It's 9:30 A.M., so good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure to host this Microsoft Teams webcast of our Q1 2024 results conference. With us today are Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of INFICON, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO of INFICON. The management team will first present the results and then take questions. During management's prepared remarks, please, online participants are requested to turn off their microphones and cameras. During the Q&A session, then, participants are invited to turn their cameras and microphones on when asking questions. Participants can add themselves to the queue of people wanting to ask questions by clicking on the Raise My Hand icon or, alternatively, you can also use the chat function in MS Teams.
You should have received by now a press release on the Q1 results together with the link to accompanying visual for this web conference. All documents, of course, are available for download in the Investor section of the INFICON website. I would also like to inform you that we record this conference to archive the audio file later on the INFICON website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this MS Teams session may contain forward-looking statements that do not solely relate to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition.
We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would like to hand over now to Oliver Wyrsch. Oliver, please.
Thank you very much, Bernhard. A warm welcome to everybody on the call. Thank you very much for joining today. It's my pleasure to walk you through the first part of our presentation. Let me just quickly show you the agenda. Our usual structure: I will first walk you through a couple of key points of our financials, talk through the different markets, and then about the expectations for 2024. After me, Matthias Tröndle, our CFO, will give you more details on the financials, and then afterwards we'll take your questions. And with that, I'll dive in. Q1 2024 results: We were able to improve gross margin and profitability. We had a solid start into the year, while slightly weaker as expected. We grew in all markets year-on-year, except semiconductor vacuum coating. The book-to-bill is nearly one.
So when you look at the sales, they were -2.5% year-on-year, so nearly flat, 2.1% organic, the growth in Europe and Americas, and again, all end markets except semi. There is a slightly slower momentum in Q1 after very fast growth in Q4 last year and a general growth for the full year of last year of 16%, as you remember. The order intake has started slow but is accelerating each month. Actually, we had an increase and see this also increase further throughout the year. Regarding operating result, we worked on systematic cost management. On one hand, while preparing for the ramp, in particular in semiconductor, the supply chain improved regarding availability and quality, while not fully at normal levels in all product lines. The broker cost, however, definitely is much lower and nearly disappeared. Gross margin improved by two percentage points.
Regarding cash, good cash generation, again, with operating cash flow of $22.5 million + $7 million. Continued investment into R&D as before and as we plan also for the future of 8% of sales, and also production capacity with $12 million CapEx for this quarter. This is a little bit the timing thing, this $12 million. Depending on the different investment projects, for the full year, we expect around $30 million. If I now jump into the worldwide sales, we see the different regions here. Good growth in most markets. We have, in particular in Asia, temporarily a slowdown on a very high level of last year of -12%. Europe grew by 3% and North America by 9%. You see also the percentages shifted a little bit. North America now at 29%, Europe at 27%, and Asia at 43%.
When we look now at the specific target markets, semiconductor, a solid Q1 based on the market dynamics, what we see is definitely first signs of the ramp, as expected, of the next upcycle of semiconductor. We have different product groups, and they go into different cycles or parts of the cycles of the ramp. So in some product groups, we can see that, while in other product groups, this is a little bit further away. We have decreased the sales versus Q1 2023 by -15%. This is mainly in Asia, which we believe will, in this year, have a good year, good momentum we see coming, while it's a temporary slowdown. When we look at the different submarkets, memory was the slowest market in 2023, now shows already first improvement. Most submarkets have moderately optimistic outlook for 2024.
It's still a mixed picture during the whole first half, we would expect, and then some positives in the second half. Again, we see first signs in some sections of our business. The Mature edge of the chipmakers, after a strong 2024, probably a little bit slower this year. So we continue with our projects, working on the next generation products of our customers. We have a strong pipeline, and we are looking very optimistic into the future. Let me now jump into automotive refrigeration and air conditioning. Good quarter with a growth of +8% year-on-year, mainly from the Americas. We remain number one position in this market. We have launched new products with good momentum. We believe that this year is a bit slower after a tremendous growth last year. We've seen nearly 30% last year.
The battery EV transition is a bit slowing, the adoption, so the growth is a bit slowing this year. Generally, the market is a strong market. The EV transition will further continue, and we are very well positioned in this market to grow with the markets, also when I look at our R&D pipeline. Next to the solution for battery, smart manufacturing for battery manufacturing, also air condition refrigeration has good momentum. You saw that last year as well in this market. This is through new regulations coming in for climate protection and new refrigerants. Jumping into the next market, general vacuum. This is a very broad market for us with a number of submarkets that we work with channel partners together also to address. We generally expect this year to be flat after a tremendous growth last year, also nearly 30%.
This is largely driven by the general market dynamic, macro. We see a bit of a mixed picture here as well, but overall, we saw a growth of 4% year-on-year, growth mainly in Europe and a bit slower growth also in Asia. We remain the most competitive full liner in vacuum instrumentation in this segment, and we also believe we can further expand our business here. Also, during this year, we look optimistic throughout the year. If you then jump into the last segment, security and energy, very strong Q1 with a new quarterly sales record. Both of these parts of the segment have its own dynamics, which are different than the other markets, often government-sponsored programs. We, after the launch of new products, have seen a continuous increase of this momentum.
We also see for this year positive growth and have started with a very nice first quarter of 49% growth. With this, I jump to the expectations for 2024. Again, we expect a soft first half with growth in the second half, mainly through the semi-upcycle that will come in bits and pieces depending on different key players and the submarkets. But we also see a momentum, in particular in Asia, that should accelerate again for the second half. So we leave our guidance unchanged with sales of $650 million-$700 million and operating income of approximately 20%. Now, let me jump to just a quick overview of what's happened recently. If you want to know what's going on at INFICON, please follow us on these different channels.
Many different things happened recently, like the opening of the Guangzhou Application Center, renewed battery momentum with our new strategies in that area, and numerous other things. With that, I'll conclude my part of the presentation and would like to hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more details on the financials.
Thank you, Oliver. Morning, everyone. To our first quarter call, I'll cover, as usual, the Q1 financials and also briefly comment on our guidance for 2024. So let me first start with slide 12, which is our highlights for Q1. Orders have been slower with a book-to-bill close to one. Sales had a slight decrease of 2.5%. Our gross margin improved by two percentage points, and our operating income reached a $31.3 million level of 20.3% of sales. Equity ratio increased to close to 70%. Cash flow and net cash showed a positive trend, and our CapEx has started really high with nearly $12 million. Now, let me go a little bit more into the details. As you have seen in our press release, we achieved revenue of $154.2 million in Q1. This compares to $158.2 million in Q1 last year, a decrease of 2.5%.
If you take into account the negative foreign currency impacts, the organic decrease was 2.1%. Oliver did already comment the development of the different markets. I think we can report that sales have increased in all markets with the exception of the market for semi and vacuum coating. We had a strong sales increase and a new quarterly record in the security and energy market with a plus of 49%. Refrigeration, air conditioning, automotive sales did grow by 8%, and general vacuum did expand by 4%. Compared to previous quarter Q4, which was our record quarter so far, sales did decrease by 11.6%, mainly coming from semi and general vacuum. The regional distribution of sales, which you can see here on the right side, shows growth in North America and Europe, while Asia showed some decrease of 12%. Let's talk about operational costs first.
Both R&D and SG&A costs did more or less develop stable. We spent $12.2 million on R&D in Q1 as a percent of sales. R&D increased from 7.7% to 7.9% in the first quarter. In SG&A, the cost level did slightly decrease to $30.2 million cost for additional headcounts, and initiatives have been compensated by some savings and lower performance-related expense. Gross profit margin increased by 12% in absolute numbers and reached 47.8%, up by 196 basis points compared to last year Q1. This is the best level since Q2 2021 and the third improvement in a row. Lower broker cost and improved supply chain with lower freight costs and a more favorable mix have been the main drivers for that improvement. The operating profit for the first quarter reached a level of $31.3 million or 20.3% of sales after $30 million and 19% of sales last year.
This corresponds to an increase of 4.3%. The tax expense for the first quarter was at $7.2 million, which represents a tax rate of 21.9%, which is slightly lower than in Q1 last year. The net profit, from a net profit point of view, the increased operating and a better currency-related financial result raised the net profit to $25.6 million or 16.6% in Q1. This compares to $22.1 million or 14% in the prior year, a 15.8% increase. Now, let's move to the balance sheet. Highlights: our net cash reached $54 million, which is nearly $10 million higher than in Q4 last year. The inventory turn rate remained stable at 2.4, and the DSO, day sales outstanding, improved to 50.7 days in Q1.
Our working capital, which consists of accounts receivables, inventory, and accounts payables, closed at $215.6 million or 35% of sales and with that ended about $10 million lower than end of last year. The decline is mainly due to good collections and a decrease in accounts receivables of $10 million. Our operating cash flow improved and reached a level of $22.5 million after $15.3 million in Q1 last year. The balance sheet shows a solid structure. We had an equity ratio of 70%, which improved compared to last year. Those were my comments on the balance sheet and Q1. Finally, I come to the outlook. Oliver has already commented the expectations for the end markets.
Based on the order pattern, the improved supply chain situation, and the expected semi-upturn in the second half of the year, we maintain our guidance and expect sales between $650 million and $700 million with an operating income margin of around 20% for fiscal year 2024. With that, I would like to close the presentation. Here we see our next dates, and our Q2 conference call will happen end of July as a next event. And yeah, now we are ready to take your questions.
Thank you, Matthias. We have first questions from Jörn Iffert. Jörn, please.
Hi, Oliver. Hi, Matthias. Thanks for taking my questions. Three questions, please, and I will take them one by one if it's okay. The first one would be China. China seems softer, and this is in contrast to all your peers reporting where China is pretty strong these days. Isn't there the risk that your exposure to China is more linked maybe to the higher-end nodes, still some last logic and foundry investments, and not so much to memory, that this is a structural concern for you now going forward, or how should we think about the end market mix in China for you in semi?
Yeah. Certainly, something we're monitoring closely. First of all, we should break it down into the different end markets for us. What you currently see is that the general vacuum market continues on the high level. The RAC auto market as well, while, of course, it's a bit of a slowdown because of the battery, the EV transition that is a bit slower this year in terms of growth. And then you see solar that was really fast last year, that has a slower year this year. There's a bit of a consolidation year. We see that when you look at semi, it's quite a mixed picture, I should say. So we, as you know, supply leading-edge logic and also second-tier chipmakers as well as OEMs. Almost each player is a bit different.
I think what we agree with our peers is that in the OEM space, there's already a lot of momentum, maybe a bit of a slow start, but really a lot of momentum. But we also have some inventory still. You need to know we come from a very high level last year. We obviously had a semiconductor market grew 2%, while many reduced dramatically last year. Overall, we grew 16%. So we only see that this is on a high level with a very high Q4, a bit of a slower start into the year. But we do not see that our trends will be different than the one from peers or the general industry. So we see these first signs on these momentums. We see the orders coming in. We see the discussions of projects. While, of course, there's a lot of uncertainty in China still.
I think our customers, and so we, are very closely monitoring the regulations. It's an election year in the U.S. Things developing sometimes more rapid in these years. So we're looking close at this. The most recent update in terms of trade regulations did not affect us, but it's also possible that a few more changes will be coming there. I hope this helps, Jörn, as an expert.
Last thing, if I may have a follow-up on this to be pretty clear that I understand it correctly. So in China, you do not have the concern that you're over-indexed to logic, which could start to weaken quite significantly over the next years in China, given that they're not accessing the tools they want to have in logic?
No. And I'll be honest with you. In part, it's also surprising to us how resilient it is and how much interest there is for leading-edge sensors, for leading-edge technology, leading-edge in China being not a little bit removed, of course, from the absolute leading edge that we see in other regions. So that actually shows relatively good momentum also already in Q1. But it's mixed, right? So, we see some players a little bit different than others.
Okay. Second question, a quick one on the order trends. You mentioned it was improving during Q1. So I mean, it's book-to-bill in March above 1, and should we expect that Q2 already is quite, yeah, materially better than Q1, or how should we think about it? I mean, Q1, you were close to the previous year levels. Should we also expect Q2 to be close to the previous year's levels?
Yeah. I mean, not giving guidance, obviously, for the next quarter specifically. What I can say is that we see a month-on-month increase steadily now, and that we believe will continue. We'll have to monitor it closely, right? The big question this year is a bit which submarket of semi will really see a proper ramp this year and when? And some will be earlier, and we see first indications there, and some, you don't see anything yet. And then they might be late in this year, right? So this is a bit still a question mark that is a bit hard to answer. But yes, we see the positive momentum, and we would also think that in Q2, this will continue.
Thanks. The last question on the gross-profit margin. Finally, the broker fees are more or less disappearing. So I mean, the 48%, I think, was all supported by lower revenues in China. So how should we think about the full year? Is this 48% now the run rate when China is coming back, which is valid, or should we expect that operating leverage, given higher volumes, is supporting the gross-profit margin also going forward, meaning that we see ongoing improvements sequentially?
Yeah. So I think the details definitely Matthias should talk some more about. But in general, just a disclaimer. I know you know that, Jörn, specifically, but maybe for the benefit of some that haven't heard this yet, INFICON gross margin has to be taken with a grain of salt. Why? Because the product mix is very diverse when it comes to gross margin. It goes from the '70s, '80s down to the '40s. Depends on what channel and what product line is in the mix to what degree, right? All of these products, we aspire the same operating income. That's what we truly measure our businesses on. And I believe we've shown progress there. It comes from three places.
It comes from, obviously, these broker fees disappearing, the inflation we digested, the dynamic, how we can ship when the supply chain eased up, and also the systematic cost management that we work on continuously. So I hope that this will continue to improve. We have been surprised a little bit in the last couple of years of what happens macroeconomically. So if it's only for INFICON itself, we will continue to work on this, and I think we see an optimistic future. I hope this helps as a general statement. I believe guidance for the full year we gave, right? We would give this on an operating income level with the approximate 20%. I think in that regard, we have made a good start into the year. We will, as you know, also continue to invest.
We will also continue to invest in capacity and R&D, while, of course, we also work on these cost levels, as I just mentioned earlier. So both will go in tandem throughout the year. We want to catch the ramp-up, obviously.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Certainly.
Thank you, Jörn, for your questions. Just a minute ago, I had seen questions from Michael Foeth , Patrick Frey, and Serin Rumesa. I don't see their hands up right now. Are you ready, for instance, Michael, to ask your questions? Apparently, he's not with us. Patrick? Patrick Frey? Serin Rumesa? Anyone else? Any questions, please? Jörn again? Yes?
Sorry. Yes. And I'm back just in case nobody else is asking questions at the moment. I will just ask one question and then going back in the queue. On general vacuum, I mean, general vacuum was, again, pretty robust while we saw many other industrial companies having significantly weakness in Q1. So yeah, I would call it a mild positive surprise. Did you get some more color now? What was helping in Q1, which end markets in particular, after you maybe talked to some of your distributors or so?
Yeah. I mean, last year, what I think it concerns for us, at least so far that we can see it this year, is the growth last year was true growth that we made. There's a few subsegments there that continue to grow or, let's say, improve on last year. It's a pretty wide area of industrials. There's pharma in there to big science and many things in between. The big slowdown is probably solar in this space that is slower this year. We don't know exactly how slow it will be. It's not only negative science that we hear, but of course, we all know there's a consolidation going on in there. Maybe if you look at the regional distribution, Matthias, or other callers that you see.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. GV, maybe this comment first. GV did increase versus Q1 last year, but we also had this decrease versus Q4, right? Q4 was very high. I think it was even a record quarter, and we dropped by roughly 14% in there. So there were, as Oliver said, right, there were really many different industrial customers in there, and the regional development is also sometimes a little bit splitted and different driving this, right? But overall, I think Q1, most probably last year, was a little bit impacted by us not being able to deliver as much as we can so capacity and material issues, which now helps in that comparison. Nevertheless, it's a decrease against Q4 levels, right?
Thank you.
Thanks again, Jörn. We now have next questions from the HLABH. Are you ready to ask your questions, please?
Yes. Thank you very much. Maybe also as a follow-up on the general vacuum, you did have quite some backlog there. So to what extent were the sales coming from backlog and to what extent from the orders? Maybe as a first question.
Yeah. So obviously, if you do the year-on-year comparison, we had tremendous backlog last year. Last year, the situation in Geneva was that the supply chain couldn't deliver yet to the degree that we needed it. And we had quite some backlog that you then saw reduce throughout the year. Now, the level is much lower. I would say it's nearly normal. So this is actual orders on this level. While, of course, you know that China is one of the key markets in there as well regionally, has performed good on a good level. Nonetheless, we are actually, if no large macroeconomic shifts happen or trade war impacts, also optimistic for the year. Generally, the outlook remains flat, right, plus-minus.
Maybe to add, I think in the Q1 numbers, there's not a lot of backlog reduction impact in there, right? So most is normal business. There are not many old orders which have been shifting Q1. So it's more current and also the situation more normalized in that market.
Perfect. And maybe as a, oh, sorry.
Yeah. I was just saying that you need to see that Q4 was really a tremendous shipment quarter. This also, you see how it compares sequentially, that we really shipped out all we could in Q4 still and then had this slower start into the year overall.
Okay. Perfect. Maybe as a second question on sanctions and maybe also the sentiment from your customers, is there still advantage that you are a Swiss supplier compared to MKS, that is your big competitor, or has that advantage basically, yeah, faded away?
No. I think this specific constellation remains the same. I believe being a European company has certain advantages. But of course, it's become a complicated picture right now also when you see the dynamics in Europe. In the U.S., I mentioned already election year. We have to stay really close what now the different bits and pieces are that go in this or the other direction, right? There's also Chinese counterreaction. But you also see collaboration in many areas on trade or could be on security topics that part of it is when it comes to some drug or pharma topics, more collaboration on the other side, militarily, the opposite. So it became a bit more complicated. At this moment, though, our position remains maybe better than some of our peers. Yeah, I would like to refer to the general setup in China.
We're there for three decades. We have a lot of very strong business relationships. In the end, these companies, they focus on doing business like we do, and we try to find ways of working together and develop the business together. That has stayed the same, right? While, of course, there's concerns and a lot of discussions to understand these regulations ongoing at the same time.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Certainly. Thanks.
The next questions come from Christoph Graue, please.
Hello, Oliver. I just have a short question on your supply chain situation. Are you back to normal there, and where do you see the main risks maybe in this geopolitical situation, crisis situation now?
Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, the key thing, Christoph, is that we have a big improvement if you look year-on-year. I mentioned earlier that at the beginning of last year, we were really struggling still to ship to the degree that we wanted to, specifically in the more sophisticated product lines. So one that I could name would be the HAPSITE, a part of the security and energy product line. This has really dramatically improved. We worked a lot on stabilizing and improving and also future-proving our supply chain. So we believe we have a much better level in terms of our capabilities, but also in terms of our collaboration. And also then, really, the supply chain has improved in terms of availability and quality. There are some remaining issues that we're still working on for the year.
I believe the first part now, specifically the semi-ramp, we don't see any issues. Geopolitically, we have not seen any issues also through the wars in Europe or other troubles caused through these in the Red Sea. But this is something we're continuously monitoring. Right now, it didn't affect us, and we didn't see any signs. You need to know also, we have a significant part of our precision suppliers in Europe and in the U.S. So for now, this is a good stable situation. When we go into a ramp and maybe if there are macroeconomic factors or trade war implications, this could be in the second half, maybe towards the end of the year, specifically next year, this could change this picture. It doesn't have to.
We wouldn't necessarily expect it because we truly improved, and there was a lot of collaboration with our suppliers and us with our customers. But we have to continuously monitor the situation and also continuously improve our supply chain capabilities. Christoph, I hope I could answer your question.
Yep. Thank you very much. That's fine.
Certainly. Yeah.
Thank you, Christoph. Michael Inauen has next questions for us.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me. I had to dial in via my phone, so sorry if it's not working so properly. I have a question regarding refrigeration and air conditioning. You mentioned in your presentation the refrigerant situation. And I think we were discussing it at the presentation, on your full-year presentation, actually. I was just wondering if you can give a bit more detail into that. Is it the situation in the U.S. that it will change to A2L refrigerants that are a bit more flammable? Is that something that you are actually benefiting from? That would be my first question. And the second question would be on semiconductor, particularly in memory. I know that, Oliver, we discussed it once. Did you try to get a bit more into the memory business as well?
So I was just wondering, do you see some, I don't know, design wins, project wins? Did you get more into the memory market, particularly now that we see also more 3D DRAM, so-called HBM stuff coming up because of AI? Is that something you are also seeing a bit more momentum for you? These would be my two questions, please.
Yeah. Thank you, Michael. I'll take them one by one. So in terms of HBM, generally, you need to know that we're working with on their products, right? We supply the premium component there, the sensor. And so not everything is fully transparent for us, but we have seen momentum in all regions regarding this, but a little bit for different reasons. In the West, it's certainly much more through these recent refrigerant regulations, specifically in the Americas. That is correct. We have seen a lot of momentum last year. So for this year, we'll have to see how much is there. There's a little bit of a macroeconomic impact as well. So we kind of a little bit still try to understand the situation a bit better. Maybe, Matthias, is there anything that you'd like to add?
Nothing. Nothing to add.
All right. So when we look at memory, memory started for us to become more and more interesting with sophisticated sensors probably five years ago or something like that. Certainly, for a little bit lower-end sensors, it was always interesting, leak detection also. But now that these tech nodes of the memory industry are coming more and more to a more sophisticated level where EUV is even used and so on. And now, of course, you mentioned it. The AI memory, the HBM, is the next big topic. Not all of the memory makers are fully there yet, but certainly, they all have a strong focus on it. So there's a lot of projects going on in that area for future use of sensors. And also in this Q1, we had positive signals already. I should just remind you that for us, it is an important market.
It's a growing market. It becomes more important, but it's also one of five-10 submarkets in semi. So certainly, the one, I would say, has the earliest or one of the earliest signals of positive dynamic and ramp-up. But there's also a distinction between DRAM and 3D NAND there or HBM, right? So that comes a little bit in bits and pieces through.
This is in the parallel elements. A lot of shifts in the market later.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Oliver.
Think we have a few other questions for somebody else there also in the background. We'll stick to our own company and our questions.
Yes, we do. Questions from the audience? Any further questions? I still see Christoph Grau's hands up, but I believe that's just up there still, right? Any more questions from the audience, please? If not, then this is the moment for Oliver's closing remarks. Yeah. Nate Leverett comes again. You go ahead, please.
One more question.
Yeah. Perfect. Since we have some more time, maybe on the CapEx, could you maybe give some more color on that? I mean, where are you investing? You invested almost half of your CapEx guidance, maybe part on that. And also maybe on R&D, you said you have some interesting products in your pipeline. Could you maybe give some examples on that? Thanks.
Yeah. Sure. So maybe first on CapEx, we will continue with roughly the same level as we have in the past, right? If you look back three years, we had a burst where we increased capacity by 50%. That was a big expansion in nearly all locations. We concluded that last year, but then added also some more through the growth last year and through the long-term growth that we see. That we have these $12 million in Q1 is only a timing topic. And you need to know, CapEx also doesn't always for us immediately translate into production capacity. There could be long-term investments there in building a lot of land, things like that. So that's a bit of a mix for us. That's why we also want to stress that we roughly would stay at the same level for this year, around $30 million.
Maybe you have some more color on that.
Yeah. I think the big chunk out of these $12 million is really related to our long-term strategy that it's not machinery equipment, but it's important for us to be able to grow further in the next years. And that's a big chunk. So it's not directly related to next quarter's output, for example, right? It's not a machine with a higher capacity of output. It's more long-term investment, which we need for our strategy and our expansion plans we have in our strategy.
And then maybe to the second part of your question, R&D. Yeah. The good thing is when you had slower years and I know I realized that. I said that last year as well. And then in the end, it didn't turn out to be such a slow year, but maybe slower in the semiconductor area as well. So when you have this downcycle, the collaboration on R&D increased a lot. There's more capacities, more tool time. And we certainly have a lot of activity going on right now, exciting amount of activity in many areas. It's not that we would look at the next couple of quarters when we do these R&D projects, also not when we talk to our customers. It's really all long-term.
If you need to imagine it's the way that we'll work on the next generation of their products, which is a couple of years out. So that could be R&D of a chip maker. It could be R&D of a tool maker. So these projects, they run over a number of years and now really intensify. Some of it, you could even say we tried to speed up since we all expect the ramp, and we want to make good progress on this. We have a really strong pipeline, certainly in sensors, in semi, but also outside of semi. I think automotive, we launched a lot of products last year. We solidified our number one position there. We worked further in all areas on smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0, data analytics. You can call it AI. We call it rather machine learning and advanced data analytics. I think we push forward.
So I'm extremely optimistic for what's going on. When it will materialize, of course, the next question because that is basically after the next ramp when you see this in high volume, right? So we think a little bit further ahead in this area and can be a little bit anticyclical in terms of our investment. I hope that helps a bit, Matt, giving some color.
Thank you very much. Yeah.
Maybe one more remark. I invite all of you. We announced that before. We have a tech day in November this year where we largely will talk about new technologies and products. And so if you're interested in that, I would very much encourage you to participate in that event.
Thank you, Oliver. Again, question to the audience. Any more questions for our management team? As this does not seem to be the case, Oliver, then it's the time for your closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Bernhard. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Thanks, everybody, for your continuous interest, the interesting Q&A we always have. We look forward to meeting you again for the next quarter's earnings release and further discussions in the different events you participate that you can find on our website. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day, and talk to you soon.
Thank you. Bye-bye.