Mycronic AB (publ) (STO:MYCR)
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May 6, 2026, 4:00 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2026

Apr 24, 2026

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Hello, and welcome to the presentation of Mycronic's Q1 report. My name is Sven Chetkovich. I'm the Director Investor Relations at Mycronic, and with me today I have Mycronic's 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.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Thank you, Sven, and hello everyone. Welcome. Today, of course, we'll talk about the quarter one result and then go a little bit deeper in the different divisions and how the development is. Pierre Brorsson will explain more about the financials. We will have a few words on sustainability, and we will end with the question-and-answer session. Today, and as always, you will find in the material on the website also the market update in that part, which we will not present. Talking about the first quarter 2026. First of all, we need to keep in mind that also the quarter one of last year was a very strong quarter. We compare this quarter to an already very good quarter. Despite that, we have a strong increase on almost every row.

Order intake up 23% to a little bit more than SEK 2.5 billion. Very strong, and a very strong contribution from Global Technologies. We will see that when we go into the divisions. Also net sales following that, almost as much, 17% up, or almost up to an equal number of SEK 2.5 billion, where we had the increases from all divisions. And also record high EBIT of quite close to a billion, SEK 938 million. So of course a very strong margin of 37%, strong backlog of SEK 4.7 billion. We also during the quarter have completed two acquisitions, ETZ and Cowin DST, and I will talk more about those when we talk about the divisions. Looking on the different divisions, starting with Pattern Generators. Here we closed the acquisition of Cowin DST, which is a company in South Korea.

The acquisition was announced quite some time ago, but we had a quite long process to receive regulatory approval from the Korean authorities as this is a strategic investment and also a strategic business in South Korea. Cowin will contribute to the Pattern Generators' product portfolio, both with the products that are adding to the portfolio, but also with the knowledge and the new capabilities that we didn't have before. Super exciting to be able to develop that business now. On the business side, very strong sales because of we delivered the most expensive machine that we have ever built, a P8000 Prexision 8000 Evo, was delivered in the quarter. The sales increased 8% up to SEK 1.3 billion, more or less.

Order intake close to SEK 600 million, which is not really a bad number, but we had a very strong quarter for last year of close to SEK 1 billion. That was down 38%. On the order intake side, we got one Prexision 8 Evo, one SLX, and one MMX. Very strong gross margin, 77%. Extremely strong EBIT, SEK 831 million, and a backlog of SEK 1.9 billion. In this backlog, we have 14 systems. Also notable is that after the quarter, we received a very special order for a customized SLX mask writer, that is quite customized, which you can see on the price tag. The normal price of an SLX is between $4 million and $10 million, and this one was sold in a range between $27 million and $30 million. It's not a product that we will be able to sell more of, really.

This is a one-off event, but still a very good order. PCB Assembly Solutions. See here we struggle. We have done that for a while. We have a continued weak market almost everywhere. We have a strong headwind in the European market in the first quarter, also in the U.S. market was quite weak in the quarter. We can see that there's a lot of hesitation around customers to hold orders until they have received firm orders commitment from their customers. This is creating quite a lot of delay on the investment side. Order intake SEK 287 million, which is 3% down, and sales SEK 318 million, which is a little bit up, but still not very strong. Gross margin stable at 37% and EBIT SEK 8 million, so a very minor EBIT, and an order backlog of SEK 116 million, which is also quite a low backlog.

You can see that we struggle in this division. On the high-volume side, we see very strong market demand, both in the Chinese domestic market and also from outside of China. Especially to be noted is the aerospace industry in North America, which is very strong at the moment. We also have reached a milestone with the new factory that we have built in Thailand, where we have the first machines both assembled and delivered. We are able to make made in Thailand, not made in China, which is a positive thing in this geopolitical situation that we are in right now. Very strong order intake, SEK 737 million, which is 33% up, on already a strong comparative number. Sales up 24% to SEK 400 million, stable gross margin at 42%, and EBIT at close to SEK 40 million.

On the EBIT, we have an impact of this employee share ownership program of SEK -24 million as well, included in the number. Order backlog, a little bit more than SEK 1 billion. Very strong development in the high-volume division. We come to Global Technologies, where we had a super strong demand. Can talk first about the acquisition that we have made, which is a company called ETZ. This will not add much to the sales, because this is a supplier that we have had for many years. This is a strategic acquisition where we reinforce and safeguard our supply chain. You can see that we have a super strong order intake, 260% up for the division and up to SEK 915 million. The two business lines that are contributing most to that is the PCB test and the ETZ company is a supplier to PCB test.

We have a very large backlog, a very good momentum on the orders, and good situation on that one. The other strong business line is die bonding. On this one, we also have a good increase. Both these demands are very much driven by AI-driven demand, and that we have applications that goes into AI product or product for AI and drives the investment in this area. You can see that we had sales of SEK 492 million, the contribution from the recently made acquisitions, it's SEK 77 million. A little bit effect from that side as well. Gross margin, strong, 49%, and EBIT start to move now with the increased sales up to SEK 119 million. We have a little bit noise from acquisitions, both positive and negative, so we had some acquisition effect on the recently acquired businesses of SEK -5 million.

We had a reevaluation of consideration related to the purchase price of Vanguard Automation, which was SEK +22 million, so a little bit plus and minus in that one. A super strong backlog of SEK 1.7 billion, so very good situation here. EBIT margin of 24% as well, we are very happy with that. The strong order intake and our view on the market has made us to revise our outlook for 2026. The previous outlook was SEK 8.25 billion in sales at the end of the year. Now we see that we will have sales in the neighborhood or in the area of SEK 8.75 billion. Quite a good change on that one as well. With that, I will hand over to Pierre Brorsson to talk a little bit more about the financials.

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

Good morning from my side as well, and happy to stand here and have a good quarter with us and presenting that. First of all, looking at this graph, you see the strong sales level that we have had. We have been above SEK 2 billion a couple of times, but not in the neighborhood of SEK 2.5 billion, which also happens to be a quarter of our long-term financial target. This quarter, we hit that in revenues, and we also hit it on the orders received side. Aftermarket revenue contributing with SEK 525 million, which is a good level, and in volume, actually higher than the number we had a year ago. Given that we also have a bit of headwind with the exchange rates, we were just below the level of last year.

A record EBIT margin at 37%, reflecting that the sales also had a positive mix between the various businesses that we have with a strong sales, in particular in Pattern Generators, as Anders explained. If we look how this looks on a rolling 12-month basis, we hit SEK 8.3 billion in the quarter, which was just above the mark we had in our previous outlook for the year. We have now revised that one to SEK 8.75 billion, as Anders just mentioned. The EBIT margin is on a good level at 25%, and we are closing in on SEK 2 billion in our aftermarket, which is a key focus area for us to continue to grow this one. We are growing it in volume, but numbers take a little bit of time with the headwind we see on the FX side at the moment.

If we cut our total profit and loss statement by cost category, you can see that we moved the EBIT from SEK 775 to SEK 938, and this was largely driven by a higher volume in the quarter than what we had last year, keeping more or less the same gross margin overall, which is a high level for us. On the R&D side, we continue to spend, in particular on Pattern Generators, so about half of this increase is attributable to Pattern Generators. For the rest, it's mainly related to the newly acquired companies in combination with some ESOP costs and some increased spend in the high-volume division. On the marketing and sales and G&A side, it's also largely related to that we have added businesses to our baseline. On other, we had a very negative impact of revaluation of FX last year.

This year is slightly positive and this supports then the delta as well as about SEK 25 million that we had to reverse for the earn-out liability in the Vanguard case. Ending on a 938, 37%, extremely good level. If we cut it the other way around, you can see that we had, despite a very strong Q1 last year in Pattern Generators, we had an increase, SEK 80 million almost. We also managed to improve the situation for PCB Assembly Solutions. This is a small profit generated in the quarter. We are continuously working to get that up to a higher level. We also know that we start the year relatively slow, typically in PCB Assembly Solutions. High volume, you see a - 20 here, and I would say that this is not really displaying the performance of the division.

We have in these numbers SEK 24 million of costs for the ESOP program, and we also had a fantastic order intake in the first quarter. With a little bit delay on the revenue side, yes, but a really good performance there. On the Global Technologies side, a very solid profit improvement, and this is stemming from the business lines which we have been owning for some time. The business lines PCB test and the business line die bonding. This has been fueled by the demand in AI infrastructure investments and is really doing well at the moment. On the group function side, this is a revaluation of cash and internal loans to a degree, and the cost base is more or less similar as before. Ending the quarter on 938, so 37%.

Cash flow-wise, of course, the result contributed very well in the quarter, and similar to last year, we had negative impact on the working capital, and here we can sometimes contribute from large orders in Pattern Generators with advances, which we did not have to a very high degree, and at the same time, with strong invoicing, we also had a buildup of the trade receivables. On the investing side, the highlights for the quarter was the acquisitions of ETZ and Cowin DST, which accounted for two-thirds of that. Still, we remain in a strong cash situation, and on top of this, as many of you who follow us well know, we also have SEK 2 billion revolving credit facilities at hand should we need to. With that quick overview, I hand the word back to Anders to speak a bit about sustainability.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Thank you, Pierre . Yes, sustainability. We have applied and been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative organization and have committed to reach certain targets related to that. We're happy to see that we already have reached the target that we have on Scope 1 and 2 when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. While we are, on the other hand, not yet reaching the Scope 3 target, which is related to emissions from the use of sold product. You may remember that we launched a few years back a new laser model for our Pattern Generators equipment, where we can change from very energy-consuming gas lasers into solid-state lasers in the mask writer. We're happy to see that we have and this will be the largest contributor to reaching the Scope 3 target for us.

We are happy to see that even though we have not yet reached the target, we have a trend which is positive on that side, where we have seen the penetration increasing of solid-state lasers in the installed base, starting from 38% beginning in January 2025. In January 2026, we were up to 47%. Still more to do, but the direction is very positive on this side. Sven.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you, Anders, and thank you, Pierre, for the presentation. Now we move over to our Q&A session. First we will head over to London and Oliver Wong at Bank of America. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Oliver.

Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Hey, guys. Thanks for letting me ask the first question. My question is regarding Global Technologies. It was quite strong, very strong performance, and I noticed that in terms of the EBIT for Global Technologies, it was at 24% in Q1, and that's a significant jump even over last quarter in Q4, where your gross profits in Q4 for Global Tech was actually higher than in this quarter, but you managed to achieve significantly better EBIT margins. I was wondering if you could give some color on that, give some context on that. Are the EBIT margins for Global Tech expected to stay at this level and continue to increase as presumably, you'll continue to grow your revenues there and, yeah, what accounted for the big jump? Thanks.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

First of all, we had a couple of percent support in a way by reversing the earn-out provision for the Vanguard case. This was about SEK 25 million. This is a couple of percent. With that said, I think we are not specifically guiding a certain EBIT number, but we do see a very strong demand in our traditional business lines here. I think we remain confident on the outlook for Global Technologies going forward.

Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, perhaps if I can ask another one, just maybe an update on the trends that you're seeing for the Pattern Generators. Sorry, my camera just turned off. Yeah, just maybe an update on the trends that you're seeing for the Pattern Generators. I'd be curious in terms of let's say, demand from Chinese mask shops, demand from Western mask shops. I think I heard a little bit about perhaps, because they may be inherently losing share to the Chinese, perhaps, they are more hesitant on their investment plans there, and whether it would be new capacity or whether it would be replacing old machines. Then also maybe an update on OLED, any update on kind of when you see kind of an inflection in demand there, in terms of the underlying OLED proliferation, what that means for your mask writers. Thanks.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

I can start to talk about that. Starting with China and semiconductor. There was a certain peak, in 2023 and 2024. We are down from that level but it's still quite solid. I think we will not really see levels back to the 2023 and 2024 peak in China. It's kind of more normalized now. Still, China semiconductor manufacturers import the majority of masks, and China still wants to be more independent on this side. I think the investments in China will continue, but maybe not as crazy high as it was in 2023 and 2024, but still a solid demand on that side. Globally, I think we will see a similar. We have many more places where people want to manufacture semiconductor equipment or semiconductor products and so on. I think we see demand from all over.

We have not yet seen a big increase in this replacement cycle of the installed base. The longer it take, more urgent it will be, likely, because this is start to get really old. We really believe that we will see a market that is also being contributed by the replacement that should and will happen on that side. Overall, quite strong. I think just recently both Photronics and Tekscend released their quarter one reports, very strong ones, both of them, I think, where they also point to that they will continue to do CapEx investments. Also more to the more advanced nodes. I think that is also a way to beating or to stay ahead of China, although both of them have operations in China. Depends on where the factory is.

If you take on the flat-panel display for our market, I think that is quite stable. We really see this OLED penetration happen. OLED is still not the largest portion of displays, but it starts to happen on a higher scale now in the IT-related equipment, tablets, laptops, desktop screens, displays and stuff like that. We hope that we can see some increases in that. The recently sold and shipped P 8000 is of course a part of that transition. It will be able to produce masks for the most advanced OLED displays. This is happening. I don't know if that was the answer. You had a number of questions built into that one.

Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

Yeah. It answered all of them. Yeah. Thanks. Very helpful.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Okay. Thank you, Oliver. Now we go to ABG Sundal Collier and Henric Hintze. Henric, please go ahead and ask your questions.

Henric Hintze
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Hi. Yes. Sort of continuing on PG there, you talked a bit about Prexision 8000 and OLED penetration. I was just wondering now that you've delivered the first Prexision 8000, what do you sort of see as triggers for other customers to invest in this? Like what kind of requirements does the model satisfy that previous models do not?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Yeah. It can write masks with higher precision, higher resolution or higher speed. You can choose a little bit. Normally when we sell the first of a new equipment, that manufacturer of mask can sell their mask at a much, much higher market price. The one who bought this one will enjoy this for some time. This is also, of course, a trigger for others to do the same. We saw that pattern when we introduced the previous high-end mask writer, P800, that the first one took some time to sell, and then it followed after that. We believe and hope that this will happen now as well. Logically, there should be more customers for the P8000.

Henric Hintze
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Yes. Okay. Very good. Still on PG, given the strong deliveries and the good mix here in the quarter, are you satisfied with the margin in the segment, or were there any maybe elevated costs related to the fact that it was the first time you delivered a Prexision 8000, or maybe the R&D investments you're making?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

I think, no, the margin is where it should be. The margin on PG is very much related to the mix of products. The price and the cost are quite fixed on those. Depending on what we ship, the margin will vary. The portion of the aftermarket, which is also quite stable. The components will contribute, as there was no deviation in the different components of contribution to the margin. On the OpEx cost side, we are running at a very high investment or a cost on R&D. This is related to the new product, what we call IQS, which is metrology or inspection tool that will be released later this year. This high spend will remain this year and into next year as well on this high level. This is mainly related to that.

Henric Hintze
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Okay, great. Maybe, if I could just ask one more question, if we turn back to Global Technologies, we talked about the margin already, but I think even more impressive were the orders in the quarter here. I'm just wondering how are you going to be able to deliver on these orders, and how long are the lead times now? Do you think this is a sustainable order intake level with the capacity expansion plans you have in place?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Yes. That's a very good question, which we also are struggling with, of course. How long will the AI demand really be there? I think maybe. No, we have longer than normal lead times, especially on the PCB test equipment. Lead time is a year, 12 months, maybe a little bit more even, which is longer than usual. We are expanding our facility. We built a new factory already. Was it last year? One year ago, yeah.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Opened a year ago, yeah.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

A year ago, yes. We are already digging for the expansion of that one. Already the new factory that we built last year had a much larger capacity than the previous one, and now we're expanding that already to meet this demand. We also work with efficiency and improvements and sub-suppliers and so on to increase the delivery capacity. So far not a constraint on that one, but it's true that the lead times are getting long and the backlog are also large because of that. We try to balance that. We can see that this demand goes into next year as well. Beyond 2027, it's very difficult to say how it will go on this.

Henric Hintze
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you, Henric. Now we move over to DNB Carnegie and Mikael Lassen.

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Yeah, we'll start from the beginning, maybe with the guidance that you raised for this year. If you could break it down maybe, and explain the drivers why you have upgraded it. Is it timing effects, or how much is underlying demand strength?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

There is a little bit of timing effects on the PG side. Largely, it's demand, in particular in high volume and Global Technologies. I think that's where we have really seen strong demand, and we foresee this to remain at a somewhat higher level than what we saw going into the year.

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Yeah, I also have a question on Global Technologies. Coming back to the margins there, just a question on if the current margin for 20% adjusted for this-

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Mm-hmm

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

temporary effects in Q1, if this is representative of the current mix, and how we should think about Hprobe, RoyoTech, Surfx, and ETZ, which are loss-making still.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Yes. I think we do see a strong situation for now. I think the 20% underlying that we see is definitely a level where I think we can be. On the acquired entities, the idea is, of course, not to continue to make losses, even if there are certain acquisition-related costs to bear for some time. This we expect, I think we have also stated that we expect that to, typically within a year or so, they should start to contribute positively to Mycronic.

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Can you maybe follow up on one there with Surfx? You acquired it mid 2025, and it looked like it was really profitable, but then you had a temporary cost in connection to the integration, I guess, or not, some things like that, accounting issues. Are you reinvesting in the business right now, and that's why it is on the same profit level as you had before? Or are you taking action to expand the capabilities?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

The gross margin and so on is perfectly okay. The volume in the first quarter is not where we think it will be going forward. We have, call it, supersized the organization because we do believe that this will grow quite fast. There is a little bit of timing difficulty when the investments fall in this industry, especially as it's a new technology to be adopted, a new process to be adopted by our customer's customer in particular. Timing-wise, it can slip a little bit, another quarter or two before we start to see the ramp. We believe in this a lot. We are investing in the organization a lot, and this may result in a short-term negative result.

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Okay. How much of this, just to understand the answer, how much of the sales in that part is to external packaging players that you deliver to them? How much is sales of own systems directly to end customers?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

The majority is where we are a part of another solution.

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Okay. Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you, Mikael. Now we move over to Handelsbanken and Fredrik Lithell. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Fredrik.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions as well. Can we maybe talk a little bit about the SLX machine, the order you received in Q1, and what drives that price tag? You alluded to it in your presentation, but is it also on the technology side that you take new steps? Is that something that you will be able to use for your line of SLXs going forward in any way, or can you talk a little bit more about that one? Thank you.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Yes. First of all, we are not allowed to talk a lot about that order from the customer, actually. In general terms, this is also a very unique machine. It's based on the SLX platform. The higher price tag is very much related to development work that is needed to be made on that platform to meet the specification. This will not become a product that we will market to others, really. This was really a unique event. The development work we do could be reused in part. I think it will contribute to the plans we already have to extend and expand the capabilities of the SLX range. It will not add anything that we didn't plan to do anyway, but it will certainly make it happen, maybe faster or cheaper or something. Anyway, that is the contribution of that.

Even so, we still believe it's a nice order, and happy that we got it.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Another question, you raised guidance for 2026. Is COVID, is that contributing to those changes, or was that already part of your assumptions?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

It has a very marginal impact on that.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Mm-hmm.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

This is not the reason. We believed already when we issued the guidance that we would, at some point, get the acceptance.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Okay. Anders, you talked in the Q4 report about that you're sort of stepping up your R&D spending a little bit this year in front of new machines you will sort of launch in the second half of this year. Are you on the right track there, or are you peaking in your R&D spend, or where are you in that sense?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

No, we are on the right track. It could possibly increase maybe a little bit more, but we are in the range, I would say, where we should be. Maybe we need to increase a little bit more on that one. It's not too far away right now, and the product is going according to plan. The demand from customers is extremely strong. The market is not a problem, it's our own speed, which is kind of the critical line here. What we said in quarter four still is valid on launching it. The intention is that when we have the Capital Markets Day later this year, we will talk much more about this machine, of course.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Pierre, I haven't been able to look at the very small details, but are you capitalizing more of your R&D just in front of sort of the launch? Is that how it works, or?

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

No, we are following the same principles, and as you analysts know, we are very cautious in putting things in our balance sheet.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Thank you.

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

We are not cheating that way either, so you

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

All right. That's very good to hear. Thank you. Thank you for taking my questions.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you very much, Fredrik. Now over to Ina Djupsund at SEB. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Ina.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

Yes. Hi, and thanks for taking my questions as well. I have a question on High Volume. Does this year follow the same pattern as we saw in last year with Q1 being seasonally very strong, and yeah, could you give just some more flavor on High Volume, what you expect going forward?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

It's of course a little bit hard to predict the future. The past is much easier. No, but I think we do see strong demand for now. It's been strong in China for us. We also see more and more international demand. In the quarter, we also enter certain new customer segments where we deliver solutions for dispensing in the optical module assembly, et cetera. This is developing very nicely for us for now. Of course, I think the biggest threat is more on the geopolitical side than anything else. I think we have a very well-functioning organization, a strong product portfolio, and we are now building international organization here.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

A question on the acquired Cowin business within PG that you closed here in Q1. Can you talk a little bit what kind of order values you have here and what does the kind of order dynamics look like and, yeah, will it be announced orders like you're doing with the rest of the PG orders or what?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

This has not been the plan to change the way we are today disclosing the PG orders because they have such a huge, not only volume impact, but also profit impact. Should we have similar orders on the Cowin side, we may consider that, but for now we have not considered that. Cowin has a bigger spread. There can be some orders in the same magnitude as a lower-end PG machine, but typically they're in the lower end. It's not display mask writer order size.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

Okay. A little bit, I guess, sort of a boring question, but what kind of effects impact did you have on order intake in this quarter? Is it the same magnitude as sales or?

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

It's a similar magnitude as the sales. It's slightly lower, and that's because we had an upward revaluation at the end of March because you revalue the backlog at the period end rate, but it's double-digit.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

Okay. Thank you. That was all for me. Thanks.

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you. I will actually now run through all participants again, just to give another chance to ask an additional question which might have popped up. Oliver, Bank of America, do you have any additional question that you would like to ask?

Oliver Wong
Analyst, Bank of America

I'm all good for now. Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you. Henric, ABG Sundal Collier, anything else you would like to add?

Henric Hintze
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Yeah, I'd just like to add on high volume. It seems to me, even if you adjust for the effect of the option program, the margin was down a bit here in the quarter, despite quite solid sales. Anything special driving that or is it just natural variance there?

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

I think the gross margin is where it should be. We do invest in building up the organizational footprint also outside the traditional Shenzhen facility that we have, both operation-wise in Thailand and then building organization both in Korea, in U.S., and so on. This is marginal deviations. Of course, on the R&D side, there is a slightly higher spend, but it's not fundamentally different.

Henric Hintze
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Okay. Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Okay. Thank you. Mikael Lassen, DNB Carnegie, any additional questions from you?

Mikael Lassen
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

No, thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

All right. Over to Fredrik Lithell, Handelsbanken. Do you have anything else you would like to ask?

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Yeah. I have a few questions actually, if I may then. Start with PCB assembly, you talked about that, Anders, you feel it's a bit on the soft side and all that stuff. When we visited Productronica in November, it was really a very high level of buzz and activity, customers walking all over the place in the PCB booth and all that stuff. Do you feel you have a very solid pipeline, but that the customers are sitting still, they don't really want to put the pen to the paper? Is that the problem?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

That is exactly what it is. I think I don't really have historical data, but the pipeline is almost bigger than ever, I would say, but the closing rate is very, very low and the hesitation is really there. I think we have a lot of quotations, a lot of discussions. We have new products, a lot of interest for them, and so on. Orders are slower, and it seems like customers need very firm commitments on their own business before they want to move ahead. It's a little bit different from before. We can see that other players in this are struggling equally or even worse than we do. We can see that ASMPT announced a strategic review on their SMT business. We have seen that Kulicke & Soffa didn't even try to sell their business.

They just closed it and took a big hit on that one end of last year. It is a very difficult market at the moment.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

All right. That's interesting. High Volume, the order intake, strong order intake. You've opened up your facility in Thailand. Are there any customers that haven't really been able to purchase products from High Volume as long as they were only Chinese-based? Is that a trigger for the order intake, or is that not part of it at all?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Not yet, but we see this as a positive thing. We have had customers that didn't want to buy or couldn't buy, depending on which sector they are in or which country they are from. They didn't want to buy from China. It's both related to tariffs, but also to political regulations and desires. Made in Thailand will open up for more, for customers that we couldn't sell to before. So far there's very little effect on that.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Okay. Final question. ATG and its probe machine. It's really flying. They're pretty much alone on the flying probe as it is. As demand is increasing this quickly, do you see or hear any competitors making moves to participate in this specific part of the space?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

We do see local China companies starting up trying to get into this market. We think that for the high-end, in particular server boards, advanced server boards market, we think that we still have a very good position both technology-wise, patent-wise, and et cetera. We've been able to maintain and enjoy that market position for now.

Fredrik Lithell
Analyst, Handelsbanken

Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Thank you.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you, Fredrik. Now finally over to Ina Djupsund, SEB. Do you have any additional question you would like to ask?

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

Yeah, I could ask one question on Global Technologies. Super strong in the quarter, but obviously it's been going strong for some time now. What kind of signals or kind of indicators should we be looking at to better understand the drivers of Global Tech? Is kind of semi-cap CapEx a good proxy or is there something more specific we could look at?

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

I think for now, for us, it's been really good. We have now four quarters in a row where this is the division with the strongest order intake, so really strong. This has so far mainly been powered by the die bonding and PCB test business lines, and they are both AI infrastructure driven. This is the best leading indicator for now.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

Mm.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

We have the other smaller still business lines. They have other driving forces as well.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

Okay.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Okay.

Ina Djupsund
Analyst, SEB

That was all for me.

Sven Chetkovich
Director of Investor Relations, Mycronic

Thank you, Ina. With that, we have reached the end of today's presentation of Mycronic Q1 report. Thank you very much for attending.

Anders Lindqvist
President and CEO, Mycronic

Thank you so much.

Pierre Brorsson
CFO and Senior VP of Corporate Development, Mycronic

Thank you.

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