Welcome, everybody, for joining us online and in person. A pleasure. We put out the best weather. Sorry it's every day like this. You're very welcome to always join us here and enjoy it. Not sure if my microphone is working. Is that good? Is that muted? Can you hear me online?
Yes, we can hear you fine. Yeah, thank you. Perfect.
Okay, good. Just making sure we don't lose you folks. All right. Okay. Yeah. Someone from Germany. Hey. [Non-English content]. Oops, sorry. [Non-English content ] . Welcome. Welcome. Okay. Take a seat. There's some here as well. I know this room is already a little bit small. Next time, we'll try to get a big one. We're really quite positively surprised by the interest. Fantastic. Who still needs a business card? You good? Anybody else? No, I don't think. Okay. If you need coffee, anybody need coffee still? Otherwise, just grab food on the table. You're also allowed to touch all our instruments. They only give you the broken ones, so if you break it more, it's okay. Okay. Again, welcome everybody for joining us. Fantastic, this interest. Let's jump right in.
I think in general, it's probably good because we have different levels of knowledge, but I want to quickly check with you that I give two, three minutes introduction, and then we jump into Q&A. Afterwards, for the ones that made the trip out here to Liechtenstein, you will get also a tour, but we will make sure that we can answer all your questions. All I need to do is catch a plane to Paris because tomorrow I have another conference in Paris. Otherwise, I think we have plenty of time. We also have here our incoming CFO, Dimitrij Lisak. When it comes to numbers, he will also be the best to answer those questions. Is that a good plan, in general? Quick intro, then Q&A? All right. Very good. We have a quick safe harbor statement here. Welcome, everybody, to our analyst visit.
Let me remind you that this is not a formal analyst meeting, nor a capital market day. INFICON will not disclose any new information during this gathering. All information shared today is already in the public domain, as it was discussed either at INFICON's full year of 2025 results, apologies for that, conference in March, or our first quarter that comes in April. We received numerous meeting requests, INFICON has decided to pool these meetings for an efficient reason as best as possible, and we invite industry partners several times a year to meet the INFICON management, either in person or online, to discuss our business in more detail. The oral statements made by INFICON during this session may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical facts.
These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectation of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. All right. Now the boring part, but a relevant part. If we quickly go here in our overview slide. Where are we and who is INFICON? Briefly, on INFICON, we are around for nearly 60 years. Our IPO, we did 26 years ago. We were first listed in NASDAQ and now in Zurich for most of this time here. Around $700 million revenue and about 1,700 employees. We grew the last years above 10%, around 11% the last five years.
We have a leading position in 80%+ of our markets, with measurement instruments and data analytics software. Our strength is clearly the innovation. That is all about working very closely together with the top players in these markets. We have relationship with all players in these markets where we work. The top markets are roughly one half in semiconductor, which we will break down in 5-10 markets, and then 20 other high-tech markets that we select with financial and strategic profile, and it needs to be R&D synergetic with the rest. With the key players in this market, we have strong innovation relationships where we typically work on the next or the one after the next generation of their product. When then the orders come, typically it is already pre-designed and pre-decided, that we're part of their next expansion.
A big part of that is, of course, in general, we have the luxury position of having too many organic growth opportunities. In the end, the world needs a lot more measuring. You'd be surprised how few things are measured still today, for instance, in semiconductor fabs, and how much more we think you should be measuring, and how many more measurement approaches and technologies can be used that we have in development or available. There is rather the decision for us, for the strategic side, what applications, what market segments we want to go into to grow further. Naturally, as I mentioned, the semi markets and the other high-tech markets, we select them with a growth and a profitability profile comparable to semi. Because of that, we are also able to generally grow faster than the market.
Somebody walked. I don't know if the post, it's a bit early for the post, but Huh?
Jürgen, could you please make sure that we get muted?
Yes, I did.
Hi, Tobias, by the way. Good to meet you. All right. That is a general statement, and maybe if you talk one more minute about the recent time. As you know, we came a bit out of a down cycle industry-wise, while INFICON, however, never really experienced that. After the last ramp, which was 2020 to 2022/2023, we pretty much stayed flat. We never went down as others in the industry. That is largely because of this broad diversification in strong growth markets. It looked flat, but under the hood, we did the same movements as you've seen with others in the industry because our customers, they did go up and down 20%-30%, and we balanced that out with this shift. Now, I believe already a year ago, roughly, we thought that the new ramp would start.
This is the usual semiconductor ramp I'm talking about. We'll get in a minute to the one where the question is: Is this a super cycle or not? The normal ramp, there was first signs last year. I think leading logic started earliest, and then the two memory sectors also started, or the three memory sectors, if you want to take HBM as a separate one, to pick up speed in different dynamics a little bit. The Liberation Day really slowed down everything. Our view is that probably everything got slowed by two, three quarters and then compacted, and then the ramp was steeper, which is very much what we've seen this year. There's an acceleration now that is pretty broad, leading logic definitely still, as you can see by the CapEx numbers of those players. Then you have memory, in particular DRAM and HBM accelerating.
What we also see now is other sectors accelerating. When we talk about 800 VDC, meaning 800 volts, meaning total new power architecture, that's a little bit out, but as an example. There is also all the sensors for the infrastructure that you need for data centers that need chips. It goes way beyond just the actual rack, and we see this also in these other players now, if you want to call them the second-tier fabs, more around IoT and power and so on. I was just visiting a customer like that last week, where we could very well see how this accelerates, and we have similar questions there as well. It's a bit less steep than logic just yet, but I think that started. What we have now is a pretty broad ramp, and it's early days.
We could, through strong preparation last year, where we really took the time. A crisis sometimes should not be wasted. We used the time last year to accelerate our reconfiguration, move many things to Asia. I think we talked extensively about that last year. What we needed to do, we feel now we are very well prepared for any kind of scenario in the supply chain as well because we not only move manufacturing but also supply chain accordingly. We could show in Q1 that we could immediately ship when the market accelerated. I believe we can continue to do this now as book to bill is high, but we also want to go and ship. Naturally, and maybe that is the last of my thoughts before then we go into Q&A. There's still significant risk out there.
We have the Middle Eastern conflict, which is not only an energy problem, it goes into many other sectors indirectly, transport, logistics, also helium, aluminum, important materials for the semiconductor industry. We have accordingly prepared ourselves, but it is a bit of an unpredictable situation. That could be a constraint as the industry ramps. Maybe the last question is: Is it a super cycle? I think right now we are half on this. I think it has increased in the last six months that this is likely. What is a super cycle? Super cycle would be as this hyperscaler ramp so much that this is more than the usual semiconductor ramp, which basically comes from the chunkiness of how you make an expansion. You build a fab, you fill it up.
During that time, there's no CapEx spend, and then you build the next fab, and it goes in waves as demand supply has always been in our industry a little bit out of sync. Now what could happen if truly this build-out as projected in the next five years is going to happen, then this is not clearly a semiconductor cycle, so then it would continue a couple of years with this kind of growth. That is possible. I think today, the way I look at it when I talk to all our customers and then look at how the market develops, there is a gap, a clear gap between what the semiconductor industry is planning to deliver and what this hyperscaler build-out plans look like, and that is a factor in between.
I guess if it truly happens, then we have still some homework to do beyond what we're already doing in our ramp. All right. On that positive note, I will conclude my initial remarks and take any questions that you might have. Anybody?
I will have a question if there are no questions in the room first.
Yeah, sure.
Okay. My question is, you just mentioned that there would be more homework from your side in the case all the projects are really executed. Can you talk a little bit more on that? What do you need to do, and what would be the potential impact to your profitability?
The operating leverage will take care of that anyway. In a normal ramp and in a super ramp, it will be even more fun if that's the answer. Homework for me is rather, you need to imagine our expansion plan in such a way. What we typically have, because we're in these growth industries, and I mean semi, and I also mean the others. The others have, in parts, higher growth potentials and also growth rates. We treat them the same if you want to go and look at it like this, 10 semi markets, 20 others. For all of those, we need to have scenarios for the next couple of years of how we deliver this growth in terms of supply. In the end, what it breaks down on an operational level is a chain of expansion projects in different locations. Right?
You need to add a little bit of clean room here, and then you need to put the tools in there, and then you need to add, train people, and hire them. We have this chain of expansion projects. What we have already done a year ago is be ready for a normal ramp. This capacity is available. It's up and running. We activated it a little bit later. When I say additional homework is now we have already started to add projects in the sense of they're basically the blueprint was there, and we pulled the trigger and started them in the last couple of months. That is not uncommon because only when you are starting to really warm up in a ramp, you know specifically what product you need more of. Right?
You go a little bit more broader and rough into the preparation at the beginning, and then it gets more specific as the forecast of your customers get more specific and so on. In the end, the orders are then basically the full clarity, but you need to work outside of the orders typically, right? You don't get orders one year out. The clean room, you need to build one year out. The building, you need to build two years, three years, four years out. Those things you need to pre-invest, but there's no real risk in it because we just need to, in the timing, look at a move, either moving out a couple of quarters or moving in a couple of quarters. Right? That's the way how we look at it.
When I say homework, I mean we would have to go and add to these expansion projects quite a bit, right? Maybe then that's 50% semi cycle, 80% semi cycle, 100% semi cycle. We have already now product lines that are at 100% +. That's selective few. Then the average, I would probably say, here, something like 30%, 40%, like a usual ramp. Again, this is super early. I think this is still the honeymoon period of this cycle. Everybody's excited, lots of orders coming in, lots of great forecasts. We have to see how it continues. That's what I specifically mean with this homework, and then we will continue to trigger these projects as soon as they make sense.
Okay. Thank you.
Sure.
How much capacity can you work with the actual acquisitions and everything that we built that out or?
Yeah. This 30%-40%, that's going now for semi, right? We talk about the semi ramp, which is about 55% of our business. That we can do. That we can do is a theoretical value because, right, Middle Eastern conflict supply chain, and there's stumbles in general when you do things. I think we're relatively competent to do something like that. You've seen we did a jump up already of this nearly 15% in Q1. I think we can continue on that.
At this point, I'm not worried about capacity.
Here, we entered the year and the ramp with certain strategic overcapacity, we communicated it, and this helps as a starting point, obviously. We also indicated CapEx guidance and further pre-CapEx, so that all goes in the direction to meeting the demand. We start at the same position.
Maybe can I ask a bit on ASML? We've seen the news that, I think it was TSMC not wanting to have the EUV NA machines in their planning. Also just this week we've seen Huawei claiming that they have made a progress to basically achieve a technology leap without EUV. What do you think of that in general?
Yeah.
What it means for you as a key supplier to the ASML.
Yeah, we are generally agnostic because we're trying very much to work with everybody in the industry generally, right? Often there is solutions, not maybe specific for Huawei. I do believe they said in 2030 they can do something comparable with 1.4 nm. I think they do this with multi-patterning and three-dimensional and something beyond Moore and not specifically with shrink. Yeah, the general statement there, and I will go back to ASML in a sec. General statement is we need to take China's innovation super serious. We do. We innovate in China. We really doubled down when I say we reconfigure or accelerate the reconfiguration last year. That means specifically innovation and production further moved to the East. That is not only China, that's also Asia-Pacific. Asia-Pacific grows the fastest these days.
That's an important area for us. We innovate where the customers are and the ecosystems where the leading-edge innovation is, and for semi, it's there largely, and for a few other sectors as well. On ASML, I think 2018 we started to work on the EXE 5000, this High-NA EUV machine. There were some kind of impossible things that they wanted. At least our physicists were really in disarray at the beginning. We worked within three, four years to deliver the sensors they needed, the custom sensors, the big sensors. One of the sensors, for instance, would say when the machine is ready for exposure, basically to switch it on. There's crucial integrated parts there. Also, with the current version of EUV that is delivered, right? The new machine, I think there's an issue on the total cost of ownership and the price tag.
The ASML and all the suppliers are working together to go and improve that. I think the expectations of this new machine and the adoption were much higher, I believe, when we started working together than now. It has really slowed down, and I believe now it's more the idea, but you'd really have to talk to ASML, right? For these things, is that it is an additional machine that you use for certain applications as we further develop. I think ASML has also further accelerated now again, as I remember, they have in the last ramp together with us, they grew also some years 20%, 30%. Did our business, and then a bit plateaued and maybe even backwards, and now they accelerate again with this build-out. I would be generally optimistic for ASML, but look, nothing is ever certain, and you should never become complacent.
This is general. This is a highly innovative industry. There's 20 companies out there trying to find a solution for that problem, and then just a statistics game, right? That's what innovation is. There's never a straight line. I have an empty sheet of paper and I'm innovating this, in two years, I have it. It's not how it works. You have many companies, many companies have many strategies and ideas, and they try them all, and most of the ideas die, and most of the companies also will not make it, but a few will make it. There will be new things. For sure, there will be also alternatives in China, but also in other regions. You have them in Europe, a couple, U.S., in Asia as well, outside of China and definitely in China, too. It's going to stay exciting.
What we want to be, again, is we want to be partner with the leading-edge companies. Is that good?
That's very clear. Thank you.
We should have this in place for a while.
Tobias.
Hello.
Can you please go ahead.
Sorry for the interruption before. I didn't realize I was not on mute.
No worries.
Three questions from my side. You mentioned the 800 volts DC infrastructure and the potential that it might have for you, for INFICON. A little bit of understanding here is that via Infineon and others which are going to invest because you need more chips to drive this infrastructure, or is it other ways where you are profiting from it? A little related to it, can it be a significant opportunity or a little bit on this. The second question is a bit the move to the supply chain to Asia. Maybe it would be interesting to understand a little bit what does it mean for INFICON in terms of financials or in terms of innovation and product, and where you see the advantages here now from this move. The third one is on General Vacuum, if you can a little bit lay out.
Yeah, a very strong first quarter. I assume that there are some semi activities in General Vacuum which also profited from this invest CapEx cycle. Yeah, if you can a little bit elaborate where General Vacuum is on top, maybe first of all exposed and on top profiting from, because I believe the solar market is still on the weak side. There's three questions for now.
Sure. Thank you, Tobias. All right. Let me try to hit each one, and then we'll see if I have it all answered for you. Data center market. I see this as pretty broad. I think most people do. This is not only about leading logic chips anymore for a long time. It is still, of course, the heart of it and the most exciting part of it, but it transforms entire industries. It doesn't mean specifically the power supply. This is also about silicon photonics or this liquid cooling or even immersion cooling. There is entire HVAC industry that is upside down that is also a big driver for us as we are the leading leak detector company in that space. Visited customer there just last week also. There's a lot happening there.
Specifically about the 800 volts, I think sustainability or EV transition was the last couple of years a bit slowed down, even went backwards. The adoption, I believe in some areas, most notably, I believe in Europe and the U.S., I think now Europe is at the tipping point and accelerating again and also doing some policy support there. I believe Asia- Pacific is accelerating. China is, of course, maybe slowing down the growth because they are nearly saturated, right? When you go and walk around in China, you see how many green number plates you have. Why am I talking about all that?
I think this power for 800 volts is something that is also very close to the energy transition and potentially data centers because they just need, the more tokens you can get out the watts, the better, and that's just about getting the energy to the rack. That's why it's transition. It is kind of the same problem as you have with EV and the batteries. It might inject an additional push there as well as it does in so many other industries. Many of those directly or indirectly we see as positives. Again, I mentioned before, we are in 10 semiconductor markets and 20 other high-tech markets. Many of these other high-tech markets are actually, they have an additional impulse for that too. It's almost crazy, right? If I take maybe exotic examples, space.
Data centers in space are not 100 years away, because telco infrastructure goes up there. It's not such a big step to do data centers. We have seen first orders for tooling and things like that. You can also take fusion, which is crazy as well, right? We have this ITER project in Europe. It always was said that it's another 20 years. They said that for 50 years. I think it's getting closer. Steps like this, now these are the exotic extremes because these are all feeding also into this transformation. The more immediate things, of course, are just the chip needs, memory and logic. Everything around to run the infrastructure of a data center. We have maybe, we're following about 10 big trends roughly right now around that which are interesting for us.
The most notable next one would really be HVAC, chiller, cooler. They're just so much bigger and they need new sensorization and leak detection is on a whole different level. It needs to be about 1,000 times higher quality in terms of reliability when you build chillers for data centers than just a commercial building. There's total new requirements. This is a forming market, it's really early. I hope that helps answering the first question. The second one about our move to the East, it's not a move in the sense of that we're going to shut down Europe or U.S., but it's just where we invest for innovation and production, which we think is in a global perspective as opposed to maybe 10 years ago, INFICON would probably have had the three big competence centers at the time, which is Cologne, Balzers and Syracuse in New York.
Then typically you just add it there for this. Now it's typically when you look at these decisions, it's a better choice to not do it here. There's all kind of issues. There's the cost of manufacturing, that could be FX, that could be labor costs, that could just be also the labor market dynamics or the flexibility of it. Also how you get permits and how you get talents and all that. In the end, the most important factor though is if you want to do leading logic, why would you do that in Europe? Why would you do that in U.S.? You need to do it in Taiwan or you need to do it in Korea where the leading-edge logic is made and where the whole ecosystem is. We need to be in that ecosystem and be innovating there.
That's why we have the innovation center in Taiwan, next to this leading-edge fabs, we have also innovation centers for EV and battery. In China, the same for solar. That's the way we look at it needs to be more of a global perspective. I believe we have been very successful with that. In the end, when you do innovation and when you do business, it's not very much about politics, it's about solving problems in a high-pressure environment. High pressure because the innovation pressure is really high. Actually, it's a fantastic problem to have. It really drives us as an industry forward real quick. In the end, that comes down to what we all do or you do. You're buying all the time new iPhones, which is leading-edge logic, and you want to use Claude and ChatGPT and all that stuff.
When you go translate that all down, this drives us. It drives us a lot more in the East than in the West. If you don't mind my flipping around here, I can show you this picture here, how the regions developed and you see the growth in Asia-Pacific specifically. Year on year, also Europe has a good growth, honestly, you see how China and Asia-Pacific shown growth the last five years or so. That's a continuing trend, this is about to continue to develop. This environment there, the number of people you have there, talent, also there's a lot of technology university partnerships that you can have there. All right. Maybe that's the second question, Tobias. The third one on Gen Vac .
Again, Gen Vac, for me, and we will come with a update, I believe, on our end markets eventually, because they might be not how we think about the markets anymore in that specific sense. We think more about advanced industrial and semiconductor, and each one has a couple of sub-markets.
Gen Vac for us is just the general bucket of all the smaller markets, right? In there would be what I mentioned, space and also solar would be in there, life science would be in there. There's a couple markets in there that are smaller but have a good growth profile nonetheless. That's also why they can grow, and that should be not surprising because some of them have real good dynamics. I hope that helps. When you ask me about the outlook this year, these other markets are less dynamic, but there is generally other growth outlook than a flat outlook, but we, at this time, we guided it, as you know, flat and growth.
A little bit also because of uncertainty of how the dynamics are geopolitically and how much of this data center semi pool will really materialize in these areas as well as an additional tailwind. Yeah. I hope I could answer your question, Tobias.
Yeah. Thanks. Maybe, if I may, an add-on a little bit on the margin side. Now you raised the margin guidance, I was wondering, you are active in many little markets, usually with a good position there. How should we look at operating leverage? When does it kick in? Where can the margin go? On top, of course, the supply chain changes and what you did on the gross margin.
Wow.
A little bit, yeah. I believe you should be able to, if the market continues to grow strongly, that we should see a clear margin above the 20% EBIT margin. Yeah, I was wondering a little bit if you can elaborate on these two topics, gross margin and operating leverage.
Okay, it's good. The one with supply chain, I don't think I fully answered. All right. Got it. I will give a broad answer, and then I think Dimitrij would be the right person to talk to you about the margin operating leverage. Yeah. We said last year because we tracked it specifically that we are still a 20%+ company, and we have outlined therefore very specifically last year what the impacts were of this trade war escalation. Remember, there was tariffs, there was this duplication of productions, and then we moved things, and there was FX in there, which we attribute also to the trade war escalation, specifically the strong euro, Swiss francs versus the U.S. dollar.
Then in Q1, we guided that there is a good chunk of restructuring costs in there, and specifically we named 3 percentage points, which gives you something like 19 percentage points in Q1. Then we also, as you mentioned, adjusted the guidance. I think we feel that we largely left this behind. There is some more sand in the engine, but I think largely we moved past it and switched the company entirely into growth mode now. Where last year was much about fitness program reconfiguration and so on. I think it was a good thing, probably in hindsight, that we've done it as painful as it was. I think it prepares us better for the future to just have accelerated all these strategic moves.
In terms of supply chain, yeah, in the first instance, when you move production around. Specifically, the supply chain is actually the harder part than moving production. It's costly, right? Our products have very tight tolerances and some of these parts qualification is a year. Tooling, the specification, the testing, the reiteration, and the working together with the partner supplier, it takes time. We accelerated all of this and some of this also we saw last year was also stabilization of all this and get the right supplies in the right place with the right quality and the right on time. In the beginning, that was that. I believe there is upside for the future. That's probably your question. I don't want to promise on that necessarily.
Because the reconfiguration was a bit costly and I think still some things need to optimize to get on the level of where we had it before. There's a prospect and a plan to also improve on the margin regarding supply. Obviously, you can go and have a cost advantage when you go in Asia-Pacific and manufacture there, or also in China versus Europe or U.S. That I would get this likely. Maybe, Dim, you want to add something more?
Yeah. Much maybe to think is, A, in the 20%, we always said structurally we're actually a 20%+ company, so there's no ceiling. If we can do better, we will do better. At the same time, this year we still have the tariffs remaining as a fixed. This is something that could reduce significantly, but tariffs remains, FX remains, right? We need to compensate this effect for the other actions Oliver mentioned, especially for the supply chain reconfiguration. 20% in general, I'm not talking about this year, but general is not the limit.
I mean, it's not on the floor in our understanding, actually, so for future. I could also say what we often repeated is because we have a long list of organic opportunities, we'll probably always make sure that we spend a buck in an organic opportunity if that makes strategic sense and financial sense, than take it out and put it into EBIT, right? We find the balance. INFICON is not a binary black and white company. We'll continue as we have in the past. Oh, yeah, you had a question. You can help out.
No, maybe, like you mentioned.
Yeah
30%-40%.
Yeah.
In which time frame is that? Typically six years.
Yeah. There's peak to peak is three to four years, right? Historically. Again, from looking from the past, thinking about the future, I think that never works. If you just want to base it on historical knowledge, that would be. A super cycle ramp could be times two, I guess.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Maybe more, and it's hard to say, honestly. I don't know where we're going with this AI. We are certainly using it like crazy. We have over 700 volunteers that use it daily, and we are on fire. It's so much fun in our lead. As you know, for two years we're launching AI products as well. There's different Ask INFICON products where you can chat with the sensors or the software and then optimize your yield. You can imagine how that works if you have all this data. Yeah. If that continues like this, and it continues to really show benefits, and I think after being really skeptical two years ago, where I was just saying it can tell bad jokes and Google better. I think now I see it personally, and I see it in the team, and I see it in all levels across the company.
Really all roles. I go somewhere and ask them, "What do you do?" "Well, this and that and the other thing." "Wow, cool. All right. Didn't think of that." I think if that continues for some more time, then we will have this massive productivity gain across whole industries and whole companies, and then we also pay for it as meaning. We have to build everywhere data centers all across and including space. That could be a very optimistic scenario, then maybe it's five years or more. It's hard to say. This industry, we normally know the next couple of months.
On the topic on China, one of the larger risks I would say is that the localization strategy of China.
Yeah
The risk that Western suppliers like INFICON could be copied or even out-innovated in China.
Yeah.
How do you actually make sure, you say innovate there, you produce there, but nevertheless, how do you make sure that key people, key knowledge is not transferred to a place like NAURA wants to localize everything?
The question is, who has the key knowledge? Do we have it or other people have it in China?
I guess what you just said is very important. You need to always stay paranoid because it moves really fast. It is the whole country is trying on pushing this key technologies forward, like semi and others. They have a lot of talent and a lot of pragmatism. There was also the last five years were bad because of lockdown, and we're still there. We actually grew in China. Lockdown means we also lost some blood in the fight. The fight needs to be there and not here. We take the fight right there to the customer. We have it in Hefei or we have it in Shenzhen, that's where we have it. In Chinese, with Chinese roots. We have been there for 35 years. It's not new for us. We have a team there.
We manufacture there. We innovate there for a while. We have strong partnerships with all the top players there, of this ecosystem. We continue that. It's a pivot this year with the new five-year plan that we started, that China themselves realized that so many copycats that are all getting funded with free money is not the future for different reasons. They don't turn a profit, don't pay taxes. They can't pay salaries or increase salaries. They are really upsetting all their trade partners. Generally, they're relaxed about this, but seemingly not to the degree that they don't want to do this long term. What they want to do, the pivot is now they want to build global players out of China with profitable ones, strong ones, and not 50 local players, but a couple of really strong ones.
That is also going to be tough, but it is a bit more the game that we know. I believe when we go and play there, we have a big advantage because we have this experience of 50 years doing each one centrally. We can talk about each one, and we do this with all the major players around the globe. We have seen all the applications, all the issues, always at the forefront. We have the largest R&D budget in comparison. If you were a 20, 50 headcount mass spec supplier in China, you might have started up real quick, you might have super smart people, but if you play our card s right, we should be the winner. So far we have been, right?
That doesn't mean that they don't sometimes make inroads because their buddies with the guys down the road that have the semi-fab from university, and they have not a bad product. They tested them all. All the big players tested all the local players. I see rather a trend now a little bit backwards to us because they have also banged their head on this. Now the push on yield is a different one than three years ago, where I think it was very true, much about just equipping this fab and get them going. I think now they also want to crank out good amount of product. When you want to make a fab profitable, yield needs to go up significantly. It can't be 20%, 30%, it needs to be 80% +. Also utilization.
They want to go and use us for getting there. I'm relatively optimistic, right? I still need to stay paranoid, but I'm optimistic also what we have seen is if you innovate and manufacture in China, you are treated in a comparable fashion. Our name is very well known. We have also a great Chinese name, is INFICON. It's a very positive one, and they know us for a long time for being the prime premium solution for this. There's going to be cheaper alternatives and other alternatives, but I think so far we could show that we could adapt, and we will have to continue to adapt. Then there's the other part, which is the geopolitics. They're difficult, right? There's continuously new rules also, sometimes erratic rules and contradictory rules and unclear rules. That is for a while like that.
The prior administration did that. The Trump, one of the administration did that. It's been a little bit more hectic even, but so far we could find solution. It is sometimes crazy stuff. We have to move a whole production somewhere, move a whole innovation somewhere. Hey, we always stay within the rules, but you can adapt to a job. We're trying to do that.
Would you say your protection is your speed of innovation of your product?
Yeah.
Is it what's something you do here or in with the ceramics and?
No. Speed of innovation. It's just speed. I think protection is honestly, that is just when you've given up. You can use it a little bit to ring-fence stuff or maybe put some landmines out there, but the core needs to be fast innovation with the key players in the world and try and create the best innovation environment. This is the only way. I think this is the same in basically all markets. In U.S. it's the same. Yeah. Europe also in Taiwan, Korea, same.
Good.
Yeah.
There was two questions. The first, yes, we are now in the era of.
Yeah.
Did you see any disruption for your supply chain? The second question is to the security and energy segment. I know that the business is quite lumpy, and you lost nearly 6% versus the first quarter year before. Is this due to later customer orders, geopolitical effects, or a deep competitiveness from other players?
All right. Maybe it's okay I answer the second one first. I go backwards. Yes. Energy is relatively steady. It was a bit less exciting the last couple of years because sustainability just fell way down in priority on the agendas. It's going to come back up. It had to stay there. The underlying is a good positive sign, right? We just started in Europe to mix hydrogen into the grid. Different places. Whenever you have these kind of mixed things, that's our jam, to go and measure that and so on. There's some positive stuff there on energy side, but it's more steady in this smaller part. The security part or the defense part is very lumpy. Yeah. We have a really nice funnel and we have a lot more spending, obviously, specifically in the NATO and a couple of other allied countries.
The spend is not really hitting down to things like our sensors yet, or specifically the HAPSITE, which is our leading mobile lab. It is still the leading product by a whole generation. We still sell a lot the last generation. ER is the name of the new CDT, which much higher sensitivity and has a lot of new applications where it can work, narcotics, explosives, more environment stuff. I think these procurement vehicles are just still very slow, these countries. Because often there is a procurement organization that buys it, and the focus very much seems to be currently on big hardware, tanks and missiles and things like that. Yeah. We are optimistic. There is also more orders coming in.
You see, in Q4, we had a big order delivered, so it's a bit lumpy still, but I think should stay optimistic on that one. It's not so big, right? That's a little bit the funny thing about this having broken this out. You've been with us for a while, right? In the past it was a bigger share. Now it's becoming smaller.
Is it a good market?
Yeah. No, it's a good market. It's also very synergetic because it's this mass spec that is inside, which is the same that goes on the TSMC chamber. Technically, it's a market we want. It almost a little bit too much in the spotlight because it's broken out separately, right? If we think more in this advanced industrial 20 high-tech markets and 10 semi markets, that's a little bit how we look at it. If it's not interesting anymore, we'll get rid of it. We could sell it. We get offers for it, of course, that's not what we currently think we should be doing. All right, that was the energy security, and the other one was Iran. Yeah. First, things we have seen, aluminum and helium. I think Dimitrij can also talk about that.
He's following quite closely of what it does to our margin. In operations, we're also following it. We have been preparing ourselves quite a bit for some things like that, but not for that specifically. We didn't expect that this should happen.
It was one of the scenarios that would happen in such a war, but we didn't expect that, yeah, that this would play out like that and people would really start such a war. We are where we are, and we might find an off-ramp, but I'm not so optimistic that there's an off-ramp. Honestly, it feels a little bit like this is going to be a never-ending limbo, but we should muddle through. It might be not so bad to slow us down, let's say. We have seen first indicators, right? I think right now it's a bit about price inflation of certain things. Logistics, more expensive. There's a little bit air freight constraint and the energy cost, jet fuel for instance, it's gone up. It's not a real shortage yet or real bottleneck. Aluminum is in vacuum pumps, for instance.
You see our products, there's a little material in here. It's not so much affecting us, but we're selling also vacuum systems with pumps. That's where we're seeing it. Helium is an important gas. At the same time, people also want to buy our leak detectors because we're the most helium-efficient leak detector out there. We have also just launched, check us out online, a helium alternative leak detector. It can also play out positively for us, this constraint. At this point, we remain largely optimistic. We're so concerned that, like last time in COVID times when we had these 500 ships stuck outside of Shanghai, nine months later everything was on fire. We don't know now what works itself as a time bomb through the supply chain and then blows up in our faces. It's sometimes a bit hard.
Very much would be good if they did find an off-ramp of some kind. We probably would all wish that.
Thank you.
Yeah. Good.
Maybe a question on market share. You said always that being close to the customer, you hope to gain some market share versus your big U.S. peer.
Yeah.
Do you see that now playing out?
Yeah
In the new generations that have your market shares, i n which direction is it going?
I've been now, the last couple of weeks, I was in all four regions visiting customers, and every single one wants to do more with us. Every single one. What that exactly means specifically, it's often, "Hey, let's go and build up our partnership and let's look at this next generation of products that we're developing. Can you come in? Can you give us more of your expertise on solving measuring problems?" It's very optimistic. That's on top of growth. There's, sure, the other half of the discussion, or no, it's not half, it's a bit less, because this is not so burning its capacity, because we have that organized, actually. This is, yeah, I'm super optimistic. We have gained market share over the last 10 years continuously.
It's just a year designing into that product line for that, or even for product lines, we've been a piece of it, maybe in the broad line, maybe down here, maybe up here. This is just a steady Well, I think the focus helps us be crisply focused on measuring. Yeah. Going to be good. I think also last year when we didn't go and throw out the baby with the bath water, we were just talking to people and found solutions. I think that was the right strategy.
Totally agree. Would be interested as a follow-up, you mentioned before the chillers for cooling of data centers.
I was recently at the Capital Markets Day of Sensirion, and I actually asked them about you, how they view you.
Was it Marc von Waldkirch? Do I have to call him?
No, they said it's a bit different markets, kind of.
Yeah.
They go with the high volume markets of today, for example, have leak detection for a heat pump that now in Europe shifts to propane, which is highly inflammable. You really need to make sure that this doesn't leak. It's more environmentally friendly, but it's highly flammable.
Yeah.
I kind of wondered a bit where there is an overlap or what you are doing exactly in those chillers, whether there's also the shift to different refrigerants there or.
Yeah, for sure. The shift of refrigerants is already going on because of the energy transition for a couple of years. There's continuous new regulations materializing also in the U.S., as you wouldn't expect, maybe in this political climate. Of course, in Europe, also in Asia, including also China, they drive the need for measurement. We're profiting from that's in our market there for RAC Auto, where we see this. Regarding Sensirion, we don't see each other as competition. Yes, we both make measurement instruments, but they make entirely different volumes at an entirely different price point. This mass spec here is CHF 10,000-CHF 50,000. The real expensive ones are CHF 200,000. He sends it for cents. It's not a bad business, but just much higher volume, right? It's typically MEMS space.
For us, inside the chamber, MEMS is difficult because the chemistry that makes chips also destroys chips, meaning a MEMS. We're working here with different materials. The cheapest sensor we make is maybe $ 700. On that one, that's maybe something like that. That's how we would distinguish the two, and yes, I'm absolutely sure. I haven't met Mark neither, I think beginning of the year, I think it should also help give him a tailwind, the whole data center transition. I see this data center build-out as a transformation of many industries, as I mentioned. A lot of companies will believe. HUBER+SUHNER makes cables in [audio distortion]. They also have a boom. That is very indirect, of course you need cables for wiring and so on. I believe it transforms many industries.
You were then more in the production of such a chiller, maybe where you need to measure whether it's tight and not leaking, and they would more.
Yeah
a sensor that is sitting the whole lifespan.
Yes. That's a very good point. In that specific example, we would rather be in the manufacturing side. Yes, assuring the quality. This is not the same in semiconductor because there we are in situ and in-process obviously.
Okay.
This mass spec is on the chamber, or these are in the chamber. That is different. Specifically on HVAC, yeah. We have a few products when they need really sophisticated, high-precision things, that they buy sensors for that, the new chiller. That's brand new now that they will spend the money for that.
Thank you. Just as a follow-up, how big is this opportunity that you're talking about [audio distortion]?
Liquid cooling is starting. The discussions are starting.
For your products are needed there too, or?
Yeah, for sure. The same leak detection. You also want to understand the refrigerant and detect it. It's a little bit like a battery. Well, exactly, the mix is in there. Yeah, it is relevant because you need to be able to detect it, but our mass spec can detect it if you need to identify it. Other tools can detect leaks before you fill it maybe, or when you fill it after with different methods. You need to think of this, when you build HVAC equipment, there's many testing steps, each company has a bit of a different strategy. They have their own leak detection group. Last week I just visited, for instance, one big, the number one commercial residential HVAC system manufacturer, they have a very experienced group of leak detection folks. We met there in their dojo. 30 people came.
Everybody knew a lot about leak detection. They came with bar graphs. Then we discussed of what kind of products they need and how they're doing it. We also learn a lot of, hey, we do this test, but not that test. Here we change. It's constantly dynamic, but it's many stations of detection. First maybe you test certain modules, and then you certain system parts, and then you do the whole system test.
Then you have even maintenance. There's established size. At times, yeah, that's the story is the opportunity is pretty broad because in the end you can test individual component. If you talk about data centers now, you test individual components, then once you assemble the rack, you test the rack, and then once the rack is running, you service it with service tools. There are very different tools and different components, and we report them also little bit different markets. It's not that easy that we can get it on the click of a button because think about service tools, these would be distributed, right? We can assume where they would be used, but we don't track where they're distributed using a huge data center.
That's a little bit difficult to track, but what we see is from the incoming orders, from the discussions we have one on one, that this market is really good and really growing, and it's pretty broad for us application-wise. I think Laura had a question for a while.
Oh, okay. Yeah, shoot, Laura.
Thanks. Look, I know that we are in the early days, and you said it yourself, but in the context of recent reports from some hyperscalers, namely Microsoft, Amazon, Google and so on, pausing some and reassessing other AI projects. Are you seeing anything, in terms of moderation whatsoever in orders or some caution in your discussion with clients? If I'm not mistaken, and correct me if I'm wrong, you do have some personnel on the factory floors of some of your clients, so you must have a better insight than others. Just looking for your view or some color into the topic.
We have INFICON staff in all fabs, just to be clear. I think it's one of our strengths, our customer intimacy, because you don't sell a sensor by just showing them the menu. Like in the restaurant, they order five of this and three of this. You need to go in there and have the discussion when they make their next generation products of how do we solve their problems. Often it's a little bit more variant than the configuration. I know this is not your question. Just want to make sure that I think we have one of the highest customer intimacy levels anybody can have, and we have it in fabs, and we have it with tool makers. It's about how in terms of dynamics. A slowdown is you ask, nobody talks about slowdown.
I think there's been more of an acceleration actually in the last couple of months. Individually, companies win bids and lose bids. That is what happens, right? They would say, "Look, if we win this, we need to accelerate like this." That's the top scenario, and if it doesn't, many things are driven through Taiwan and then through NVIDIA and Apple and so on, the Google and the Microsoft orders there, indirectly, right? If a tool maker wins a certain process of the next build out in the next technology node, then it would accelerate more than maybe the average scenario at less if it goes somewhere else, another one accelerates. In aggregate, say, it's accelerating still.
Okay. A second one and last one from my side. In your base case, which allows for the 18%-20% margin guidance, what kind of increase in volumes or capacity utilization, if you will, do you need to reach in order to get the operating leverage that you talk about, and where are you today?
I think we're there. If you look at Q1, that very much points into that direction, right? Now it's just about how much more can we do based on that and how much can we potentially get slowed down on the supply chain versus I don't see it so critical yet, but don't know towards the end of the year could be challenging more.
But on a-
If you take the Q1 result and just exclude this one-off effects, that's very close to the range that we guided.
What is the utilization that you are right now? Just for me to frame it in a way.
Mm-
You said that we're there. Where is there? You're there on the margin, yes, but what level of utilization does that imply?
No, we are there in Q1 to deliver that kind of level, right? Sure, there's always a 20%, 30% error, and you need to have that in your manufacturing when you are in such a volatile market that are growing, right? We keep that buffer, and as soon as it eats into that, we would trigger the next expansion project.
Okay.
There's no reason to assume that our factory suddenly is stuck. Sure, there could be structural issues where we really need to build very urgently over here in Balzers, the second building, which we just announced December that we will buy a piece of land and do that. We're not there yet, right, where we would go and really be worried about such big expansions being needed.
Just to clarify, the Iran impact that you mentioned earlier, that's already baked into the guidance, right?
Yeah, some of it is. Yes. Because there is some impact to be expected. In a realistic scenario, we bake some of it in, yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Everybody should. I would think.
Can I maybe ask, Samsung, I think they said that they don't want to see this boom-bust cycle anymore. If you look at the memory players, they are earning so much money. Is there a risk that they will start to like this environment and don't even invest or just invest them so much?
These guys are in this game for a very long time. I don't know. Yeah, Samsung. There's also very sad quarters where there's a big loss of billions. Now they need to make the money. I think on average, when you look at DRAM manufacturers, they are on the average positive. I think now this is a bit like a zero kind of a market. Maybe it will transform now too and get better, but I don't think they can allow themselves to go and just crank out the products now and then retire on their laurels. They're going to be out. Some of them fell behind. If you look at Samsung, they fell behind on HBM. That's why SK Hynix really moved ahead. I think they are very much on their toes to catch up and very much investing in the next generation. Honestly. Yeah.
All of them. Micron as well, they introduce new tech nodes. They don't do that so often, but they're accelerating even their tech nodes. Their tech nodes maybe 5-10 years, not like logic, three years. If you, by the way, go to the other one, the power chips, analog chips, and so on, then the tech nodes are even older because you don't have an advantage of shrink. You have actually often very funny physics, so if you go and redesign the chip, you need to work through that, all this kind of stabilization, optimization again, and you gain not much. All of this industry is accelerating down to the back end, also accelerating. I don't see any investment stop. I see the opposite. People actually, they would look at this new outlook.
Oh, we're not going to grow 5%-10%, we're going to grow 10%-15%, so let's go for it. Also, all these pressures from transformative new requirements, talked about in the data centers. No, I don't see anything.
Just to manage that a bit in your former question, then this.
Okay. Yeah, no, my question was regarding software business [FabGuard].
Yeah.
Difficult to judge. It's not dependent, I guess, on volume, how much the clients are producing. Just to give a bit of a sense how that is performing.
Yeah, it's bundled with the sensor package, with the advanced sensors , basically. It's in all the fabs, used to some minimal to maximum level, depending a little bit what they need and what they have already. It's advancing in the fab. The general trend there is that a lot of the software was homemade a generation ago. These specialists and wrong software are retiring, and then they want more on the shelf, and I believe we are the leading product regarding install base. It's a positive development right now. Look at that, our Final Phase Systems acquisition 10 years ago. That was more for second-tier fabs. The ones I just mentioned, there were the tech cycles a bit slower. You don't build so fast new fabs.
There, you want to get more out of your fab, the cheapest way, in a sense, is not to build a new factory, but optimize it by software. Also recently, just discussions around that is all really accelerates. Hopefully it will get through. I always say that much as I'm a computer scientist originally, software is not faster than sensors. We're not unhappy about that because it will both grow.
It's not growth diluted at the current stage?
No, no.
Okay.
It just has a bit of a different dynamic, specifically on the scheduler side where we run entire fabs and schedule them. The mentioned dynamic. In FabGuard, the FDC system is very close to the advanced sensor packages, which is going to the chip makers directly, the largest business there. They're always part, combined sensor with software, because they deliver you a lot of data. You need to analyze it, ours is the leading software there. Also, the American competitor has nothing comparable that we have. We worked on that. The acquisition was 1998, so that was a while ago. We built it since then tremendously, so there's a big team. Our AI team is also in the middle of this big software team, and they are having a party right now. They have together with the new.
There's a public to talk about. We always come out of the meeting.
There's chemistry in there. Yes. I would be optimistic there. All right. Anything else that-
This is another one.
Yeah.
One broader question. Your $1.6 trillion opportunity, 2030. Are there any in the industry where you would see bottlenecks that in this will-
Yeah
be accelerated through all the others that already say, but.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe, could sustainably grow 10%-15% already as an industry. We're certainly rebuilding everything. Last year, we did a lot of that in anticipation of that. Right? That was not just to avoid tariffs or trade barriers and whatever. It was about that, but, hey, you first need to do it because what that means in the average 15% means some years 30% and some other years 10%. What then? Right? Then you are maybe somewhat flat here, but you need to do a lot more of this crazy growth here, 20%- 30%. Those are taxing. I think we normally, after these quarters of intensive sprints, we try to pick up the pieces, all the things that went wrong, and then fix all our engines that were overheating and falling apart.
We need to all have higher RPM engines here to be able to digest it. I think there's bottlenecks. Yes, we're working on them in our institute. I mean, do we have the capacity in the fabs? I don't know. The build-out plans really match. I see a gap between the build-out plans of fabs that make chips and the build-out plans of data centers. I see a gap. Some of this can be closed by better software. You get also when you get more tokens out of certain mods. These efficiency gains are happening. We saw the big announcement a couple of days ago, this massive memory optimization. There's a lot more of this coming, I'm sure. That will close some of the gaps, then Semi will accelerate some. We'll do it somehow.
Yes.
Today you can't say the next five years, that's just the Sunday afternoon stroll. I would say that would be optimistic. Don't take away that we can't do it, or we're discouraged, or we would say, "Anybody, please slow down the quarters." Not at all. We're happy to go and take on the challenge. We're relaxed. This growth we did in Q1, nothing falling off. We're pretty chill. We prepared for this. This is just the early days. We'll tell you when we're sweating. We're not sweating. We're just like spring. It's fun.
Yeah. You have so many opportunities in your roadmap. Are you still looking at acquisitions, or is this not the theme anymore?
We are. We have a built list of nearly 200 targets, but we have slowed down because one part, the hottest part of the last five years, one of the hot parts for sure, is software. Right now you don't want to do software acquisitions because you buy 20-year-old spaghetti code or make it yourself. The make equation just got so much better. We're looking. We're looking, but it needs to make sense. Many of these acquisitions, our prey is bolt-on tech acquisition for sensor technology and software or something like that. Many of these things we can do ourselves if we really put the resources against. The problem is just you can't do everything, then you dilute your efforts entirely. Sometimes we're a bit strategic with picking when we buy things. Right now, everything accelerating in terms of R&D, it has slowed down.
Not looking, but let's say the pushing. We have a couple of hot topics going right now also. I don't think inorganic is the biggest lever to look at right now. I think we have so much organic. Got to go deliver that first.
I think there's one more online.
Sure. Yeah.
Yeah, thanks. I have three questions, two related to the semi and vacuum coating segment, which is, first of all, I haven't done the math, but I think you are outperforming the WFE CapEx numbers in terms of growth rates. I was wondering, is that just related to the increase in vacuum needs or are there other drivers why you are outperforming this index in terms of growth, and are you expecting this to continue? The second thing is more inside of the semi and vacuum coating. I remember you are exposed to OEMs, you are exposed to chip producer, and you have some thin film activities. If you can, a little bit remind us how the split is more or less, actually, and if you see differences or big differences in terms of growth rate between these three activities.
The last one, more in general, I was wondering how you are managing the company, because we get the numbers on the four division or segments. We never saw a P&L on this. A little bit, if you're looking at numbers and managing the company, I was wondering how is it set up? What kind of numbers do you have, and what are you looking at when trying to manage the company?
Great. Thank you. All right. That's quite a amount of questions. Wafer equipments are growing in semi. If you look at this other picture before of the last five years on the left, blue, you see a CAGR of 11.6%, 2020 to 2025. I'm doing the six years, actually. Okay. Anyway, normally we are over 10% historically as the industry is growing 5%-10%. I believe this is not market share, mainly. Some market share gains. We talked about this one product line where the American competitor is still a little bit ahead of us, but we're catching up. Largely it is the underlying growth of the industry plus the sensorization density.
We should think of it as a share of the CapEx that a fab spends to build a company, spends to build a fab, and some share of this goes towards INFICON, and this share increases because of higher needs. Look at a fab, what happened in the last 10 years, right? You went from a few hundred steps. A fab is full of machines and these wafer packages, the FOUPs, they hop around and go in all these different tools where you drill holes, add stuff, and implant and dope and whatever. All these different tools are in there and the wafer normally did 10 years ago 100 steps. Now it's over 1,000. These chips get more complicated, clearly.
All these steps, you could actually use sensors, but very few in the past use advanced sensors, just the one where you have a real big yield problem. You need to also understand that a wafer doesn't die in one machine. It dies by 1,000 cuts. You pick it out sometimes, and you send it to metrology, to the quality lab, and then investigate was this good, was it bad? Do I need to change something? You have very long blackout periods where you don't know what is happening, and you just follow the recipe that was developed when it was R&D. That is time-based, like when you cook. Three minutes opening this valve, then closing. Don't see inside.
Our sensors are process-aware, so they understand the recipe, and it can go inside and say, "It does what it should be doing," or even deposits as much as it should and things like that. You put these sensors on where you have risky machines where often something goes wrong. The risky machines are increasing because you do more complicated stuff. That's why memory started five years ago to buy now also these advanced sensors that before only logic bought, right? When I started at INFICON, there was this general opinion that we are more exposed to leading logic than memory. This has really changed, right? HBM and DRAM is now the same sophistication of sensors, same sensor density in a fab, same amount of dollars of CapEx going into sensors.
There's a number of underlying drivers that increase this spend, that's why we believe that we grow faster than the market. I don't see any stopping there. You can add to the thing that you mentioned on software. Software also gets more sophisticated with more modules you can buy for analysis, optimizing metrology or preventive maintenance or the labor or whatever you want to go and monitor there. I think that's the general trend. You ask about coating and semi. Yeah, we really got to rename this end markets, I think, because coating once was much more important than semiconductor. I think 15 years ago, there was a lot of vacuum coating also relevant, that can be very crude things, right? You just put some film on some things. Doesn't even have to be electronics.
Now it blended a lot, but semiconductor manufacturing is the major driver there, and solar isn't even in there. Solar is an individual market in General Vacuum. Yeah. The last question from you guys was about management. Yes, we are a one-segment company, so we show one P&L. The way we look at it, though, we look at these 30 markets individually. Each one has its growth margin. Each one has certain product groups. They're a little bit mixed, right? All different product groups can go into different markets. What is important for us is that this EBIT profile is at 20%+, and the growth profile is 5%-10%. This can be volatile. We will not pull out just because we have a bad year and bad EBIT there or a bad growth rate. This needs to be a strategic position.
These markets, you don't just go dabble a little bit. You need to go commit yourself for 10 years, then you can pull back out, or you sell something. You can do that. We also have done that, right? Actually, also the last three years, we used the time a bit to decide what we don't want to do. As this acceleration happens in semi, we make room for those opportunities and a couple of additional industrials. That's roughly how we manage it. All right.
Maybe, yeah, just on the topic, OEMs versus chip producer usually was not always aligned in terms of growth rates in the past. I saw the note of our colleagues at UBS, [Jörn]. It seems now to be more aligned, but yeah, I was wondering if you can comment on that?
Yeah
on these two clients.
I think I remember distinctly about seven, eight years ago to try to really drill into the data with not as much fun tools as we have nowadays to find out this correlation. I could never really find it. Meaning that the idea there is the theory that. First, when you build a fab, you order the big tools, and then the big tools would order our smaller sensors, because our smaller sensors, like those pressure sensors, would go to the tool makers, and we would see these orders first, and then we would see the orders that directly come from the chip fab later when they are starting to design the specific processes and then order the sensors.
I think the decision is made again in R&D stage of this new technology node. They make this factory expansion plannings, and then they pull the trigger when they think now is the time to make this expansion because of demand they see. For me, there hasn't been much evidence, but I remember from Lukas, our former CEO, that he has seen that. I think our reality, though, isn't like that. Maybe it's also a different way of how our sensors are designed now versus in the back. Maybe this correlates with this trend that I also explained some time, that again, also in discussion with Lukas, for me, already, it was changed, and we pushed further in that direction. We are not a component supplier that knocks on the door of the procurement team and then tells them, "Look, we have the sensors.
What do you want to buy?" They will buy a few things. It's not how it works. We have these strategic partnerships. We talk with them long-term, they pull us in three, four years, or I just mentioned the one with the Dutch company, where we started in 2018, which is eight years ago, for this specific product. When they're in the middle of their blueprinting and when they start, that's when the decision is really happening. I think it's just a different level how we operate now, apparently, than before. Again, I was not fully around when we had that.
Thanks.
All right. Sounds good. Tobias, so you might know what's happening. When you talked to Lukas 15 years ago or something.
Yeah, probably a long time.
All right. Good. We good?
We're good.
We answered all the questions. We have probably have the tour ready. Guys, make sure that you grab some breakfast if you're still hungry.
I think we have at least two.
Yeah, we have our tour guide. Okay.
Yeah.
Very good. Hey, and then I want to conclude here for the online and everybody else, thank you so much for your interest, these fantastic discussions and questions, and for your continued support. I'll see you again too. Really looking forward to that. For some French-speaking in Paris, I will meet them tomorrow. Probably it's a different crowd. See you soon, everybody. Thanks for the interest online. See you soon in person again.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks.