Hello and welcome to the presentation of Mycronic's Q1 report. My name is Sven Chetkovich, I'm the Director of Investor Relations at Mycronic, and with me I have CEO Anders Lindqvist and CFO Pierre Brorsson, who will be presenting today. With that, I hand over to Anders, please go ahead and present Mycronic's Q1 report.
Thank you, Sven, and welcome everyone to this call. Today we will, of course, talk about the report, Q1 in short. We will go deeper into the different divisions. Pierre will talk about the financials, a few words on sustainability, and then we end the session with the Q&A part. As always, there is an appendix in the presentation that we will not present, which is containing data from independent sources on the market. Starting with the quarter, we had a very good start, a good start of the year, and comparing to the same quarter last year, and the same quarter last year was also a good quarter, so it makes the figures even nicer, I would say.
We had a good increase in order intake with 25%, up to a little bit more than SEK 2 billion, and we had a record in sales increasing 27% over the same quarter last year, up to SEK 2.14 billion, which is very high and good. We also recorded a very strong EBIT, the highest ever in a quarter with SEK 775 million, and corresponding to a margin of 36%. Also, backlog continued to be strong at SEK 4.6 billion. We also made two acquisitions this year, one within the quarter, which is Hprobe, which is a company that has developed a unique technology for high-speed testing of what's called MRAM, magnetic memories, and also magnetic sensors based in France, and this will be integrated in the Global Technologies division as a new business line.
After the quarter, we also made another acquisition with Global Technologies, a company called Robat, which has a good, unique technology for testing of signal quality on PCBs, and that will be an important part of the PCB test business area, also within the Global Technologies division. Good start of the year on numbers, but also on acquisitions, two very good acquisitions so far. If we then move into the different divisions, starting with the Pattern Generators, a lot of the records are coming from here, so we can see that the markets, both for displays and semiconductors, have continued to be stable. We also saw the first order for a Prexision 8000 EVO, the newly launched high-end machine for mask writing in the display industry.
We can see that it confirms our thinking that it was well in line with the industry needs for more advanced photomasks and really to take the most out of the capacity of aligners, etc., and so on. Very happy with that. Also, we could see that the order intake was very strong, up 48% to almost SEK 1 billion, and the record in sales to very increasing 43%, close to SEK 1.2 billion. Gross margin 76%, good, and record EBIT SEK 752 million. Very strong start. Backlog a little bit more than SEK 3 billion, which contains 27 systems at the moment. Strong performance in Pattern Generators. High Flex, it's maybe that division where we did not see a strong performance. I think every other division contributed nicely.
In the High Flex business, we could see that the demand in Europe was very weak. We also took part in the largest show or exhibition in North America called APEX, which generated a lot of interest. At the same time, we could see that the order intake declined 12%, down to SEK 295 million. We also could see the first impact of tariffs. The new tariffs for the U.S. have led to delays in deliveries. Things get stuck in customs longer than normal. For the quarter, we saw a negative impact or delay, actually, but it is a negative impact for the quarter, about SEK 15 million. Overall, net sales down 1%. Gross margin, okay, at 37% and EBIT minus 13. Backlog SEK 105 million, which is quite a low level of backlog for us. Not that good. High Volume, much better.
We could see that China is really coming back. We had a very good demand in the Chinese domestic market. We could see the order intake rose to 42%, with 42% to SEK 553 million, which is a very high number for this division. We had an increase of sales up to SEK 330 million. The newly acquired company Modus contributed with SEK 9 million to that. A good gross margin at 43%, EBIT SEK 59 million. We had an impact of SEK 4 million on that EBIT because of acquisition cost of Modus. Also strong backlog of SEK 975 million. Overall, good performance from the High Volume division. We move to Global Technologies. As I said initially, we had these two acquisitions. We could start with the business side. We could see that we have a slowdown in the order intake from the die bonding business in the quarter.
It's not related to market. We have not that many customers in this business, and we saw just fewer orders coming in. At the same time, we saw that the PCB test business line continued to be very strong. What you see on the picture is the equipment from the newly acquired company Hprobe, based in Grenoble, France. This has a unique technology for high-speed testing of MRAMs, magnetic sensors. This is a technology that is coming, so we believe very much in this acquisition. The orders situation, we had a decrease of 8%, down to 254, while there was an increase of sales, 31%. Gross margin, good, at 46%, and EBIT 54. In that 54, we have a negative impact of SEK 18 million from the previous and recently acquired businesses. Backlog was 445, which is reasonably strong.
After the quarter, as I said, we also acquired Robat, that has a technology for testing the signal quality on PCBs. Overall, I think a very good performance from the Global Technologies division, and we are happy with that. We talk about the outlook. Of course, there is a lot of talk on tariffs and what impact that will have on the business. Because of that, we could see that the uncertainty has increased, and it is more difficult really to say now, after one quarter, how the year will end. We believe that we can still reach this 7.5, but there is also a little bit of downside to that.
You can all have seen, I guess, that the currency has changed quite a lot since we gave the forecast, and the Board of Directors' opinion now is that we will reach sales of between SEK 7 billion and SEK 7.5 billion, introducing a range instead for a fixed number here. Talking more about the tariffs, the direct impact on Mycronic is quite limited. We have not that much flows between the U.S. and China that are directly impacted. In most cases, the customer is the importer, and we do not carry the cost of the duties or the tariffs in that case.
We believe that the indirect impact has a bigger impact on us. We can see that the investment climate can change, and there is most likely hesitation to invest. We could see changes in currency, et cetera. Therefore, we see that the uncertainty has definitely increased since the introduction of this. All right, with that, I hand over to Pierre Brorsson to talk about the financials.
Thank you so much, Anders. Going back then to the first quarter, which we are super happy about on a total level, we had the increase of 27% on a pretty good quarter of last year to the level of SEK 2.1 billion. We had also the highest ever aftermarket revenues, SEK 531 million. You can see that we have now two really strong quarters in the aftermarket side, and this is mainly in the Pattern Generators division, where we have additional contracts, but we also have some one-time effects there, works that we have been doing on that side. You can see on this picture that we have also an EBIT margin higher than before, breaking the level of last year, where we were at 35%, now even up to 36% on the quarter. Exceptionally high profitability levels on record sales levels.
Here you can see that we have now reached our previously communicated outlook of SEK 7.5 billion, which is still the upper range of the interval. Good continued growth over many quarters and a very high EBIT level at 29%. With the aftermarket, we have been able to continue to grow quarter on quarter all the way back since early 2021, which we're really proud about and happy about. If we look at a bridge comparing this quarter with a similar quarter of last year, we had a strong improvement of the gross profit, partly or largely because of higher volumes at maintained levels, which was the case for Pattern Generators. We also had improvements in the gross margin, in particular in the Global Technologies division, as well as in the High Volume division.
There is also a portion of that which is related to a higher share of Pattern Generators sales. On the cost side, we have added costs in all categories, deliberately so, because we see opportunities both in developing new products and in the markets. A large portion of the R&D expansion relates to Pattern Generators, whereas the marketing and sales cost is more spread across the divisions, and it also includes a portion of acquisition costs for the two acquisitions we have been able to complete in the beginning of the year. Also, the G&A is spread across divisions, and here the new companies in Global Technologies have also an important portion. Other items are largely related to currencies. Actually, the revaluation of receivables is in particular affected because you get paid later than when the receivables are created, so we have a negative impact here.
The impact of the exchange rates is actually bigger than the total of SEK 46 million here. We have received more other positive impacts largely from government grants in this amount, so about SEK 60 million is effects related to this. Despite that, we end on a new record level of SEK 775 million. If we cut it the other way around and look at it based on how we are organized, you can see that the main part of the improvement comes from Pattern Generators, where we have added SEK 209 million, largely by selling more than the prior year.
In the High Flex division, as Anders mentioned, we are actually making a small loss in the quarter, which we are not happy about, but based on the volumes that we saw and the additional cost that we had to bear for having the largest fair we have in North America in the first quarter compared to in the second quarter of last year, this is the main explanation for the negative result and the residual between this quarter this year and last year. On the High Volume side, we had fantastic order intake driven by a strong business in China. We could not get that all to revenues, so the improvement on the result is limited, but we still consider this as a very good first quarter of the year for High Volume.
For Global Technologies, as Anders referred to, we had a very good quarter in the PCB test division, and we had also a strong result improvement in the die bonding part of the business, and this more than covered for the costs that we have with the newly acquired technology companies compared to last year. On the group function side, it is a bit split in two. We have, on one hand, exchange rate differences on loans that we do from the group to subsidiaries, which are in different currencies, and acquisition costs for the two acquisitions we have made. By that, we ended up at 36% or SEK 775 million. On the cash flow side, we continue to have strong cash flow from our operations, but in the quarter, we had lower advance payments, and this is mainly a reflection of Pattern Generators having stronger sales than order intake.
We also built inventory, in particular in the High Volume division, where we had strong order intake but could not realize the sales. This is where we are having a rather late point of revenue recognition. A customer has to accept before we recognize revenue. On the investing activities, we had mainly the acquisition of Hprobe in the quarter. By that, we had a relatively modest cash flow for the period. With that, I hand the word back again to Anders.
Okay, thank you very much. Before going into the Q&A session, a few words about sustainability. What we have done in the quarter, this is a continuous effort, and in the quarter, we launched an initiative to strengthen the efforts in the supply chain when it comes to environmental and social conditions. That was the focus area for the quarter. We also finalized the sustainability report for 2024, which broadly follows the CSRD reporting standards. Quite big work going into that, of course. Really to optimize and align the sustainability reporting with the company strategy, we will review both the processes and reporting during 2025 to find a maximum alignment between the business strategy and also the reporting. That was that for that quarter. With that, Sven, we can start the Q&A.
Thank you, Anders, and thank you, Pierre. Now we are moving over to our Q&A session, and we will start with SEB and Ina Djupsund. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Ina.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the gross margin strength we saw in the Pattern Generators division, and was this driven by some specific orders or something more structural? If you could talk about the kind of customer conversations you had over the past few weeks, has there been kind of a significant change in the demand picture for the Pattern Generators orders in your view?
If I start then by speaking about the gross margin, there is a little bit different gross margin profile in the display industry and the semiconductor industry, and we had large display sales in the quarter, so it is more a reflection of that than anything else. We were on not too dissimilar levels last year as well. When it comes to demand, we have seen so far a stable demand in the Pattern Generators businesses. It has not yet changed of any significance.
I can add a little bit on the customer conversation. Actually, we had the opportunity to talk with most customers a few weeks ago on big conferences that are normally happening in the beginning of the year. So far, no one is changing their long-term plans. Everyone in this industry is really in for we have a quite long horizon and still holding up their investment plans and expansion ideas. No change of that.
Okay. You said on outlook, there's a little bit more uncertainty now, which is a big surprise. Could you give us some flavor on if the higher uncertainty is related to some specific end market or country or division? That would be great.
I think it's generally a reflection of the uncertainty related to both the underlying demand. I mean, if we see a settle, if we see a lower general demand, it will also affect the investment climate. I think that's the most important. Second to that is the exchange rates fluctuations that we see at the moment. We have little revenue compared to the cost base. We have obviously little revenues in SEK. When it comes to project orders, this is all hedged, but of course, it affects the SEK amount over time.
If you see different divisions, I think the one that have shorter lead times and shorter decision times, of course, will be more affected by hesitation. I think that's typically our High Flex division would be the most likely most affected by uncertainty, and the Pattern Generators most likely the least, if anything, affected.
Great. That's good for me. I get back in line here.
Thank you, Ina. Now we move over to Fredrik Lithell at Handelsbanken. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Fredrik.
Thank you very much. Thank you for taking my questions as well. I just want to stay with Ina's question actually on the gross margin on the PG side. You also alluded to that you had some positive one-off related items in the aftermarket revenues in the PG side. It would be interesting to hear how that sort of inflected or improved your gross margin and how big that could have been. It would be interesting. That is the first one. In High Flex, you alluded to that also there, Anders. I think if you could talk a little bit if you have seen or felt that this is some pre-buying in the High Flex, especially from the U.S. clients in front of the tariffs or anything like that would be interesting. Thank you.
Take the first one then on the PG side. It doesn't have a material impact on the relative gross margin in the quarter.
Okay.
On the High Flex situation, the weakening we saw in quarter one and order intake was actually Europe and not North America. That was that. We have not really seen a rush in North America either. I think it is more just the business climate that is affecting here.
I mean, that was really the feeling that you had a fairly decent North America. Maybe there were clients that were rushing. I mean, you see the everyday behavior and you do not feel they were rushed.
No, not really.
Okay. Thank you. I'll get back in line.
Thank you, Fredrik. Thank you, and now over to Nordea and Anders Åkerblom.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I was wondering first a bit on the updated sales guidance. Obviously, SEK 7 billion-7.5 billion from SEK 7.5 billion previously. If I just look at the midpoint value and also with you having moved the delivery of one Prexision 8000 from this year to being replaced with Prexision 8000 being delivered next year, that accounts for approximately half of this change in the midpoint value. Should one interpret that as being a substantial portion of the updated sales guidance, or are other factors driving this primarily? You mentioned currency as such, but still.
I think it's more a reflection of the uncertainty that we have opened up. We are delivering a record quarter, which is almost not at all affected by any of this turmoil that we see in the markets right now. As such, we want to also signal that, well, there is a downside to this as well potentially. It is more a reflection of that than any specific other events.
Fair enough. Asking just about PG, you mentioned that it's the maybe more resilient of the business areas. Just looking at the quarter, and not to in any way sound unpleasant, you received six orders in the quarter. As Anders, as you mentioned in the beginning, most of that was in January. I think four of six orders were in January. In my mind, that's maybe not stable.
It seems as such at least that there was a quite rapid deterioration towards the end of the quarter. I'm just trying to balance that a bit with what the display OEMs are saying, as you mentioned in this environment, that they have to continue to invest to support earnings, maybe especially in this environment. How should one balance that going forward with using stable? I mean, looking at Q2 last year, that was a very strong quarter for display order intake. Is something in line with that, or do you get my question?
I think stable in the PG business, I normally say that quarter is much too short a window of time to look at. I normally say that we need to have a three-year perspective more or less on this. I think six machines in a quarter is good. It happened all in January. That was not. I think that is kind of a normal distribution. If you see historically, there have been quite a lot of months without machine sales, and then all of a sudden it happens. It is very difficult to, when we say stable, it does not mean that we will have two orders every month or something like that. It is more kind of the customer's, how do you say, investment plans and the technology shift and the whole business.
Still, we could see that there is stability in the transformation from LCD panels to OLED. We still, according to third-party analyst companies and so on, see a growth in the display industry. We see a bigger growth on the OLED side. We see it is forecasted also to have quite good growth on the semiconductor side. Then we have the replacement cycle on top of this. All of that is very stable. We have not seen any change of customers' willingness to get quotes or to discuss opportunities and so on. The orders will come with a little bit irregular pattern.
Yeah, no, makes sense. If I may just ask a follow-up on that. I mean, speaking about the new Prexision 8000, last time around, you mentioned that when you get the inaugural order, that tends to create a bit of a spurring effect among competitors to also order. Do you still see that that is the case and that maybe we should expect a somewhat similar pattern to when you launched the Prexision 800 in terms of the phasing and timing of the orders, or has it fundamentally changed?
No, I think that's a very good comparison, actually, I think. The time between launch and order was quite much shorter, actually, on the 8000 than it was on the 800. That was a really wanted machine in the market. I think we could most likely we will not sell any or so many 800 anymore. I think customers will really move to the 8000. I think you can look on the 800 as a kind of a proxy to see how the 8000 will sell in the future.
Super helpful. Thank you. I'll get back in line. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Anders. Now we move over to a new participant, Joachim Gunell at DNB. Please go ahead and ask your questions.
Thank you for that, Sven, and good morning. When it comes to the AI-driven demand opportunity for Mycronic, you called out maintained momentum here for PCB tests, but saw some weakness in die bonding. Have you observed any sort of hesitancy in customers' spend in this end market in your sales pipeline recently?
Not really. I mean, AI is a driver for both of these business lines. Despite that, we saw a decline on the die bonding and still a very good demand on the PCB. This is a little bit contradictory. The difference is that on the PCB test, we have quite a big customer population. Orders are more spread, so you can more easily see trends and general demand will affect more directly. While in the die bonding, the customer group or customer universe is quite small. It depends there a little bit on when the order is coming and so on. So far, that demand still exists and is still there.
Great. If we raise the line of sight a bit here and focus on the bigger picture. Over the past five years, your SLX series in Pattern Generators have been one of the key growth drivers for the overall group growth. You have essentially captured the low-hanging fruit now in the Semicon opportunity. You will increasingly go head-to-head and replace incumbent competitors in that space. If we look over the coming three to five years, just from a more philosophical standpoint, do you think that Mycronic needs to find a new growth vector similar to SLX in order to deliver high single-digit organic growth, or do you think that the current product portfolio can support such a growth trajectory?
We will certainly welcome one more, I was saying. The display, of course, as we have the majority, if not everything, of the market there, the market growth is, of course, very important for the growth there. It is our ability to develop technology to increase the value of that market, really to do that. I think that can continue as before. On the SLX side, it is correct that we have sold the majority of the newly of greenfield installation where new factories have been built or new capacity has been built. We have not been as good in replacing the installed base. The installed base is still huge, and we still have quite a small part of that installed base.
We think that the market will shift a little bit more into replacing existing equipment rather than building new factories or new lines or new capacity. That can still go on for maybe five, ten years, I think. Then the installed base will be old again. I think that opportunity still exists. We have recently launched also equipment called MMX and so on. It's not big money, but I think it's a way for us to expand the market and to participate in more applications. This is also what we would like to continue to do, of course, to launch technology that can participate in new adjacent applications and expand the market by doing that.
Great. Thank you for that.
Thank you, Joachim. Now we go back to Ina at SEB. I think you had some additional questions.
Yes, I wanted to follow up on Joakim's question there. If you could talk a little bit what kind of new growth vector you're looking at and if you already started doing some R&D for this.
Yeah, I can speak in general terms. I think if you see, we were only in display before with Mask Writers, and then we expanded into metrology or measurement equipment in the display. Then we went into Semicon and also launched metrology equipment, the MMX, into that. I think around that theme, I think we can do more. We are looking, of course, into different areas, but we believe it should be close to the existing products or the existing technology. As an example, the inspection business is almost as big as the Mask Writer business. That is valid for almost the whole electronics industry, that quality control and inspection is almost as big as production equipment. We are much, much more leaning to the production side in every division, actually. That would be a natural step. There are several other areas as well. We are looking wide.
I wanted to ask a question on your expansion in Southeast Asia in high volume. Is this kind of proceeding as planned? Have you seen any change in outlook on growth there? If you could talk a little bit about the opportunities you see there.
We are establishing ourselves in Thailand now where we also will have production of high-volume equipment. This is as many companies have a strategy to be not only producing in China, also to have a second place. We thought originally Vietnam could be one of them, but now we have considered Thailand to be a much better place to be at. That is in line with that strategy to have additional manufacturing location for that kind of business.
It is also a very important market, of course. Thailand is coming up, or Southeast Asia is coming up as a quite big additional market to China in Asia. That is very important. That is going according to plan. I think maybe that kind of expansion is faster than expected. We have also thoughts about India, which is a little bit more difficult when it comes to regulatory and also the sensitivity between China and India currently and so on. Not yet decided, but it's under consideration if that could be the next expansion in Southeast Asia.
Awesome. Thanks a lot. That's all for me.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Ina. Over to Handelsbanken again and Fredrik.
Thank you very much. A few more questions then. I was thinking about the strong Swedish krona and your prices you have on the PG side specifically. If this is sort of triggering you to look over the prices you offer to clients and make adjustments to them in any way, or if you're sitting still as is. That is really how you elaborate on your prices would be interesting to hear. Another question is we got in last week a new updated export restrictions in the U.S., mostly on the semiconductor side, but still they get tougher and tougher. The question is really, have you gone through them, evaluated them, see if you are sort of touched by them, or are you still outside of what is demanded in those routes? Thank you.
We had first the prices question. This is something that we are, of course, always reviewing and considering different factors. The Swedish krona is one. The competitive landscape is a different one. The tariffs is the third one, et cetera, et cetera. This is something that we work with on a continuous basis. This we will do going forward as well. On the PG side specifically, it's not that we have a competitor which is based in a similar competitor which is based in Swedish krona. From a competitive point of view, it's not an important consideration. Of course, for us, when it comes to earnings, it pushes us a little bit harder. Customers do not feel the Swedish krona, and we do not have competitors in Swedish krona.
Okay. The second one on export restrictions, U.S. export restrictions, anything that?
Nothing at the moment that is changing the situation for us when it comes to export. Also worth to mention is maybe that on the import to the U.S., the Mask Writers are actually exempted from the tariffs.
Okay.
For now, at least. Tomorrow may be different.
Thank you.
Yeah, things can change quickly. Okay. Thank you, Fredrik. Over to Anders at Nordea.
Thank you. Firstly, just asking the obvious. I mean, you've had a quite significant net cash position for quite some time now with SEK 3 billion currently. I mean, what should we think here? Are you going to keep having it and letting it yield 3%, or will you be more forward-leaning in this environment, or how should we think about that?
I think very few companies want to have cash for having cash. That is not in the plan. We will distribute a bit here in the second quarter to the owners. Of course, we are actively looking, and what you have seen so far is maybe limited-size acquisitions. We continue to look for those opportunities as well as for the opportunities to organically develop products within the company. We are accelerating the R&D now, as you may have seen in the numbers. All fronts, but the idea is not to collect cash to a very high degree.
That's comforting to hear. Kind of talking about R&D, I mean, in the quarter, some SEK 230 million in R&D investments. I mean, that continues to trend up quite nicely year- over- year after Q4 also seemingly noting something of a substantial step up. I mean, not in the least PG. Could you give us any type of indication on the timing of when we might expect to see some results of that?
Once we have new products, we will communicate the launch of the new products. Nothing to communicate today, unfortunately.
All right. Makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you, Anders. Over to Joachim at DNB again.
Yes, thank you. I just wanted to double-click to start off with the revised sales guidance. We all know the FX headwind, right? Can you just comment a bit on what the underlying assumptions are for the trajectory of the year when it comes to, call it, the tariff impacts? Have you only baked in a headwind for Q2, or have you basically penciled in a headwind for the remainder of the year in what you currently state?
I think what is in that revision is more the uncertainty rather than Prexision. I mean, we still have three quarters to go. If currency stays where it is, then there will be quite some impact on the full year. The currency change is most likely affected by the tariff turmoil, I would say. That could change in any direction, so that is kind of the difficulty in the prediction, I think. Currency is a big part, of course.
Connected to that will be, of course, the customer's willingness to invest. I think that's just more difficult to predict. Most likely, there's more from the 7.5 we had earlier. It's more if anything, there's downside because of this. We could still, if everything kind of normalizes or so on, then I think we could definitely reach the 7.5 again. It is not really that we are seeing a new number, just seeing more difficulty in predicting that number.
That makes sense. Thank you, Anders. I mean, how do you think about Mycronic? Should we see even more uncertain world than you currently see? In the past, of course, Mycronic was a bit more cyclical. You have now created a much more diverse, dynamic company. Can you just comment about, okay, where do you actually see relative resilience in the portfolio should macro worsen even more? Where would you anticipate the largest cyclical swings?
Yes, I think long term, I think we have a good position still. I think to be based in Europe, and particularly in Sweden, is today a good geographical location. We have a majority of sales in Asia. I think the Europe-Asia relation is still very strong and maybe could be maybe even better because of what is going on. I think what we have seen in the past when supply chain kind of localizes, where we had this called reshoring from China to Europe to everywhere, I think we normally sell more. The more places things are produced at, it's normally better for us. That could be quite positive.
I think the impact is more on the short-term hesitation for our customers really how to position themselves in this. I would say that in the High Flex, we've had quite short time between investment and, yeah, discussion, decision, and investment. I think that will maybe be the more affected. We could see already the good growth in the High Volume side because of China taking off. I think on the Global Technologies, that is also quite long-term and driven by factors that are here for long-term. I think we will have a good position to continue to have good business, I think.
That sounds encouraging. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now I think I will just leave the floor open to if there are any additional questions. In that case, please jump in. It seems like everybody has had their answers. With that, we have reached the end of today's presentation. Thank you very much for participating and listening.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone.