future.
We're not concerned on our growth path here because with the increase we're expecting over time in the business, we're well positioned to finance the working capital coming from the operational cash flow of completed transactions. In case there is a more steep incline, which is great for us, we wouldn't say no there, we have revolving lines available to finance here temporarily the working capital. Going from cash flow to the U.S. tariffs, we wanted to give you a quick update here on the situation and our view because it's more or less for the last four or five months the elephant in the room. In general, we can say our contracts are made in a way that the tariffs are a risk for the customers after the order intake because DDP is an input term, something we're usually or in regular not doing.
On top of that, we have a task force which is monitoring the situation and development closely to be prepared. Looking at our order intake from North America in Q1 and Q2, we don't see an impact here from the tariffs. There are two different important things to understand. First, we have domestic business we're conducting in the U.S. for the U.S., which isn't that impacted, maybe for some parts we're sourcing there. On the other hand, the business from Germany to the U.S. is very, very focused on metrology. Here, we not only have the qualification phase as a market entry barrier, we believe our technology is here advanced, which gives us, again, a good position in negotiations. At the moment, with the trade deal between the EU and the U.S.
administration, there are reports, we don't have official confirmation here, that Zieme equipment is not subjected by the tariffs. As we explained today, we also want to grow with material solutions in the U.S. Here, we are considering all options, starting with the local sourcing and onsite assembly. That's something we're already doing in certain projects that the material is directly delivered to our customer's site and then assembled there. That's something which we could also do in the U.S., and this then could be extended to a local production in the U.S. Let me finalize here with a quick summary. We're seeing ourselves on a very good way to accelerate the top line to $500 million, being active in markets with structural growth, like the semiconductor market, energy market, and aerospace. We see a high demand for high purity materials and advanced metrology technology.
At the same time, we expect a profitability uplift after the growth period with a significant margin improvement, especially in the gross margin. We are looking at a robust cash flow, which helps us to grow the business over time without being dependent on external financing. With that, thank you very much for your attention. Now we're looking forward to your Q&A session or the Q&A session with you.
Okay, super stuff. Hi, Kevin. You're much, much on working?
No.
Yes?
I believe so.
I can ask a question anyways, I don't really mind.
I think you have to.
Yeah, no, I know.
That's fine.
We will hear you.
Yes, thank you. Just one on metrology, please. I wanted to understand a little bit better how many machines you need per factory or if there's a way of thinking about kind of customer throughput, both on the back end, also on the front end. Maybe any clues at all in how we can tie that into thinking about the demand for your machines going forward.
I think with the graphs that we gave to you, you can roughly calculate which amount of volume we are expecting. Coming from that business, the demand on the system or this exact number of systems are depending on which kind of production line we are supporting. There's also a difference between more packaging-related applications to front-end-related applications. That's not a general number that we can give to you.
I have more questions. Go ahead, Mr. Chamberlain. Just keep going.
Fair enough. A question on margins then. Just looking at your EBITDA targets there, you've got CAPEX coming down a little bit as well. Just moving down the P&L, could you help us kind of understand what that should look like, how much you're depreciating, when you might need a next CAPEX wave sort of post that as well, just so we can move from EBITDA to eventually net profit?
At the time of our guidance, the CAPEX cycle is then done. There is not significant more need of CAPEX that we are expecting from today. The next CAPEX cycle would then come with the next growth phase that we would expect afterwards. There is some room for growth within what we are doing now.
I mean, you can see it also in the past, there hasn't been a large CAPEX cycle, but we were also able to double our sales. It's easy to scale here our business.
On the material solutions side, I'm just wondering, sort of synthesis, how much of that do you expect to come from the silicon side of the equation and how much should come from other end markets?
The numbers for the new end markets, I think, are also pretty clear on that slide. The rest is more the basic application that we already are supporting to the market or providing to the market, coming from the material side, silicon, silicon carbide, but also other applications that we are already in.
I guess another way to ask the same question is, should we assume that the silicon market should also pick back up again towards 2028 to reach these numbers, or should we think about that as?
Regarding the silicon market, our clear aim is to get independency from single market cycles in that area. That's why we are also focusing on new applications, especially in the material solutions business. Of course, we are also expecting contribution from the silicon market as there are investment cycles coming up, especially in the area of 2027, 2028. There are expected capacity increases that the market data is telling us. Contribution from that part of the business is expected, but our clear aim on the long run is to getting independence from that more bulk-oriented order situation.
I'd start with the market projections. Your financial targets are clearly set for 2028. In the markets, there was this term, medium term, is that, let's say, equivalent to 2028, or is that more like 2030, which were most of the final years in the projections that were shown?
Our expectations are going with our strategic targets.
So 2028?
We try to show you market reports that you can find also online. They are always reaching a little bit longer than we are having in our calculations. Our expectations are also in line with our strategic goals.
All right, understood. On cash generation, obviously, you've shown us margin projections and also your CAPEX plan. I haven't done the math yet, but looking at next year, what are the chances for a positive free cash flow?
For next year, it's always very difficult to predict because this year is heavily impacted by the order intake and prepayments. For the metrology business, we're expecting always to be more or less in line with the EBIT. In material solutions, it's heavily influenced for the free cash flow on where are we in the project cycle. That's hard to predict at the moment.
Understood. Thank you.
I think that you should see more on a total period, not from year to year. Focusing on that cash flow figure of one year, it's very hard. You have as there are prepayments coming in one year, and then we are finalizing and continuing the production process. It's going into the financing process until it's picking up. That's what Markus explained on the slides.
No, fully understood, but markets tend to have some short-term element in their view as well. Lastly, on the projected share gains, again, there were some 2024 base years, some 2025. I think especially in metrology, do you see those share gains materializing already? Can you somewhat track that in terms of how you, let's say, do versus competitors in new fabs being equipped, for example?
Yeah, that's already something that you can see in our order intake. There is a high contribution already in a double-digit amount coming from new qualification processes with our metrology tools. This is already a nice development that we see in 2025, which we will see continue over the next years.
Thank you.
Hello, Maisa from ODDO BHF. I will be back to the crystal growth business. Siltronics, you said recently that they still need some equipment for their fab in Singapore, but they will not order them until the market will improve. Are these potential orders already included in your outlook, or will they represent some upsides?
As I said, we are actively aiming for independence from the Bayer market. Of course, there is a part of business included in our expectations, but not the big, big bulk that we have seen in the past. A nice contribution, but not dependency from this kind of market.
Okay, I'll follow up. The Chinese wafer manufacturers are also very aggressive in developing their technologies for 300mm , and they are ramping their capacity. Are you seeing any potential win from the Chinese wafer market?
Our systems, when we are talking about contribution in the semiconductor value chain, let's keep it a little bit higher in market expectation than we are involved in everything from raw material until the area of packaging. The contribution or growth in the market, it doesn't matter in which area that is, is having a positive impact on our equipment. Also, when we might not sell a crystal growth system to a customer, this might rise a metrology demand on the other hand, as these are partly also the same customers that we are supporting with that technology. A growth in the very front end or raw material side also has a positive impact on our equipment.
Metrology is growing very fast since the last CMD. Could you give a little detail on this, on how this $30 million growth has materialized for which solutions, and how are you going with the qualification process at the Asian semiconductor makers? Marcus, sorry.
Yeah, metrology was growing most significantly in the area of acoustic microscopy already in the last year, and this was already coming from qualification processes, especially with additional customers in North America and in Asia. We are quite nicely developing in their processes and see our technology in the forefront of solutions that are available on the market and expect further participation out of that market.
There is a high growth expected in optical metrology. How is qualification going there?
Optical metrology contribution will come on the one hand side as we are extending our portfolio to new materials like silicon carbide and are having qualification processes not in introducing this technology to customers, rather than giving proof to the market that it's working with other materials. This is something which will contribute very nicely. On the other hand side, we saw today already new technologies that come or that came on board where we will develop or address the market in also the inline area where we will see nice wins of market share in that region.
Thank you.
Thank you. First of all, a big thank you. I think that was a very comprehensive overview of where you want to head and how you want to get there. What I would be interested in is the growth rates and the market shares you're aiming for. Is that already part of your budget, and are there any, let's say, financial incentives for the people responsible for reaching these targets? How implemented is this already in the process that you envisage?
Yeah, we changed the concept of our payment structure for the management team in 2025, and everyone is participating on that targets that we want to achieve.
These are firm targets.
Included. It's confirmed t he people are fully connected and committed to their targets.
Great.
They are also sitting here, so I presented them by themselves.
If you do the financial targets, not the market share. A second question would be if we would draw a straight line, let's say, on the sales line or the EBIT line from 2025 to 2028. I would guess if you're looking at the development in 2025 in the first half of the year and probably also the third quarter, you would be a little bit behind the growth rates that we would get from a straight line. My question would be, when do you expect to arrive at the average growth rate in both terms? You are in certain aspects already ahead of the targets. Give us a feel for that, please.
Yeah, so in the area of the development of our metrology business, we are a little bit faster than we originally expected. This is nicely developing, but still we see the more contribution coming during the year 2026 as investment cycles will then happen more in the direction of end of 2026. On the material solution side, the market has been a little bit conservative developing over the last quarters as we also have had some uncertainties in the general market. This is something which we see step by step picking up again. With the areas that we just presented to you, we see a more developing or faster developing market rather than the general economic situation is acting at the moment as there is a special need for this technology.
Also a nice contribution from exactly the areas that we mentioned that we will see over the next year already.
Okay, so material solutions rather end of 2026, beginning of 2027 that you cross the line. Okay, thank you very much.
Quick question for me on the mix of this growth. I mean, obviously, a year ago, it was more an indication because M&A was included in there. The narrative changed six months ago. It seems you became a bit more optimistic that you could achieve that organically. Now there is a bit of M&A there included again. Looking at that $500 million target, how much of what's the gap missing to get to that $500 million that is expected to be driven by potential M&A, which obviously I would assume visibility is relatively low on that. I'm just wondering how we should think about that gap. First question.
M&A is happening in areas where we see a possibility to scale technology. The focus is on the technology side that we want to get on board and then develop into the market. There can be a contribution in the revenue side as well, as there is also part existing business, but our aim is not buying revenue. We want to develop technology and our regional footprint that we are extending over the next years.
It would be fair to say that today's base is already enough to get you to the 500.
There is still a way to go also in the R&D side, and there are some decisions on the make or buy side that we are handling, but we are on a very good way on the way of our targets.
Okay, and then just quickly elaborating a little bit further on the growth curve over the next three years. Are you expecting growth in 2026 at all? I understand that it will be more back and way to 2027, 2028 that has already been discussed before. In terms of 2026, that's always been a bit of a question mark. Looking at obviously the metrology order intake in Q2, that's already pretty good. If material solutions stay at this level, what do you expect here in terms of what kind of visibility you have based on your pipeline? Is there any growth in 2026?
Not the full one yet. You have to wait until we are giving an announcement for our guidance 2026. In general, with building the blocks and bases for that growth that we are aiming for, we are on a very, very well way.
Okay. Just last question then, just on balance sheet. In terms of working capital, M&A, obviously financing this growth, you're happy with your existing credit lines, no need to go to market with anything else. What kind of?
Yeah, Constantine, that's the case. We are looking at that the financing for the working capital is mainly coming from the operational cash flow in metrology as a high margin, fast turning business. In material solutions, we're looking at the prepayments coming from customers to finance our growth there. There is no need for external financing besides the existing credit lines.
Is that for me?
Yeah. My name is Nick Hook, Spice Investments. A follow-up question. It's rather silent on dividends and share buybacks. Could you shed some light on your plans there?
Yeah, we just raised a program in 2025 with our Annual General Meeting. This is something which we are aiming to continue also in the future. In terms of development in general, we are having concepts that we are working on also to further give a benefit to this area, but it would be too early to change programs yet to further instruments on that side.
Okay, and a second question, a more broad one. Did you consider to select and focus more on the high margin semiconductor and not spend time, CAPEX, and resources on your lower margin business because you seem to be widely spread with your R&D plans?
We already did. What you have seen now is a special focus on the one-hand side and the metrology business, which is having a significant higher margin contribution. In the material solutions side, the markets which we are addressing are also having a higher potential for gross margin contribution rather than the markets that we have been originally in.
Okay, thanks. A last question from my side. You know, many of your industry competitors have their assembly and production in low-cost locations in the Far East, being Malaysia, China, Vietnam. What are your plans there? I did hear assembly in the US, but I didn't hear focus on lower-cost locations which could drive your margins.
On the regional side, yeah, maybe I did not comment on that in detail enough. For us, it's important to have the right concept for the regions available where we are acting in. In the long run, there are potentials to further increase our assembly capacity and sourcing capacity on site. We are already doing that. For example, in China, we are already sourcing and assembling products for especially this region. This is a process where we will continue our work. In the area of new products, we are always focused on the local production as there is some development work behind that before you can bring such a product to a scalable production line, which is having a low-cost component with it.
Thank you.
Thanks. I'll squeeze one more in. I just wanted to understand the comment you made about PVT growth in the silicon carbide space earlier. You mentioned that you still expect there to be growth and demand for PVT ovens despite there being oversupply in silicon carbide. I get it's a yield-related question, but maybe you could elaborate a little bit on that and whether or not you assume that yields on the silicon carbide side will improve at all and if that changes your calculus.
Yields are improving also when the diameter of the crystal is growing. The existing market has a lot of systems which are working with smaller sizes. There is an investment cycle expected to change system technology to solutions which are able to get higher yield rates. That's the one area for existing markets. With the product portfolio that we now generated, we are having a broader touch with silicon carbide over the whole value chain, coming from the powder production until the metrology or the qualification of the material. When we are talking about that market share, we are also talking about that whole product portfolio which we are aiming to bring to market.
Additionally to that, in the reports, we cannot see yet developments which might come up because of future applications like Jan explained about, like quantum computing or high-power solutions which are not related to the autonomous driving or electromobility area. This is something which we are seeing and aiming for our system technology as well, coming also with new material solutions like aluminum nitride in the long run.
Yeah, just maybe two quick questions on the metrology side. Can you elaborate a bit on the product roadmap on X-ray and on optical and how that will ramp up over the coming years? I guess the second question on the topic, as you try to cross-sell into your existing SAM customer base, these X-ray and optical solutions, where do you see the largest opportunities? Is that more on the backend side? Is that inline or offline? Just a bit more context would be helpful.
Yeah, we are aiming for inline solutions. We are on the optical side, so let's go for the first question. We see a steady development on the R&D projects that are addressing our existing technologies, which we are developing to a higher throughput. This is something where we see nice development starting end of 2026, beginning of 2027. In the areas which are new in the portfolio, you saw that on the slides, the technologies are introduced into the market end of this year, beginning of next year. This will slowly grow into our revenue contribution over these years and already having some positive impact on 2028 already.
Got it. Thank you. You already have some pre-orders for the X-ray solutions or some good customer feedback at least?
We are having good feedback about the solution and about the technology. We are not yet talking to concrete customers with the technology yet.
Got it. If I could maybe squeeze in one more on the overhead side, I mean, you showed us a graph on FTE step-ups in 2028, and that's quite a substantial one. Could you maybe give some more color on how that is split up between R&D, overhead, manufacturing, just to get a bit more grip on it?
Most of that increase is on the one hand coming from our support in 24/7 levels on the sales service side, but also in the sales teams that will increase worldwide as we need the representative persons sitting in the areas where our customers are. We have already a good base of offices that we implemented worldwide, but people have to be increased. On the other hand, the second area is on the internal side, R&D and also the production capacity, which is increasing coming with a higher volume business.
Okay, thank you.
Great.
You have confirmed several times that you are in ongoing qualification with the leading U.S. and Asian semiconductor players. Here we can understand that the current news flow is impacting your business in a positive like a negative way. For example, Samsung is still waiting for some approval from Nvidia in HBM. Once they get it, I think we will see an increase in orders not only from all the tools makers, but also Intel is restructuring their foundry business with the U.S. government support. Does this kind of development impact your visibility on the upcoming quarters for your metrology tools?
Our actual activities are going to, on the one hand, already implement technologies which are in the ramp-up phase. The plans are partly already set. Additionally to that, there are new developments in the markets where we are aiming for. It's better to see that more from a general base. There is a need for technology in that area. As our systems are the ones who are able to detect the defects, and we are on the technology side on the forefront, there is no possibility to change on that side. It's more a matter of who is then investing rather than that we are on the right track on that. Qualification process and continuing with that is something that is important for us.
Does all the qualification will finish this year and then we will speak about?
No, that's a continuous process.
It's continuing in 2026 as well, the qualifications? Okay.
Thanks a lot for your questions. We are having plenty of time for lunch and get together now with everyone, also our experts on the technology side. It seems that you might have also some additional questions on the technology as well. Let's have a good time at lunch as well. Thank you for participating at Capital Markets Day this year. I'm looking forward to further discussions with you in other setups again.