Good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, investor relations contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure of hosting this online Microsoft Teams webcast. Thank you for attending INFICON's conference on the second quarter and half year 2026 results. With us today are Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer of INFICON, and Dimitrij Lisak, Chief Financial Officer of INFICON. The management team will first present the results and then answer your questions. During management's prepared remarks, you are kindly asked to turn off your microphones and cameras. You should have received by now the press release on the Q2 2026 results, together with the links to the accompanying presentation for this conference and the half year report. All these documents are available for download in the investor section of the INFICON website at www.inficon.com.
During the question-and-answer session, you can ask questions either in writing using the chat function in MS Teams, or you can add yourself to the queue of people wanting to ask questions by clicking on the Raise Your Hand icon. I would also like to inform you that we are recording this web 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 relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to several 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 now like to hand over to Oliver Wyrsch. Oliver, please.
Thank you very much, Bernhard. Welcome everybody to our earnings release Q2 2026. We have the usual agenda today. First, I will tell you a couple of key messages and figures of the quarters, talk about the target markets, businesses, and then talk about the full year expectations. After me then, Dimitrij Lisak, our Chief Financial Officer, will go into more financial details. When we look at Q2 2026, I'm very excited to say there's a couple of really strong components in it. I think three really stand out. The orders are really going up quick and accelerating across all sectors, all different businesses and products. We have sales that grew really nicely, and we have also a very strong profitability, a big step up, reflecting this completed efficiency measures that we talked about in the last couple of quarters.
If we go more into the detail, the Q2 sales is a clear record quarter of $198 million, up 18% year-on-year, 9.5% versus Q1, which is already a strong growth quarter, as you probably remember. We have growth across all regions and key target markets. The book-to-bill ratio is well above one of the steepest inclines ever, driven by record order intake across all regions. All different markets have shown a very positive momentum. Of course, semiconductor and vacuum coating the strongest. Talking about this market, there we had also the strongest sales growth of 31% year-on-year. A strong Q1 that was growing already a big step up from last year. Sequentially, therefore, Q2 is 13% up in this quarter. General vacuum continues the positive momentum, 11% up year-on-year, - 3% quarter-on-quarter.
That is just a timing thing because the orders are strong. I believe we'll have further positive momentum going into the future of growth here as well. RAC Auto increased by 9% year-on-year and 13% compared to Q1. Still a demanding automotive market. There's a couple of very strong drivers in there as well. Security and energy. As you know, this is the timing with the big government programs. We had strong orders in Q2, also from the U.S. Year-on-year, we declined 31% in sales. Improving 55% versus Q1. When we look at the order operating results, gross margin 46.6%. That's 0.7 percentage points above previous quarter and a +3.5 percentage points versus Q2 last year.
Operating income, I think is most relevant here to mention, $42.3 million or 21.3% margin versus a Q2 last year of 15.1%. It's an improvement also sequentially of 5 percentage points, so a big step up from the last quarter. Much like we explained, we are now past this reconfiguration that we needed to do last year. We accelerated a number of strategic initiatives also as part of last year, where we build up stronger footprint in the East, strengthen our innovation abilities in that area. Also manage the cost in the West or in general, more efficiently while we still invest, of course. We also needed to go through this configuration, as you see. That clearly shows a positive effect. There's still some sand in the system.
Obviously, FX effects and tariffs haven't gone fully away. I think we could more than compensate this with this program of reconfiguration. Operating cash flow robust of $48 million. Organizationally, I just mentioned it, we're very proud to say that this reconfiguration was completed of the footprint manufacturing and innovation. It showed resilient through recent supply disruptions also regarding the trade tensions. We feel we're very strong positioned now for the future. We continue the investment in leading-edge R&D on a similar level as before. We are increasing production capacity, obviously, with the accelerating order intake as well. CapEx of $8.7 million for this quarter. Full year, we would expect something around $35 million. I then jump to the different geographies. It is a strong quarter and growth in all regions year-on-year.
Certainly, Asia-Pacific, for understandable reasons, has most dynamic, but we can say all regions had positive momentum. Europe and the Americas with nearly 20%, while Asia-Pacific over 30%. China looks a little bit slower here with 5%, 6%. That's a timing thing. The orders were also there, very strong, I think nearly the highest in China. This is a very positive outlook for all regions, I would say, and also a great result year-over-year. If you jump into the end markets, semiconductor, we continue to build out our strong leading positions. This is a lot related with the strategic partnership we have in the top plants in the industry, where we work together on the next generation of their product challenges.
I think this is leading to a very strong product pipeline that we continuously execute and launch new steps at the leading edge of all these measurement issues and data analytics issues that are in the market to push the industry forward. We see here the strong growth that I mentioned earliest, orders significantly up. This is not a normal ramp. This is the steepest we've ever seen, with a big jump up. We grow a lot, 30%, the orders also are really steep, and there's a lot more to come when we look at the projections that we talk through with our strategic partner, the customers. When we look at the reasons for the driver, naturally, there is the data center build-out, and with that connected, leading-edge logic, high bandwidth memory, there's more in there.
It spreads out across the semiconductor ecosystem, also into other sectors, communication, automotive, IoT-like chips. They also profit from this build-out. We see really a momentum across all these different sub-markets that we are looking at and working in here. If we jump into the technology end markets, we normally look at three different parts here. All of them are specifically selected synergetically, in terms of R&D, in terms of strategy, but also with strong growth profile and profitability profile. When we look into these three parts, we have automotive refrigeration, air conditioning, strong CAGR overall. Like in all markets, we have a track record of growing above the market. Also here, not only in semi, we continue to grow. Sales up 9% year-over-year, 13% quarter-over-quarter. A solid order intake. Underlying, it's a bit mixed as well.
I believe automotive hasn't regained the momentum it had, EV is, in some regions, accelerating, in some regions, not. That's a bit of a mix. Storage batteries is actually more exciting. Some of it is data center-driven, some of it is other usage, and also consumer batteries are actually quite resilient, no matter the most recent dynamics in the market. Service handheld expansion, this is the after-sales service tools. These are continuously growing over the last years. It's a continuing growth story. New HVAC, next to the general HVAC and heat pump development, there is also a data center driver establishing. Not to forget, the new refrigerant regulations due to climate change, this is also a continuous driver for this sector.
What is exciting now that hydrogen gets a bit more expensive or even scarce, we have launched a new product, Arnova, which is leak detection with air and argon. Clearly, much cheaper, much easier to get. I believe this is going to be a breakthrough product as well. Further establishing our number one position in this market. If you look general vacuum, this is across many different advanced industries. Sales 30%+, - 3% quarter-on-quarter. Again, strong order intake. This is a timing topic more than anything else, and we believe this is going to be continuing strong growth. We have the number one position here with the most complete instrumentation offering. A couple of sub-markets here have more dynamics. I believe some of the smaller ones, newer ones, are exciting. Big science, space, robotics, but also life science.
Solar is still a bit soft, I believe. We're still working through this overcapacity and looking for the next bigger step, the next tech node, something around perovskite, something like that is a little bit out in the future. Probably only at the end of this year or beginning of next year. The smallest segment, briefly, security and energy. Again, this is very much driven by large programs. We got strong orders in Q2, mainly from the U.S., but also other programs are warming up. There's obviously rising defense budgets, which will drive this segment further, but the procurement processes are not as efficient, as fast as we would maybe like. With that, I jump to the expectations 2026. INFICON raises the full year 2026 guidance.
Orders are very strong, really steep, the steepest incline. A lot more to come with what we see in the market. We also believe that we can execute. As you've seen, we have shown good quarters absorbing this growth and scaling up based on our reconfiguration and our work prior to this. We are quite confident for the future with the up cycle accelerating, but also the other markets, as I explained earlier. There are some risks that remain: trade disputes, geopolitics. With that, we would move it from $710 million-$750 million sales to $750 million-$780 million sales and operating income. We narrow to 19%-20% from previously 18%-20%. With that, I conclude. Again, as always, if you want to know more about us, follow us in the different channels.
You will see all this exciting news in different developments of new products, but also collaborations, be it space, be it with big technology companies. You also see here new product launches are announced. In particular, what I mentioned earlier, the leak detection system, Arnova, that now works with air and argon, doesn't need hydrogen to do the same thing. With that, I would like to hand over to the second part of our prepared note with Dimitrij Lisak, our Chief Financial Officer, that will give you some more details on our financials.
Thank you, Oliver. Good morning, everyone. I will give you some more color on the quarterly financials, the half year results with the guidance, and the upcoming events in the corporate calendar. First of all, to start off, Q2 was a quarter of record orders, record sales, and a very strong profitability. Further strengthening our balance sheet at the same time. The orders, as mentioned before, reached its highest level by far, with a book-to-bill well above 1. The order intake was broad and developed strongly across all regions. Sales increased by 18.3% versus Q2 prior year to $198.1 million, and the gross margin increased as well by 3.5 percentage points versus Q2 prior year to 46.6%. Operating Income ended strongly at $42.3 million, increasing by 67.2%, which represents 21.3% net sales, and with this, a sequential increase of 5 percentage points versus the previous quarter.
The equity ratio ended solid at 64%, underlining the financial resilience of our business. Both the operating cash flow and net cash showed a strong performance, almost doubling versus the reference period prior year. CapEx ended at $8.7 million, and we mentioned it earlier, with this we also are increasing our full year outlook for the CapEx from $30 million to roughly $35 million. Coming to the sales in more detail, we grew 18.3% across all regions and three of the four end markets. Therefore, the organic growth was 74% and the rest attributed to currency effects. Looking at the regional split, Asia-Pacific showed the strongest growth, with 32.5%, followed by Europe with 18.9%, Americas with 18.7%, and China with 5.6%.
The Operating Expenses remain under close focus, overall increasing by 7.1% compared to previous year, with the R&D costs decreasing slightly by 2.1%, reflecting mainly seasonal effects and currently representing around 7% of net sales. While SG&A costs increased by 10.8%, driven mainly by personal expenses, some remaining adverse effects, and continued investments in our system and infrastructure. Overall, the Operating Income ended at a strong margin of 21.3% net sales and showed a substantial improvement versus the previous quarter and the previous year Q2, as well as year end. Here, I would like to highlight the three key factors. First of all, the improved operational efficiencies after the completed production reconfiguration that we see reflected in the result and also reflected in the improved gross margin by 3.5 percentage points versus Q2 2025 to 46.6%. At the same time, we had a strong top line in Q2.
This also supported the margin and Operating Income development and continuous efficiency gains and cost discipline on the OpEx side. While FX and tariff effects remain to a certain extent, but not as pronounced as in the previous quarter. These would be the three main factors. Looking at the income tax development, it increased to $10.5 million, mainly driven by a higher taxable income. There is a significant increase there compared to the reference period in Q2 2025, and the net income increased by 76.4% year-over-year, with a margin improvement to 16.3%, mainly driven as well by the higher Operating Income. The balance sheet remains strong and continues to reflect a solid financial position. Here, specifically, the operating cash flow almost doubled, increased to $84.4 million in Q2 2026. There are two key drivers.
First of all, the higher net income and at the same time, the disciplined working capital management reflected in the increased inventory returns, increased payables position, but also a disciplined approach to accounts receivables, increasing broadly with the net sales growth. Coming to the financial overview of the first half year 2026, INFICON had a strong first half year with double-digit sales growth of 16% and improved profitability across key metrics as well as a strong balance sheet. Sales increased by 16.4%, growing similarly as in the Q2 results, three out of four end markets and all regions. The operating income increased to around CHF 72 million, increasing by 25% versus previous year and 18.9% operating income margin, which is also an increase versus year end at 16.7% and last year at 17.6%. As mentioned before, the equity ratio remains solid at 64% for the half year.
With this, I would like to reiterate again the increased guidance. Overall, the guidance is raised and narrowed, reflecting the strong half year performance, continued strong order intake, and an accelerating semiconductor cycle with the updated guidance being CHF 750 million-CHF 780 million in net sales and an operating income margin of 19%-20%. With this, I come to the last part, which are the upcoming events in the corporate calendar. We will have the Q3 2026 media conference on October 27th, and we will have the next analyst visit in Balzers in person on November 19th, 2026 where we would be happy to welcome you. With this, I conclude the financial update and happy to take your questions.
Thank you, gentlemen. Craig, I have to ask the first question for you. Craig, please.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Congratulations, gentlemen, to the good quarter. Two please from my side. The first one is operational, second one's more about positioning. The first one is just on operational. I'm just trying to gauge a little bit how we should think about the operational leverage in the back half of the year. You said OpEx was up 7% in the second quarter. Clearly, looks like you're getting more top-line growth than OpEx growth. If you could talk us through what you're expecting there, that would be the operational question, and then I have a positioning question. Thank you.
Okay. I can say a sentence or two, and I think then they'll probably want to hear from Dimitrij too. Good morning, Craig, by the way. Thanks also for the congratulations. Yeah, I think it was a very good quarter. I believe the biggest, most important step was that we moved past this period of time where we had too much sand in the engine, if I want to say it like this, regarding the profitability, and we make a big step forward. I think there is more air in there. Sure, there's operating leverage, but you see there is both steps that we did. I believe also in future, there is a little bit of both possible. Naturally, what plays a little bit against that is the potential trade tensions and the geopolitical risk that presses on the supply chain.
So far, we have navigated this well with this new configuration, but it's a bit unpredictable. The other thing is that investments also need to be made to absorb this extremely steep incline. They will probably lead a little bit with cost there in some parts as well. I believe there's not necessarily new locations needed. I believe the footprint is strong, but we'll get to the point where larger steps are needed, which are in preparations. Meaning buildings and more clean rooms and so on. You've seen our projection on the CapEx. That's our best projection at this point, which will not weigh too much on the profitability beyond what we've seen in the past. Maybe a bit more color from you, Dimitrij.
Yep. Just to add one or two things. I believe the production reconfiguration and also the efficiency measures we took in 2025 and in Q1, this helps us to have a good starting point and also to have a good starting position in this ramp that we're in now. What I would just ask to be mindful of is also the topics we spoke about, maybe more prominently in the previous earnings release, but this is still remaining, and this is specifically the impact of inflation. These are the impacts of potential interruptions that might come. This all needs to be considered, but we have a very comfortable and strong starting position.
Yeah. Some factors are there also still tariffs and effects. We spoke about that previously. There's not going to be massive jumps on that.
Yeah.
I believe this is a slow and gradual improvement as we reconfigure further. I hope that helps, Craig.
That does indeed. Thank you. My second question was just, could you remind us please again, when we're looking at your Chinese sales how much of that you're selling actually directly into Chinese chip ecosystem, i.e. the local players, the local OEMs, versus indirectly via your Western OEM customers? Thank you.
Okay. Yeah. That is all direct. We have also there the split of OEMs and chip makers. We serve both, direct depending on the sophistication of the sensor solutions. It's much comparable with the rest of the world, really, but it is a little bit of an independent ecosystem, as we all know, right? It separates itself. For us, we try not to make it a different approach, all in all, while it has certainly its particularities. Innovation is a bit specific and done in China. Manufacturing is done in China. Not for everything, obviously, right? That is a balance about what makes sense cost-wise, innovation speed, manufacturing, supply chain. It has its specifics, but largely it's a similar model. What I also would like to say, I mentioned earlier, the sales were a little bit slower than the other side.
It's a high benchmark, the order entry is very strong. I think we had also great meetings with top partners there, projecting the future. We're very bullish about that market too, and also our standing there. Right? I would like to remind everybody, we're there for nearly 40 years. We manufacture there for over 25 years. We do innovation there. We have very strong ties. We have so far always found a good way of working with our partners in China as well, in spite of the complications that we had in trade war disputes.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Good luck.
Thank you.
Thank you, Craig.
Joern Iffert has the next questions for us. Hey, Joern.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be, please, on the order intake trends. You said book-to-bill materially above one. At the same time, your second-half sales outlook implies at the high end that sales momentum remains flattish quarter-over-quarter. Just to double-check a couple of assumptions, if I may. Do you see some restocking? Do you see some double ordering, some customers already ordering for the first half 2027, not materializing then in the second half? Do you see any trends of the order intake has peaked already? Is it more a concept of prudence for the second half, which is, of course, totally understandable in the current macro environment? Maybe some words around this to better grab it. Would be the first question.
Yeah. I expect a little bit of discussion around probably our projection and our guidance and about next year. It's the last one that you said, it's a little bit of prudence. Again, we're probably still digesting a bit the last year's surprises, and that is not what we normally do here at INFICON, right? We would like to be more steady in delivering and also how we perform with this long-term CAGR above the market. I believe we've seen that also now, that we grow above the market. The order intake is extremely steep. There's no double ordering. There's no building inventory that we can see anywhere. Quite the opposite. I believe there is a lot of announcement of, here's another chunk. We have also market share gains, and we have new applications that we unlock that go on top as it has been in the past.
It is a bit on the cautious side. What I will say, though, is that the order timelines, they get a bit longer. People would order a little bit sooner, for some of the projects. However, we map this out, and it does not have a material effect, actually, for the near term. There's more discussions also about future projects there. We see also some of the movements, that's not a large effect, but that other suppliers have delays and then some expansion projects are moved out. That is not because of demand. That's just probably because of the complexity of the ramp-up in some places. We are very well positioned. We are nowhere the bottleneck. We try to keep it that way and push forward.
If there is going to be more growth, and we will show it in Q3, there's a very high likelihood that we'll have to move it up materially again, the guidance. We'll capture it. Right? We do not have that full certainty yet, but we have full certainty that we will have these expansion projects, and we'll implement them.
Thanks for this. The second question is to some extent a follow-up. Your total capacity expansion. You have increased CapEx a little bit. How do you see, or how do you prepare the company for the next two years? What is your potential total revenue output you can generate in two years with your current CapEx plans you have in place that we get a feeling what is maybe possible in terms of total output?
Yeah, look, we have always to have also some buffer, but we clearly are now building the company out for over $1 billion because we need to go and be able to deliver on this coming two years' projections. We need to go and implement these projects now. They're being implemented as we speak. Obviously, some take longer, some shorter. Clean room takes one year+ with some building expansions, and then you have tools that take six to nine months. That might even delay a little bit because lead times might get longer, and then staffing is a little bit, a couple of months topic. We have taken on a lot of temps as well to obviously make these steps up in delivery, and we continue on that path in roughly the same steepness.
It's a little bit of steps. We've probably done already two big orders, level steps. Then there's just another one happening now. There might be more steps. We don't exactly know how the shape of it is. What we know is at the back end, we need to go and work on these projections directly with building up the right capacity for it.
Joern, maybe to add y ou mentioned CapEx increased a little bit. To put things into perspective, the number or the projection we gave for this year would be around 60% above the prior year CapEx. This puts also the numbers behind the statement that you just made because that means, for us, significant investments that we plan already this year into capacity.
It will be, with extremely high likelihood, a very large jump that we make in these two years. It's still early, actually, where we are now.
Sorry to really quick follow-up. I go back in the queue. Someone else can ask the question. If we had in 2023 or 2022 at around CHF 1 billion semi equipment CapEx, we had CHF 300 million semi sales. Now we are likely going to CHF 300 billion, which would mean your semi sales alone could go towards CHF 1 billion by 2028, 2029. You have the general vacuum biz, et cetera. My question is for you, in theory, would be able with Night Shift, et cetera, that you have a revenue output of CHF 1.3 billion-CHF 1.4 billion by 2028, 2029. Is this a big burden?
Certainly, it's a scary number when you think about it. As soon as you start breaking it down, it is a scenario that we have to be looking at as well. We have a little bit of a range of scenarios now we're working on. It has been continuously accelerating. It's a bit hard to say where we land, right? The Q2 was quite extraordinary, I should say, even though we have seen some great jumps. These partnerships, I believe, last year it was just a huge plus to react how we did and strengthen our partnership when it was tough. It pays back big now because we even get on top orders maybe also because of performance of others. I cannot judge that so well. I just know there's more coming in.
Discussions are ongoing. The scenarios are basically updated weekly. We must look also at the very aggressive ones, obviously. In general, the strategy is, I think, everywhere. Specifically at INFICON, these expansion projects, they pay back anyway. It's about the timing. It's rather good to be early. You can maybe delay it out with some activation and some staffing if you really had to. In this current scenario, you'd probably be on the safe side to just continuously expanding. That's roughly what we do. I think we have every week discussions of other expansion projects in places as we model out the future. It's quite a dynamic. It's fantastic. Positive dynamic. It's quite dynamic environment, really. Fun discussions.
All right. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Thank you, Joern. Martin Marandon-Carlhian has the next questions for us.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. My first one is on the 2026 guidance. Just for me to understand, I understand that there is some conservatism in the guidance when you look at H2 growth growing modestly versus H1. Also the last quarter, I think you were mentioning that we could see a slower Q3 and maybe a stronger Q4 due to some project timing. I was wondering, considering the very strong order intake, is that pattern is still valid now?
Yeah. Very good question, Martin, because this is a bit what we are also currently discussing. When we mention these order trends or also sales trends, this is just the seasonality that we normally have. Q3 is often one of the weaker ones. That is more timing of holidays and summer vacations and timing of project approvals and so on. It might actually be that this year you will not see any of that. It's unfolding still. The interesting thing is here also a little bit like in Q1 when you have Lunar New Year, you lose a little bit of visibility for a minute. Here it's the same because the West is a bit absent, also the East, during the July weeks. That's where you see a little bit less, have a little bit less transparency of what the quarter is going to look like.
It certainly looks extremely positive as we stand right now. Obviously, I cannot comment too much on the exact numbers. You might be right. Yeah.
Okay, very clear. In the semiconductor growth in Q2, more than 30%, do you have a way also to distinguish a bit between leading-edge logic, memory, and the rest? Where do you think you have more visibility today?
Leading logic has started earlier with really pushing forward in this current super cycle. Then memory, we all know when it started, right? Last year with DRAM, but especially HBM, is continuing. Both of them are probably two equal strong drivers. HBM is a bit more on fire just now in a positive sense. Obviously, the key drivers there, we work with all of them, have very strong relationships. That drives it forward. What is really materially different maybe versus a year ago is that beyond that, there is a positive upswing. You know these other players in the market as well, there's also earnings season for them that they could go and make positive statements, and that's exactly what we also see in the market. It goes across IoT, even automotive chips that have different purposes, right?
Automotive is also used in industrial and in data center build-out, down to sensors, MEMS, power. All of these have now gained momentum again after a bit of a difficult time, right? The last two, three years, I would say. That's very encouraging to see, but it is not as big there, the CapEx and the projects, maybe yet, but at this point it is a step back versus what we obviously see in memory and logic. For us, clearly, these two are the biggest driver, maybe with memory being a tad more exciting even than logic. We've been spoiled with logic anyway, as you know, for some time in terms of growth. I hope that helps, Martin.
Yeah, that helps a lot. The last question from me, you probably saw the combination, the acquisition of Atonarp by VAT recently in mass spectrometry sensor. I was wondering to what extent does this overlap with INFICON, what do you think about competition there? Also, maybe what does it tell us about the prospects of that market if you start to see some M&A momentum in that segment?
All right. Certainly. Look, Atonarp specifically, we know for a very long time. They're around for nearly 20 years, and they're around 20+ people. It's very concentrated on Japan. They have good products. I believe they have leading products in all their spaces, and obviously our portfolio's massively bigger. Hey, competition is good for the business and drives us forward. I don't want to talk about the strategy of VAT necessarily. I believe they have an interest in sensorizing their larger systems, the lock systems. You'll have to talk to them about this. Again, it's a very small competitor, and nothing that we were considering buying, because we have, I believe, the superior technology and the broader variety of, let's say, if you think about our sensorization as a toolkit, we have a lot more tools in there.
In the end, each application is a bit of a challenge of how you put the pieces together to, I don't know, protect against particles or protect against aggressive chemistry, and this continuously moves forward. That's a little bit how it works when we say, "Hey, we adapt to molybdenum deposition," or, "We adapt to selective etch processes in smaller tech nodes." Each of these application needs an innovation step. By having the base technology, that isn't yet the game. Hey, it's not a bad company. I think if you have no sensors, could be a good step. Again, it's not for us a major competitor. Obviously, we talked about our competitors in the past. That would be somebody like MKS, somebody like that. However, in that space, mass spectrometry, we have 80%+ market share globally.
Versus MKS, that probably is the next largest in that space.
Okay, understand. Thank you very much.
All right.
Merci, Martin. Michael Furrer has the next questions for us.
Yes. Hi, good morning, gentlemen. I have two questions. The first one is on operating expenses. Again, I was surprised to see R&D slightly down when sales are really ramping up. My question is, what level of R&D are you targeting in the future, and what should we expect going into the second half and into next year? The second question is on China, as that industry is growing strongly, are you seeing any changes to the competitive dynamics in China now?
Thanks. I'll go first to the R&D question. There's no change in course there. That's a tiny thing. Again, we did a little bit of reconfiguration also of the innovation. We moved closer to customers. Work closer to them geographically as well, we'll continue to have similar comparable levels, 8%+ of sales will be also in future what we do. I would also like to remind everybody what a part that is in SG&A is this application engineering, some of it is really what I spoke just a minute ago, what these applications are. Some are simple. That's just taking a standard tool of ours and basically plugging it into a certain tool, you roll it out for a full floor. Sometimes it's a real big step. We really reconfigure the base product quite a bit.
Application engineering is a big chunk as well, and this is what we pushed a lot most recently. You could technically add that to R&D. I would not say that R&D is down if you added that in, but I believe it's a temporary fluctuation, right?
Just to complement-
As we sell, the sales went up quite a bit, right? If you look at percentage of sales, we do this independently, the R&D, investment plan.
Just to complement on this, the year-to-date R&D costs are growing by around 4%, so the investments continue. This is purely what you see is a seasonality effect also considering the base of last year, there are a couple of smaller effects that lead to this. Nothing major there.
We will stick to the general strategy of INFICON, where we probably first invest in the new opportunities. We still believe, same statement, we have a very long list where it's rather difficult to choose and not do too many things. In that sense, now that we are out of this profitability dip, we most certainly continue to invest there. That will not change. We haven't stopped even during that dip, of course, but we needed to do a little bit of reshuffling things. On the second one, regarding China dynamics, yeah, I believe that's what you see in this 15-year, five-year plan as well as the strategy, and it materializes. I believe the idea is now the fewer players, stronger players, but global ones is what the market is trying to build or what I believe Chinese government policy is.
That's a good thing, we believe, because many of these players we know quite well. Some of them are really in the market for 20 years+ . We grow with them and further strengthen our partnership. For us, there isn't a material difference if a partner is in China or anything anywhere else. Sure, there's certain regulation things that need to be looked at, but in the end, that is okay if there's global Chinese players that form and maybe less of those with this nearly zero interest funding and very low profitability that really pushed down prices and moved the focus from value-add pricing to a little bit who is the cheapest? I would say that's a positive turn over time.
Of course, there's competition, but this is a competition way that we understand, where companies grow, get funded normal, and also have a normal profitability. I would still state, there are strong companies in China. The trade dispute favors them in many ways to build up their own capabilities, and they are doing that in a wide range of fields in semi and outside. We must be there, we must innovate there, we must work with them, we manufacture there, we stay close to them like in all the other three regions as well. I hope that answers your question, Michael. Otherwise, let me know.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. The next question comes from Craig McDowell.
Hi. Morning, gentlemen. Hopefully you can hear me okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Perfect. I just wanted to come to margin, both gross margin and operating margin. From commentary on earlier questions, it sounds like we might be moving towards a quarterly revenue run rate of certainly north of $200 million, maybe close to $250 million. Just wondering whether you can give us a kind of indication of whether gross margin, sort of soft guidance from high 40s still is relevant in that case, and similarly on operating margin, what's the kind of target operating margin, with a run rate of $250 million US per quarter? If you could maybe comment to that. I've got a follow-up as well. Thanks.
I mean, I can say something general, and I think you want to hear from Dimitrij. Look, general one note of caution on our gross margin. The gross margin has a big mix impact in it, because we have two different channels as others don't. We work 50% with OEM as tool makers in semi, and then with chip makers. The other half, there is a lot of application engineering part of it. One has a low operating margin, 40s%, 50s%, and then some of the chip maker products have 50%, 60%, and if you go to software, you're even at the 80s%. The mix swings depending on their project, the expansion projects that are in there.
I'll always take the gross margin a little bit with caution, but we internally look at when we look at their sub-businesses, we very much look at the OpInc and how they perform there since the in-between structure is slightly different. I'm sure you can give a little bit more of an overview.
Maybe just to reiterate on the gross margin there, it's not binary, right? Yes, volume of course helps. You have mix effects. You have the effects I mentioned before also in terms of inflation, that would affect the COGS mix and so on. There's a lot to consider. Overall, if you use our updated and narrowed guidance and project, yeah, to get to the upper range, you would need roughly similar quarters as we delivered now, maybe a bit less on OpInc. That's the range, if you look at the updated guidance from 19%-20%. Does this answer your question?
That's helpful. Thank you. Just on my follow-up was, great to hear your plans to expand capacity further and your own footprints. I was just wondering on your certainty, your confidence on your own suppliers, as in how confident are you receiving the components, et cetera, you need for what sounds like a pretty steep ramp into 2027? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Look, we certainly worked a lot on our supply chain and our manufacturing footprint the last three years, specifically from what we learned after COVID and the supply chain crisis then. Naturally also last year, this reconfiguration was all going in that same direction, more planning, closer ties to suppliers, closer geographically. Also more second sources and things like that. I believe we are placed pretty strongly. You see the last two quarters, we could scale up as the orders came in. Naturally, the orders come in even faster, so we need to continue on that trajectory. So far, we are keeping up in the sense of the customers are okay with us, or there's also suppliers in this large project that struggle more with their timelines or their lead times.
I believe so far we haven't seen anything beyond smaller hiccups. Actually some effects are interesting. Some of it, I mentioned a choke hold around the magnets a little bit. That has affected us already two times. Every time, we found a solution. Then there was a little bit around PCBs, some concerns, a couple of times. We have stocked up there to have a bit more buffer to navigate these bumps in the road. Then there was also some selective smaller things, housing cables, where the data center build-outs basically ate into the capacity that the suppliers provided to us, and they got in a bottleneck. Also there we found solutions so far. I guess so far so good. The system works. The bumps were small. I would not say we could project that into the future as we go through this ramp further, right?
There's going to be bottlenecks that will hit us, and we'll have to find other solutions. There might also be bigger ones. There is certainly a good amount of uncertainty around that. Then on top of that, of course, geopolitical reasons, including trade tensions, that can also be further concerning or of bigger impact. I believe that is more short-term impacts than systematic impacts. Right? We'll keep you posted as we take on these orders and expand continuously. It's certainly an exciting journey.
Super. Thanks, both, very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Craig. The next question comes from Oliver Wong. Oliver, please.
Hi. Thank you. I hope you can hear me.
Hi.
Hi, Oliver.
Hey there. Just a few quick questions from me. First is if you could comment on your lead times. Second, if you could comment on where your supply is relative to your demand. I have a follow-up. Thanks.
Okay. Let me quickly talk about lead times. I think supply, demand, we talked a little bit about. I'll add some more calls, I will try. Lead times, at this point, I believe we are fulfilling this to the largest degree. Again, we could ship probably even faster. This is also about just making sure that expansion projects of the chip fabs work out, and then we so far have found good solutions. There is nothing that is of a larger headache. We certainly are continuously monitoring this and have smaller headaches every now and then which need attention. Supply and demand, I explained a little bit in a minute ago how we strengthened our supply chain, how we reconfigured manufacturing supply chain, and how we have been most recently navigating it. Demand is really high. Supply so far worked out for us.
Again, we are in an unprecedented steep incline here, so we'll have to see where maybe things break in the system. Not only for us particularly, but in general. Right? We had a couple scares and a couple of smaller bumps. I hope this answer your question, Oliver.
Just a quick follow-up. Lead times are still safe to say less than a quarter?
Sorry, now I could not hear you.
I was saying lead times are less than a quarter?
Yeah, this depends on the product, right? The smaller sensors is typically, that's a question of weeks. The very biggest one, most sophisticated one, they're as big as a phone booth almost there. The usual is two to three months, right?
Yeah.
At this point, we're in an okay area. A little bit longer than usual, but we manage together with our customers.
Yeah. Okay, makes sense. Then I was also wondering about your growth relative to WFE for this year and next, whether you comment on where you see your growth relative to WFE growth this year or next year. Thank you.
Yeah. Yes, that is an exciting question. Look, we try to grow above market. Don't take my word for it. We have done that in the past. Look at our CAGRs versus the WFE. As I commented earlier, on top of going with the market for WFE, we open up new applications, new measurement areas. These are things that in the past, there was no business case to put a sophisticated sensor on. Now it is because the process just demands it. If the size, the complexity of it, too much wafer scrap tips the business case. There is also things where we find out new measurement ways that haven't been possible, or let's say, put sensors in an environment where in the past they would die, and now we found a solution to it. Adding or unlocking applications.
The other one is, I believe you're taking market share. It's not possible on a broad base when you're number one by such a clear margin. Obviously, there is in pockets where we can push that. I believe the new application is probably the stronger driver here. Where there is also the average sensor price goes up and things like that. I would say that's how we should look at our development, at least in theory. Let's see how it pans out in specific, because everything is heating up. The decisions are different. The decision models are different now by our customers than a year ago. There was much more time to evaluate, there was much more time to test, but at the same time, very small fractions of unlocking some additional yield or productivity already make a business case.
It's kind of an interesting time to see how this all pans out then in the end. There's a little bit of variability in that and probably also some timing. Again, I remain optimistic based on the past that we also continue like this in the future, driven a lot by a tailwind of additional sensorization.
Got it. I guess in theory, base case, hopefully it'll grow at around WFE over-
Yeah
a decent time period.
Yeah, that is definitely possible based on my remarks-
Yeah
that I made, yeah.
Thanks so much.
Sure.
Thank you, Oliver. Michael Inauen has the next question for us.
Yes, morning everyone. Sorry for being maybe the last one. Two questions actually on the revenue development, if I may. I don't know if you've answered it already, Oliver, China sales in Q2 seem to be pretty low compared to the other regions. I was just wondering what's the reason for that? The second one also on revenue is, can you split it a little bit for us between OEMs and actually chip producers? The way I understand it is that you're probably benefiting right now on revenues from both, whereas others like a VAT and a Comet, they still have to ramp the production phase. They're getting the orders, we're not ready to ship it yet. I'm just trying to understand, are you now earlier than these guys because you were obviously ready to ship?
Is it, let's say another driver? Is it more the chip producers that actually put your sensors in existing fab lines? Can you give us a bit of color on that front, maybe?
Yeah, I'll try. It's a bit of a murky picture, which is highly dynamic, so I'll give you my best thoughts.
Yes.
On that one, maybe first on China. Yes, I mentioned earlier that, yeah, that's a timing thing on China.
Okay.
Orders were tremendously in Q2. They'll come back. There's a little bit about project expansion. After the recent discussions I had also personally, there was more and more and a couple of more ideas after that, so of where we would expand. This is going to stay exciting there. OEMs versus chipmaker. Yeah, both have drivers right now. Both feed into logic and memory. Again, I probably think memory, in comparison, it has a bit higher dynamic right now, but logic has been longer already in ramping, leading logic, and then now the other components of the chip, of the semiconductor industry is also moving up, which has also positive effects. It's quite a big mix as you know, probably is. INFICON is quite diversified, not only in terms of the sub-markets we serve in semi, but also in terms of timing.
When you make a fab expansion, some of our products come very early with the OEM tool orders, and some come with a first big selection of semiconductor advanced tools that we typically develop together with them years before in R&D of their node. They get ordered a little bit after, and there is another order of these sensors when it goes into HVM and maybe first issues and problems show up, and there is another piece needed, and then there is the whole maintenance tools Ramping up leak detectors like the UL and also smaller ones for service tools in the sub-fab and so on. That is a span of maybe 6-12 months, and I think every project is a bit in a different place.
It is hard to say because it is not like the step function did not work like this, that they are doing all the same, right? Even if you look at memory, everybody has their own struggle. Some have sold all their capacity and are desperately trying to build clean room and fill it up, and some have parts unlocked, and yeah, it is a messy picture. What we try to be really is use this reconfiguration last year to also be ready for the ramp because it had to come, right? What we saw last year was Q1 first signs that it will happen mid-year. My theory is still that the trade war escalation just delayed it and compressed the beginning.
Now, of course, we are entering not in the usual semi cycle only, which always happens like this every three, four years, but we have this super cycle now, which is overlaid on top, where I believe still the semiconductor industry is way behind in terms of ramping versus what the data center build-out plans actually are. There is still a gap there which we will have to eventually fill. Probably will be a question of time. Everybody is just trying to go as fast as they can with their expansion. Regarding commenting on our Swiss peers, it is a bit hard for me. It is probably you need to go and talk to Stefan on ours directly better.
I will.
you-
No, that wasn't the-
We couldn't talk.
I didn't expect you yeah, I didn't expect you to comment on that. Just trying to understand because old patterns, of course, were different. Yes, also at INFICON, at the revenue patterns. I think it's just not valid any longer for anyone right now in the chain, we
We build our gaps, right?
Yeah.
The most notable, the memory gap, you can clearly see that. We also really try to go on every account that we had an under-penetration go and build that up. Fill this ecosystem, fill it out. Whoever wins there.
Sure
We are trying to be in this ramp. It is through that less volatile as we just seen the last few years. Now everything's up, yeah.
Yeah. Perfect. Maybe just a very quick question for Dimitrij on the SG&A cost. Do I understand it right that it's mostly FX related and, of course, you have to add some cost with such a high volume, but is there anything we have to be aware of that has changed?
Yeah. FX is certainly a driver. Probably less pronounced if you look at Q4 and last year.
costing, it's less pronounced, but it's certainly one of the main drivers. What's of course also contributing, we always mentioned it, that we have also variable components in our compensation, so this also plays an impact, and the investments in our system. We continue to invest to improve our system, so you see this also reflected in the SG&A costs now.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks very much for that.
Thank you, Michael.
Thank you.
Take care. Bye, guys.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, this is the ideal moment for management's closing remarks then.
Okay. Thank you very much, Bernhard. Thanks everybody for your continued interest. Thanks everybody for joining today for the interesting discussion. We'll meet again latest in Q3 earnings release or in one of the various events where we are participating, which you'll find on our website. With that, big thanks and have a wonderful day.
Thank you, everyone.