Good morning, everyone. A warm welcome to the Singulus Technologies Earnings Call for the First Six Months of the Fiscal Year 2026. Today's speakers are Lars Lieberwirth, who is a Member of the Executive Board, and Markus Ehret, who also is a Member of the Executive Board. They will walk us through the company's performance for the first half of the current fiscal year. Before we start, a quick housekeeping note. This conference call is being recorded, and we will release it later on Research Hub. If you have any questions, you will have two options. You can, on the one hand, submit them using the chat box on the lower right-hand corner, and you will also be able to ask questions using your microphone during the live Q&A following the presentation.
In case you do want to ask questions using the chat box, please make sure to preface them with your name and your company name. With all this in mind, I will now hand it over to Mr. Ehret and Mr. Lieberwirth. Please go ahead.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome from our side. I am Markus Ehret. I am sitting here in Kahl am Main with my colleagues from investor relations, and my colleague, Lars Lieberwirth, is currently traveling. We are pleased to welcome you to our first half-year figures conference call. I will start and hand over to Lars in a few minutes. Most of you are fairly familiar with Singulus Technologies because we have our 30th anniversary this year, and we are very proud of this. I know that many of you have been following Singulus Technologies for quite a while. For those who are new to us, we are an equipment-making company. You will learn a lot about our portfolio of technologies, our core competencies, from my colleague, Lars Lieberwirth, who will be taking over in a few minutes once I have run you through the financials.
Let us start with the financials, with an overview. Basically, you will see that we have increases in revenues and earnings in the first half year of 2026. This is positive. Very important issues we have seen was the refinancing with our strategic partner. I will get back to that when we have a look at the balance sheet. The gross margins are slightly above what we expected and satisfying. You will learn a lot. We also had one interesting event, a small one, which is that we acquired some employees and activities from a company called MASS GmbH, also an equipment-making company, and you will also learn about the product portfolio when Lars takes over. This was basically the key events we have seen in the first half year.
If we have a look at the key financials, you will see that revenue is up with EUR 45.3 million. That is a good figure. We are satisfied with that. We are along our planning for the full year. This is positive. Order intake, for those who are remembering that the Q1 was at EUR 28.8 million, you realize that we have only EUR 9.1 million roughly in the second quarter. The order intake was rather slow in the second quarter. However, you will learn what we have done in the second quarter, and there was a lot of R&D work. There was a lot of project work we did, and this moves us forward. Basically, no worries there. If you have a look at the EBIT, we will get to that in the P&L.
This is also satisfying, and we stay along our business plan and the forecasts we have given to the capital markets. Let us move on to the P&L, and whenever you have questions later on, I am happy to take the questions during the Q&A session. In the first half year, as I mentioned, we have seen EUR 45.3 million in revenues.
This is split up between life science, semiconductor, and solar in such a way that life science is EUR 6.7 million, semiconductor is about EUR 9.4, and solar is the bulk of it with EUR 29.2 million in revenues. You see very strong revenue in solar. It is the key segment for the time coming. However, we do see that semiconductor is very strong. It is still on a growth path, although the second quarter was a little bit slower on the order entry than we expected it to be. This is just postponement, and we will get those orders later in the year, and we think we are on track with semi. Life science has a strong service business. In the healthcare sector, or medical tech, with our MEDLINE, the order intake was rather slow, but this will be also picking up.
Remember, the segment is more or less dependent in its order entries also on the global GDP. If growth picks up globally and especially in the developing countries, then we do see also more investment into consumer goods and into medical technology. This is roughly the split. As I said, EUR 6.7 million, EUR 9.4 million for semi and EUR 29.2 million for solar. With the EUR 45.3 million, we are slightly ahead of plan, and so we are very confident that we are matching and fulfilling the forecasts we have given and the guidance we have given for 2026.
Gross margin is also satisfactory. With 33.5%, this is good. We had a very strong first quarter. Second quarter was a little bit weaker, however, still satisfying and we are on track. In the OpEx, you see that we have worked a lot on R&D, and especially in semi and in solar, we are working on new technologies, improving the technologies we have at hand. R&D is very important to us. So these are the key segments for our R&D activities. In the OpEx, however distributed, please bear in mind, the phantom stocks program with EUR 1.8 million in cost. That was basically due to the very positive rise in share price we have seen. So we started at the beginning of the year with EUR 1.34, and share price rose to more than EUR 9.
You remember, we have a long-term incentive program for the leadership team across the company, and this is a phantom stock program. It is related to the performance of the shares and the share price. There is a cost related to that, which is a paper cost. It is just accounting. It is not a cash out. However, it was kept to be capitalized with EUR 1.8 million in the first half year. However, we will see the share price later.
Very satisfying and I guess many of you appreciate the rise in the share price. We look forward to further increase this, of course, over time. Let us have a look at the. I said, the EBIT is with EUR 2.7 million. We are also in line with our forecast and our guidance. I think this is good. Let us have a look at the balance sheet. Balance sheet figures.
Cash available at hand is sufficient. Although, of course, for an equipment-making company, we are always trying to be more cash richer. We always need cash as we are investing and try to have the projects always cash flow positive. However, EUR 6.8 million is fine, but we are working to improve the cash at hand situation over time. Remember, when we have a look at the balance sheet, also when we have a look at the long-term debt, just remember, we have been refinancing in the first quarter, the outstanding bond. We issued a new convertible bond with EUR 3.6 million. We also had the chance to refinance long-term loans.
We have now long-term loans, with a volume of EUR 31 million, and EUR 31 million + EUR 3.6 million for the convertible gives us a very strong financial background, as we know for the next five years that we are fully financed and we can follow up on our strategy, which we will learn later on about where we are moving towards and what the strategic objectives are. That was basically the refinancing we had in the first half year. However, that was just refinancing and not much cash at hand for us. That was about EUR 7 million, which was exceeding. We do see that we have some cash available in our balance sheet, which gives us the stability. We all know that the shareholders' equity is still negative. This will be changing over time. We have been communicating that on every shareholder meeting.
This will take some time to become positive again, but over time, this will change also, and we are very positive there. Cash flow development, I think I already talked quite a bit about the cash flows. Operational cash flow is -EUR 4 million. We built up a lot of accounts receivables and because we have been working for our larger customers, this will be changing in the second half of the year. We expect that the operational cash flow is going up because we are getting some of that accounts receivable paid and see the cash inflows. Also, we expect prepayments on projects to come. This will be improving for the second half of the year. I talked about the financing cash flow already, the EUR 6.1 million.
I said that most of the refinancing was neutral because we paid back our outstanding loans and the outstanding bond, which was repaid in time or even ahead of time. That was a very strong signal, I think, for this year. Let's have a look at the headcount. As I mentioned, we took over the activities from the former MASS GmbH, M-A-S-S, and along came 22 employees we highly appreciate having on board. What MASS does in PCB technology and others, and furnace drying ovens, we will learn from Lars in a few minutes. This is the increase in headcount is basically due to our new employees in that segment. Let's move on. Sales, the split by segments I've given you already earlier on. You can see that solar is very strong. I think that's now too interesting. Also, the regional sales split is okay.
This will be always depending on where we do our projects. We see strong interest moving in solar towards the Americas. Also in Europe, interests will be coming up, but you will hear that when Lars talks about the solar activities in a minute. Let me sum up from our perspective, this is basically what we've seen in the financials. I'm very much looking forward to take your questions later on and answer the questions in the Q&A, and look forward to that. Now I'll hand over to Lars, who's traveling right now, and he will give you a background on our strategy and product portfolio. Lars, stage is yours.
Yeah. Thank you, Markus. I hope I can be heard well. We want to continue with the application and especially the technologies. These are very much linked to each other. We are looking off on one side also, what are the target markets and target applications that we are aiming for, but we need to adjust and enhance the technology offerings that we can provide into those applications. So, there's a very strong linkage here. We added the vacuum plugging as a new element that you have not seen in previous such meetings. On the very right side, starting, that's a process that we are offering now that brings paste, metallic paste of different types into very tiny holes. Then there's a process about curing this and removing solvents from that.
These plugging systems are used in the printed circuit board industry for very high dense boards. We do foresee that as a good market as we see that the entire industry of compute and AI and so forth is moving very rapidly. We want to make sure that we have, within our portfolio, opportunities to engage in that. The second piece that we are also strengthening through that acquisition of MASS is our capability to thermally process, especially for dry and cure. This drying and curing capability goes super well along our wet, if you can go back please in this chart. Our wet capability, because what we process wet chemically, also needs to be dried. I think it's very important that we have both capability on curing and drying.
We want to talk about the technologies and applications. What I just explained is the capability that we have on PCB. If you want to stay at that page first, it shows systems and machines that we are doing here. You see on the left side, the plugging machine, that's an example of a machine that's a relatively small machine compared to some of the other machine that Singulus is doing. What we like about that is that's a machine that is not coming with a lot of options. There are certain configurations that we have, but that's the start, maybe to a little bit more a serialized kind of a machine, that is used across various industries and partners. It's possible to spec in a process and a machine like that in the manufacturing process.
Therefore, we do hope that we can develop our business towards a machine type or platform. That we can use in a more standardized way and fashion compared to some of the other machines and equipment that we have. That require a higher degree of customization and unique discussion with the customer. This is really a huge opportunity. What we show here on the right side is a thermal processing system. You can say that's an oven. It's a little bit more than an oven because these systems deal with a very wide range of solvents. These solvents are typically flammable, or tend to be explosive, depending on the concentration level.
One capability that spills very well with the overall capability of Singulus is the ability to offer a system that can process these solvents, drying, maybe certain inert gases, and that goes very well along at that overall capability that Singulus possesses. Going back to this chart, we also can use this kind of processing capability in certain elements of our surface engineering solutions. If we are dealing with surface engineering, we also have systems for ovens and imprinting that we can use through this newly acquired capability.
Okay. I talked the entire time about page 10. Could we then go to page 12, please? Okay. For a time being, we will report our PCB manufacturing-related activities under our semiconductor offering. As this may grow over time, we may consider to change the way of how we do the splitting. What we are trying very much is to enhance our capability in semiconductors, and that will go a little bit towards advanced packaging. This is exactly where also the activities of that newly acquired business go along. We are trying to strengthen our overall platform, but we also maintain a very high focus on the TIMARIS systems. That's the reason why I'm traveling right now. These systems, we see a very good response from customers.
The individual process modules are a major part of our focus to enhance them, to add additional features. Also certain new features that are required really in what we see from this artificial intelligence industry, higher compute power, certain features in inductors. Those are exactly the kind of applications where our TIMARIS platform offers a very strong opportunity for further growth, and we are pursuing this actively. Next to semiconductor, we maintain our strong position in solar. What we see and what we spoke to is to make sure that we have a good choice between single equipment in solar and turnkey offerings. The difference is for single equipment, they are very individualized systems and machines and processes that we are selling to our customers. We see that very strongly for established companies as well as for perovskite applications.
Our main focus remains in turnkey solutions where we offer to a customer a combination of processes, and that's illustrated here on this page. Those are entire factories. The idea is that because Singulus is offering wet chemical solutions as well vacuum deposition solutions. We just talked about the oven technologies. We are able to offer a broader range of process and machine technologies that are required in turnkey solar offerings. It's a major focus that we continue to pursue very actively. If we are going on the next page, you will see examples of an area that we see a very high continued interest. We see also a certain technology shift within that, and that's really talking about perovskites and tandem technologies.
Those are an additional layer of a solar that is added on crystalline solutions that offering an additional capability to catch more light and produce solar systems with higher efficiencies. It's an area where we see a very strong interest from across the world, very interesting customer interactions in Europe, in the U.S., also in Asia. We are following this very closely. The big trend here is to define what amount is done through wet chemical and what processes are done through vacuum deposition processes. Singulus is playing in both fields, we do have a very good opportunity to catch early project opportunities, but also to see how these two technologies evolve. It's very hard to say one or the other wins.
I think it's a combination out of both, and we can see very clearly there are certain customers trying with different end targets and application targets, and then either/or technology is a little bit more in focus. We have here a system for deposition systems that are using evaporation systems, and there are different kind of machines and also materials that we done. This is a project example that is delivered and installed at a customer. We have more in the pipeline. We have already more installed, and we remain very positive about our EVARIS line, which was only introduced last year. And we see a continuous good interest from prospect customers in all geographies talking to us about evaporation systems.
We feel we took the right decision to bring this product to the market, and we remain very invested in optimizing the system further and maybe even consider larger systems of that kind. Closing on solar, the next topic is about our MEDLINEs. We remain very active to pursue that medical industry, especially we remain active in contact lenses. We do see a very good response from customers working in these fields. We see certain trends where maybe new opportunities are coming up in contact lenses, and also the commercial model is changing a bit. As that happens, we are currently working on several projects in an early stage, I have to admit, on refining our service offering and solution offering in the wet chemistry side, and we remain positive that we can talk about larger projects going forward.
At this stage, we can see overall that medical industry a little bit careful. There are certain considerations going on about in which country and which geography, what kind of production systems are in place. While this is being sorted out by our customers, we are working with their respective R&D teams on new solutions. We are very glad that we do see a continuation of the work that Singulus has been done there for many years. Aside from contact lenses, there are a few other application where we start to engage. We reported in prior meetings about that. As that happens slowly and the processes for approval in the medical and pharmaceutical industries take a certain time. We don't want to speak too much about it today, but we see there's a continuation and an interest that we are actively pursuing.
The same thing we also notice on our three-dimensional deposition systems. Currently, those systems are mainly used for cosmetic or for appearance coating. We also see certain customers switching to more functional coatings where they have additional properties embedded into those deposition systems. We see a very interesting trend where that industry is coming back or getting stronger in Europe. There's a few examples that we see in different countries in Europe, where the production systems are increased for traditional consumer packaging applications. But we also see very major global companies and branded companies who start to engage very deeply in certain technological aspects, and working with us actively on developing new solutions or an adaptation of a solution. And here also our combination of capabilities in vacuum deposition, in curing, drying, and oven technologies, and the wet side is coming to play.
Those are exactly the kind of activities that we actively pursue in our development work with our customers. All in all, you can see that our product portfolio is developing. We have shared this chart a little bit, and we are going to refine that more going forward. What we want to make sure is that we have a very clear focus on our systems in vacuum, in wet, and also in thermal processing solutions. With that overall offering, we feel very confident that we can well pursue our interest and our strategic view where we want to go. That strategic view we summarize here as our business development goal, meaning that we are trying to very actively seek projects that require both, or a combination of technologies for both wet chemical technologies and vacuum deposition technologies.
The combination out of those offer us a unique selling point and selling proposition, and that is something that we actively pursue in discussions with customer. There is a whole range of different applications that we see, and we are judging one by one about what is the risk level to establish a process, what is the likelihood we can get in. We are looking into certain aspects of timing and our own resources. We feel positive that that strategic direction that we took to really focus in this intersection of those two major technology fields offers us a good plan forward. That is actively what we are pursuing with nearly all the projects we are working on. All in all, we want to close with an outlook. We remain positive for the remaining of the year that we can achieve our sales.
We have a guidance currently to achieve about EUR 80 million-EUR 83 million in this current year. The main drivers here we see really in the combination of one side using our technology footprint that I just explained, wet and vacuum in that combination, and work then together with customers more strategically. Especially we see here a huge opportunity going on in the work that we are doing with a very large leading technology company in the solar segment. This, we expect will be one of the growth drivers we are working on. These things take a little bit time. We need to go through a proper work to establish a process, but we are positive that that will come.
While we view that positively, we also remain bullish about our semiconductor segment, as we just said, because that is an established machine platform. We are going more for incremental improvements of these machines. That is why the semiconductor segment has a very good contribution to our EBIT in the company which we forecast in a low single-digit million euro range for 2026. That is closing what we have prepared for our sharing today, and we want to open the floor for questions.
Thank you so much. Indeed, questions, we have received quite a few already through the chat. For those of you who are interested in asking questions via the microphone, please feel free to do so by entering the word "question" into the chat, and I will then permission your microphone for usage. As you see, the process is quite easy. You will be asked by our system to permission the microphone usage, then you have to unmute your microphone and go live. With that, I will be able to hear you, and you will be able to ask questions. While we are waiting for additional questions, I actually already have seen a lot, let's start out with the operating cash flow. Do you expect the operating cash flow to be positive at the year-end?
Yes, basically, we do expect that. As I mentioned, we build up some accounts receivables over the first half year due to the POC. We are working on lots of projects. So yes, the operational cash flow will improve. We expect also some prepayments when new projects are coming in. I mentioned that the order entry was rather slow in the second quarter, and we expect order entry picking up in Q3, Q4 in the normal term of business. This is why we expect also the operational cash flow to increase and being positive in the end.
Thank you so much. Also regarding the cash flow, you plan to repay the EUR 2.9 million CTIEC financing in September from operating cash flow. Given that the first half operating cash flow was negative at EUR 4 million, how comfortable are you with that repayment?
Sorry, I couldn't hear the first part of the question. Can you just repeat it?
Of course. You plan to repay the 2.9 million CTIEC financing in September from operating cash flow, and the question is how confident and comfortable you are with that?
We are working on that, and we are very confident that we can do this, and that's basically, it's a short-term liability we have, and we're already in touch with CTIEC on the prepayment. We also expect a related cash in close to that project. This is basically no issue at all.
Great. Thank you. Looking at the current order backlog, question is concerning that it does support your 2026 guidance. However, in the second quarter, intake was around EUR 9 million and relatively subdued. How should we think about order momentum over the next two quarters, and do you expect any additional orders from the strategic partner in the second half?
Basically, we do expect order entries in the coming months. As I mentioned, we stay with our forecast and our prognosis for 2026. This means that we will be using some of the existing order backlog to turn that into revenues. We will be also moving forward with new projects, especially in the solar segment, but also in semiconductors. This will basically lead up to the revenue forecast. Not sure if you Holger, you are hard to hear for me at least a little bit. So because sometimes we see loud on my end. So sometimes the questions are hard to hear.
Thank you. All right. Let's continue with the MASS acquisition. We had a few questions surrounding that. What was the strategic rationale for you acquiring MASS, and where do you see the most tangible technology synergies with the Singulus portfolio?
That is in thermal processing. There are certain elements that we see. MASS has two technology fields. One is the thermal processing, the other is the vacuum plugging. If you want to call really one big driver, I think it's definitely the thermal processing capability that we see. As well, we are trying to open up some of the technology capabilities that we can offer to answer to growing market opportunities that we see, and that brings the vacuum plugging. We feel it's a very good fit between the two companies to combine these technology into one unified service offering. We see this is slowly picking up. We are going through that integration, making sure that we integrate their systems into ours, and that's life going on.
We hired additional people also to support our design in that area, and we are quite positively looking into this. This is a small flower that we planted, but we have a very positive outlook that that will grow and that overall market that you can see, especially in computer developing and supply chains for that diversifying. We think MASS and the technology that come with MASS are a very good fit with us.
Great. Can you give us a little bit more flavor on the purchase price, the revenue, and earning space you are acquiring with MASS and the expected 2026 contribution? Is it accretive, and how did you finance the transaction?
Well, it was just a small asset deal because the GmbH, the former MASS, was in insolvency procedures, and we took over selected assets. As I mentioned, most important, besides the IP, was taking over the employees. They give us a good lever to move in that market. So there was no major. It was 5-digit, small 6-digit thousand EUR sales price related to that. So no major investment, and we got a lot of IP, we got customer relationships, we got the employees, and we have a strategic entry into that business field, which Lars was just explaining. That was a very good deal. Overall, as you can imagine, 22 people do not change the consolidated financials that much. Over time, it will round up and add to our service and product portfolio, what Lars already told. But right now, in the consolidated figures, it is neglectable.
Great. You have slightly alluded already to the rationale also on the customer side. One of the question was concerning this, whether or not it would lead directly to new clients, and if so, what magnitude you would expect in the fiscal year 2027, in the coming year?
It already happened. It's the good news. Through this activity, we got to know customers that we did not know. We are in these early conversations with them. Some conversations actually start to materialize, we can see that. I think they came to visit us. They had a lot of questions to understand what is Singulus offering, how do those two companies fit together? To our big happiness, there are some also larger names from the industry in the clientele that discuss with us. They are negotiating through us through contracts. We are doing that. Typically for more standardized machines, there's a negotiation on certain frame contracts required, because those customers, they have multiple factories. They discuss about deployment across different sites and these kind of negotiations, they take a little bit of time to pursue. The same thing is on the technical side.
We went through a period of certain demonstration and explanation and sample-making with the customers, and this takes a bit of time. In 2026, specifically, I do not expect a super major contribution, but we are building a pipeline here. For 2027, we do see that that could be a very good business, and it's a very interesting synergy with the offerings that Singulus already has. As we continue, we will report on that. As Markus just said, it's a relatively small team. We are growing that, and we are finding very good synergies between that. I think material results I only see in 2027.
Cool. Let's look into the semiconductors. You've already talked about that a little bit as well, so there might be some redundancy. Semiconductor revenues are remaining below last year, although we see quite a broad industry CapEx upcycle. What's holding back growth, and when do you expect a meaningful acceleration also in your base?
The semiconductor side is growing overall. Singulus is in the non-CMOS kind of semiconductor. The big growth that you see for the broader industry is mostly in CMOS and in advanced packaging. Advanced packaging is one of the reasons why we are looking also into MASS and some of the related works there. We do see a very good pickup of our customers. We see that machines, especially delivered to customers in the past 24 months, are actually getting higher and higher in mass production. That's really a shift that also Singulus is going through to bring the Singulus machines from a predominant research institute, relatively small production houses-driven customer base into fabs and foundries and different level of customers.
There's a learning that we are going through. I think in 2025, particularly, we put a lot of effort in to make sure that we upgrade our machines, work on software applications, make sure that our systems are more suitable for large volume production, and we see this is happening. We also remain positive that we will see that momentum. Customers are in active discussions with us. There's a very positive dialogue about driving that. If you're looking into, for example, the magnetic applications for TMR sensor, that's just a gigantic market for electric vehicles. There are many such sensors in an electric vehicle. You see these same things also happening going forward in the robotics. There are major programs right now going on in robotics, humanoid robotics, everywhere talked about in the internet.
I think if you're looking into each joint, TMR sensors for different functions, for encoder functions, or basically defining the positions, but also for sensing, current sensors to measure force on overload. That's exactly the kind of application that we see. While we talk to those customers that are working on these kind of applications, we need to see that our systems also are made fit to do that. For example, TMR values, they are changing. We are seeing customers asking for different working ranges of those sensors. That's exactly what we are adjusting our process to, so that our machines suit the needs of the customers. That's an ongoing dialogue, and we see that that overall market is right, and we remain positive that we have a good offering of our products and processes today. We will see that in coming orders.
Great. Good transition to the next question, which might be difficult to answer, but maybe you can give us a feeling. What do you expect semiconductors to contribute in percentage to the overall revenues in the coming years? What development are you expecting?
That's really an interesting question because that depends on larger projects that are as opportunities we are working on in the solar side. Those projects tend to be higher in volume or lower in margin. In semiconductor, it's a bit different. But I do see that a good third or more of our business is semiconductor-related, and that's exactly also investments that we are taking. If you look at what we describe as solar, that's also a semiconductor at the end of the day. So there are certain synergies that we are catching. We are expanding our laboratory and sample-making capability in our headquarters in Kahl am Main. So these things will go hand in hand. If you just talk about that semiconductor, Singulus defines that, I would say, I think a 30%+ is a very solid number. Hopefully, even bigger. The projects are there.
Thank you. Looking at R&D, in the first quarter, you indicated that some follow-up R&D with your new partner would have been needed to be done before the bigger projects can be realized and started. How are you progressing with that R&D? Is that over what time frame, or has it been completed already? Can you give us some more color on that?
It is exactly on track, in my opinion. It is exactly on track. We set a larger set of activities. We are working through that. These things take time. It would not be R&D if this would be done in a few weeks or months. That is a process developed that meant where we are spending really significant effort. There is a large part of the team is working on that. We have multiple activities there, and we will see that in the coming months of how that yields. In terms of meeting the more granular milestones that we agreed there with the partner, we just reviewed that actually a few days ago. I feel we are on track to meet what we said we are going to deliver.
Thank you. Next question is regarding Triumph. Can you give us an estimate how long the bidding sale on process of Triumph will take?
The bidding is closed. That is a very simple answer. There is a public solicitation that Triumph bid. We submitted and published also on the demand of Triumph that that period is being closed. They are accepting currently no additional bids. Whoever bid it, those bids have been received. Currently, this is entirely an activity of Triumph to go through those bids and evaluate that and then come to a conclusion. We cannot really state too much. I think that is a question that has to be raised to Triumph. What we are doing is we are basically waiting for a Triumph decision.
Thank you. Next question is regarding one of your customers, Grand Process Technology from Taiwan. The question's regarding a press release that they released about two weeks ago, and that very prominently mentioned you as a key supplier. It seems like they're keen on developing an AI chip packaging technology for the next generation. Why did you not release a press release on this, and when would you expect an order in conjunction with this news?
Yeah, we are very excited about that. Thanks for mentioning that, and that ties into everything that I said before. We are actively working on widening our service offering, and taking technology that we have and putting this a little bit in a different context, and that's exactly a case and example where we do that. The release came out ahead of the SEMICON Taiwan show . That is happening in beginning of next month, beginning of September. We are actively working with customer. We are also working on additional marketing activities and we will share when we are ready. But that's exactly the kind of activities that we are pursuing very systematically. One side in terms of technical aspects, so make sure that we have a solution and we have an offering that is attractive to the market, but also on the commercial side.
We do see that these projects require a little bit different go-to market strategy from the commercial aspect, and that's exactly what we are working through in certain partnership. We expect there's more to come. We are working on more in that field, and we feel to really tackle these upcoming applications. They are so challenging, so we need to put this on a few shoulders, and we can't do everything by ourselves. Partnering is a great way to also mitigate risk, but also offer more sales channel, have more access to more customers because our overall offering is wider. But we don't do this in any form or shape as a joint venture or any other kind of a relationship.
It's really two companies working very closely together to offer something to the respective markets, and that's what we find is the right approach to pursue here, and we are very happy about that application.
Thank you. There were a few questions regarding, as a follow-up to the presentation and things you mentioned during the presentation. You said on one of the slides, "Turnkey talks are ongoing," and the listener wanted to get a little bit more details on that.
Yeah. Turnkey is a wide word. When we talk about it is basically that we offer the customer a machine plus a process. Very often it is not just one machine and one process, it is maybe a combination of machines and a combination of processes. As well giving them a guarantee that what is being processed in this setup has a certain measurable output or measurable performance standard at the end. We are doing that as a general contractor. Those projects are highly attractive to us because they underpin the capability of having multiple technologies in the company. That is something that we are pursuing very actively in a very positive way. These projects take a bit of time. There is a lot of discussion going on. We also see the customers are going through their funding discussions.
I think this is very typical in the solar industry. They are working through that to make sure that these projects are established. In order to manage our risk, what we are doing is we are trying to work through pilot scenarios, and making sure that we deliver these combined processes prior to customers for testing. That ensures that the customer knows really what they can expect getting from us. It also makes sure that we understand what the customer's expectations exactly are. That is something that we are working on very actively, and we do see a huge opportunity here for Singulus Technologies going forward. It will take some time.
Thank you. Next question is regarding perovskite. Do you have an idea of when you would expect this to go into mass production?
Some things are already our customers in production. We do not want to speak for the customers, but we are very positive on where we stand. We think that we did the right choices from our point of view in terms of some of the offerings on machines and exactly configurations of machines. What we see is there is, like I just said, a trend on combining what you do in wet and what you do in vacuum, and the combination of the two. That is exactly what we are pursuing. These customers that we are looking for, they are located in Europe and in the U.S. T hat is something that we will pursue very actively, and we remain bullish for that. There is a certain time for qualification.
I know the performance results that the customer achieved in the lab scale, and they are also working with their partners to bring this really in a large scale to market. But on a small scale mass production, we are already in.
Another thing that you touched on were new commercial models in contact lines. Can you be a little bit more specific and give us more details, and what are the consequences for Singulus?
I hope it is a good consequence that we see a continuation of business. What we see is that it is a market that has a certain saturation on one side, but it has also a very good niche player and others who continue to develop these products and some unique versions of mainstream product for certain target application. That is something where we continue to offer our solutions. What we want to make sure is that we stay relevant, that we also understand the trends where that market is continuing. There are certain materials currently being tested, there are certain process combinations being tested, and being part of this active development of customers is a very good opportunity for us to make sure that we maintain our position with our customers. As people age and populations are aging, we see also certain trends, cosmetic trends are changing.
We see in different geographies the contact lens market is behaving different, and those are the drivers. There are certain markets that demand for more. We are right there. At the same time, there is also the end customer's commercial model is a bit changing in terms of the price structure. Private label is a big topic in that market. We need to make sure that our offerings are fit to what those customers are asking for.
Thank you. Looking at the solar market, there are two questions. One is the perspective of the solar market in the U.S., and the second question is, when do you expect the project with your large solar partner to deliver a meaningful sales contribution?
We are working through a development plan. Answering the second question first, we are working through a development plan. We mentioned that before. These activities and developments, they have a certain time. We are going through that and we do not want to pre-conclude exactly when that is. At the moment, from our point of view and the development roadmaps and the sub-milestones that we agreed. We are on schedule to deliver what we said we would deliver. We are in active discussions with that customer on whether and when they may go ahead. That is a decision that right now solely sits with them. What we are working on is to make sure that we are really ready, our process technology is ready, design is ready, validation is ready, and in that terms, we are there.
These projects will take some time then to be built and made. If you are asking for major contribution, this is definitely not in 2026. This is something for 2027 and beyond. Our team is highly focused to make sure that we close on these projects. Specifically in the U.S. market, I think this was the first question, we do see a high interest in solar in the U.S. market. There are different drivers really. I think one big driver is that the U.S. market is a little bit more entrepreneurial than the European market. You have multiple also smaller players who are very active, who have very strong technical teams, and we selected teams where our technologies really fit. We are in a very close interaction and cooperation, and we see that continuing. The European market is a little bit more careful about that.
We don't see in the crystalline side a lot of growth, but we see in the European sectors also in other fields, perovskite, thin films, there's a continued interest and with those customers we also dealing. By nature of these markets, the European side, I think they're a little bit more conservative. They are a little bit more careful. They are thinking less big in scaling and in the availability to invest their money, and the U.S. is much better. That's why you see in that U.S. solar market a much higher momentum.
Great. I have two more questions. One of them is, and I'm not sure if I'm understanding it correctly, is there any relationship with SpaceX that might result in business at some point?
We are talking to many customers. There are many rumors. We are not going to talk about individual customers, but we talk with nearly everybody in the solar market, as well as companies who are today not in the solar market. There is a multiple arrangement. We heard all sorts of things. We also follow very closely what they do, their publications. This is one side. You have the same thing for Tesla. We get the same question nearly daily. We see that also for other markets. There is a huge search in energy, and that's partly driven out from the growth in AI industry. That is where those questions are coming from. But at the same time, we are seeing that also in other markets and in other I don't want to say markets as a geography, but also in an application market.
There are companies who are interested in using solar for their self-use, because they have a demand in energy and in supply, and there are other players who are more working on selling solar as a module for others to produce electricity. These business models are very different. With nearly everybody in the market, we are in an active conversation.
Thank you. Aside the projects with a larger partner, are there other larger U.S. projects in the pipeline, and do you have sufficient flexibility and capacity to pursue these opportunities that might present themselves?
Yeah. I would say, especially in solar, there is more players in the U.S. Perovskite is one of this area where you find some very strong players in the U.S., and I think they are building very strong pipelines. Also, despite some of the statements and what you may read here and there in the media, there is a continuous good business case for solar in the U.S. So you need to look a little bit under the hood, but there is a few companies who are very active, and they pursue very promising go-to-market plans in solar. We do have the capacity. We are working with them. We have machines in those companies, and we are in very good contact.
Myself, I would say probably on a weekly basis, we have a very good insight on where we are with those existing as well as new customers.
Great. We are coming to the last two questions, and I guess looking at the time that has already passed, and it always goes faster when you are enjoying it, I would close the call once we have answered those two questions. One of them is also regarding the solar part. Have you already disclosed who that large solar partner is, or are you going to disclose that at some point?
We have not disclosed who that partner is, and there are currently no plans to disclose that.
Okay, and last but not least, on the MASS acquisition, can you give us, just for clarification purposes, an idea what customer sector, semiconductors, you are targeting with that technology?
It's not so much the front-end semiconductor, that's definitely the back end of semiconductor. Some people call that advanced packaging, or even after advanced packaging, the printed circuit board and printed circuit board assembly process. That's really a little bit afterwards. Those markets, however, they grow a bit together, especially in advanced packaging. You see people are working with more dense printed circuit boards, so the whole density of electronics is developing very rapidly. There are a lot of thermal questions, especially due to AI compute, that require dissipation of heat. So there are different combinations of materials being used to dissipate heat, to also deal with thermal expansion coefficients, and that's exactly the area where we are working on.
If you want to look at MASS related to semiconductor, it's really the back-end part of the semiconductor world, where we see a good opportunity and where we focus on.
Great. I guess that concludes our call. Thank you so much, Lars and Markus, for all the insights that you've provided and the time that you've spent with us. Thanks everybody for participating and the amount of good questions that we've been able to share and get answered during this call. This call was recorded. We'll put it on Research Hub a little later today. If you have any questions, I'm sure the IR team of Singulus is more than happy to answer them. Of course, you can also contact our analysts any time with interest that you might have. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon, everybody. Lars, safe travels to you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Take care, everybody.