Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Moritz Gmeiner. I am very happy to welcome you to this morning's conference call on our first quarter results. Alex Everke will lead you through the developments in our business, and then Ingo will take you through the details of the financials. Alex?
Yeah. Thank you, Moritz. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very happy to welcome you to our first quarter 2021 conference call this morning. I will start with some key figures showing the healthy performance of our business. First quarter 2021 consolidated group revenues were $1.55 billion, and the adjusted group EBIT was $172 million, which was 11% of revenues. Referring to our final published expectations for the historical ams business, we recorded robust first quarter results in that business. Revenues of $525 million and an adjusted operating margin of 22% were in the upper half and near the top end of the expected range respectively. Let me first look at developments around the acquisition of OSRAM. The domination and profit and loss transfer agreement between ams and OSRAM became effective in early March, giving us full operational and financial control of OSRAM.
The business integration of ams and OSRAM is now fully underway, and we are very well on track here. We are running a broad set of parallel programs to implement the new group organization, drive the creation of synergies, and optimize our business portfolio. Regarding savings, Ingo will have more details on the increase of total expected synergies and savings to EUR 350 million over three years. As part of the announced alignment of our business portfolio, we are already engaged in a number of M&A processes. Here, I expect several announcements over the course of this year. Yesterday, we have also announced a delisting offer for all remaining OSRAM shares, which will result in the delisting of the OSRAM share after completion of the offer. This is the next logical step in the full integration of OSRAM, and Ingo will have more details on the offer later on.
Our combined business will be known as ams OSRAM, which emphasize our combined position as a worldwide leader in optical technologies. We have also moved to a new presentation and reporting framework for the group, which consists of two segments, semiconductors and Lamps & Systems. The semiconductor segment comprises the historical ams business and the historical OSRAM Opto Semiconductors business, while the Lamps & Systems segment includes the historical OSRAM Automotive and Digital Systems business. This segment framework reflects our business structure and maps onto our solution portfolio. Now let's take a look at our business in the first quarter. Our semiconductors business showed a very healthy development supported across business lines. The semiconductors business in the automotive market achieved strong results with very attractive revenue growth and higher profitability year-on-year.
Excellent customer demand across regions continues to be driven by the ongoing recovery of automotive demand compared to last year. Overall, we see a very strong order situation continuing into the current quarter, enhanced by demand supply imbalances in the sector. Despite an increase in production efficiency compared to 2020, capacity utilization is at maximum with volumes in several areas short of customer demand. Our semiconductors business in the consumer market saw a healthy performance driven by our optical sensing solutions. Our broad portfolio helps drive features such as behind OLED and other display management, 3D functions, camera enhancing applications, and ultra-small scale optical sensing. Serving a variety of leading OEMs for different devices, our solutions recorded healthy demand in the quarter, including typical seasonality. The semiconductors business in industrial and medical markets showed a robust development.
The regionally driven recovery in illumination, industrial automation, harbor, and imaging is gaining further traction, helped by our leading position in global shutter imaging. medical imaging developed positively and COVID-19 LFT solutions showed sequential growth. Our Lamps & Systems business recorded a very solid overall performance in the quarter. The Lamps & Systems business in the automotive market performed strongly with attractive good revenue growth and higher profitability year-on-year. Sustained very robust demand across regions reflects the ongoing recovery of automotive demand compared to last year. A strong order situation is continuing into the current quarter, which also echoes demand-supply imbalances in the market. With production fully utilized despite year-on-year output improvements, customer demand exceeds available volumes in several areas. Our L&S business in the industrial and medical market saw a mixed picture overall.
Reduced ends demand continued to impact the construction and building-related business as well as the entertainment market. While horticulture and certain areas of the Digital Systems business are developing positively. The disposal process for the Digital Systems business, which had been initiated by OSRAM earlier, continues to progress. Looking at our combined business, let me take you through how I see us moving ahead. We have a range of major growth vectors for the medium term. The highly disruptive Micro-LED technology for next generation displays. We are seeing strong momentum here already and are driving the industrialization for scalable consumer applications. We have a leading position in Micro-LED epitaxy and wafer processing and are getting strong positive feedback from the consumer market. We therefore expect significant Micro-LED opportunities for us with sensor display integration to follow. Our innovative UVC LED technology for effective chemical-free disinfection.
Here we create market leading performance, and the application areas include all of our end markets. That is medical, consumer, automotive, and industrial. Next generation automotive lighting, such as highly pixelated headlights and head-up displays. High-resolution front lighting enables completely new application to assist the driver and increase road safety while head-up display will move to integrate AR for safer driving. LiDAR for ADAS and autonomous vehicle plus industrial use. We offer a market leading portfolio across edge emitting laser and VCSEL for different LiDAR architectures and applications to serve automotive, but also industrial automation. Consumer optical technologies for 3D, AR, digital health, and much more. Here we are driving new 3D technology in time-of-flight and other areas. Near to eye sensing and visualization for AR. Next generation in vitro diagnostics using UVC or VCSEL and highly innovative optical sensing like self-mixing interferometry or SMI.
More near term, on the other hand, we also see a broad range of drivers for our business. Horticulture lighting, where demand is increasing rapidly. We are also leading in this field as our LED technology enables much higher harvest and profitability per area. Our strong position in Mini LED technology, which significantly enhances the performance of current displays via backlighting. We benefit from a positive market dynamic and are very well positioned to expand opportunities through technology advances. Driving innovation, we also see ways to create novel Mini LED technology for new uses beyond display backlight. High power projection technology for visualization, where we offer market leading technologies. Our market available LFT technology for point of care medical diagnostics using spectral sensing. Current application consumer optical sensing, where we offer high performance solutions for a range of features in smartphones and mobile devices.
Our market leading position in current automotive lighting technology, benefiting from the LEDification of exterior and interior lighting. Important for all of these drivers is our much larger customer base through the acquisition of OSRAM. This base creates much broader support for our growth drivers because in new markets, we can access more customers more quickly, especially compared to the historical ams business. While the consumer market now accounts for less than 40% of our group business, let me offer some additional comments on this space. We receive ongoing positive feedback from very large customers on our core technologies for consumer applications. This includes our optics technologies, illumination and sensing, and it confirms the unchanged attractiveness for consumer OEMs. Given multiple active developments and early stage work, I definitely see no lack of consumer opportunities going forward. These include all our customers in the consumer market today.
Let me now talk about our business outlook. Starting this quarter, our outlook relates to the combined group. We expect our overall business to continue to develop positively across segments in the second quarter. This expectation is particularly driven by the ongoing dynamic recovery of the global automotive demand, despite a general tight supply chain. Solid demand trends in other business areas support this development in light of seasonal effects in the consumer market. At the same time, pandemic-related effects continue to influence regional economies and end markets with different intensity. For the second quarter, we therefore expect group revenues of EUR 1.43 billion-EUR 1.53 billion, 5% lower sequentially at the midpoint, with an expected adjusted EBIT margin of 7%-10%, all based on currently available information. Looking forward, we currently expect a more limited seasonality for this year.
Group revenues for the second half are presently expected to be slightly higher compared to the first half. This is due to the expected automotive production situation in light of continued strong automotive demand, as well as an expected lower market share in the consumer market. The latter, with a net revenue effect of below 5% of currently expected full year group revenues. At the same time, we have multiple ongoing developments and program activities for all our largest customers in consumer and automotive. On this basis, I'm confident we will continue to build our business on the strong relationships we have with all of these large customers. Against this background, our focus as a company is on improving profitability, strong cash flow and free cash flow generation, speedy deleveraging, cleaning up the business portfolio and realizing synergies.
While we do not offer a detailed view, we feel confident about our business position, financial strength and improvement potential, not only for this, but also for next year. Consequently, we also reconfirm our overall financial target model for the integrated group, which looks for a double-digit average yearly revenue growth in % and adjusted operating margin of 20%-25%. With this, I would like to hand over to Ingo.
Yes, thanks. A very good morning to you all. Before I start reviewing the financials, let me first briefly outline the status of the integration on page 18 of our presentation. A number of important milestones have already been achieved, and overall the integration is fully on track and in line with the plans we've made. The DPLTA is in place since early March, which means that we have full operational and financial control of OSRAM. We've defined the new global organization structure for the group and have started its full implementation on a worldwide basis. Our new segment and financial reporting framework is in place, and I'll come back to that in a moment. We've increased the level of total expected synergies to now EUR 350 million, and I'll come back with more details later on.
The portfolio alignment has also started. We are currently running several active M&A processes at various stages. Let me now move to page 19 of the presentation, which shows our new reporting segment structure as of 2021. In this context, we will refer to the ams OSRAM Group when discussing consolidated group financials. The ams OSRAM Group has two segments. On the one hand, we have the Semiconductor segment, which includes the historical ams and OSRAM Opto Semiconductors businesses. On the other hand, we have the second segment, Lamps & Systems, which includes the historical OSRAM Automotive and Digital Systems businesses. This clear reporting and business presentation structure aligns with the setup of our business, our technology base and our solutions portfolio as we see it moving forward. Let me now turn on page 20 for an update on the expected synergies.
With the DPLTA now in place, we're able to implement and execute all programs targeted to create and realize synergies across the group. This translates into more than 500 separate projects which have been defined or already started. A dedicated integration management office is in place, properly resourced, and led by senior executives of the company. First of all, we again confirm the originally announced EUR 300 million run rate pre-tax synergies over a three-year period looking forward. Furthermore, OSRAM has already achieved savings of approximately EUR 50 million since the summer of 2020. These savings at OSRAM were fully aligned with our implementation thinking when we first planned for the transaction. They related to the phasing out of the low-margin general lighting business, an adjustment in corporate and general lighting R&D, and G&A expenses, including the corporate office of OSRAM.
As a result, the total of pre-tax synergies and pre-DPLTA savings now amount to €350 million. Around two-thirds of the integration synergies are expected within the first two years, in line with previous comments. Let me also emphasize that the integration synergies are independent from the OSRAM transformation programs announced by OSRAM in the past and will therefore happen in addition. One-time costs for the integration continue to be expected at around 1.3 times the €300 million synergy target over time. Among others, this also includes the evaluation of the group's manufacturing infrastructure and footprint, where we could see certain one-time costs to be incurred over time. Let's now move to the financial results of the group summarized on page 22 of the presentation. When we refer to adjusted financial metrics, we refer to adjustments for acquisition-related share-based compensation and restructuring costs, and results from investments in associates.
A reconciliation to the IFRS base of presentation is included in the financial information on Q1 2021, which we've published today and which is available on our investor relations website. Comparable prior year financial figures are not available this quarter due to the acquisition of OSRAM, with the consolidation having started only from Q3 2020 onwards. I'm turning now to page 23 of the presentation. In the first quarter of 2021, group revenues were $1,549 million. Against the background of healthy to robust demand across different end markets. There was a sequential revenue decline of 9%, as expected, due to typical seasonal effects, particularly in the consumer business. Let me add some comments on the market and supply chain environment and situation as we see it now.
Overall, our business is seeing a strong order situation, particularly in the automotive, and to a lesser extent, industrial market, which continues also well into the current quarter. At the same time, we note maximum capacity utilization in several areas, as well as multiple allocation situations towards existing customer orders. These mean that currently we are not able to realize all possible revenues within our business portfolio. We are also aware of tight supply chain conditions in several segments of the semiconductor industry. Given the complex nature of supply chains and currently constrained forecasting of supply chain participants, we may therefore experience indirect or direct revenue effects or swings related to product availability and customers' manufacturing plans in the future. Let's have a closer look at the revenue distribution on page 24.
With respect to the segment split, 65% of group revenues were recorded in the semiconductor segment and 35% in Lamps & Systems. This reflects external revenues as reported for the group. Intercompany revenue flows have been fully eliminated in this view. With the acquisition of OSRAM, the group's revenue distribution with respect to end markets has already substantially changed compared to the historic ams business, when we look at the right-hand side on page 24. This reflects a very balanced and attractive end market mix, already pointing into the direction of our targeted mix. Turning now to gross profit and gross margin for the group on page 25. First quarter 2021 adjusted gross margin came in at 35%, unchanged from Q4 2020, despite lower revenues. Adjusted EBIT for the group was a solid 11% for Q1 2021.
Foreign exchange movements, especially the weakening of the US dollar against the euro, continued to provide headwinds for our profitability in the first quarter of 2021. Moving to the OPEX development for the group on page 26. SG&A expenses for the group in the first quarter were at $236 million, almost unchanged sequentially, but slightly higher on a relative basis at 15%. Our more targeted range for SG&A spend for the integrated group is between 7%-9% over time. R&D spend in the first quarter was $187 million, which translates into 12% of group revenues. This was slightly higher on an absolute as well as relative basis. We target R&D spending in a range of between 11%-14% of revenues over time to support our innovation-driven growth. Turning now to the net result in EPS on page 27.
The adjusted net result for the ams OSRAM in Q1 2021 was EUR 89 million. This was significantly lower sequentially due to the lower operating profitability, in line with typical seasonal patterns. Adjusted basic earnings per share in Q1 2021 were EUR 0.38, or CHF 0.34, reflecting the sequential decrease in the net results. Let me just briefly also add a comment on the tax rate. We target a sustainable tax rate of below 20% over time. Moving to cash flow and debt position of the group on pages 28, 29. The group's operating cash flow was strong in the first quarter of 2021 at EUR 249 million. The sequential decrease we saw here was mainly due to the lower profitability as well as higher CapEx spending. Free cash flow was also very robust at EUR 151 million for the group.
Q1 2021 CapEx spending for the group reached $97 million, translating into about 6% of group revenue. Our target looking forward is for annual CapEx spending on a normalized course of business basis to remain below 10% of revenues. We would currently also expect to run at that level for full year 2021. Moving to page 29 now. The group cash equivalents stood billion US dollars in Q1 2021, unchanged compared. Debt was slightly lower sequentially at almost exactly $2 billion at the end of March. Overall, this translated into a financial leverage of the group to approximately 1.7 at the end of Q1, which is ahead of expectations. Overall, a very sound and solid financial position for the group.
The well-balanced funding structure we have in place now for a while enables us to acquire all available OSRAM shares in the delisting offer we just announced without the need for further financing. Obviously, the delisting offer will result in a planned increase in group leverage, which will very much depend on the number of shares being tendered. To give you some perspective here, were we to acquire all remaining OSRAM shares now, which is rather a highly unlikely scenario, the resulting maximum leverage level would still be below 3.5 times debt at that time. This also means that outside of this rather hypothetical scenario, we do not expect to access the still existing and undrawn bridge facility of EUR 750 million. In any case, we remain committed to deleveraging the existing debt as quick as possible.
I would personally see ourselves reaching our target level of two times net debt to EBITDA within 18-24 months, depending, of course, on the actual tender rates in the offer, among other factors. That view is based on continued robust cash flow generation and free cash flow generation we would expect. The cash flowing in will also be augmented by the disposals, some of which are already underway. Finally, to give you an idea on the interest expense, the cost of debt across our current total debt for the group is right around 3%. During the first quarter, we also announced the buyback program for our convertible bonds, which started in early April. As of now, we have bought back convertible bonds with a nominal value of slightly over EUR 16 million, spending approximately EUR 13.4 million, which helps to further optimize our financing structure.
Moving now to the outlook for the second quarter of 2021, on page 30. As Alex said, we expect group revenues in the range of $1.430 million- $1.530 million, and an adjusted EBIT margin between 7% and 10% for the second quarter. As you can see here, we provide quarterly guidance on revenue and adjusted EBIT for the ams OSRAM group. The financial reporting of OSRAM continues in line with statutory requirements until the delisting will be effective. Let me now take you through the announced delisting offer for OSRAM on page 31. The offer price is €52.30 per share and represents a significant premium to the cash compensation under the DPLTA. The maximum total consideration for 100% of the remaining outstanding shares would then translate into approximately €1.4 billion. This is a fully unconditional offer, the delisting does not depend on any level of shares received.
We currently hold 72% of OSRAM and expect the offer period to start on May 21st, following approval of the offer document. Let me provide you some background on this decision. The delisting of the OSRAM shares is the next logical step in the integration to realize full ownership of OSRAM. The shares received will also reduce the yearly compensation payment under the DPLTA, so less cash needed for that. As mentioned before, the total consideration is already fully financed, so we do not need additional financing. Let me finish my prepared remarks by mentioning that we have published the annual general meeting invitation today. The agenda includes an update to our typical shelf-type authorization, which is already in place and common in Austria. Adding back a 4% capital authorization, we are partially adjusting for the reduction resulting from the capital increase last year.
As this is a shelf-type authorization, we have no intention to access it in the short term. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention and open the floor for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen at this time we would begin the question and answer section, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on your touch tone telephone, if you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may press star followed by two, if you are using speaker equipment today please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time.
One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes to the line of Dominik Olszewski with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. First question is just with regards to the EBIT impact of those lost revenues that you talk about in the second half of this year. Putting that another way, does the guidance for a slight increase in revenues in the second half versus the first half also apply to EBIT? How is OpEx trending for the remainder of the year? Then a second question is just around your customer engagements and traction you're seeing on the back of the software integration solution offered via your relationship with ArcSoft. To what extent is that helping you win design wins for world-facing solutions? Thanks.
Yeah. Alexander Everke, go ahead. Sorry.
Let me take the second question. Ingo takes the first one. Obviously, the relation with software companies, as you described correctly, will help to get further design wins.
Specifically in the Android space, it's not a must-have, but it's very strongly helpful. Certainly, it will also help to design better performance systems with the knowledge of software. The customer, at the end of the day, has the choice to use the complete solution from us or utilize their own software.
Yeah. Maybe on the EBIT question. As you know, we're providing detailed guidance on the next quarter, on the second quarter. We mentioned that we have somewhat of an impact, revenue impact for the consumer business. We will clearly take available measures to lower the margin impacts that this will have, including cost reductions in our manufacturing base, to mitigate somewhat the margin impact this will have. We will also see improvements from the synergies ramping up further in the second half of the year. I think it's important to realize what Alex also said, that right now we also, from a market perspective, still very much supply constrained. In other words, we could do more revenue as we can do right now because we have these constraints right now.
As therefore expect also in the second half, somewhat distortions in the supply chain. It's a bit too early to say, but we are definitely working on measures to mitigate the impact that you were referring to.
Thank you.
The next question comes the line of Janardan Menon with Liberum. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just to follow up on that. This loss of market share, is there any further color that you can throw on it as to what were the factors which led to such a loss of market share? Was it the lack of competitiveness of your product? Two, is there any requirement, I mean, is there any read that this could lead to further losses of market share in the consumer space into 2022 or beyond? Do you have confidence that the development work that you said you're working with all your customers, including on the consumer side, will ensure that there is no risk or less risk of further losses of market share beyond what you're seeing in the second half of this year?
Secondly, as a follow-up, can you just give us an update on what are the timescales in terms of exiting from the digital business on the OSRAM side of things? Also anything on the Continental JV, if you could give an update on that as well, that'd be great. Thanks.
Alex, let me take your question. Generally, customer product definition requirements can change over time, while new opportunities open up as well. In any case, important is that first, you run a portfolio at different stages based on strong relationships, which we do. Second, that no single product line or application is completely defining any of our business. Unfortunately, you will understand we can't go too much into the details. That's not possible for us. We can clearly state that the technology we have available and we continue to expand is competitive and there's future growth for those opportunities as well. On the divestment, as I mentioned, OSRAM announced already divestment of DS, and this is going smoothly. We also expect in a discussion with potential buyers that in the course of this year, we're going to make announcements of potential divestments.
We feel very confident that what we have indicated a while ago, that the majority of the digital business unit can be divested for good buyers in the very near timeframe. We are not in a rush there, but we see opportunities that we can execute a good amount of these in the course of this year and next year.
Understood. At this point in time, you can't give any clear view on whether your position at various customers will improve or get worse or stay the same into 2022?
As I mentioned before, we have a very strong relationship. We see a lot of opportunities at all of our large customers, and I can tell you we feel very confident with the portfolio and technology we have moving forward.
Understood. Thank you.
We're very confident there.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes the line of Stéphane Houri with ODDO. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Good morning. Actually, I have two questions. You've been talking about an impact of less than 5% for the full year. How should we model the complete impact going forward? I assume that this will probably expand in 2022. That's the first question. The second question is, you've been talking in your preliminary remarks about Micro-LED with sensors included. Could you say more about that? Is there already some patent design wins or things we have to know about this kind of product? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me start then with your first question. We mentioned that we feel very comfortable with that. The impact is less than 5% for this year. It would be premature to speculate about the eventual size and revenue effects in the coming year, as we also do not provide guidance in the coming year. You know the cyclical seasonality of projects in the consumer space. On the Micro-LED, this is a very compelling technology, and OSRAM is clearly leading this space. We strongly believe, and that's also the feedback we've received from a large amount of customers in different market applications, that Micro-LED is certainly the superior display technology for the future, with a lot of advantages above compared to OLED screens, certainly in the brightness and in the power consumption, which is basically half of it only.
We clearly see there's a way forward to have displays manufactured with Micro-LEDs. It will start with smaller screens in AR/VR glasses and watches, and then continue into larger displays. The next step is, and that is the most exciting part, basically, that the sensors we are providing can be integrated into the display. This is not the same like OLED, where you have it behind the glass, behind the OLED screen. It's basically in between the Micro-LEDs, which creates a higher performance and a better visual display as behind the OLED screen of the OLED display. For us, it's important that we are focusing predominantly on epi and wafer manufacturing, on chip manufacturing. That is the differentiating technology we have, which clearly differentiates us from our competitors.
This is a good compromise of differentiating this technology, and less CapEx investments on the way forward.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes on the line of Jürgen Wagner with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. We had STMicroelectronics last week saying that design cycles in smartphones are about three years. How do you see that trend for you? When will those three years start and end, basically? On 2022, what are the growth drivers for you? Would you now still see 2022 as a growth year and a year of margin expansion for the combined group? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. Start with the second one. I think it's too early to give statement on 2022. I mentioned in my speech before the mid and short-term growth drivers. Certainly we are encouraged by also the more positive market environment currently, and we expect this to continue specifically in the automotive space. It's too early to give a guidance for 2022. Design cycles in mobile devices, three years. That really depends on not only the customer, it also depends on the technology, on the complexity, and certainly on the roadmap from the specific customers. Let's say for high complex technologies, a timer of two to three years is certainly .
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes line of Adithya Metuku with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, you talked about an impact of 5% from this consumer share loss. Is this the impact that we should model in the second half of 2021, or has some of this impact already come through in the first half? That's my first question. Secondly, now from my discussions with investors, it feels like investor confidence and communication is pretty low, given different events that have happened over the last two to three years. I was just wondering if you have any plans to change the way you communicate around financial reporting, et cetera, to help increase investors' confidence in the strategy of the company going forward. Thank you.
Apologies. We had some technical difficulties. Alex? Thanks. I'm sorry for the technical problem. On your question, the 5%, as you know, we just gave the guidance for the second quarter, and we indicated that the second half of the year for the complete company is slightly higher than in revenue than the first half, and this is all what we can say to this topic. Certainly the 5% is a factor for the second half, for sure.
Understood. There's no effect of that 5% in the first half?
No. Look, we gave a guidance for the second quarter. We are very confident with that one.
Okay, understood. Thank you.
The next question comes the line of Robert Sanders with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. My first question would just be, could you give an update on your plans to consolidate manufacturing sites in Asia, for example, in back end? I was wondering if this content impact might accelerate those plans.
Exactly
To reduce inefficiency. The second question was just, I saw ZTE launched a under display 3D sensing solution for facial recognition. Reviews are a bit shaky, but how soon do you think we could see mass adoption of under display 3D sensing for facial recognition? Thank you.
Maybe let me take the first question on the manufacturing footprint, and Alex can take the second part of the question. When we look at the synergies that we communicated, as you can see, there's also a contribution from what we refer to as cost of goods sold. That indeed refers also to what can be done on the manufacturing footprint side. Since the DPLTA was effective in March, we now have had the chance to start further looking into what optimization opportunities we have to do so. Generally speaking, if you look at the manufacturing sites and the build-up, they're largely designed for manufacturing flexibility so that we can do multi-process, multi-product, or multi-technology in the locations that we have across the group in Asia Pacific.
Clearly, if you look at the synergy work we're currently conducting, this is right now given that we had to start a bit later with that clear focus indeed. Then, the second question regarding 3D under the OLED screen. We announced that we have the technical concepts demonstrated. We are engaging with customers on this technology, but depending on the customer's roadmap, it takes time to materialize this. We expect about two years on that. Clearly, what we see the trend in general to bring the sensor parts behind the OLED screen or then later on what I described before, within the screen with the Micro-LED. The trend in the market clearly goes that to make the sensors invisible and having integrated or behind the screen. That's the trend, and we are prepared with our technology to participate there.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes to line of Achal Sultania with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Just a question on the margin profile again for the second half of this year. Can you just help us understand when you talk about this consumer market share loss, does it have any impact on the gross margin for the consumer business? If yes, are you already starting to take some cost actions in your Singapore fab, which I presume is the fab where most of this consumer business is located? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. Maybe building also what my answer was on the question from your colleague earlier on. As I said, we are in the process of planning and executing meaningful cost reductions. Certainly, also including our manufacturing footprint in Asia Pacific to help mitigate the margin impact that we expect. At the same time, there's also synergies that we see ramping up in the second half, and we still have a fairly volatile supply chain environment. At the moment, we can't deliver all the demand that we see from our customer base. We're working also there to, let's say, help debottleneck here and there so that we can do a bit more. It's still at this point in time, a picture that will evolve, but rest assured that we are addressing some of the margin impact we expect from this consumer share loss through robust cost reductions.
Maybe, Ingo, just to follow up on that, just to clarify. The EUR 350 million synergy plan, that is OSRAM specific. Whatever you do with this consumer business will be on top of the EUR 350 million?
The EUR 350 million synergies is as you would expect in any business combination is derived from the integration of both companies. Eventually it will be difficult to tell whether it's from what used to be OSRAM or what used to be ams, but it's a EUR 350 million plan that is coming from the integration overall. That's also the way we manage it, and that's also how we're going to execute it overall. I think it's important, of course, that when we think about this year and what we will do. We've announced a few things last week. As you will have noticed, we're now looking also what we can do from a cost mitigation perspective on the manufacturing side. Overall, these are plans to generate that EUR 350 million, EUR 50 million of which, as I explained, have already been realized by OSRAM since the summer of 2020.
Okay. Thanks a lot, Ingo.
The next question comes to the line of Sébastien Sztabowicz with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. On the reduced market share on the consumer, are you losing one specific design, or it is more than just one design? I would say couple of designs. This will be the first one. The second one is on the LiDAR market. Now that you have integrated OSRAM, could you please make an update on the opportunity that you see on the LiDAR market? Notably, how is your backlog today in terms of number of projects for LiDAR or the size of deals in euro or dollar terms that you have already in the backlog? Thank you.
Yeah. Alex here. On the first question, as you know, we are not discussing specific product lines relationship as well as certain areas of the business. I think the indication we gave in our statement should describe the situation we are in. On the LiDAR market opportunity, certainly now is the combination of OSRAM adding their VCSEL capabilities and edge-emitting laser capabilities and system know-how. We have a very strong basis which can accelerate the business ams as a standalone has generated already, and both companies together have a very unique position there. As you know, the manufacturing side for VCSEL manufacturing is automotive qualified. We have the ability to drive the driver ICs to control the LiDAR VCSEL arrays. We have the edge-emitting laser now. It's a very broad portfolio. The engagement with customers in that space is growing, and we see more and more opportunities.
Of course, the question is the timing of the future deployments or cars utilizing LiDAR. We feel comfortable with the project we have on hand and delivering into the market.
When do you expect this kind of opportunity to start to ramp in terms of revenue at the combined entity?
Well, we see first growth will happen in the next year. This depends a bit on the customer side. As you know, the automotive market is a little bit in jeopardy right now. I think the first priority is to resolve the chip shortage for these guys. We feel comfortable that LiDAR will happen. This is a growth driver for the midterm, which is very compelling and very differentiating.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much. This concludes our question and answer session for today's call. We thank you very much for joining us this morning, and we look forward to updating you on our business again with the next quarter's numbers. Thank you very much and have a good day.