Good morning, and thanks Sebastian. 2025 was a challenging year for PVA TePla, operating in a very cautious market environment. At the same time, we used that period to prepare the company for growth in both segments, metrology and material solutions. Over the last two years, PVA has developed from supplying highly specialized solutions with small volumes to now significantly targeting global high volume markets, which means that we are addressing the world's largest chip producers now. This transformation requires a fundamental transformation of our organization, and this is something that is still ongoing. Further to this, we have had a strong order momentum which especially took place in the second half of 2025. Both product lines developed very positive. Aiming for growth also requires the right foundation to build on.
We did set up an investment plan to support this, which was executed in 2025. This also caused higher operational expenses for investments in technology, in sales, in service infrastructure and our organization in general. These investments also include some project costs which are having short-term effects on our overhead costs, 2025 and 2026, but will not be recurring. Markus will explain a little bit deeper, what this is about. Our gross margin development was stable with 32% and, yeah, also was coming with a lower revenue volume, in a positive development. Efficiency projects which we already have started contribute to the gross margin development already, starting from 2026 and onwards. We started to focus our activities in the industrial segment to new high volume markets.
With this, we already have started to increase our share in the energy market. For example, R&D projects with customers to produce advanced anode materials for battery technology. We increased our share in aerospace, in North America and Europe. Within 2025, we extended our portfolio with cooperations and acquisitions, and we started with a vertical integration of a supplier of ours. This was supporting a faster production increase in our metrology business. Further we strengthened our optical metrology with new patented technology that we took over and a strategic partnership. The positive about that I would like to mention is that there is already an outcome of that project.
We started to produce first R&D systems which will be delivered to institutes in the first half of 2026. Most excitingly, we stepped into high volume business with our acoustic metrology. This is something that I would like to keep for a deep dive later. Let's first look to the financials with our CFO, Carl Markus Groß.
Good morning, and welcome to today's earnings call. I'm happy to guide you now through our financials, and we're immediately starting with our Group revenue. Q4 was our strongest quarter in 2025 with almost EUR 69 million. For the Semiconductor Systems, it was a good quarter, and for the Industrial Systems segment it was a quite strong quarter. Overall, we completed the year with a revenue of EUR 244 million. Here are two key takeaways. First of all, we are pretty close to the midpoint of our updated guidance from October, between EUR 235 million and EUR 255 million. We are also almost 10% below the previous year. When we started into 2025, we guided for EUR 260 million to EUR 280 million.
During H1 we had to realize that there are delays in the order intake, which led us to guide with H1 to the lower end of this bandwidth. In H2, project timing shifts affected our revenue recognition across several markets and product groups. In this context it's very important for us there are no cancellations and projects were and are expected to convert in 2026. Looking at our product groups, metrology is with 40% contributing to our revenue mix. In this revenues, high volume customers have a growing share. Looking at the regional split, Europe is our strongest market in 2025 with 43%, closely followed by Asia. There's always a back and forth between these two markets. We will see in 2 slides ahead that this is about to change here.
Coming to the order intake, we see a very strong development over the year, with an almost doubled order intake from Q1 with EUR 46 million up to EUR 91 million in Q4, which also means that there is an average growth rate per quarter of more than 25%. Demand was supported by both product groups, with especially strong contributions from material solutions in Q3 and even more in Q4. Here, semiconductor-related investments played an important role. Metrology showed normal quarterly volatility. Coming to the cash development, our operating cash flow was around EUR 12 million for the full year, but also for Q4. If you remember, in Q3 we were quite close to near zero, due to working capital effects which reversed in Q4. The cash flow from investing activities was around EUR 30 million, and 50% of these can be attributed to strategic growth initiatives.
EUR 5 million for the acquisition of Desconpro and DIVE or PVA Vision as of today as investments in our metrology business. Other investments were in technology and capacity expansions. With 2025, we're in the middle of an investment cycle which started in 2024 and will continue at comparable level in 2026. Then onwards, we will return to approximately 50% of what we're seeing today as here at the normal level. Let me conclude the financials with a little bit more color on our guidance. We're guiding for revenue between EUR 255 million and EUR 275 million. At the same time, the order intake was EUR 268 million, with especially strong contributions in Q3, but even more in Q4. These were primarily driven by material solutions.
Projects here often have lead times of 12-18 months, and especially in this case, a substantial part of the revenue will take place in 2027. At the same time, we have a very good view on 2026 and also beyond. Roughly 50% of our guidance in 2026 are already covered by the order backlog, and the rest will be coming from order intakes in H1 in metrology and material solutions, as well as our regular run rate from service and aftersales revenues. In 2026, the EBITDA has been guided for EUR 26-31 million, and here around EUR 18 million are attributable to strategic initiatives, where EUR 13 million are from recurring scale-up costs and EUR 5 million are related to one-off items like IT projects or restructuring. That's it from my side here for the financials.
I'm happy to answer your questions during the Q&A, and I'm handing back over to Jalin Ketter.
Thanks, Markus. In our strategic update today, I would like to remind you about two important fields we are active in and give you some insights about actual developments of these areas. Let's start with metrology. Within our midterm targets, scaling acoustic microscopy is one of our most important tasks. With this technology, we are addressing high-end semiconductor applications in a steady growing market environment. Until mid-2025, we have been more active in R&D and near-line inspection with our tools. This is addressing special applications at customer site. The systems we delivered have been more highly customized, but either manual or semi-automated, only in a very few cases, fully automated.
The applications we addressed with this technology were mostly placed in the production of legacy node chips, which is more automotive and industrial electronics oriented. The number of customers in that field is high, but the number of systems used in such a fab is low. Based on our outstanding technology, focusing on high throughput and resolution, we took the opportunity to now address the world-leading chip manufacturers. Within that, we are bringing our tools now into R&D centers of these companies and production lines, which means that our systems are now used in-line. This brings different requirements for us. The number of customers in that area is small, but the volume of tools used in a production is significantly higher than in other fields.
The tools have to be copied exactly, which means that, once they are evaluated and set up is fixed, R&D process with customers has ended, there are no changes anymore in the systems. We have to support the customers in a 24/7 on-site support. Also, the quality requirements for tools and service are significantly higher than in other areas. This causes also changes in our production processes, the tool set up and the qualification of our teams. It's a different world for us. Stepping into this market is only possible when we are participating in qualification processes and approve our technology on customer side. These processes can take up to 12 months, sometimes a little bit longer. It's also depending on changes of the technology for special requirements of the customer.
Sometimes there is an R&D phase, which we often have seen already, where we are adjusting step-by-step the tool, for the application of the customer. With that development, we already made a very great progress stepping into that market. When we just take 2024 compared to 2025, in 2025, more than 50% of our activities in acoustic metrology are already related to this high volume business, which is significantly more than before. With new developments and production steps, and the higher complexity of semiconductors, the need of 3D inspection in non-destructive ways becomes also more and more important. Our inspection method is relevant for both memory and also advanced logic chips.
With the technology that we are able to address actual stack HBM stack levels, but we are also prepared for the next generation, which means that stacks are increasing, but also material concepts are different to before. The layers which are built up there are getting very thin now, and acoustic metrology is the only way to really non-destructively inspect with a high throughput and a high resolution. Also hybrid bonding is a very important technology for next-generation artificial intelligence and high-performance semiconductors. Its critical challenges are structural anomalies at the bond interface that go undetected in electrical testing. If there is a defect, it would only occur on the end customer side.
Scanning acoustic microscopy is uniquely positioned at the only non-destructive technology able to identify these kind of defects already at the process level, which is very important. This gives PVA TePla's customers significant quality advantage and positions us at the center of the most demanding quality control requirements in advanced packaging. Both of these most likely causes that the method becomes required for semiconductor production processes, which would be very supportive for our development. Technology that can come up. Having a look to the addressable market, we observed that it's steadily increasing. Since our capital markets day in September 2025, market demand for 2028 increased to about EUR 550 million, and we still aim to generate a market share of 30%-40% of that market. With all of that, our midterm targets are significantly underlined.
For material solutions, I want to point out synthesis technology for semiconductors. Our strategic aim in this field is to diversify our activities and address a broader range of future materials with our technology. Also, in this technology, we are coming from single system approach, very customized systems, yeah, for special application at customer side. Also with the focus on silicon and silicon carbide for power electronics where we still have.
30 seconds.
Okay, let's start again with the material solutions area. I just heard that we had some problems with the connection, so I hope that I'm getting the right point to start again. For material solutions, I would like to point out synthesis technology for semiconductors, where our strategic aim is to further diversify our activities and address a broader range of future materials with the technology. In this field, we are coming also from an area where we have been focusing on single system approach, very customized systems for customers and special applications. Yeah, we already stepped into kind of volume business with focusing on silicon and silicon carbide for power electronics, but we still had some dependencies on single market cycles.
With the strategy, we aim to fully reduce these dependencies on single markets and customers. In 2024, you might remember that at beginning of the year, we announced that we opened our R&D center, PVA Technology Hub, with a strong focus on future materials. In the meantime, we made a lot of progress with this development team. On the one hand side, we pushed the next generation of crystal growing technology in established market fields. On the other hand side, we also broadened our activities from single element crystals to compound semiconductors. In last earnings call, I already mentioned the new developments in crystal growing technology for silicon carbide and 300 mm. I'm happy to announce today that this already brings a positive outcome as we are already discussing with different customers about R&D systems to deliver.
So-called vertical gradient freeze. Next to calcium fluoride, which is relevant for optics, and an established field for us already, indium phosphide is a very promising material for photonic chips. This is very important for the connection between data centers, so it's also coming with everything around artificial intelligence. Also, for this technology, we already started first customer projects, and we'll deliver small number of systems used for R&D at the second half of 2026. We expect to further contribute on the positive market development of this area. As mentioned right at the beginning, we used the year 2025 to start the change of our organization, which are needed to address the high volume markets. Yeah, metrology in that is the most important growth area.
Already 2025, we increased our production capacities with the vertical integration of the desconp ro, but also additional clean room capacity. In 2026, we will finalize the increase of our production line for the optics for the systems and additional clean room capacity for that high volume area. We also gain more and more market share in metrology worldwide, which means that we now start to bring our training concepts to the next level. This comes with, on the one hand side, additional floor capacity in Germany, which we invest, but more important, it's a combination with an international on-site approach to be near to the people that we just hired in Taiwan and Korea.
We already streamlined our organization in 2025 with the consolidation of our team in China. Beginning of 2026, we further decided to close our facility in Coburg, which provides metrology tools with less potential to scale. High scale potential and fast-growing markets. Closing that facility is in line with our strategy and also allocates more resources to metrology projects which are supportive for our midterm targets. We further streamline the organization in that field. We steadily also work on the improvement of our operational excellence. That's something that we already started last year with a new shop floor management that we implemented. In 2026, there are some additional projects to optimize production flows and lead times, and that will be supportive for our gross margin development starting from 2026, but also ahead.
We also reviewed our software landscape. We initiated a project for a new CRM system, HR, an HR system. This will be finalized in 2026 as well. One last point that I would like to point out is our onePVA approach, which we initiated in 2025, which is also a cultural change, to leverage synergies across the group, and also avoiding silos, and most important, present as one global team to our customers. Markus already explained in detail our guidance, so I will not go too deep on that again. We started with a very strong order momentum in metrology during the first few months of the year.
I would like to really point out that parts of this order intake already relate to 2027, which finally shows that the technology has been adapted for HBM, and it underlines our expectation for significant growth starting from 2027. Please take that point with you from today. In the area of material solutions, we already see a diversification of activities and new market activities with growth potential. Examples for that are, on the one hand side, battery technologies, but on the other hand side, materials like indium phosphide, which have a great potential in the market. Looking beyond 2026, we also focus on the expansion of our service and after-sales business, which will bring more recurring revenue level and, of course, on the improvement of our profitability.
With that set up, we are very well prepared to and committed to our midterm targets. Before we close this presentation, I want to remind you about the most important points of today. The market for the use of acoustic microscopy grows significantly, and we are very well positioned as we already have been qualified with the technology at some major chip manufacturers. Our activities in the industrial segment are strongly focusing on fast-growing markets such as aerospace and energy. The expansion of our cost structure, which also includes non-recurring cost effects in 2025 and 2026, is short-term impacting our earnings development, but on the long run, it's an investment in the future of PVA TePla.
The demand of both product lines, metrology and material solutions, remain unchanged, which is already reflected in that strong order momentum that we have seen over the last quarters. Our midterm target to achieve EUR 500 million in revenue remains unchanged. With having said that, I would like to close the presentation. Thanks for listening, and we are coming to your questions now.
Thank you very much, Jalin Ketter. We will now move to the Q&A section and open the floor for your questions. We kindly ask you that you limit yourself to 2-3 questions at a time so that we can give everyone a chance to participate. Remember that you have to raise your hand, so you can only pose questions via audio and not over the chat. Maissa Keskes is first.
Hi, Maissa, can you hear us?
Yes.
Maissa? Okay, apparently there are some connection issues. Michael Kuhn is next.
Hello?
Good morning. I think there's always a tiny time delay with the unmuting. Starting with the first question on the very strong order intake in metrology year to date, can you provide us with a rough split, what was for HBM already and maybe also an idea why this HBM order came so early despite the obviously quite short lead times in that business?
Yeah.
That will be the first one. Yeah.
It's the first double-digit order for 2027 to save also capacities on PVA side as we're seeing that we are getting yeah, more and more orders also in the actual timeline so for the actual year. There are customers who already want to save capacity for 2027 to be prepared for the investments. From the metrology side, yeah, the majority of the orders that we are having or that we are seeing in the first quarter are for high volume business, so it's a split between HBM and Logic.
Answered. Thank you. I mean, HBM players, there are only three. Are you in contact with the other two as well?
Yes, we are in contact with everyone.
Fantastic. One on the material solutions and crystal growth, which was pretty strong in Q4. Obviously, Siltronic isn't placing any orders right now. Could you provide us with, let's say, few more details or indications on what's the background of that order in the fourth quarter?
Yeah. It's also synthesis technology for semiconductor applications, but we cannot disclose exactly which area is behind that.
All right. Last question, the third one. In the context of silicon carbide, you mentioned 300mm again and discussions about R&D tools. Maybe some indications on who are the potential customers here, maybe location, and what could be the timeline of that project, let's say, once it converts into volume orders. Thank you.
Yeah. We are talking about R&D projects at the moment, and this is a different area of application. In the past it was more power electronics, so automotive and energy related, and now we are talking about areas which are also, yeah, supporting developments on the artificial intelligence side. This is a different use for the material, and this is also something where locations are diverse. It's Europe, and it's also Asia.
That would be more like SiC interposers?
Yes.
All right. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Maissa, let's try again with your questions.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Good morning.
Good morning.
Okay. Good morning. The guidance 2026 came in well below the consensus, and it's just 8% increase at the midpoint of the range despite all the good news in the industry and your new customer win, which raises some concern on 2028 targets as it will imply around 37% CAGR, meaning a still huge order intake needed. What are you hearing from your customer, and what give you confidence that 2028 targets are still in place and that there are no risk that it will be pushed maybe into 2030?
Yeah. As just mentioned in the presentation, especially the developments on the metrology side are giving us very well confident that, starting from 2027, we will see a significant growth in that area as we are getting more and more qualification processes closed. Already orders received for 2027 to save production capacity. Very good signs from that area. On the material side, that diversification, which I wanted to point out in the presentation also is very supportive, or underlines very well, that we are on the well track to achieve that target. We are very confident for midterm revenue volume.
Timing with 2028, we just see that there can be some shifts in months, but it's not a shift, a significant shift that we would foresee for that.
Okay. There has been an increasing industry momentum around the silicon photonics, which you have already highlighted. Given your exposure to this market through the metrology for advanced packaging and for crystal growing system for indium phosphide, could you clarify whether you have already started to see order intake related to silicon photonics for crystal growing systems? Are any of these application already included in your recent orders, and what kind of customer that you are addressing in this field?
We are already having a small number of systems that we will deliver on the crystal growing side in the second half of 2026, which are for that material. We are active in that field. We are having first activities. We expect that will further grow over the time.
Okay. Maybe the last question, can you provide some updates about the remaining qualification for the potential your new customers, and when are you expecting to get it?
Yeah. On the qualification side, we are, yeah, in very well progressed with that. As you know, each production line needs a qualification of tools. That means that there will be a continuous process. We will never end with that as we always have to, yeah, qualify again. Which doesn't mean that there is a long qualification process anymore when we are stepping in new production lines, because the first is always the most intense as, yeah, tool setup has to be aligned with the parts that have to be detected. We are making progress, so we see already nice order intake coming from Taiwan. We sold the first system to Korea. Nice development on that side.
Okay. Thank you.
Right. Thank you. Bastian Brach is next.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Good morning.
Good morning. Two questions for me. The first one is, if you could break down the EUR 18 million additional costs you guided for in 2026, of which are EUR 30 million for business scale up. Is that mostly R&D or your service centers? Maybe a little breakdown there. The EUR 5 million one-off items, is that related to the ERP project or what is included in that?
Yeah. The scale-up is especially in the R&D sector, but also for our sales and service infrastructure. Jalin mentioned it already, and we did in the last calls that this is a requirement in terms of the non-recurring strategic initiatives, but also it's from the restructuring in Coburg we mentioned. There are IT projects going on. Jalin mentioned the CRM system. We're rolling out a new ERP system with some of our entities, and these are the most important projects there.
Okay. Thank you. Then the second one is on the headcount growth, which you mentioned is largely completed, apart from some special hires. Does it mean there's also no significant headcount growth necessary to reach your midterm targets? Even in 2027, 2028, we only see a moderate headcount growth, or was that related to 2026 with another increase in 2027, 2028?
No, we expect not a significant increase anymore. That will be more related then to, yeah, further build-up of activities and future-oriented when we see that business is getting stronger than we originally planned. It's only moderate development that we are foreseeing now.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
All right. Thank you. Hartmut Moers, please.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Right. I would start with the cash flow. Probably you could guide us a bit through your thinking for the coming two years. With the CapEx still being high in 2026 and also some decent growth, working capital should increase. Would it be fair to assume that free cash flow would still be negative in 2026? With CapEx coming down in 2027, you should be back to somewhere around yeah, positive break even, something like that. Is that a fair assumption or am I missing something here?
I think I got most of your questions. We're thinking about the cash flow for 2026, that's looking at the EBITDA level and the CapEx we are planning, they are more or less. You mentioned the working capital development. Yes, we're seeing there a growth in metrology, but at the same time, we're receiving larger orders in material solutions where the majority will take place in 2027. Prepayments will support here the business. This is all what we are often explaining how helpful both business lines here are in financing. We're seeing that the cash flow here will be supported by material solutions and, I guess you didn't have yet the time, but we added some sections here in our business report where you can find also some views in this topic.
You can confirm that 2027 should be in positive territory on the free cash flow side?
Yes. Yeah. That's our expectation. Yes.
Yeah. Great. Thank you. The second one was your statement regarding Q1 order momentum remaining strong again. On a previous slide you had mentioned that you are currently at a 25% growth rate in order intake. Shall we make the connection and add 25% for Q1 to the EUR 90 million we had, well knowing that Q4 included some bulk orders? Is that what you're saying or
No, no. We meant that the strong order momentum from Q4 is continuing in Q1 2026, not that the growth rate of 25% will continue at this level in 2026.
The growth rate compared to what? Are you saying we're looking at the same level?
Yeah. We are looking for Q1 at a comparable level to Q4.
Okay. Thank you. That's clear now. Thank you very much. Last one would be with regard to your medium term guidance. I mean, everything you're saying now relates to your sales target. Originally you also had a margin target. Are you modifying that in any way or are you still keeping to the 15% once you've reached the EUR 500 million?
We didn't combine the revenue target with the margin target. The margin target is meant for after growth, and this is also staying like that for now.
Okay. Thank you very much. That was very helpful.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Constantin Hesse, please.
Good morning. Can you hear me okay?
Yes. Good morning, Constantin.
Morning.
Great. Morning, everyone. Thanks for taking. I've only got a few questions left. Can we start maybe with a commentary around, you know, Q1 capacity reservations? I think that is definitely something quite interesting and that you probably haven't seen before, at least not from other players compared to what we had from Siltronic before. If we look at capacity reservations and, you know, you basically mentioned that you're talking to every HBM player out there. Do you think that these capacity reservations could continue into the year? Could we see more of that, or do you think this was more of a one-off? That's the first question. Let's start with that one.
It's not depending on how the customers are acting. There are some who are reserving and putting final orders in place, and there are some who are just forecasting and putting the orders in place how, like we agreed. It will be diverse over the year. We will see some more reservations, but we also will see orders that are coming.
Sorry, you cut off there a little bit at the end. Fair enough. It's fair to assume you expect reservations to continue into the year.
Yes, not for all of the customers that we are targeting for. Yeah, they are working different. Some are doing reservations and some don't.
Okay. Great. Thanks. Look, we've been talking a lot about the momentum and the outlook for metrology and with an acceleration anticipated in the second half. Could you maybe just give us a little bit of a, an idea of how you're thinking about material solutions? Because from what I understand, if we're looking at a similar level in Q1 relative to Q4, that implies again, quite a significant decline again, quarter-over-quarter from a material solutions perspective. Looking at material solutions, do you expect a bit more of a sustainable growth over the year, or is it still going to be quite volatile quarter-over-quarter?
Material Solutions has one special effect that always comes again as sometimes we are talking about higher order volumes that are getting placed, and that also is combined sometimes depending from where order comes from with prepayments that we are waiting for until we are disclosing the orders. There are some of these effects included. On the other hand side, as there are significant investment packages that are placed, that relation to each quarter can be a little diverse. Yes, there will be some volatility in that as that counting on quarters for Material Solutions is something that's not really sufficient.
Just thinking about the stepping stones from 2026 to 2027, because you guided us during your prelims to a number significantly above EUR 300 million for 2027. Thinking about the math around that, it would be fair to assume that we probably have to see a bit of an improvement in orders, a bit more sustainable recovery and material. Not even recovery, just sustainable growth really in material solutions. Is that something that you see from a pipeline perspective?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay, cool. Just lastly, could you tell us a little bit more about the indium phosphide market there? I do understand the exposure to the end markets, but I'd just like to get a bit more color around the potential that you see there. You mentioned that you are about to deliver a few machines in the second half of 2026. I'm just trying to get a better sense of, you know, because you also mentioned, well, it will probably grow further beyond 2026, beyond the second half of 2026, obviously. Just thinking about the EUR 500 million target, is this technology already a good chunk of that EUR 500 million or is it still negligible?
If you could just give us a bit more color as well on the competitive environment there, that'd be quite interesting.
Yeah. This technology is something that underlines our development to our midterm growth. Yeah. We see also the first systems that we are having finally in our books now. Looking at the markets and the dynamics in that material, which is, as said, for photonic chips used for the connection between data centers, there is a significant increase in those developments in the market that we are observing from the announcements that have been placed in the market and the results of the reports that we are seeing. We expect that will also come into our books. We are prepared for that as crystal growing method is developed, so systems are in place, and it's just about a matter of time.
Jalin, just on the competitive environment, who else is supplying these machines?
It's more an in-house thing rather than an external. Freely available systems are limited.
Understood. Are there any players out there that actually already develop crystal growing equipment and indium phosphide that you know of?
We are, very well-positioned in that market, I would say.
Okay. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Gustav Froberg is next.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes. Good morning, Gustav.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions as well. I just have one, actually. Could you give us a bit more color on the regional split of the order intake in metrology? I know you've mentioned it sort of in piecemeal throughout the call, but any further color on a regional split in metrology and how you also expect this regional split to evolve as we progress through 2026?
Yeah. I think it's fair to assume that, the picture we are seeing in the revenues and in the order intake, it's a combination which can be applied to metrology in the order intake. It's strong contributions coming from the U.S., but also from Asia.
Okay, great. Just actually a quick follow-up if I like or if I may, just on prepayments. With this order intake that you are seeing at the moment, are you also seeing a commensurate amount of prepayments for these and sort of to firm up the orders, if you like? I'm particularly interested in what you've seen so far in Q1.
You're referring to metrology or to material solutions or in general?
It would be nice to have a general comment, but yeah, maybe in particular on metrology.
In metrology, prepayments are more unusual, so we're financing the working capital ourselves when we're building the orders. In general, we're expecting a quite good inflow from prepayments in Q1.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. All right. Thank you. Edwin de Jong is next.
Hi, Edwin.
Morning.
Can you hear us?
I think you're still muted.
Wait. Is this better?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now. Good morning, Edwin.
Morning.
Good morning. Sorry for that. Forgot to push the button. A couple of questions from Markus. In the EBITDA, there are some extra costs this year, the EUR 80 million, the EUR 5 million and the EUR 13 million. If we add that to the guidance for this year for the EBITDA guidance, should we take like EUR 62 million-67 million more or less EBITDA as a base number to compare to 2027, or am I completely wrong there?
I mean, if you take the numbers from the Capital Markets Day, we guided there for ratios in distribution, admin and R&D, and I think we're here on the good track there. You can expect that the relative share of distribution and admin will reduce and that we're seeing a slight increase in R&D on our way to 28.
Okay. The EUR 18 million, the first part was, what was it? Additional costs in.
Yeah.
Yeah, I forgot what it was. Is that also expected to continue in 2027 or should we also see a diminishment there?
From the EUR 18 million, EUR 13 million are recurring costs from the scale up, and these will kind of slowly increase with the revenue. Yeah.
Okay.
because the cost base will slightly increase, but the one-off of EUR 5 million, these are non-recurring, and we expect them to reduce in 2027.
Okay, clear. Then on silicon carbide, let's say in the last call, you said that you were finishing the project, yeah, the 8-inch process for this year. Now we're going obviously for the 12-inch process. Is it expected that you already get some revenues from the 8-inch part as well this year? How now should we see that development?
We lost you for a short time, but I think I got your question. That process development is not meant as that we are selling material afterwards. That process development is supporting the system development, and improving the system for getting better yields, for a higher level of automation, for better process stability. The process development activities that we have done over the last months.
Mm-hmm
was what we were working on. With that outcome that we are providing now 300 millimeter technology to the market and discussing first R&D project with customers, we already have that success from the development work that we invested. On the other hand side, the step into that process technology for silicon carbide brought us also to new materials like aluminum nitride. That was also something that we start because it's the same technology set up. Physical vapor transport is also the system technology which is behind that, and it's a similar. Yeah, not a similar process, but yeah, for us it's important to invest in that and to improve the technology and prepare the technology to be ready for market entry.
It's more about the systems and improvement of the systems rather than on the material side.
Yeah, clear. Is there already, let's say, a material contribution to revenues from these two developments on both aluminum nitride and the 300 millimeter?
300mm technology, as said, is in discussion for R&D projects with customers, so we expect to receive orders for first systems within 2026. Aluminum nitride is early-stage material, so it's a development that we are doing together with institutes to get the material developed. We are providing system technology and improving system technology and together develop the process for that with also industrial partners.
Okay. The other material where we talked about a lot this call is indium phosphide, of course. I think in the Netherlands, we now have a foundry doing indium phosphide wafers or processing in indium phosphide wafers. Are you connected to that party, SMART Photonics?
We are connected to institutes for R&D on the process side. This is normally our concept that we are working with partners, institutes. We are having the system technology available for that material.
Lastly, there's obviously a lot of uncertainty at the moment in the world, but also in the markets. There are all kinds of material shortages popping up. I guess in semis it's especially helium at the moment. Is there anything that affects you in the disruption of those supply chains, or are you completely fine?
This is something where we are having a close look to, and this is exactly what we are aiming for with the diversification of our activities to identify the materials that are important for future applications and start R&D work and system technology development on that materials. This is the aim for our technology hub to have a close look on that developments. Which also, for example, an indium phosphide, it's not about only the crystal growing, it's also about the cleanness of indium that's important for us. Technology for cleaning indium is also part of that.
Yeah. Clear. If there's room for one more question, I
Just one, Edwin.
Just one. Okay. That is on the qualification process of metrology. As I said, the Taiwanese part is finished now. The American part is finished. How are we going in Korea?
Yeah, as said, we delivered the first system to a customer in Korea. Finally delivered, which means that it's one process is closed.
That's one for the HVMs, I would guess. For HVM, memory.
On the memory side.
Okay. Great. Thanks.
All right. Thank you so much, everyone, and we would like to apologize for the network connection problems that we experienced today. We want to make sure that this won't happen again. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. With that, we would like to close today's call, and thank you very much for attending. Have a great day.