Hello and welcome to the presentation of Mycronic's Q2 report. My name is Sven Chetkovich. I'm the Director of Investor Relations at Mycronic, and with me I have Mycronic's CEO Anders Lindqvist and CFO Pierre Brorsson, who will be presenting today. As you can see, we have moved to a live video format, which we hope you will enjoy. And with that, I hand over to Anders. Please go ahead and present Mycronic's Q2 report.
Thank you very much, Sven, and welcome to everyone to this new format and our Q2 report. So what we will talk about today, the agenda is similar or the same as it has been before. So I will give a brief introduction of the second quarter of this year. We will go a little bit deeper per division and see the divisional development. Pierre Brorsson, our CFO, will go deeper into the financials. We will talk a little bit about sustainability, and then at the end of the session, we will have a Q&A session as well. So with that, I would like to start with the highlight of the quarter two, and that was really the strong order intake.
We had an increase of order intake of 45%, up to a little bit more than SEK 1.7 billion, which is extremely strong for us, and it's very much driven by really good performance in the Pattern Generators division. The sales development compared to the same quarter last year was almost flat. It was a decrease of 2%, and the EBIT ended at SEK 170 million, but it has to be noted here also that including in that we had a one-time cost, a non-recurring cost of SEK 60 million related to business development, so taking that into consideration, we were more or less equal to the same quarter last year with the EBIT.
Margin with that development cost included ended at 14%, and with the strong order intake, you could see that the backlog increased up to almost SEK 4.5 billion, which is the highest we have ever had, and that backlog contains 31 mask writers. In addition to that, and that was per end of the quarter. Then in addition to that, we also had two more orders for one SLX each after the end of the quarter too. Starting with pattern generators, as I said, we had a record order intake, and it was very much related to the pattern generators.
We increased the order intake up to SEK 804 million, and in that order intake, we had six systems, two different variants of precision mask writers, which are writing photomasks for the display industry, and then we also had four SLX mask writers, which are writing photomasks for the semiconductor industry. We had a really good development of gross margin. It increased up to 64%, and the reason for that increase is that we have increased the value of the delivery system. Also, we have a little bit of positive currency effect, and also we are continuously working on operational improvements. So all that together resulted in a very nice increase of gross margin, and EBIT ended at SEK 191 million.
So the backlog, majority of backlog of SEK 4.5 billion is in pattern generators with SEK 3.3 billion, and as I said before, that consists of 31 systems at the end of the quarter. So moving on to the High Flex division, what we see here is that we have seen a very strong demand from our customers' customers, like the end customer, in the focus segments where we operate, which are aerospace, defense, medical, and industrial applications. That demand has not really yet translated into a bigger demand from our direct customers, but of course it's very good when the end customer market is strong. If you look on the different regions that we have, we could see that Europe and North America performed well, and this is similar to the previous quarter presentation we had, and China continued to be weak.
We have not yet seen the upswing in China that everyone is waiting for. We had an increase of sales with 13% up to SEK 350 million, and we also initiated a project to close down production of Storage towers, and Storage towers is also what you see on the presentation picture here, which we today manufacture in Germany, and that manufacturing will be transferred and consolidated in Sweden with other production. Gross margin at 39%, which is reasonably okay, and the EBIT declined to SEK 14 million, and a bit of that decline, SEK 10 million, relates to a cost of transferred production I just mentioned. Backlog at SEK 175 million, which is kind of normal for us. If we move into High Volume division, focusing on delivering dispensing equipment for the electronics industry, also here we see the weak demand in China impacting this.
We see that the investments in consumer electronics manufacturers in China are still weak, similar to the previous quarter that we had. We can also see that our customers are actually replacing manual tasks by increasing efficiency by automation rather than investing in new production lines. On the other hand, we have been very successful in changing focus from consumer electronics into the electric vehicle industry, where we have been very successful and see a very strong increase. The size of that segment is smaller, so it doesn't make up for the weak demand in consumer electronics, but it's very nice, of course, to see that we can refocus into other healthy segments. Order intake decreased 24%, sales down 32%, and this is all compared to the same quarter last year.
Actually, if we look on the order intake, which we had SEK 370 million of in this quarter, it's the best quarter in three previous quarters. It was actually much less. So we are seeing a change here in the order intake if you look on it quarter by quarter sequentially. EBIT down to SEK 38 million, and that's a good number actually. We are working a lot on efficiency to keep our profitability up, and backlog ended at SEK 723 million at the quarter. If we move on to the next division, Global Technologies. In Global Technologies today, we have two different lines of businesses. One is electrical testing, and this is the equipment you see on the picture here, and we have also a technology called die bonding, mainly focusing on equipment for the telecom and data market, and we have a mixed picture in performance.
We can see that the electrical testing of printed circuit boards and substrates has recovered in this quarter in terms of sales. And we have seen that demand in this segment is very much driven by investments in AEi and also servers. In die bonding on the other hand, we have seen very strong demand from aerospace and defense, but our biggest segment or market in this is data and telecom. Here we have seen that this market remains weak, and therefore we see this mixed picture in performance. So combined, the order intake increased 11%, sales down 15%, and the order intake of SEK 246 million is actually the best order intake in the last four quarters. So also here we see a little bit of trend shift. EBIT was down to SEK 9 million, which is unusually low.
We have seen that the aftermarket business was impacted in the electrical test line of business, and backlog ended at SEK 272 million. So if we move on, that was the divisions. If we look on our outlook for 2023, we confirm that we remain at the same number as before, that our outlook is that we should reach net sales of SEK 5.5 billion for the full year. And with that, I will hand over to Pierre Brorsson to go a little bit deeper into the financials. Thank you.
Good morning from my side as well, and thank you, Anders. Looking at the development over time, we can see that rolling 12 months took a little bit down. We took the 12-month number a little bit down by declining 2% in the quarter on the same quarter of last year. You can see that on a rolling 12-month basis, the EBIT margin is around 16%. Aftermarket continued to increase as before, sequentially now since 2021, despite some challenges, particularly in the GT division in the quarter.
If we look at it on a quarter-by-quarter basis, you can see that we are having quarters in the beginning of the year around SEK 1.2 billion, and given our guidance for the year to reach SEK 5.5 billion, we are then predicting to be on average at SEK 1.5 billion for the remaining two quarters of the year, so predicting a stronger ending than start of the year. As Anders mentioned, we had a business development project cost in the quarter amounting to around SEK 60 million, which took down the EBIT margin to a level a little bit below what we've had lately in this quarter. If we look at it by cost category, you can see that we had an improvement in the gross margin.
This stems largely from our Pattern Generators division, where we had improved gross margin last year due to improved efficiency in our own operations and also higher value in the machines that went out. We had also a slightly higher mix of the Pattern Generators in the quarter. On the cost side, the main difference on quarter by quarter is, of course, the business development project cost that we have in the quarter, and on these other items, we have the main parties that are related to the restructuring of Royonic within the High Flex division. That brought us to SEK 170 million at the end of the quarter. Division by division, we had a good contribution from the Pattern Generators quarter on quarter, whereas all the other divisions declined for various reasons on a quarter versus quarter basis.
And on top, then the group functions where we host the business development costs also contributed to a lower EBIT for the quarter compared to the same period of last year. Looking at the cash flow for the year, we have a strong cash flow. We had a strong cash flow in the quarter as well. We have improved working capital. This stems both from reduced receivables, which is not necessarily only a good thing. We could have had higher sales, of course. We had very high sales towards the end of the year, but also from advance payments, in particular in the Pattern Generators division, that contributed to strong working capital improvement. Last year, we had the divestment of AEi, which generated about SEK 215 million in cash, which we didn't have this year.
Having paid the dividend, we still have a very solid cash position of SEK 3,095 million, and on the bank, we have SEK 1.6 billion at the end of the quarter. With that, I hand the word back to Anders again.
Okay, thank you very much, Pierre. So we will move on to the next slide before the Q&A, and this is, as usual, about sustainability. So we continue to focus on our initiatives regarding sustainability. And during the quarter, we had a lot of visits to our different subsidiaries from our management team to discuss the local sustainability activities that we are driving around the world. As of next year, 2024, reporting needs to be carried out with a new EU corporate sustainability reporting directive, normally called CSRD. And as a part of the preparation for this, we made an assessment of our company's reporting from 2022 and also on our current processes and reporting structure compared to the coming requirements of CSRD.
So the final report is not yet out, but preliminary result indicates that we are in a good position and we are prepared to meet the future reporting requirements, which feels very good. So with that, I would like to hand over back to Sven to introduce you to the Q&A session.
Thank you very much, Anders and Pierre. So now we move over to our Q&A session, and we will start with Carnegie and Mikkel Lassén. Please go ahead with your questions, Mikkel.
Okay, thank you. Good morning. Okay, I'll start with the SEK 60 million in cost that you have related to business development, if you can explain the reason for these costs and how we should think about them ahead and when you expect to have a more normalized cost level for group functions?
Yeah, maybe I can start responding to that question. Thank you. I mean, we have business development projects ongoing. We go out with information about more details as soon as we can. We have only one business development project which we have been clear about so far, and this is the potential listing of Axxon on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. And maybe I can say that I foresee that we will have somewhat lower costs in the third quarter than what we had in the second quarter. That's as far as it goes.
Okay. Do you have other projects ongoing apart from the Axxon listing? Not just M&A costs and other items in that?
It states in the report that it's projects, so yes, there are more than one project.
Okay. All right. And another thing, I'm curious here about the comment you have in the report about exciting development projects. Can you say something about what they are and elaborate a bit more on that?
Yes. And that's in addition to, of course, the corporate development. And this is very much related to product development projects. We have a very good pipeline of good ideas in all our divisions and very exciting new products that we will develop and introduce to the market. It's not very soon, but I mean, the list of ideas and what we want to execute and will execute on looks very promising, I would say.
Okay, and this is part of your ongoing R&D activity that you have a strong pipeline, so we shouldn't expect any sort of significantly higher R&D activity just because of this.
It will be around the range where we have always been. I think not any extremely high special cost. It's kind of normal development, but very exciting products.
Okay. Interesting. And I have a couple of other questions. Regarding the previous segment, you had a really, really strong gross margin in the quarter, and you mentioned a few reasons for this. For example, the value system. So I'm just wondering if this gross margin that you had in Q2, if this is applicable for the other SLX systems we have in the order book. Of course, they vary in price, of course, but if this is an approximate level that we can use also in the coming quarters?
Yeah, it varies depending on system configuration, etc., etc. So it's not necessarily exactly the same, but we do see an improvement, and we have had also improved exchange rates that contribute to this development in addition to our own execution ability and that we are able to lower the product cost of these machines.
Okay. So you didn't have any software upgrades on the temporary boost effects supporting the margin in the quarter?
Not of a significance that drove the margin extremely high, no.
Okay. I have a few more questions, but I hand over to Fredrik to continue.
Okay. Thank you very much, Mikkel. So now we move over to Handelsbanken and Fredrik Littell. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Fredrik.
Thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation. I'll continue a little bit on the questions here then. You talk in the quarter about you have moved production from Germany to Sweden within High Flex, the storage towers. Haven't you also moved your production of the inspection machines from France to Sweden? Is that something that is impacting the numbers as well in the quarter, or is that something that would come?
So if I start with the inspection equipment, so that we moved already completely last year. So that's finalized. And we still have an R&D department left in France, but that will remain there, and the production will remain in Sweden for the inspection equipment. So that is all done, and there is no extra cost coming out of that. When it comes to the storage tower, we have just initiated this move, and it will be a gradual move. So there could be smaller costs, but not significant coming in the coming quarter. And we do it to consolidate a larger volume at one place where we see more efficiency in production and also in R&D. So this will turn out very good, we hope.
Okay, thank you. And maybe if I could continue on Mikkel's question on exciting projects that you are working with. You have talked earlier about the success with the laser technology you have in the SLX machines and that you have intention to upgrade your laser technology within the precision lines of machines as well. How is that progressing? Where are we in that type of project, and what do you foresee?
So, I don't have it on top of my mind, an exact timeline, but it's coming very soon, and we have already got a lot of, as you said, the solid-state laser, which is more energy-efficient laser, is already in the SLX. All the SLXs are equipped with that laser. And we have also the intention to put that laser, similar type of laser, into the precision machines. And we have been around with customers to calibrate their interest to have this upgrade. And there is a remarkably large interest, actually, to make an upgrade, mainly for sustainability reasons. And I don't have the exact timeline here and now, but it will come quite soon.
That's very interesting. Can I also touch a little bit on the order intake? In my view, High Flex came in a tad slower in order intake than what I had anticipated, and also High Volume came in much lower. So should we see this as High Volume in China specifically starting to ramp, or was the order intake any one-time large contract for the cleaning to the order intake? Could you comment a little bit about those numbers?
We had a number of, let's say, significant for us projects in the second quarter in May in particular. That said, also the underlying demand is somewhat better in the second quarter than what we have seen before. So I think the jury is still out there, but sequentially, it looks as an improvement.
And that goes for High Volume, right?
That is high volume, yes.
High Flex, did you yourself expect High Flex to be at these levels in order intake before the quarter, or is it a bit slower than you expected?
This is more or less according to what we could expect going into the quarter, I would say. So I think we had maybe anticipated the high volume revenues to be a little bit higher still, but we do see improvement on the order intake side there.
And my final question then, also on the back of what Mikkel asked you regarding the gross margin in pattern generators that came in at a very strong level. You alluded to in your response that you had also done changes to production or maybe the COGS within for an SLX machine. Have you been able to reduce the COGS levels on the SLXs, or is it production-related?
I mean, we have been, since the introduction, increasing the number of produced units and thereby also learned how to assemble this in a faster way. We have a little bit higher volumes on the components, etc., etc. So we have made improvements on the operation side there.
Okay. All right. Thank you. I'll hand over the questions to others.
Thank you very much, Fredrik. It sounded like Mikkel at Carnegie had some more questions. Do you have any more questions?
I have, if it's okay.
Please go ahead.
I'm wondering about the High Volume segment, and that segment has grown strongly, I mean, by CAGR of 30% roughly until 2021, but now it looks like growth will be negative in 2023. Can you say something about the overall market situation for this segment and also about the long-term growth drivers for the segment, what they can achieve over time, considering where they are in the market and maturity levels and so on?
Yes. So the underlying segment that we focus on is consumer electronics, which is very much driving the sales of high-volume equipment. And the majority of consumer electronics is in China, still in China, and will be in China for the foreseeable future. And the China market, especially when it comes to consumer electronics, has been weak. There is a hesitation in the market to invest. Rather, customers invest in efficiency, like productivity with automation and so on, rather than buying new lines. And the reason for that is there are not so much new products. I mean, we had a big jump in the past with the 5G, with the AirPods and the smartwatches and all that. So I haven't seen really those kind of big investment waves yet in consumer electronics. But most likely, it will happen.
There is always something new, and now we are talking about 6G and so on. We also, of course, have uncertainty on the Chinese market related to the kind of trade frictions between various countries. We have seen that India is not anymore buying Chinese-made smartphones, which is a kind of big market for the China smartphone manufacturers. We have seen also tensions, of course, U.S., China, and so on, which is also creating hesitation in the market. And so I think all of this is impacting this. It's very difficult to say how this will look like in the future. I think global demand of consumer electronics will be the same as before. So I think that we might see a little bit different distribution on the market.
And adding to that, I think a new important market for our high-volume division is the electric vehicle business, which is growing and where we are also gaining market share. Another potential market is to address the markets outside China with the high-volume products that we have, and we are growing there as well. This cannot fully replace the consumer electronics industry in China at the moment, but it's becoming a more important part of this business and could be the base for future growth.
Okay, got it. And when it comes to High Volume again here, the operating costs on a quarterly basis are varying quite a lot. Can you explain why they vary so much and how we should think about the OpEx going forward?
Yes, this is varying quite a lot. And this is largely related to that they have a high variable portion of the pay. This is the main explanation. The other explanation is that they are also very quick in adapting to new circumstances and holding back on things when the business is not there. So I think these two explanations is, and thereby it's a little bit difficult to predict because if they see good development, they will spend more, and they will also cost more because of the variable part. So it will be highly linked to the revenue than what you see in other divisions.
Okay. That is from my side. Thank you.
Thank you, Mikkel. So with that, we have reached the end of the presentation of Mycronic's Q2 report. Thank you very much for attending.