By my watch, it's 9:30, so it's time to start. Good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure of hosting this Microsoft Teams webcast of our Q1 2025 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 the management's prepared remarks, online participants are requested to turn off their microphones and cameras, please. During the following Q&A session, participants are then invited to turn their microphones and cameras 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. 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 a link to the accompanying visuals for this web conference. All documents are available for download in the Investor section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com. I would also like to inform you that we record this web conference to archive the audio file later on the INFICON website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this session may contain forward-looking statements that do not solely relate on 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 operation 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. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings release, first quarter 2025. I would like to start with a few general remarks on the markets and our expectations of this year, and then we'll hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more details on the financials. Let us jump right in. 2025 Q1 results: a solid first quarter with a positive order trend, continued growth in semiconductor RC auto, as well as a rebound in general vacuum. However, we see increased risk and uncertainty due to trade tensions. If you look into more details on the sales, we see generally in this first quarter an improving market environment. Sales increased to $158 million year-on-year, with 3%+ year-on-year, and two extra points if you take out the negative currency effects. The orders substantially increased with a book-to-bill above one.
When you look at the different sectors, the semiconductor year-on-year increases +1 8% with good orders. The recovery continues. Solid RC auto sales in a still difficult environment, but we have shown further growth, + 3% year-on-year. General vacuum continues the improvement after the backlog reduction still in Q1 last year. We are back on normalized levels and now growing again for the last quarters. Year-on-year, - 13% on a tough comparison with a growth quarter-on-quarter of + 7%. Security and energy after very strong growth for many quarters, most recently + 21% record sales in 2024. As expected this year, slower with - 27% year-on-year and - 4% quarter-on-quarter. Operating result: a healthy and improved profitability with an operating income of $32 million or 20.2%. The gross margin improved as well by 1.6 percentage points year-on-year. Solid operating cash flow of $18 million at a high level.
Continued investments in R&D: 8.7% of sales, as well as CapEx, currently in this quarter $5.3 million for the full year. We expect, depending on the required investments and developments, $25 million-$30 million. If you look at the worldwide sales, we see a strong quarter for Asia with significant growth year-on-year. Europe and especially America's in the year-on-year comparison slow. When we then look at the different end markets, first with semiconductor and vacuum coating, we see continues to have a strong position, continuous growth in this challenging environment. We also see in Q1 the recovery picking up speed with acceleration expected in 2025, unless, of course, trade tensions impact the growth negatively of this market. If you look on the year-on-year comparison, we increased 18%. You see continuous growth here.
When you look at the last five years, we were able to grow step by step continuously, and we see this also in the first quarter continuing. The market expectation for 2025 is flat to growth. This is depending on this uncertainty and the risk due to trade tension that it is more difficult to see what is the development of this year. Visibility is quite low. It remains low based also on past quarters outlook. The recovery is picking up. We believe that there is a positive outlook with further improvement over 2025. Mid and long term, we see strong drivers, but for short term, of course, the uncertainty caused this low visibility. When we look at the sub-markets, most of them are moderately positive for 2025. We have seen some acceleration and expect further acceleration.
We reported last quarter there is a positive narrow development, even a ramp, you could call it, around AI investments for HPC and HBM. This trend is broadening now and stabilizing. We see this also in our customers' numbers. This is a positive sign that the recovery continues and expands. We have ongoing investments in leading edge, another advanced chip design processes. With that, also more sensor use, a broader sensor use. With this, we continue also our strong R&D pipeline with all these collaborations with the top customers in the industry. When we then go to automotive refrigeration air conditioning, we keep our strong position. We have a good development in Asia. America is more moderate and Europe is slower. Market-driven, we expect flat to growth for this year. In 2025, we have seen first recovery in the market.
We expect towards the end of 2025, in particular, the automotive and battery EV market to further recover. Year-on-year, we could show more growth also quarter-on-quarter. We continue to grow here. You see this trend over the last five years, even in most recent quarters where the market was much less dynamic and even in some of these sub-markets of this end market contracting. We believe with this growth, this shows a clear sign that we're gaining market share. We continue our R&D and have a very strong pipeline working with top customers here. A few of the key products we have talked about in the past, but also the service tool, the after-sales service handhelds that continue to show resilience even in a difficult market here driven by refrigerants requirements due to climate change. Next market, general vacuum. We had a very strong comparison.
Q1 of 2024 was the last part of this big backlog that we worked through and then normalized starting Q2. Q2 to Q4 last year, we saw slower development, but a steady recovery. This you can also see when you compare Q1 to the most recent quarters. We could show a quarter-on-quarter growth of +7%. We remain in a very strong position as the most competitive full-liner in vacuum instrumentation across all these sub-markets in this end market. We are optimistic for the future. It is particularly in Europe visible now, recovery versus prior quarters. The uncertainty, of course, regarding trade tensions makes it hard to predict the development. Based on these most recent developments in Q1, we are moderately optimistic also here and have an outlook from flat to growth. We go to our fourth segment, end market, the security and energy.
Strong position with strong product lineup. As most of you know, this is a segment that is depending on government programs and policies. We had a very strong growth the last two, three years. This is now end of some of the phases of the rollout programs with the U.S. Department of Defense. There are more phases coming, but the timing is unclear. Certainly for H1, we expect this segment therefore to be slower. Midterm, we are very optimistic here. We have additional applications that we work on, meaning this is a new market that we can go and explore. We can also expect higher momentum with the increasing security budget, specifically in Europe, which we already see first positive signs also in this first quarter. We see for 2025 a decrease.
With that, I move on to a specific topic that I would like to talk about with you, our worldwide footprint. Why are we continuing to be moderately optimistic as we also guided last quarter? Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of additional risk due to the most recent trade tension. These trade tensions, though, we see as a longer-term development, in particular the decoupling of China and U.S. These are developments that we have been following closely and have set up our global footprint accordingly. Today, we believe we have a very strong footprint to reconfigure quickly to any of these scenarios that can potentially materialize.
The current scenario, if you particularly look at the setup of the tariffs as they are today, that is also one of the scenarios that we see as likely going into the future, even though some of the numbers might change. The actual impact of it and how the configuration of our global footprint needs to be seems to be similar even in similar scenarios. Meaning we have anticipated this and the ongoing product transfer projects, meaning moving manufacturing from one location to the other or opening up another manufacturing location. This has already been ongoing and addresses the current setup as well. The only thing that we have been looking at most recently was to speed up certain of these projects given the increased tariffs. If there is going to be a further escalation, we are very confident that we can improve further.
I've seen the team also work after these announcements on Liberation Day when they needed to make adjustments. This was a matter of days and weeks to reconfigure and make tweaks to these projects with minimal impact on our operations. Also, we remain very close with our customers and have very strong partnerships to adapt to this. Here I have an additional view where you see the current ongoing manufacturing reconfiguration projects: Syracuse, Cologne, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur. These are projects that I mentioned before, and they are going to be shortly completed also and will address the current issues. Now, when we look at the expectations 2025, we've seen a good order entry across semi, RSC, auto, and GV markets. This supports the moderately optimistic outlook for the year.
That's why we reconfirm our guidance of sales of $660 million to $710 million and an operating income of approximately 20%. However, the recent trade tensions add uncertainty and risk across all markets. There was a low visibility, and I think the visibility has further worsened. We need to look at this with looking at different scenarios. When we currently look at the positive momentum in our markets, even with the weaknesses and risks that we had before Liberation Day, there is a reason for this moderate optimism. We see a gradual increase in the Q1 and across the year, specifically for semi.
The outlook, though, is under the assumption that there is no major potential slowdown of the global economy or major region and any other major unforeseen impact due to trade tensions, most notably extremely high tariffs between trading partners, as an example, the European Union with the U.S. In this current scenario, as we have it today, and also the scenario that we currently assume we are roughly going to end up with after these negotiations take place, we have limited impact. As I mentioned before, we have addressed already these issues with the currently planned manufacturing reconfiguration. We can also easily adapt to further changes for new scenarios. What we do say, though, is that under certain extreme scenarios, we see a potential temporary impact of up to 2 percentage points of the operating income. Where does this come from?
It's not so much the reconfiguration of our manufacturing. That's a small part of it. It's basically to absorb tariffs for a certain amount of time until the reconfiguration has been done. This is an extreme scenario. We looked at all the different scenarios, therefore we say this is from no impact or very limited impact up to a potential 2 percentage point. We have a pretty clear picture of what is needed and what the costs and impacts are for each scenario. With that, I conclude the expectations for 2025. I want to remind you, follow us. We have all different channels for you to gain more insights on what's going on at INFICON. Always interesting new projects and ideas and engagements that you can see.
One interesting thing maybe this time is that we have with smart software and one of our smart sensors in a network of different sensors provided or developed a solution to a forecasting system for earthquake through gas analysis. Very interesting project, of course, not in one of our main markets, but nonetheless, also strength and adaptability of our solutions in all kinds of different projects. With this, I would like to conclude my part and would like to hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more details on our financials.
Thank you very much. Oliver, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter call. No surprise. I will cover actually one financials and will briefly also comment on the 2025 guidance. Now, first, let me start with the highlights for Q1. The orders improved and the book-to-bill reached after quite some time, again, above one. Sales did increase by 2.6%. Gross margin was strong with 49.4%. The operating income improved in absolute figures and reached 20.2% of sales. Our equity ratio shows 474.1%. The cash flow was solid. The net cash reached a very high level and improved yearly versus last year by $33 million. The CapEx started a bit lower with $ 5.3 million into the year. Now, let me go a little bit into the details. As you've already seen from our press release, we achieved revenue of $158.3 million in Q1, which represents an increase of 2.6%. Taking into account the negative currency impact, the organic increase was at. Ich würde jetzt mal kurz sagen, wir müssen bitte einen Konferenzcall noch fertig machen, bis etwa 10:15 Uhr. Maybe somebody goes to mute. Thank you. As you've seen from the press release, yeah, we have been there.
Oliver, let me quickly comment on the market trends again a little bit. Oliver already commented on the developments in the market, and we can report that sales increased in the semi and vacuum coating market and refrigeration, automobile, and air conditioning, while the general vacuum and the security and energy market declined by 13%, respectively 27% compared to Q1 last year. Compared to the previous quarter, we had a little bit different picture, which the previous quarter was our record quarter, and we had some sales decrease overall of 10.8%, mainly coming from the semiconductor and security energy end market, while refrigeration, air conditioning, and automotive did grow by 7%, and general vacuum returned to growth, increasing by 7%. The regional distribution, which you can see on the right side, shows strong growth in Asia, mainly driven by semi, while North America and Europe did decline clearly.
Now, let me go to the next slide. The gross profit margin reached 49.4% in Q1 and was up by 170 basis points compared to last year in Q1. Lower freight costs and a very favorable mix have been the main drivers for that. Talking about cost, we spent $13.8 million on R&D in Q1 as a percent of sales. R&D increased from 7.9%- 8.7% in the first quarter. Additional headcounts, external support costs, and many projects in that area did drive this increase. In SG&A, the cost level did increase to $32.5 million. Cost for additional headcounts, infrastructure, and several initiatives have been the main reasons for that 7.8% increase. The operating profit for the first quarter reached $31.9 million, or 20.2% of sales, after $31.3 million, or 20.3% in Q1 last year. This corresponds to a slight increase of 1.8%.
The tax expense, income tax expense for the first quarter was at $5.5 million, which represents a tax rate of 18.9%, which was a little bit lower than in Q1 last year. The net profit reached $24.9 million, was 15.7%, and did slightly decrease due to negative foreign currency impacts, which have been partially compensated by this lower, slightly lower tax rate. Now, let's move to the balance sheet. Our net cash, as mentioned already before, reached $87.3 million, which is around $12 million higher than end of last year. The inventory turn rate developed stable at 2.4, and the DSO, Day Sales Outstanding, was 47.6 days and comparable to Q4 last year. Our working capital closed at $222.4 million, or 35% of sales, and with that ended $7.6 million higher than end of last year.
The main driver for this is increases in inventory and the accounts receivables levels. Our operating cash flow reached a solid level with $18.1 million compared to $22.5 million last year. The balance sheet shows also a very solid structure with an equity ratio and improved equity ratio of 74.1%. Those were my comments on balance sheet and Q1. Finally, a few words to the outlook. There is positive momentum in certain markets, as well as uncertainties in a very dynamic environment due to the tariff and trade discussions and tensions. Based on the expected upturn in the semi market and based on the assumption that there is no major slowdown in business activities, we are moderately optimistic for 2025. We confirm our latest guidance and expect sales between $660 million to $710 million with an operating income margin of around 20% for fiscal year 2025.
We believe that we are in a good position and will be able to continue to adapt in a flexible way in order to serve our global customers, as Oliver explained earlier. However, under certain scenarios, and as mentioned also in the press release, the 2025 operating income margin could temporarily be impacted by up to 2 percentage points. Yeah. That is basically the main statements we want to give to the guidance. Let me close with the calendar. The next event, which we have, is an analyst visit in Balzers here in Liechtenstein. It is a hybrid meeting planned for May 12th. There is a second one at the end of the year in November 2025. If you are interested, you can register on our web page. We have the typical, need to come back, the typical Q1 and Q3 dates with our second quarter and third quarter results in July and October. With that, I would like to close the presentation, and we are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you, gentlemen. We have a first question coming from Jørn Ifrit. Jørn, please.
Thank you. Just to double-check quickly, can you hear me?
Yes. Hey, Jørn. Good morning.
Thank you. Morning. Three questions, if I may, and I will take them one by one. The first one would be, please, when you look on the order trends in the semi segment, is there a big difference between the OEMs and end users and memory versus logic?
Yeah, that's one for me, I think. At this point, it's a bit difficult to see real trends. I have to say it's a bit lumpy and a bit volatile. What we did see is, what I mentioned earlier, is that it continued off the Q4 with the most dynamic around AI investments, which is HPC and HBM. So there's memory and leading logic in there. And then around that, we've seen some additional developments in other product lines. From our view, it was both OEMs and users, maybe with a slight tip towards Asia and towards OEMs. It's not something that I would call a trend at this point. Maybe Matthias would agree.
I think there's no real trend, and I think still it's mixed with the orders.
Okay. Thanks for this. The second question is, I mean, you mentioned there was strong order intake in Q1 and book-to-bill above one. I mean, what does it mean? Is it fair to assume book-to-bill was at around 1.1, 1.2? Don't you see the risk that we are currently seeing also a lot of pull forward demand ahead of potential tariff impacts?
Yeah. We were not commenting the book-to-bill exact ratio. It was a significant improvement versus before, that I can say. What we looked at, when we looked at the orders regarding pulling, we didn't see such a pattern. I know that chipmakers have seen something like that. It's important to know that we are one removed, right? We are the ones that help investing in additional capacity. This is also, if you look at the timeline, I think the share prices, the market showed that people were not expecting Liberation Day as extreme as it came out. Hence, that was also the general industry expectation.
There was not much evidence from what we see that there were major pull-ins. Of course, when we look into the future, there might be something like that, but I think also there is a tremendous amount of confusion, as well as almost each single customer relationship has its own flavor, depending on where you make what and ship to where. It is difficult to say that there is a clear trend of that, even in the future, as I see it. We will be continuing to look at something like that. What I can say is that China, the customers in China, they have been clearly preparing for it. We have been in discussions with them. Hence, also this de facto decoupling state that we currently are in is something that we have been addressing for quite some time, actually. That is also why we can navigate this. Technically, if you decouple two major economies, it's extreme impact, and we would say in general, in many sectors, there will be extreme impact that will work its way through, maybe in a major slowdown. That's one of the risks we see. For us directly, not at this time. If that makes sense.
Thank you. The last question, if I may, assuming your base scenario is kicking in and we don't have a material macro backdrop and we don't have material tariffs anyway, a question about the gross profit margin. With lower freight cost, with better mix, can you give us more details? Where exactly, what kind of mix was it? Do you see this 49% now as a more normalized run rate going forward?
It would be very nice to have a 49.4% going forward run rate, to be honest. This was really high, I would say. I did not look back, but I think quite a long time since we had this level. Trade and duties was one aspect, but we also had some, I would say, high-running, good profitability products in the shipping area, which did help to support this positive trend. As I said earlier, I do not think 49.4% is now the new baseline going forward. I still would be happy to be in a range of 48%-49% or even 47.5%-49%. This would be good. It is, again, always very much depending what we ship and to whom we ship. This is driving the whole thing.
I mean, I know you know this, of course, but maybe for the benefit of other listeners, it is not so indicative to look at INFICON's gross margin because we have this high mix of gross margins. They're going from 80% + to 40% +. How we look at it is that these 20 or so sub-businesses will really look at operating income. The goal is there to have 20% +. I think you see there also what kind of resilience there is and how fast we adapt. Because also this Q1 didn't develop as maybe expected. The last couple quarters were quite confusing. Also, the following quarters will. I think we are good and flexible to adapt when these changes come. This you also see in how we manage our cost. At this point, it's still important to note that we are ready for the ramp. There's this additional cost in there to be taking production lines online when these high orders come in. Q1 showed in a few more places this positive momentum where you have this clear acceleration that we know from these semi ramps. It is not broad enough, right? What I said earlier, it is very narrow around the AI and a little bit beyond at this point.
Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Jørn.
Thank you, Jørn. We have next questions from Nigel Albrecht. Please, Nigel.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I will start with two and then let's see if others ask as well. Maybe on this extreme scenario where you say that the operating margin could be impacted by up to 2 percentage points temporarily. I mean, can you maybe speak more about the assumptions? Is it more FX-driven? Is it more tariff-driven? I mean, you also said you will probably have to take some of that hit on the margin. We're hearing maybe from others that they will still have the same prices and the OEM will be paying at the end of the day. Can you maybe break the impact down a little bit in an extreme scenario?
Yeah. Why is it temporary maybe first? We believe we can configure the manufacturing accordingly or our product streams. We have been preparing for a number of scenarios and for once now you see that the decoupling of China and the US, we anticipated this and can relatively easily navigate this. It is always also connected with the strong partnerships with our customers and our suppliers where we also talk through these scenarios to be able then to change. When it comes to absorption of tariffs, I mean, this is the major cost that we see, cost impact in these scenarios.
It can be relatively extreme depending on the scenarios that you could imagine, right? Right now, we all do not know exactly where these tariffs will land. They change really quickly. They change unexpectedly. They can be much higher than in prior administrations in the US, as we have seen. When you look at those and then the timeline of how long it takes to reconfigure and then what you could expect of what you can absorb with customers and suppliers and ourselves while always maintaining the strong long-term partnerships, you end up at such an extreme scenario. At this point, that is also why we took it not into account for the guidance. It is not something that we expect.
What we also want to be transparent with is we look at these scenarios and we understand them very well and we quantify them also well, which goes together, obviously, with a very clear plan of how to react to those. I think we try also to show here more than others that we understand them and we also want to share that. We generally have a bit more the policy to be upfront and straight about what is happening and be transparent about this. I do not think that when you look at the different scenarios, you can easily say there is not going to be any impact on the general population of businesses out there that operate globally. I think everybody has to probably look at extreme scenarios and quantify them and needs to know what are we going to do in that case.
When it happens and when you have not such an extreme timeline or such an extreme ramp of tariffs, it's much easier to absorb them and reconfigure and change cost, manage, move around resources. We just look at these extremes and they would impact us this year because if it's happening now, we believe probably next year it would calm down a little bit based on midterms in the US. We would expect an escalation rather this year and then also our reaction needs to happen this year. Hence, that's why it's a temporary effect that we would, if it happens, we would expect it to happen in the course of this year, roughly. Regarding FX, you had a question as well, Nigel, right? It's like a sub-question maybe to address these two. You need to look at our global footprint as well for this.
It's important because we are markedly different than some of our peers. We do not have one place where we have a majority of our headcount. When you look at a location like Switzerland, it's not a large location for us. It's about 15% of our headcount that sit in a Swiss franc area or the payroll is in Swiss franc. When you look at the key currencies for us, which clearly the U.S. dollar is the most important one, they're very well hedged. Our largest headcounts are in the U.S. and also our largest customer relationships and supplier relationships are in U.S. dollars. Even across the globe, we have business in U.S. dollars. This hedges this quite well, changes versus U.S. dollars. The euro is our next important currency. The same there because we have good customers, good supply base, similar to our cost base.
We're quite resilient, actually, with movements around that. I think there is still some impact because, of course, we do not have so many customers in Swiss francs. Since the headcount amount is relatively small versus the 1,700 around the globe, the impact is not massive. It is also, honestly, something that we have seen a couple of times in history, a strong Swiss franc. We have certain measures of how to deal with it. We look at this with quite some optimism. Maybe Matthias, you would like to say something as well?
Yeah. Maybe I just can add, as Oliver said, the majority of our business and cost and also people is really U.S. dollar. We report in U.S. dollar. This is good, right? From an exposure point of view, we feel quite okay with the other second major currency, which is euro, where we have also quite okay balance between cost and income. We have, of course, many different entities around the world and also this Swiss franc. As Oliver said, also in the past, we had periods of time where we had a little bit high or a little bit pressure on the FX rates and the conversion from Swiss franc to U.S. dollar. Yes, this is existing.
On the other hand, we also see every time some positive impact on the top line because as long as it is today, right, as long as, for example, euro versus dollar and Swiss versus dollar is going in a kind of similar way, we also have positive impacts on the top line, which is then, of course, also compensating some negative cost impacts. Overall, I would say from a hedging perspective, we feel okay. Again, it helps a little bit with our global footprint that we are based in all regions in different currencies. We did work some years ago quite good on natural hedging activities, not foreign currency hedges where mostly banks earn some money. We worked some years ago on natural hedge to compensate a little bit and to reduce exposure. It's not at zero, the exposure for sure not. We do what we can do without other disadvantages in the supply chain. From that point of view, yeah, we look at it, I would say, more relaxed than to the tariff situation and the trade tensions. Yeah, we watch it. In case there is action needed, we may do something.
Yeah. What you see, just to make a note of that, if you look at the negative currency impact, our growth would be 2 percentage points higher at this point, but with comparable profitability, obviously, also around 20%, hoping. All right? Nigel, you had two questions maybe, or maybe you answered it already.
Yes. Thank you for this answer. Maybe on the second question, I mean, we speak a lot about risk and there is a lot of negative sentiment, but your major competitor is a U.S. company. I mean, is there a chance, considering that Asia is the biggest market, especially in the semiconductor, that this would be an opportunity for you? I mean, what are your thoughts maybe on that end?
Yeah. I mean, maybe sometimes it could be a bit bolder in our statements. Yeah, maybe thanks for this question. We absolutely see this as an opportunity. It's terrible to have this kind of direction of global trade tensions, but it's a level playing field for companies that act to it and are set up in a better way, maybe, right, with a more global footprint. We see this as a big opportunity. We are just, at this time, a bit cautious until we fully understand what scenario will materialize and how we can best play it. I don't see one of these major scenarios where we don't have actually a benefit versus our competition. If you see the growth in Asia, this shows our very strong long-term footprint there. We can do this also with a decoupling. This is not what many companies can truly do. I don't know if everybody truly goes and exercises these scenarios through to the end and sees how they're going to play it out. We did. Most notably, we looked at Asia and particularly China in the first quarter, again, strategically and have mapped out our strategy. We believe we have an extremely strong one for growth in Asia, while we, of course, maintain our position in North America and Europe. Yes, I believe there's a lot of reason for optimism there for us.
Okay. Thanks a lot for the answers .
Sure. Thanks.
Thank you, Nigel. We have a next question coming from Michael Inauen. Michael, please.
Good morning, everyone. Sorry, probably it's a bit dark here. I'm sitting in my living room, so. Sorry for that. Anyway, you know how I live. I just have three questions, and I'll just get them out. The first one would be, when you talk about reconfiguration of production, I was just wondering if you can give a bit more color here, how much of the demand, for example, in the U.S., could you cover with your, let's say, factories or assembly lines in the U.S. in a best-case scenario? Would you be able actually to cover there almost all of the demand, say, maybe for Europe and Asia? That would be my first question. Second one would be on Malaysia, the project that you have there.
Can you give a bit more color on the timeline and what exactly you're going to produce there and for which clients? I mean, I know this is a stupid question, obviously. It's for Asian clients, but Lam Research is in Malaysia, obviously. I mean, all the big U.S. guys are in Asia, probably or in Malaysia, sorry, in Penang. Maybe you can give a bit more color around that project, that would be interesting because, obviously, the other Swiss guys are also already there. Oliver, you already mentioned strong growth in Asia and also caught my eye when I went through the presentation that it was extremely strong. Can you elaborate a little bit also what happened there in China? Where are you benefiting there in particular? I mean, I assume local Chinese players. Is it on the mature edge side, particularly that companies are rebuilding their production facilities also, obviously, because of the decoupling discussion? Maybe a bit of color on that Asia-China topic, if that's okay. Thank you.
Sure. Thanks, Michael. All right. Maybe first on the reconfiguring, right, taking you one by one there. As it stands today, the current scenario as the tariffs stand, when I talk scenarios, it's not only tariffs, but it's largely tariffs and a few other things like entity lists and so on. When we look at such a scenario, as I mentioned before, we have anticipated this and are in the final stages of implementing this. We had to speed up the back end a little bit. We did not expect it so extreme to escalate on Liberation Day. We sped up by factor two or three.
We were going to be done in a month or two versus maybe a couple of months with the project, the large part of this project. Yeah, what we do is we move, or actually, we're not moving, but we are duplicating production from the U.S. in Europe and in China. You need to understand that each of these maybe 20 product lines has its own logic to it. There are some suppliers, there are some innovation partners, and there are some customers. Also, these customers, even though maybe the headquarters is in the U.S., you do not ship there, but you maybe drop ship to the customer or you drop ship to a factory or something like that. Each one of these 20 product lines needs its own logic, how you optimize it. Most of them have two locations, very manufactured.
You can go and ship to all the different places where customers need that product. There are a lot of factors that are taken into account to optimize this, which we're continuously looking at. There are some things that you do a first big stroke, and then you further optimize. Maybe the sourcing then should be from here or from there and so on. If there was a big tariff between Europe and the U.S. or a big tariff between ASEAN and the U.S., this is not an unlikely scenario, right? Technically, that was the Liberation Day announcement. We would have to do about two more production moves. We would have to ramp up some of the production in our Syracuse and our Colorado facilities. The plans exist. The teams are ready. At this point, we're not sure if it makes sense.
You need to take into account also other costs, labor costs, tax costs, shipment costs, sourcing costs. Not only the tariff decides, right? When you, for instance, have a tariff of 10% in Malaysia, it might still be better to manufacture in Malaysia versus in the U.S., as an example. As we have seen, as we have shown in the past, we can quickly ramp this up. It is also a discussion with the customer often, right? Where would they like us to near shore? U.S. customers actually do not—the largest part of the products for U.S. customers do not actually go to the U.S. because where is the largest part of semi-manufacturing in the world? It is not in the U.S. It is also not in Europe. Maybe 70% + of semiconductor manufacturing is in Asia. Hence, for us, Asia is an extremely important region.
There's more and more also innovation done there, done there first. That goes also for China. That's how we changed our strategy most recently, right? For our partners, even if it's U.S. customers, they have a similar approach to this. Manufacturing in the U.S. is only, to be very specific to your question there, it's not as important as it seems at first sight, right? As you also said yourself, many have hubs in Southeast Asia, Malaysia most notably. Maybe that's to the first question. Talking about Malaysia, what and to who we ship there. I mean, the most important product line that we wanted to move there was the handheld service tools, this after-sales service handheld, which we do assembly or did assembly in Shanghai factory for a long time.
Obviously, the domestic market in China is very relevant to us, but we then opened up when we announced Malaysia some time ago already that we moved this product line there as well, or we produce in both locations. We can do this on a very good cost level, a good sourcing environment. Now, of course, it is a benefit to have Malaysia as a location because it gives us more options. There are a few more products that we potentially will move there. At this point, we did not have to yet, honestly, right? We can serve all the major customers with these most recent moves, but we do have strong plans to do other things also there. I cannot be close too much.
This is also customer-related there and how they would like to source there and how their sourcing strategy works, but it's a big asset, honestly, to be able to do that. China. Regarding China, we are for 35 years in China, in Guangzhou. Yes, we are around for over 50 years, but we have really a very long standing in China, very strong customer relationship, also sourcing relationship. There is a big ecosystem that we value, much like in other locations. More and more innovation happens in China first. When you think solar, when you think EV battery particularly, but also in semiconductor. We are participating in that ecosystem as well as one of the strong local players, and we want to further build that up. I mean, most recent discussions with customers there, there wasn't much flinching about these tariff announcements, to be honest. The concerns that we've seen with our partners there were much higher one or two years ago, and I think since then they have adapted to it. They were probably most prepared to these announcements. Hence, also we roughly stayed the course. We might speed up a few things. We might tweak a few things. We are definitely very committed. It's an exciting environment. It's a positive outlook. That continues to be the same. All right. That hopefully answers your three questions, Michael.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Oliver. Thank you, Matthias.
Welcome.
Thank you, Michael. The next question comes from Martí Carafere. Martí?
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I just have one, if I may. It's regarding your strong sales growth in Asia in Q1. Can you cover all the demand from your Asian sites, or are also some products shipped from the U.S. or from Europe?
Yes. I guess. Maybe to elaborate a little bit. Back to my explanation a bit, when we look at our competency centers, the map that I showed earlier in the prepared remarks. For each of these, about 20 product lines we have. The system is slightly different, what I mentioned earlier, right? The ecosystem is relevant. Where do you source? Where you have your sourcing partners that deliver specific precision parts or pumps or PCBs, electronics, things like that that we require for a high-quality product. There is research. We have obviously a lot of collaboration there too. Where are the customers, and where do they actually need the product?
For each of these 20 product lines, it's a slightly different setup. To answer your question, yes, we absolutely can serve our Asian customers. When we say we are prepared for the ramp, this is exactly what it means. Even if you say US customers, a lot of this, when you talk to makers, will end up in Asia, obviously, because the absolute largest part of fabs are in Asia. Hence, this was always part of the plan of when there is the next ramp, which we are continuing to be prepared for, and in some parts has already started. Maybe one or two product lines you could really see taking off well as it typically happens with this acceleration in a ramp. Yes, it's fully factored in, and we're ready. Hope this answers your question, Martí.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
Just a reminder, if you want to ask questions, just click on the I Raise My Hand icon. So far, I guess Nej has another one.
Yes, if you do not mind, since we have a few minutes left. On your automotive, I mean, you increased the outlook, right, for the end market, I mean, compared to the previous quarter. I mean, can you maybe speak more about that market or why you have decided maybe to do that? Because if you remember last quarter, I mean, you spoke about this struggling automotive market. We are also reading a lot just the impact from the tariffs. Can you maybe explain more on that point? Thank you.
Yeah, certainly. It is a small change, right? We went from flat to flat growth. A few factors that came in there. First of all, being visible that the unit sales of automotive has a positive trend for this year. It's not a massive trend, but above last year. There are continued strengths in China. I made now a number of remarks. I think I will not further elaborate, but we believe we're gaining market share. We're opening up applications. We have positive momentum there. In the end, we also saw a good first quarter with good orders. To stay with flat, when you already see growth in the first quarter, that should further improve towards the end of the year, right? Specifically auto, led to this decision to go from a flat to a flat growth. This, of course, still has a lot of uncertainty and risk because of these trade tensions, right?
When the tariffs, specifically on auto or also just on general consumption, which will drive the units sold, if this impact is heavy, this will slow down or maybe slows down dramatically. We would look at another situation. I think that is not the current assumption out there in the market. The next quarter will probably tell us a lot where we're going to be landing with this and what then really will materialize in this nice little first trend of recovery in that specific market, right? Automotive is only part of this RSC auto market, but it's a relevant part, obviously. It drives even a part of the HVAC sales because it's so much related with auto. Hope that helps, Nej.
Yes. If I may, my final question, maybe on your capital allocation. I mean, if we look at the dividend, it has been largely stable, let's say, since five years. Your earnings are going up. The payout came down. You're building a net cash position now, and you have a high inventory. I mean, so can you maybe elaborate a bit on that? I mean, are you looking maybe to buy something? Is there a chance maybe to raise dividend? Probably at current prices, even approaching 3%. I mean, can you maybe give more color on this?
Maybe I start, and then Matthias, you can give more financial numbers. I mean, the short answer is nothing has changed to the prior discussed strategy. We are looking at an organic growth continuously. Any moment of time, we look at 100-200 targets. It's typically not big targets, right? Most interesting profile is established technology bolt-ons that we can well integrate and then scale up across our customer access around the globe, which then gives you a nice 2x, 3x potential growth. That is still similar. When it comes to our dividend policy, Matthias will talk some more, but it is unchanged. The idea is that we give back in a balanced way. That is why we increased to CHF 21, even though the last year was maybe not a huge growth or a very positive market around us, but we wanted to show appreciation and give something back. We still also, of course, want to be able to continue to invest into the future. You see how we invest in R&D and how we also invest in capacity for able to be able to adapt to these trade war tensions or also for ramps. This is a combination of all this. Maybe Matthias gives some more color.
Yeah, I just would confirm basically there's not a major change in how we treat and discuss dividends. Yeah, we increased last year or this year, but we paid in April. This was 5% higher. There is some improvement in there, but it's not like, I don't know, maybe six, seven years ago where we had payout ratios of 100% or 90%. It's lower, yes. At the end of the day, I think one guiding principle for us is really that we try to balance our own needs and our capacity expansions, our expansion as a company at all, and our investments in infrastructure, building, machinery with the dividends and the capital allocation.
We must make sure that we have enough funds and that we can support the growth of the company, right? In parallel, of course, being able to pay out a certain amount and an acceptable amount of dividend. I think that's something we need to balance and where we have every year discussions, and we don't have a real dividend policy, I must say, right? There is none. The dividend at the end of the day is decided by the shareholders and proposed by the board of directors. Every year we have a discussion. We look into the situation, into short-term and midterm plans and our strategy, including all of these other things, right? Oliver just mentioned, whether it's M&A, whether it's capacity, whether it's new building, whether it's a new entity somewhere in the world. This is what we try to balance at the end of the day.
All right. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Nej. Thank you all for this discussion. As there are no further questions, I would like to invite management to share any closing remarks with us now.
Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today and for the interest in INFICON. It's great to have such an interest every time and interesting discussions around our business. With that, I would like to say goodbye. You've seen our next events on the calendar. I'm looking forward to see you on one of those. Have a wonderful day.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.