Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Comet full year 2021 results conference call and live webcast. I am Arianna, the call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions or comments in writing via the relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Ulrich Steiner, VP Investor Relations, Comet Group. You will now be joined into the conference room.
Thank you very much for joining Comet's full year presentation for the year 2021. In the following minutes, our CEO, Kevin Crofton, and our CFO, Lisa Pataki, will present to you the results of the last year. After the presentation, you will have ample time to ask questions either here in the room, but also over the phone. So we'll open the line after that. The documents we publish today are available on our website since this morning. You can also find the annual report with much more information on our figures on the website. Before we start the presentation, I would again like to remind you of our disclaimer. We will make forward-looking statements today, and as you know, there are always uncertainties linked to those forecasts. With that, I would like to hand over to our CEO, Kevin, please.
Thank you, Uli. Very much appreciated. Great. Good morning, everybody. It's super to see some folks live all in 3D, which is awesome. I think it's the first one that I've been able to have as CEO of Comet, so that's fantastic. Also, of course, as Uli just said, welcome to all of you. Thanks for being intrepid and making the trip. For those of you all on the phone, thanks for joining. I understand there are a few people that actually were supposed to be here live that couldn't be here because, okay, they've got COVID. Thanks for not coming, and I hope that you all get a good recovery. This is gonna be hopefully an animated and a rich discussion. Hopefully, y'all will enjoy it.
As Uli mentioned, we will take a break at the end for Q&A, so I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have. I'm gonna talk about what's happened sort of at a high level for 2021. I'll talk about what's happened in the industry in 2021, and then I'll talk later on when we get to the outlook session about what we see for 2022 and a bit beyond that as well. With that, I'm just gonna march right into it. First of all, before you've seen the results already, they're in my view, they're excellent. This is a result of really hard work from our employees. We owe them a gratitude of thanks, but also the trust that our customers have given us.
They are absolutely embedded with us and it's a privilege to have them as our customers. Of course, you all that follow us, we appreciate your support as well. Thank you to you from the Comet team for the results. You've helped us get there, and we greatly appreciate that. Now, relative to the results, we've already said it out loud in a couple different ways. It is a record year for the company. Lisa's gonna go through the actual results in detail. I'm not. What I do wanna stress is that we've had really very nice revenue growth, nearly 30% year-over-year revenue growth. It's heavily dependent upon the division we're talking about, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. Of course, our EBITDA margin has actually reached a threshold point.
It's a hurdle point for the company to be at 20% EBITDA. When you run the numbers, you can do the math yourself, it shows you that we did a very, very nice job in the second half of 2021 to get to this level of performance. I'm quite pleased with the results as a company and as an organization. Record results for the company, really, really positive for us. I would have to say that most of that comes from staying absolutely relentlessly focused on our strategy. I'll use that term relentless.
We are making sure that we stay true to the core of the company, stay focused on our served markets, particularly in the semi and electronic space, but also make sure that we serve the aerospace, the automotive, and the security space as well. I'll talk to that. In the middle of this page, we talk about the continued progress towards our midterm targets. To remind you, our midterm targets, 2025, we said that we would have demonstrated at least 15% CAGR year-over-year through the period. We said that we would reach 25% EBITDA, and we said that we would reach at least 30% ROCE. That's what we said we're going to do, and I can say we're quite strongly focused on that, and we're well on the way to that path. We announced that in 2019.
We're two years into that, and that six-year horizon and quite comfortable with where we sit. In the middle of that page, progress towards our midterm targets, we're absolutely focused on getting our new products out. We launched new products in 2020 that are bearing fruit in 2021. As a result, we know without exception we've taken market share in 2021. I'm quite pleased at what we've done at PCT, what we've done in the X-Ray Systems division as well as in the X-Ray Modules division that we've taken share, primarily because of new products that we've launched into this space, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes as well. Overall, I would say that we've really focused on how we are positioned in Asia.
As you know, most of you know, we started our mass production facility dedicated to high volume manufacturing in Penang nearly two years ago. We said we would fill that factory to 20% by the end of 2021, and in fact, that actually happened. We're on track to delivering what we said we would do from the Penang facility. For those of you all that stuck with us, we also announced that we had established a, I would say, boots on the ground in Taiwan, direct sales, direct service in Taiwan, which is the most important region in the semiconductor industry. We have boots on the ground, direct sales, direct service, and it's focused on really the top foundries as well as the top OSATs.
Those are the outsource assembly and test companies like ASE and Amkor and PTI. We've improved our overall production and our overall efficiency. We've grown our efficiency on employee basis by nearly 50% year-over-year. That's gonna continue. We're not world-class, that's quite clear, but we are gonna get to a reasonably good performance there. If I look at the challenges aspect of this, you know, it, we're all kind of tired of the pandemic, but it was absolutely imperative that we focus on what's happening with our team, making sure that our workplace is a healthful workplace, but also that we're protecting our customers as well. I can say we've managed the COVID pandemic environment that still exists in a reasonably good way.
As everybody knows, supply chain. That's the theme of everything we talk about today. It starts off as chips, but it's something now that affects the entire industry, whether it's electronics, PCB boards, but also cables, wood for crates. I mean things that we as society would think, "Oh, must not be that big a deal maybe." But it's a challenge, and as I've said in many different forums, we've managed this challenge really day to day. The supply chain team has done an incredibly good job getting there. As a result, we've been able to support our customers and meet the demands that they have. I'm quite pleased with the overall performance there.
Now, I have to say, yes, our results are a result of improving end market conditions in every market we serve, different flavors of what that improvement looks like. Of course, the semi industry is in a boom cycle still. I remember people challenged me on the use of the term super cycle a couple of years ago, and I hope now I've convinced everybody to be super believers at this point. The industry grew somewhere around 34%. I've seen some folks say it might be as high as 40% year-over-year, 2020 to 2021. I can say for sure that that's gonna continue. That gives you a taste of what our outlook looks like as well. That cycle is fully in play.
I would also say that in the automotive space, production is definitely improving. It's lumpy. It's really a shallow recovery, but we foretold that going into the year. It's single-digit growth at the moment. It's gonna be high single-digit growth quite soon. On the other hand, what we do see is this whole uptick of the EV, electric vehicle, programs. By 2025, we're gonna see that EV is gonna be more than 50% of all cars, light vehicles, et cetera, that are gonna be produced. Why that's important is that drives our, in particular, our X-ray businesses. Of course, the PCT business will benefit from that growth as well, but it really is a key factor in the IXM and IXS businesses. Maybe third to.
Third over on this slide, it shows our cool jet engine. Remember, I'm an aerospace engineer, so I really like this. You know, the global passenger air travel is increasing, particularly in North America. It continues to recover. We can see the industry is shrugging off the pandemic. It's a little bit lumpier in China, but the rest of Asia looks to be quite strong. As a result, again, the IXS and IXM businesses will be able to take advantage of that growth as well. On the security side, that goes hand in hand with the growth in passenger air miles, but also of course in the defense sectors as well. The four primary markets really strong growth in 2021 for the semiconductor space.
Single-digit to high single-digit growth for the remaining 3 industries that you see there. Maybe some comments about what we're trying to do from a fabric of a company perspective. I guess the first thing I would say, and I've kind of covered it a little bit ago, is our productivity. It's increased by almost 50% year-over-year. We are running around CHF 67,000 EBITDA per employee. We expect that to grow obviously by 2022, and that's up 50% from the previous year. We also can say that our gross margins have improved significantly. You've seen that from our financial results. It's greater than 300 basis points, and I think Lisa's gonna. I know Lisa will talk to those details because I'm just giving big numbers here.
As a result of that's from high, of course, high volume, but also our product mix is also improving in all sectors of the business. It's a varying degrees of how fast we can make that change. For example, IXS, those products are ordered a year to a year and a half in advance, so we're still flushing those previous orders through our system. I'll talk about the transformation of that business further in just a few minutes. In the center there, where we say we strengthened our proximity to our customers, I mentioned that already, but maybe to give you the flavor for that, currently now our penetration into the Asian market stands at about 40% of our total revenue, and that's up from about 30% a year prior.
That's roughly 60% growth year-over-year. We've also improved our footprint. It says here rapid growth in Taiwan and China. Well, I already mentioned the boots on the ground in Taiwan, direct sales and service in the Taiwanese market. Of course, we're booming in China. That's a significant growth year-over-year. But also we do have our Korean R&D center, which concentrates on match box assemblies for everybody else but the tier ones, and we can explore that later on as well. Now, in the product and services, I'll get to some specifics when I talk about the actual divisions, but maybe the most important is that we are well on the path to changing the focus of IXS and IXM to be focused on the semi space, the electronic space, and even the battery space.
The reason for that is because these tend to be higher margin, higher volume business sectors than the traditional aerospace, automotive, and security sectors. That customer base shift is occurring, and we're on that path, and I'll talk about some of the products that we launched there in just a few minutes. Then on the far right of this page is really our investment in our company, and we're keenly focused in investing in our team. We kicked off a comprehensive talent identification and management program during the year, really to understand our high potential talents and also who we can grow with within the company. We've sharpened our values, and if I'll remind you, our values really are to be absolutely dead nuts focused on our customers. Customer centricity is number one. Number two, we want to challenge and empower our team members.
We want them to make decisions at risk and do that with an open mind and a willingness. Then also to have this whole trustful collaboration, this idea that we trust each other, that we are making good decisions, we will work together, and it's a way for us to make sure that it's a team effort of making things happen. We did publish our first full compliant GRI report for ESG purposes. You'll see that in the annual report if you haven't seen it already. It's a comprehensive report. Remember, we were sort of ad hoc on this in previous years. Now we've got a well-documented situation report, and it's something for us now to build upon.
We'll announce what those metrics and goals are, for the company in about middle of the year or slightly thereafter. Now, a few comments about our divisional performance. Again, I'd say it's quite good. Each one of these divisions have grown to the point where our company has grown on the order of 30% as a group. But each one of these divisions were at the 30% or higher in and of themselves. PCT, of course, was higher. It grew at about 36%, year-over-year, which is outpacing the market conditions and outpacing our peer competitors. Now IXS and IXM both grew at almost exactly 30%. I would draw your attention to the first bullet, sub-bullet on the left here.
For those that have been waiting with bated breath about when are we gonna announce that we finally got a generator in the marketplace, we have sold our first Synertia product. We used to call that DaVinci. This is the first RF generator in our new generator family. We have launched that. We have received our first purchase order. Now, I have to admit that I'm shading it a little bit, and the reason why I say that is because that actual PO occurred in the second week of January. Just to be clear, it happened in January, not in December, so I should be fully transparent on that. I think it's important that everybody understand that, yes, we're in the marketplace, yes, the generator has been sold.
I'm sure you're gonna ask me questions about that later, so I'll just leave it at that. We did expand our market share in particularly in the RF match box sector. We took 16 new design wins during the course of the year. The bulk of those design wins, more than half, were with Tier One level customers. Also, I would say that nearly 20% of those also occurred with customers in China. Good regional distribution, good Tier One and Tier Two distribution. The reason why this is most important is because that then bears fruit about a year from now. I'll remind you that last year, we took 23 design wins.
As a result, we do expect because of PCT's performance and because of those design wins, that we are comfortable that we will be able to say in April that we have taken market share in the RF match space again this year. Last year, we were at 36% market share at number one. We should have advanced that as well. I already mentioned the product transfer. On IXS, we use that terminology realignment. It's a euphemism for saying that we have really redesigned that business. This is a work in progress. I'll remind you, I said that we were starting this whole activity about a year and a half ago. That realignment gained momentum. We reduced the number of products that we sell out of that organization. We stopped doing custom business.
Remember, we were doing a lot of one-off, single off business items, which you would sell one-off. Maybe two or three years later, you'd sell another one. That's a very difficult set of business circumstances to be profitable. We've really moved away from that type of business line, and we have been extremely focused on high quality, high revenue, high margin business in that organization. I would draw your attention to the second bullet there in a minute. We have received our first hard copy purchase order for a system that is being used for inspecting advanced packaging devices. This is with the world's largest foundry. That's a major win for us, and it shows that we can be in that space successfully and that we can probably generate some delight with our customers.
Then on the far right here, you see IXM, the module, the industrial X-ray module business. That team has done a really good job in introducing new products alongside a recovery in their traditional served markets. We've released the MesoFocus product lines into the electric vehicle space, batteries, electronics, but also in the semi space. In addition, though, we've been able to take more share with the ION product as well, particularly in the security space. This whole inroad is happening, and I can say that the team is definitely taking market share. Okay, this is my last slide before I hand it over to Lisa. I would just hope you'll agree with me as well. I think it's been a very good year. We're two years into this six-year program.
Our strategy is definitely bearing fruit. We're staying focused on it. We are and have been demonstrating at least a 15% growth year-over-year. We're well on track to be at about CHF 830 million or more by 2025. We've demonstrated really good progress on the EBITDA performance. We should be comfortably at that 25% EBITDA range. We're very close to the 30% ROCE. Really, the themes are basically this, PCT, the Plasma Control Technologies group, the RF business, just needs to keep doing what they're doing. They need to keep getting the design wins. We need to expand capacity continuously through this period so that we can stay ahead of the curve in semi.
The X-ray businesses will continue the redesign and the transformation of IXS, but also start to capitalize more and more on the trend in IXM. For sure, we want to make sure that we have a really nice and successful collaboration with all of our partners, our customers, first and foremost, our supply chain, which probably are getting tired of hearing from all of us at times. I think if we work together, we'll definitely overcome challenges. For sure, have to say again, thanks to our employees, because they've been incredibly dedicated to our success. With that, I'm gonna hand it over to Lisa and see if you can make your way over.
Thank you. Okay, perfect. All right. Thank you, Kevin, and good morning to everybody. It's really nice to see you all here in person. For those of you on the webcast, a very warm welcome to you as well. I will go through the prepared remarks here a little bit more formally, and then looking forward to your questions afterwards. In 2021, Comet achieved outstanding record high financial results in top line growth, profitability, returns, and generation of free cash flow. As Kevin mentioned, these achievements resulted from our commitment to maintain our focus, gain market share, produce efficiently, and by proactively managing supply chain and COVID-related challenges.
Our strong performance has enabled us to return more to shareholders through an annual dividend and to fund the investments fueling our growth strategy. Now turning to the actual results of 2021. The company achieved sales of CHF 513.7 million, an increase of 29.8% compared to 2020, which was also a historic year for Comet. Sales volumes increased in each of our end markets and divisions. Our core markets in North America rose 17% compared to the same period last year, and account for 42% of the group's total sales. Since 2020, we expanded our geographic footprint with a new production facility in Penang, Malaysia, new subsidiary in Taiwan, expansion of our sales and customer services in Japan, and in our R&D and demo center in Korea.
Our ability to be closer to our customers resulted in 60% sales growth in Asia. Asia now represents about 41% of group sales, compared to 33% in 2020. Gross margins improved by 360 basis points compared to 2020. Each division achieved double-digit growth in volumes with a favorable product mix. This was really our primary lever in driving gross margins for the year 2021. Additionally, faster and optimized production processes led to improved operational leverage that helped offset higher input costs coming from labor, raw materials, components, and logistics. Going into 2022, production efficiencies and product mix will further compensate for rising costs. Operating expenses in 2021 were higher than in the same period last year due to investments in growing the company.
We invested in people to manage growth in all areas, including operational excellence, supply chain, sales and marketing, and of course, in research and development. Our R&D represents roughly 11% of sales and remains a foundational focus for the group, with investments focused on medium and long-term strategic projects, mainly targeting the semi and electronics markets. It should be noted that net operating expenses, excluding the 2020 gain from the sale of the ebeam business, as a percentage of revenue, decreased from 30.9% in 2020 to 27% in 2021. We achieved profitability at the upper end of our guided range as a result of higher sales volumes, product mix, and operational efficiencies. We improved EBITDA from CHF 58.6 million in 2020 to CHF 102.7 million in 2021.
This represents 520 basis points improvement to 20% EBITDA margin compared to 14.8% at the same time last year. Our performance grew margins by 590 basis points, more than compensating for 70 basis points of margin erosion due to weaker foreign exchange conversions and the elimination of the 2021 one-time gain from the sale of ebeam. The effective tax rate for 2021 was 18%, driven by the taxable profit mix generated from our international subsidiaries. We will continue to monitor the potential local tax changes of our subsidiaries, especially as it relates to corporate income tax in the United States and with new changes in the OECD.
As a result of our solid operating results, Comet achieved a net income of CHF 67.4 million, representing a net income margin of 13.1% and a return on capital employed of 26.8%. Now let's turn to the division results for 2021. Our focus on delivering to our customers operational efficiencies and culture paid off. Each of our divisions achieved double-digit sales growth while expanding profitability. The Plasma Control Technologies division, PCT, achieved record performance in sales and profitability, executing remarkably against the backdrop of a booming semiconductor industry. Sales increased 36.2% from CHF 224.7 million in 2020 to CHF 306.1 million in 2021. PCT achieved sales growth across key geographic markets and with all major customers.
In 2021, PCT benefited from the start of its production in Penang, Malaysia, which reached 20% capacity by year-end 2021, and further cost discipline in operations. These factors, in addition to the strong volume, expanded EBITDA margin by 430 basis points versus 2020 to achieve high 26.3% margins. Division results for the two X-ray divisions reflect the focus, strategy, and the improving market conditions. Let's start with X-ray Systems business, IXS. IXS achieved important milestones in its focused realignment strategy. IXS sales growth was complemented by competitive wins with newly introduced X-ray systems pointed towards the higher growth, higher margin semiconductor and electronics industry. The division contributed CHF 138.9 million in sales, an improvement of 30.1% versus the prior year.
In 2021, IXS returned to profitability, successfully generating CHF 8.9 million in EBITDA and 6.4% EBITDA margin. The division managed its cost base while meeting demand and ensuring customer satisfaction. The IXS business continues to focus on its realignment strategy, including cost reductions, virtual installations, discontinuing of low margin custom work, and investments focused on the semiconductor and electronics device arena. Results from these efforts will continue to materialize and add to future profitability of the division. The X-ray modules division, IXM, achieved sales of CHF 78.9 million, a 28.4% increase compared to 2020. EBITDA margins improved by 470 basis points to 19.4% in 2021. IXM's core markets showed gradual recovery. In particular, demand increased in the second half of 2021 in nondestructive inspection and security.
The division also benefited from commercial success of its new products, ION modules for security applications, and the MesoFocus product line targeting the semiconductor, electronics, and battery markets. In summary, a booming semiconductor market improved X-ray market conditions. Focus on strategic objectives, targeted product development, and improved productivity measures produced historically high and excellent results for the group. Next, I'd like to provide a few comments on the balance sheet and cash flow metrics. The solid performance of the group has continued to allow for a healthy balance sheet position at year-end 2021, with a cash position of CHF 115.5 million. Comet generated CHF 57.8 million in free cash flow. As I previously mentioned, this free cash flow result is a record for Comet and was achieved through strong operating cash flow performance.
Operating activities generated CHF 70.5 million in net cash, an improvement of CHF 13.4 million compared to 2020. Capital expenditures totaled CHF 11.5 million and represented 2.2% of sales in 2021, reflecting timing shifts into Q1 2022 of capacity and expansion projects in our Flamatt, Switzerland facility. As a result, we expect that our CapEx expenditure in 2022 will be at the upper end of our targeted range of 3%-5% of sales. Our CapEx investment profile reflects our strategic priorities. We will continue to target investments in production and R&D capacity in several locations globally. We will also invest in digitalization and cybersecurity efforts. Net working capital management continues to be a focus. Performance is in line with our target of 20% net working capital as a percent of sales.
Net working capital was CHF 30.1 million higher than at the same time last year, reflecting our growth expectations and our supply chain mitigation actions taken to protect the company's ability to meet customer demand. Our favorable cash flow generation has resulted in a negative net debt position for the company. We will continue to allocate capital to strategic projects focused on business growth. We also want our shareholders to participate in the group's success through an attractive annual dividend. Our goal is to maintain a healthy and flexible balance sheet, and our performance in 2021 reflects the same. Finally, with respect to our capital return to investors, earnings per share has more than doubled to 8.68 CHF per share, compared to 3.56 CHF per share in 2020.
Our outstanding operational performance enables us to return a dividend to our shareholders at the upper end of our guided payout range. Consequently, the board of directors will recommend at the next annual general meeting a dividend of CHF 3.50 per share, representing a 40% payout ratio. In summary, the company executed exceptionally well in a challenging environment and is well-positioned to deliver on our opportunities going into 2022. From my side, I'd also like to take a moment to thank our employees, our customers, our suppliers, and of course, our shareholders for their substantial contribution to our success in 2021. As Uli mentioned, additional details on our annual report and 2021 performance can be found on our website, published on our website this morning.
This concludes my prepared remarks, and I'll now hand it over to Kevin to provide a bit more color on our outlook going into 2022.
Great. Thank you, Lisa. Much appreciated. All right, I'm gonna talk a bit about what we think is gonna happen in 2022 and probably take some really other comments on the future beyond that as well, I'm sure. Let me just talk what's gonna happen really in 2022, and I'll go from left to right as always. In the semiconductor space, it's definitely gonna be a strong year throughout 2022. Depending on who you talk to and who you listen to, you're gonna get a forecast of anywhere between 15%-20%. I would tell you if you were only one month earlier, you would have had people telling you it's gonna be maybe 8%, 9%, or 10% growth.
Right now, I would say barring any other factors, the trend is more up and to the right. 15%-20% wafer fab equipment growth seems to be quite probable. We've gone from $63 billion last year in wafer fab equipment spend, last year being 2020 to 2021 of about $85 billion, and it looks like it'll be about $100 billion in wafer fab equipment spend in 2022. These numbers are gonna be bouncing around for a little bit. They won't be consolidated by the industry probably for another month, but that can give you a very good feeling for where things stand at the moment. We're gonna ride that semi wave. I already see people that are looking and forecasting 2023.
2023 right now, generally speaking, is being high single-digit forecasted growth at this point more than one year away. In the middle there with the automotive sector, we do expect that we will see continued recovery in the automotive sector. You can see the number here. It's gonna be about a 9% growth in production year-over-year. This is an estimate that was done by IHS just this month. It'll be 3-4 times higher rate of growth than what we saw in 2021, and that would portend very good items for the team in the IXM and IXS businesses. I would also say and remind you that the content in vehicles, whether it...
Sorry, the electronics content in vehicles, irrespective of whether it's an EV or a non-EV EV vehicle, it's really coming on quite strong. It's gonna be about $1,000 per vehicle. That's almost 2x what we were saying would be in this timeframe. Most pundits were saying it'd be about $500 at this time this year, and it's actually gonna be about $1,000. That's really great for PCT, it's great for IXS, and it's great for IXM. I would say that because of this transition to the EV as well that I mentioned earlier, that's gonna be a big strong pull for the businesses. I'd say it's gonna be that 9% or slightly higher growth in our served sectors. In the aerospace sector, we think that's gonna continue to recover.
It's not gonna be a rapid climb-out, but it's still going to continue to improve. It'll be in the high single-digit area of growth. Asia will continue to lag probably for the first half of this year, but from a long-term perspective, Asian travel, in particular, is going to be a driver overall in the aerospace sector. Private aviation, defense, they're still very strong and will continue to be very strong, although it's a relatively small niche in the aerospace sector overall. In the security arena, we will see growth in the security sector that will primarily drive IXM. We will continue to see that, and I think it's gonna be in the high single-digit range, and we'll see that structural travel growth in Asia also will pull the businesses along.
In the aggregate, we're gonna see very strong pull, we think, through 2022. If you take that backdrop and then look at what we have to do and what our opportunities are, it's really, again, the matter of seizing our opportunities that are put in front of us. Stay focused on what we're trying to accomplish, stay focused on our strategy, stay focused on our served markets, and take the opportunities that are put in place and in front of us. As long as we execute to that, you'll see that if you look at these bullets on the right-hand side of this slide, it's basically showing that our TAM, our total available market is growing by something like 1.5x between 2020 and 2025.
Our served available market is growing by more than 2.5x in the same period. Our SAM is growing faster than the TAM that we're in, and you can see the bulk of that is coming from the electronics and the semi space. That's really coming on the backs of us opening up this RF generator space that we Remember, we got our first purchase order in for the da Vinci product. It's also because of our penetration. Quite frankly, the IXS businesses in the 3D architected space, advanced packaging. To keep pace with that, what we need to do is focus on all of these major bullets that you see on the left-hand side of this slide. PCT, they're gonna be like gerbils in a cage.
They've just got to stay in front of the growth that's being pulled by the semi space. That means that we've got to take on capacity. We got to stay ahead of what our customers' demand forecast looks like. We have to get more generator variants into the market. Remember, this generator is a platform. It's not a singularity. When I say platform, you know, in the industry, we have power, and we have frequency domains that we must be able to operate in. There's no one-size-fits-all. There will be multiple variants that we'll be launching during the course of this year and next year. It's gonna be a continuous wave of products in this RF generator category. Our next variant will also go into beta testing in 2022.
I already mentioned we'll expand our market share in the RF match box space. That's an opportunity for us, and we think that we can do that quite successfully. We want to maintain our vacuum capacitor share. We're sitting at, you know, in that 70%-80% market share range. This is a protect that domain in the future. As Lisa just mentioned, and as I've mentioned as well, we have to make sure that we ramp this Penang factory. We expect that the factory will be filled by nearly 60% by the end of 2022. Again, it was filled at about 20% in 2021. 60% in 2022, we'll start to see the benefits in a real meaningful way in the cost of goods sold side of the equation. In IXS, we've got to continue that transformation.
I've mentioned it. Lisa's mentioned it. You know, look, the performance of that division improved quite significantly, but it's not there yet. We still got another year or two of progress that we need to make. That means we need to be dead nuts focused on the semi space. We need to move the product lines in that direction. We still need to take a few more product, products out of our portfolio. We need to get on one software platform. We need to reduce our cost structure, not in any sort of layoff situation. That's not what I mean. We need to reduce our overall cost structure. For example, we still use an inordinate amount of representatives and agents in the industry to go to market.
Well, that comes at a very high cost, hence why we're trying to get more direct boots on the ground in our served available markets, served regions. We're gonna invest in that semi space, and we're gonna invest in new products in that semi space, and we are going to reap what we can as a cash cow, the automotive and the aerospace sector. In IXM, just grow share in our markets with the new products we mentioned. We've already mentioned the MesoFocus and the ION products. We need to continue that ramp. We're gonna invest in further products for the semi space, particularly from that items that are used at the sub-10 nanometer design node. That's gonna be important for the IXM business. IXM is also going to start investing further into our presence in Asia.
Which kind of gives you the idea on my previous two slides. Of course, I'm very bullish about what's gonna happen in 2022 with one point that I need to make sure that I acknowledge. That is the geopolitical situation to drive uncertainties. The Ukraine situation in particular is clearly disturbing. Right now today, the impact on our business is very negligible. At this point, we have very little revenue risk, and when I say very little, it's I mean, really little. At the same time, our supply chain, so far we have not seen anything in our supply chain to give us concern. Of course, that could change tomorrow or the day after. We've taken these accounts into our guidance.
We've taken our supply chain challenges that were already preexisting to come up with the guidance you see here of CHF 570 million-CHF 610 million in 2022. I would say that is well in line with what our overall strategy would indicate that we were trying to accomplish. I think Serge is gonna ultimately ask me a question, "Well, what's the upside to that?" There is upside, of course, I'll admit that, but there's also downside to this as well, and we've tried to be right through the middle and tell you what we feel at the moment in this time. Our EBITDA margin, 21%-23%. We're gonna continue to invest, as Lisa mentioned, in the business. Infrastructure is gonna be important to us. New products is important.
Capacity is important. We're gonna take on inventory to make sure that we can manage the demand side from our customers. That kind of gives you a flavor for how our EBITDA, we've tried to be quite careful about what we project our EBITDA performance to be. I think our focus really is on growth. We have to, yes, of course, improve our efficiencies overall, and we will continue to do so. Of course, we wanna continue to invest in our people and our culture. I would say we've gotta be steady as she goes. I think the last bullet under that growth and efficiency and culture, we have to, as a company, continue on a path to become an employer that's attractive to new employees coming. This is gonna be a problem for the entire industry. It's a problem for Comet as well.
We need to be able to attract talent to our company disproportionately to the guys that are up the road from here, like VAT or the INFICON or the Pfeiffer or whoever's that are out there. We need to get more talent than they do. We need to be focused on gathering that in the industry. We're gonna be really focusing on attracting and recruiting skilled workforce. We are going to be really clear about university, for example, university relationships, et cetera. We have to go and farm that for ourselves. It's not gonna come to us. We are gonna have to manage the supply chain.
Irrespective of the conflict that's going on right now, we will be facing a situation very similar to 2021, that we're gonna have to manage our supply chain prudently through the entire 2022, and in some cases, I think maybe even into 2023. Now, I know people are already talking about a second half recovery in the supply chain, again, disregarding Ukraine. People are saying maybe second half of 2022, there's a recovery. You know, well, I hope it's from, you know, their mouth to the Lord above because I personally believe that it's probably gonna be a whole 2022 period where we have to manage our supply chain and manage them very, very closely. We are gonna have to mitigate energy costs, rising costs in our supply chain as well, logistics costs.
So far, we've been able to prudently and fairly pass those costs on to our customers, and they've been able to pass those costs on to their customers as well. It's a well-known phenomenon, but at the same time, I will say we are not trying to raise our prices in an extortionate way at all. We're trying to be quite careful about how we thread that needle. All right? That gives you an idea of what our guidance looks like at the moment. Again, I wanna say thanks to you all for your interest in the company and the interest as shareholders. Thank you for supporting us. Thanks to our customers and our employees as well. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and open it up for questions.
I know we've gone a little bit long, but happy to take as many questions as anybody would like to ask.
Excuse me.
Okay, I'll go sit.
I was told to sit down. Thanks a lot, Kevin, Lisa, for all your explanation, and I'm sure that you have a lot of question now. As we have a few colleagues on the phone, so please wait with your question until you got the microphone from Ines or Cornelia Bürgi, my two colleagues, so that everybody can hear it on the phone. Are we ready on the phone? No.
Okay. The first question is from Michael. Michael, please.
Thank you.
Is working? Yes. Thank you. Two questions, actually. You mentioned the importance of direct sales and service in Taiwan, in the same industry. I was wondering if semiconductor production gets more geographically diversified around the world, more regionalized, nationalized, how will you service your customer? How are you preparing to get that direct service in sort of the changing environment in semi? I'll ask the second one.
Okay. Thank you, Michael. First of all, it's absolutely clear that nationalization is going to occur in the semiconductor space. There's no doubt about that. Our situation as Comet is that regionally, we're very well-positioned directly in Europe, quite well-positioned, so I don't see that as an issue. Our biggest development area for PCT is in the West Coast of the United States, so quite well-positioned for the new fabs that were just recently announced going into play in North America. We're gonna have to continue to expand our footprint in Asia. What I mean by that is we're gonna have to continue to put more people, sales and service on the ground in Taiwan. We're gonna have to do the same thing in Korea.
We do have a development center and an applications development center in Korea already, but we actually don't have the sales and service team in place in Korea as well. We're gonna need to do that. In China, we are kind of a mixed business model there. We do use quite a few reps and agents with a core of our own employees with boots on the ground. We're gonna expand. We're gonna invest in that so that we become less reliant on the agents that we have there. That intimacy is extremely important. Our customers need to have a direct interchange with somebody that carries a Comet business card. It gives them a degree of comfort.
It gives them a great degree of satisfaction, and it lets them know they're dealing with the entity and not with a third party to get to us. So I think it's quite crucial. It will require more than maybe the business model of Comet has been in the past, because we will have to become more geographically diverse. But we're gonna go do that, and it's the right thing to do anyway as a company that's growing in the way we are.
Thank you. The second question is on IXS, the order you got from TSMC in for the advanced packaging. Is it an in-line or at-line application, and is it a systematic testing of every product or? What's the pipeline looking like in for that kind of business?
Yeah. Great. Thank you for that question as well. Just to be clear, I said the world's largest foundry. I don't think I said TSMC, but you're probably right. No, you're right. The situation there is that it's an offline. It's being used for offline testing, so it's mostly used for failure analysis and for quality assurance purposes. What that means is this is for this particular customer to prove out their process flows. I've sort of said this a bit repeatedly, and I'll bore you guys with this, but I think in the future it will evolve into an at-line test protocol that the industry follows.
An in-line test, meaning every single wafer or every set of packaged devices being inspected using X-ray, every wafer, day in, day out, 24 hours a day, 40 wafers an hour, I struggle to see the ability to actually solve that physics problem at that rate. I mean, you're talking about being able to put a test article into a product, whether it's from Comet or from somebody else, put it into that X-ray platform and have it settle. 'Cause remember we're moving granite, thousands of pounds of granite that has to step and settle, and then actually do an X-ray. To do that in 6 seconds, that's what you would have to be able to do. Right now well, the industry would struggle with being able to solve that physics problem.
Doing it in an at-line mode, meaning an AQL level, at an acceptance quality level of testing, where you're testing X number of articles every 20 minutes, maybe 6 minutes, in that range, that probably becomes quite interesting. Our view right now in our business plan, in our model, we've only said in our model online. That can kinda give you the idea that we're being conservative because there is a challenge that we need to go and address. The way we may be able to address that 6-minute or 6- to 20-minute inspection challenge is with our acquisition of ORS, Object Research Systems. For those of you all that aren't familiar with that, this is a part of our company now that specializes in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Where you can imagine taking a blurry image via X-ray, and because of the learning that's occurred, you can actually make a reasoned decision that that's a known good device or a known bad device without having a perfect picture. That's exactly what happens in the CT space in the medical sector, for example. That's exactly what happens in some of the automotive inspection arena as well. The proof points of that are there. It's what happens in optical inspection in the semi space already. It's not a leap of faith to get to that point, but we're probably a couple years away from that, Michael.
The sales pipeline?
The sales pipeline, again, remember this is a failure analysis and quality assurance application right now. The overall served available market for this by 2025 is somewhere in that 100 ± 150 systems, in that range. It's, you know, double handfuls of tools that are being sold for this application today. In our pipeline we have quoted to some seven or eight different customers with multiple systems. We think we're right in the mix of it and in very good shape.
Okay. Thank you, Michael. May I also ask you to state your name and company so that the audience on the phone knows who's talking. Serge next.
Yes, good morning. Congrats to the result. Yes. My name is Serge Rotzer from Credit Suisse. I have many questions, but I will try to focus on a few ones. The first is, you mentioned the order book, that your order book is full with orders you got almost two years ago. Can you share with us how much of the order book is covering your sales guidance already to get a little bit of view of the visibility you have? This would be question one.
Great. Thank you, Serge. Let me clarify because either I said it too fast or I didn't say it clearly enough. The order book that I was referring to specifically was related to the industrial X-ray systems business, IXS. In terms of what percentage of our order book for 2022 does that cover, I would tell you that it's substantially more than half without giving you the specificity, if you don't mind, because that then becomes a bit competitive when we talk about it. For IXS, it's quite a long-range view of what's happening in the business. Overall, our book to bill for 2021 was in excess of one, which gives you a good idea that all of the businesses are in good shape and are scheduled to grow.
Okay. This is very helpful. Thank you so much. I will move to the sales guidance. This implies growth between 11%-19%, if I'm not wrong. I think this is a fair guidance at this point of time, but it's a wide range as well, like others do, other companies do the same currently. Can you share your thoughts with us, what is the 11% growth and what is the 19% growth? What are the triggers or what are the downsides when we talk about 11% or 19%?
Yeah, maybe I'll say a few points on that, and then I'll ask Lisa if I've missed anything because I probably will. On the downside, first of all, the downside situation, we think that we've bottomed out to at least from what we can see right now. It's really what we see as our low probability. We've taken into consideration a probability that this supply chain challenge is going to continue irrespective of the Ukraine situation. The downside would mean it could get worse, but nobody can forecast that right now. As I mentioned earlier, we don't see a sales problem at this point. We have very little exposure. To give you color on that, it's, you know, CHF 1 million-CHF 1.5 million.
It's very minimal from a company perspective, and our supply chain situation seems to be okay relative to the Ukraine situation right now. It could worsen. We've tried to take into account what could be the worst case scenario as we understand it that we experienced during 2021 for the recovery of everything else that was happening in the supply chain. A further downside on that would be, can our major customers in the semi space continue to deliver because of their supply chain risks? That's a hard one for us to really predict at the moment, because the mantra in the industry has always been copy exact, no changes.
As a result, you become monolithic in your view, and you have some companies like my former employer that, you know, they've got a perfectly optimized operations, perfectly optimized. Any bumps, they can't react to it, and the supply chain challenges are bumps. They have to go through looking at alternative components and alternative suppliers even. That violates their copy exact protocol. In our case, we have been really way ahead of the game looking at new components, alternate components from different suppliers or new designs to go into a product, even to the point where we're looking at also different geographical regions, and we're buying a bunch of parts to protect the supply chain. We've been a little bit faster than some of our bigger customers. They're getting there. There could be a lead lag situation.
What I mean by that is you could see us a little bit more back-ended loaded than front-end loaded first half to second half. We have to go manage that. I hope that gives you the flavor on the downside. I think that we've been prudently cautious to talk about where we think the downside is. Similarly on the upside, there is more there. However, we've taken into consideration as well what our customers are saying and what they've shown us in their ability to ramp. That sort of gives us what we think is the top line potential as it stands today.
If the supply chain does improve in the second half, the supply chain, I mean the worldwide supply chain for our customers and their suppliers, not just ours, if that really happens in the second half, like some people believe, there's upside. That's where our upside comes from.
Okay. Thank you so much. Probably last one, if I may, then on the supply chain, a question to Lisa probably. When did you notice the impact then in accounting, you know, from the supply chain? As your inventory you had working down and then really had negative impact on the margin since when did this started last year, what time?
I mean, I think as we've said, you know, we've been managing the supply chain diligently all year long. It was something that we noticed obviously in the first half of last year. You know, we baked it into the guidance into the second half of the year. You know, I think there was a few factors from our perspective that we were able to to leverage to achieve honestly the gross margin growth that we did. So Most of that gross margin expansion did come from increased volumes, but at the same time, there is a portion of that that did come from operational efficiencies. We were able to get the factories operating more efficiently, specifically in Fremont. We were able to ramp Penang up to 20%. Those are good things for us, but obviously we were dealing with what everyone else is dealing with, which is higher labor costs, higher raw materials, some longer lead times. Now, on the flip side of that, we were able to also work with customers to push through some price increases. Majority of those will flow through in 2022. We didn't necessarily see them flow into the second half of 2021.
Yeah. One more point on that, if you don't mind, is that the overall exposure for us last year and going into this year with the cost increase that our supply chain has given us to this point, net, it's on the order of 0.5%. With the efficiencies that we're talking about and with the improved mix that Lisa just mentioned, we've been able to offset that with a very good degree of headroom.
Okay, great. Happy to hand over to the next client.
We'll have Harald in the back first, and then Mikhail from
Yes. The gentleman in the back. Mark, I believe.
Should be open.
Hello. It's Harald from ZKB. Basically two broader topics. First one is the IHS forecast on automotive. In the past, they were mostly too upbeat, and I was just simply wondering what from the midpoint of your guidance, if now automotive production turns out to be zero, what broad impact would that be? The second one is Ukraine, Russia. What is your gut feeling? What are your customers thinking? What could the magnitude be, and how long could this situation last? I mean, we are hearing that drivers, truck drivers are heading to Ukraine, missing on the market, now impacting logistics clearly. Then probably also coupled to that, inflation. I mean, the risks are meanwhile tilted to the upside.
What is your broad assumption of the inflation for your guidance? Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for the question. I'll take the first two, and I'll ask Lisa to comment on the inflation side of things. First of all, let's see. Gosh, I gotta remember the order of the questions again.
Automotive first.
What's that?
Automotive.
Automotive. Oh, yeah, the automotive sector. The impact of if it's a 0% growth, just flat relative, you know, at 9% is what IHS sits right now. What's the impact to our overall guidance? To be frank, it's quite low, very low. Yeah, very low. I would say it doesn't impact our lower end of our guidance in any way whatsoever. Second one?
Second one was-
Ah.
Your gut feeling on Russia and Ukraine?
The conflict with Russia and the Ukraine situation. That's a hard one. That's really a hard one to address. We've got to look at the mosaic of what, in particular, the semiconductor industry, how it sits. Many of the raw and rare earth materials come from Russia. You know, for example, palladium—they are 40% of the world's entire supply coming from Russia. Every single electronic device in the world has palladium in it. There could be a knock-on effect, not directly to my customers and my customers' customers, but at the next level up, there could be an impact there, right? It becomes a food chain phenomenon.
In the meantime, you could see in South America or even Latin America and in China and in other areas on that exact material, they're already starting to ramp production. It might be a cost impact that trickles down through, but it looks like supply-demand, it would probably be okay. On the other hand, there are so many things that you could look at. You could look at neon. Neon is a source material heavily from Russia. You could also look at aluminum and stainless steel, particularly 316L. All of those are heavily turned out industrially by Russia. It's an unknown. I don't know how long it will last. You know, it comes down to will we have a treaty? Will we not?
It could be just a minor perturbation. Our plan at this point today is that we know what our top line looks like. We know what the impact currently today on our supply chain looks like. We've looked at the N-2 level. At that level in our supply chain also looks fine today. We think that we've taken the prudent view today about what the conflict is gonna orient itself. I'm sure that doesn't really help answer your question, but that's the only way I can answer it at this point.
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, it's also psychological question of how end consumers demand now might evolve now due to the fear of spreading of the conflict, of course.
Yeah, that is a possibility. I think that honestly, in some respects, the semiconductor industry as an example right now currently is kind of going, ho-hum. It's sort of like, hmm, the pandemic. Remember, it was an incredible growth year through the years through the pandemic because societal demands are insatiable right now. Mostly the industry right now is kind of saying, "Hmm, we're gonna have to go figure out how to deal with it." Okay? My gut feel, this is Kevin Crofton, CEO of Comet. My gut feel is that we'll find a way to manage through it and that businesses will be likely to be okay unless this spreads into a worldwide conflict, and then it's a different story.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, we have Michael.
Yeah, thanks very much. It's Michael from Stifel.
Oh.
I have two questions for Kevin.
Okay.
One for Lisa, if I may. On the supply chain, we're always talking about supply chain issues, but I was just wondering which parts are really missing at your end clients that they cannot deliver their tools or their machines? Because what, if I'm not completely wrong, VAT suggested yesterday that it's actually power tools, that is a shortage in power tools, so assuming some of your competitors are not really able to deliver. Which leads me actually to the second question for Kevin. Were you able to sell your Synerga generator because you were actually able to deliver it? Or were you able to sell it because there is something that you do better that you can maybe now explain to us, because before you couldn't do that. These are my two questions for you.
The one for Lisa, I'll probably also answer right now. I was trying to do a little bit of math here on my notebook, and I'm not the best in math, actually. When I just make a quick calculation, the lower end of your EBITDA margin guidance, assuming that the IXS margin, which I think is a little bit low actually in 2021, will just go up, let's say 200 basis points, and the rest will stay more or less stable, not even taking into account the Penang factory, the cost initiatives that you have. I'm not getting to the 21%, I'm already getting more than 21%. Maybe you can just elaborate a little bit.
I appreciate your optimism.
Maybe you can just elaborate a little bit how conservative you really are, you know, on the margin side, not on the top line, but just on the margin side? It doesn't really add up, in my opinion.
All right. Why don't I take the margin question first, and then we can go back to supply chain. I mean, I think, you know, when we put out the guidance for the year, it's you know, we are trying to give a twelve-month outlook factoring in a lot of different things. I mean, I think to go back maybe to the sales discussion, because that's really a large focus for us. You know, we're seeing the demand coming from the customers. Our order backlog at the end of the year was roughly 50% higher than it was at the end of 2020. I think, you know, from that perspective, we feel good about the demand that's coming in. We also feel good about where we're able to produce.
I think we've done quite a good job in terms of making sure that we have the capacity to meet the demands in the short term. Obviously, I think we need to ramp up where we're spending, from a CapEx side to make sure that we're ramping capacity for where we need to go to 2025. At the same time, you know, the supply chain constraints are persistent. The other thing that I know we talk about supply chain, but we also need to put labor into that as well. There are price increases on the cost of labor. We need to make sure that we are retaining labor, that we are attracting labor, to meet the goals that we have.
I think that just gives a little bit of color around the sales guide. Then at the same time on the profit side, associated with all the factors I just explained with the input costs, and obviously we're still continuing to work with select customers on pushing through price increases, and we've taken a you know a view on that into the margin numbers as well.
I think the final thing though to say on the margin, and I referenced it in my prepared remarks, but you know, we are investing in the company, and we are investing in digitalization efforts, and we're investing in cybersecurity and some of the things that we need to do to make sure that we are creating a scalable organization to meet our goals going into 2025 and into the future. That's my view on how we thought about margin and what the guide looks like for 2022. Since it's supply chain.
Okay. I'll take your question on supply chain and impacts. Yeah. I think I helped Michael on some of his slides at some point for his presentation. Look, the situation, if you look at the major subsystems that go into a plasma piece of capital equipment, you know, there's of course VAT's product lines. There's typically turbo pumps and other types of roughing pumps from Pfeiffer and companies like that. Then you have the RF power subsystem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The biggest problem for our primary customers is the availability of RF power control systems. That's the issue. If you were to look at our biggest competitors, they're quite...
Well, of course, Advanced Energy and MKS, they've been very clear in their results that they've reported multiple quarters that they are having trouble to produce. Their supply chain is letting them down, and as a result, there have been missed opportunities for revenue. Of course, that then gives a problem to the large tier ones, okay? For sure. That's a pacing item. There are other pacing subcomponents, but that's the primary system. In our case, you asked specifically, were we able to capture RF generator opportunities, I think is the way I'm interpreting your question, Michael. I would say no. I would say on the RF matchbox perspective, the answer is yes.
The reason why that's the case is that we're well known as a provider of RF matchbox assemblies. We're qualified across you know most of the tier ones and tier twos with RF matchboxes, and so we're able to step in and take positions that maybe our competitors couldn't fulfill. The generator is a different story, and the reason why that's different is you know particularly in the tier ones, they have to go and qualify a generator not just on their product, but then they have to qualify that generator as part of their overall piece of capital equipment with the TSMCs and the Samsungs and the Intels of the world. That's not the work of a moment.
Even were my biggest competitor not able to supply a generator that is form, fit, function that we can fit, no chances in this timeframe, there's no chance that we will be qualified that quickly. We have had a situation that's come up where one of those very large tier ones have said, "We need to go qualify your product," in anger. That's gonna take time. Before that was like, "Oh, yeah, ho hum, we'll get to you. Sometime we'll talk to you." Now it's become, "Oh, can we have it?" That's gonna take us time to be fully qualified in a tier one. Does that answer your question?
Thank you, Michael. Do we have one more question in the room?
Just two more questions. First, Holger Frisch from Berenberg. I have a couple of questions on the RF generator business. You said you estimate first sales in 2022. Could you give us a ballpark figure what kind of sales you expect this year? And then, you said addressable market is CHF 1.2 billion. Do you have an estimate what market share you can get in the midterm in this market? And will it be more of tier one or tier two suppliers?
Gosh, that's a big question. Okay, first of all, I will defer about telling you what our revenue line for 2022 is gonna be for this generator. That's highly competitive information, first of all. To give you an idea of why we're so careful about divulging that at this point, we'd rather talk about design wins and first customers. The reason is because our two competitors that I've already mentioned, they've got boots on the ground everywhere in the world. They wanna find out where every single beta site test we have going on is occurring. Think about what their reaction in the marketplace would be if they knew exactly what product at which customer we're being qualified on.
They would go to that customer right away at the highest level of management, and they'll say, "Why are you entertaining those guys from Switzerland? What did we do to not satisfy you? How do we make it better? Can we reduce price? Maybe we need to give you more people. Maybe we need to give you spares." They can act like a gorilla in the marketplace. At least that's what I would do. I would do everything I could to prevent a Comet or any other to come into my customer because that's my customer. That's highly competitive for us to actually divulge that. But I'll try to give you some flavor. Our we've been very clear about saying we'll get revenue in 2022. We'll get some more revenue in 2023.
It'll be interesting revenue in 2023. Then you'll start to see a significant uptick in 2024 and 2025, as long as the product does what we say it's gonna do, right? We're still in that phase where the baby has no warts. It looks really good. It's gonna be, you know, Prince Charming when it grows up. We're still in that phase right now. It looks like it works. You know, it looks like it does what we say it's gonna do on the tin for really one power regime and one frequency regime. So far so good. As long as the other variants do the same thing, then our stated objective as a company is that we will take 10% market share by 2025. I've been quite clear that I believe that's a very humble objective.
Because if the product does in every variant, if it does what we say it's going to do, by 2025, we should have a shot at being at least number three in this space. So again, we're talking about a $1.1 billion-$1.3 billion serviceable addressable market in 2025. We've been very clear about stating our objective is to be at 10% share in that timeframe. Okay. It's going to be in that range, and that would be a major success for the company.
Okay. Thank you. One question on the CapEx. You said, you're expecting CapEx to be at the upper end of the 3%-5% range. Can you give us an indication of the split between the three divisions?
Yeah, sure. I can give you a kind of a indication of where that CapEx is. Will be directed. The majority of that CapEx is related to capacity expansion and R&D expansion. It will be in Flamatt, Switzerland. Part of it could be in San Jose, California. A minor part of it will be directed towards Penang. Of course, Aachen, Germany, is where we had planned to produce the Synerga RF generator. But the majority of the CapEx, it's really around capacity expansion, R&D expansion. It will be disseminated globally. The majority of our CapEx is in the Plasma Control Technologies division. It's our largest division.
It's where many of our strategic aspirations are at the moment, especially in the mid to the long term. That's how I'd put a flavor around the CapEx. The other thing is really, again, we're investing in digitalization, and that includes in operations. Part of the CapEx is related to those activities.
Great. Thank you.
Sebastian.
Okay. Sebastian Wolter from UBS. Perfect. Many thanks. I got three questions. The first one would be on Penang. Can you sort of give an indication or a rough indication of ballpark figure, how much of a margin help that was already in PCT for this year to have a little bit of a better sense what is the potential going forward? The other one would be on the RF generator order. Just to be clear there, is that just meaning one single generator that has been sold in these orders or there's a couple of machines being included in there? And is the delivery supposed to be happening next week, tomorrow, or in two, three months' time down the road? Just to have a little bit of a more of a sense how quickly that will turn into sales?
A bit of a housekeeping question. Could you share with us the FX impact on the sales number for the different segments? That would be great.
Okay. You handled the FX and what was the first part of your question?
Can you repeat the first part of your margin question?
Yeah, sure. I mean, since you have said that you have already moved some production to Penang. The question is just like, what is the margin support that you have seen in PCT already from this transfer?
If you're ready.
Yeah. I can-
Go ahead.
I can start. I gotta look up the sales number, but I know it's in the appendix. On the margin side, again, I think just to kind of repeat back what, you know, we had seen happen in the second half. The major thing here with Penang is that we did ramp it up to about 20% this year, and that was on schedule, it's on plan, and that was. It did what we needed it to do. Again, remember that we're transitioning from San Jose manufacturing of our match boxes from San Jose to Penang. The real lift from that is gonna come 2022 and then into the out years.
In the second half of 2021, we also needed to compensate for increases in labor, raw materials, components, et cetera. Just in terms of, you know, where did our margin expansion really come from, in 2021, it was generated from volume and a favorable product mix. As I did say, a portion of that gross margin expansion did come from operational efficiencies, but the lion's share of that was really coming from volume. Going into 2022, the ramp up for Penang should be around 60%, and that's. We should be seeing an appreciable increase in gross margin from that. Why don't you take the next one just 'cause I need to check the actual number on the FX side.
One last comment on that. The summary of that answer primarily is that Penang was a volume increase situation that we're trying to get it filled, but the overall impact on cost of goods sold is pretty small relative to the opportunity. Quite small to the tune of, you know, CHF 1 million plus or minus. If you get to 60% capacity filled, it would be substantially more than that, and that's what our plan has always been, by the way, Sebastian. Thanks for that question. The second part of your question about the RF generator, I hope you all don't laugh at me, but remember I said that we would sell one in 2021. We didn't quite get there.
We sold one, a couple of weeks ago. Just to be, you know, dead nuts straight down the line here. There will be repeat orders from that customer for sure. I don't wanna go into the specifics of that, if you don't mind. We have five ongoing beta sites already for that variant already, as I previously announced. We expect we'll convert a significant portion of that into revenue and into extended purchase orders for the year. By the way, that first unit, yes, it's shipped. Yes, it's there. Yes, it's at the customer. Yes, it's real. Sorry, I forgot that part of your question. The...
You know, we have an objective to have another handful or more beta sites going on midyear, so they'll be carrying on through the course of the year. Can we convert some of those into revenue? I would say between the ongoing beta sites we have, plus the new beta sites that we have coming, there's probably the likelihood that we'll convert you know, something smaller than a handful of those into actual repeat orders. Just because of the amount of time that it takes to get qualified. Yeah. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Circling back on the foreign exchange, the impact on sales year-over-year, 2020 to 2021 was CHF 5 million.
How was it split between the segments?
I don't have it by the split of segments, but the way to think about it is that the majority of our exposure is coming from US dollars. That is mostly with the PCT customer.
Got it. Many thanks.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Sebastian. We're already running a little bit behind schedule. If there is no urgent question in the room right now, then I would ask, and we'll come back to you. After that, I would ask if there is one or two question coming from the phone. Do we have something there, operator?
There are no questions registered at this time.
Okay, perfect. We have another question in the room.
Daniel from True Trade. Just a tiny question in reference to design wins. If you win a design, does that mean you get the order? Or how does it work?
Okay. The question is, when we say we get a design win, do you get an order from it right away? The answer is yes. Typically, what that means is you'll get a first set of orders for depending on the product that it's going on, right? Our customer's product. It'll be, you know, some tens of RF match boxes. You'll very rarely get 100 units because nominally you're getting qualified on either a new product from our customers or a new variant from our customers, or you're in a situation where you are replacing an incumbent, so you're getting part of what they are already delivering, not all of it. It's typically in the tens.
The tens for the first orders that you're gonna get. After that, you know, if it's the right product at your customer, the right end product, I mean, look, our biggest customers in one of their product ranges, they're supplying 500 modules per quarter. You know, that's okay, it's at least 500 RF generators per module going out the door, so it could be substantial order. Or it could be with a little tiny customer that, you know, maybe their entire production for the entire year is 200 modules, depending on the customer mix, customer position.
Do you pay the design?
Yes. Under normal circumstances, we do all of the design work. We do all the engineering. We do all the design for manufacturing as well as the product engineering, and it's a wholly sold article from Comet. There are circumstances where we do build to print, but nominally, what ends up happening is it becomes build to print for the first units, then we do a design upgrade on behalf of the customer, and then it becomes a Comet design to deliver. That's a transition that occurs.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question, Daniel.
Do we have a final question in the room? Yes, Serge. Yes.
Sorry, if I may. Not final, but a question from me on IXS. I was not sure. You mentioned that you see some competitive headwinds in IXS. What is wrong if I understand this not correctly, sir? Then on IXS, if this not is true, you showed a roadmap you want to achieve with these 25 initiatives or something like that. Can you give us a feeling how much you already have achieved of this roadmap and what we can expect for this or then even later from that?
Okay.
Yeah. That's it.
All right. Thank you for that question. If I said headwinds, I don't remember saying that, to be honest. You caught me off guard on that one. Maybe you can whisper to me and tell me when did I say that? Let's talk about the IXS transformation, maybe to try and put that into a broader context and narrow down to where are we headed. When I came on board, we had 26 different products, 13 of which were single one-off custom designed systems that were literally being sold one, and then three or four or five years later, you'd sell one. There were 13 of those, and then there were another 13 or 14 that were standard products that had quite low margin.
I want to tell you the as-is condition. That was the as-is condition. Each of those products, those 26 things that we're selling, were on four different software platforms. Now, how does a small company have four different platforms, software platforms, and be able to support that as an entity? That's like having some of your products on, you know, a Dell computer and some of them on a Macintosh, as an example. They don't work the same, right? We also had 300 agents, distributors, and representatives. Many of them were historical from the Philips days. For those of you who know, this division was formerly part of Philips, and the contracts that Philips had put in place carried on through that period.
you kinda go, "Why is that important?" Well, they were contracts that were not to the benefit. Maybe at the time they were, but in today's day and age, the commission structure, the service structure, it was not what you would expect in a capital equipment company that is in the semiconductor market. Wasn't fit for purpose. Those are maybe some three examples of what the condition was a year and a half ago. We're down to the point now where we have six products that are actually standardized and real, and we can produce them repeatedly. We still have two custom products that we're still delivering and still building. We are on two software platforms, and we have a little bit over 50 reps, distributors, and agents.
Where we're headed is that we want to get to a point where we're probably gonna have 7 products, and we're probably still gonna have one custom product that we're gonna deliver for a period of time, because of the nature of the customer and the nature of the industry that we're in that particular case. By 2025, we should be on 1 single platform from a software perspective, 1, and we'll have something less than 50 partners in the channel. We're on that pedal. I should have said, remember I said we'll go from six to seven. We might go from six to eight new products because you can imagine that we might have a semi-only product and electronics-only product. Currently, today, we think it might be that one additional product will cover both sector demands.
You can envision maybe that's not gonna be right, 'cause that comes back to Michael's question, is it gonna be online, at line or, a one-off sort of test system. That would be a different architecture. Where are we in that journey? We've done the sort of easy parts, sort of, and now we need to get through this design and, industrialization activity, and we probably have another year to a year and a half to go in this transformation. 2022 for IXS, yes, is going to be better. I hope that all of y'all are believers. I remember coming into these forums and there weren't that many believers. Hopefully we've changed that.
It's gonna be, you know, we got work to do. I've lived it a couple times, and I'm sure we can make that happen. Hopefully, Sir, that helps you.
Great, Seth. Thank you. Thank you very much for your lively participation in the event. We can close the official part of the event right now. Thank you for showing up here. Thank you also to the audience that joined us over the phone. After the meeting here, we'll have served some finger food in the back of the room, and management, Kevin, Lisa, will also be available for you if you have one or more questions. Also, thanks to Cornelia Bürgi, who organized the event, including the food you're getting after that and the drinks. Thanks for coming to Zurich here, and I hope you'll stay a while to have a conversation with our management team. Thanks a lot and-
Thank you, everybody.
See you soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over.