Welcome everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, investor relations contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure to host this Microsoft Teams webcast on our Q3 results. With us today are Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of INFICON, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO of INFICON. The management team will first present the results and then take questions. During management's prepared remarks, we request participants to turn their microphones and cameras off, please. During the Q&A session, participants are then invited to turn their microphones and cameras on when asking questions. You can add yourselves to the queue of people wanting to ask questions by clicking on the Raising My Hand icon. Alternatively, you can also use the chat function in MS Teams to ask questions in writing.
You should have received by now a press release on the Q3 2023 results, together with the link to the accompanying visuals for this web conference. All documents are available for download in the investor section of the INFICON website. I would also like to inform you that we record this web conference to archive the file later on the website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this MS Teams session may contain forward-looking statements that do not solely relate to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management, and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition.
We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would like to hand over now to Oliver Wyrsch. Oliver, please.
Welcome, everybody, to the earnings release of Q3 of INFICON. I'm very pleased to have so many in the call. Let me jump into our presentation for today. For the two sections, as an overview, first, I will talk about a couple of key messages, the figures of Q3, the target markets, and our expectations for 2023. After me, our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, will give you some more details on the financials, and we'll then also start the Q&A. With that, I jump into my presentation. Q3 results 2023. Very strong growth, continuous high sales. We are pleased with how we were able to grow and develop our markets. We had year-on-year growth in all regions and all end markets, except Semi and vacuum coating.
The supply chain is improving, but still impacts the margins and even some of the shipments. So if you look at the sales, 18% year-on-year growth to $170 million. The Semi Vacuum coating market slowed down a little bit, with -6% year-on-year. At the same time, we have good momentum in other markets with GenVac and RAC Auto, with record quarters in Q3. Again, INFICON's position with these diverse end markets shows a good resilience in more volatile times, and even some growth in this market. The organic growth was 17% year-on-year. There were some slightly positive FX effects. The order intake is, as expected, a bit lower, with a book-to-bill below one, however, not significantly below one year-to-date.
For the operating result, we have an improved operating income in the Q3 by 33% year-on-year to $34 million. The gross margin also improved by 1.3 basis points year-on-year. The lowering of broker costs helped. It's not fully gone, but it's gonna be around for a couple more months and impacting us, and we still have supply chain quality and availability issues in some of our product lines, but it has improved. The profitability, even with headwinds in this year, improved to 19.9% in Q3. Also, the cash generation has made big steps forward, with a record operating cash flow of +$38 million. Regarding organization, we continue our investment plans in R&D and also in production capacity.
We would expect our CapEx around $30 million for the full year. Having said that, I will jump into a review of the specific regions around the world. You see each of the three regions show growth. Asia, plus 15%. Europe, plus 34%, very dynamic. And North America, plus 9%. Interesting here also is that it's going in waves back and forth. North America had actually a very good order momentum also in Q3. So we stay optimistic for all three regions. All made good progress, with overall plus 18%. Then if I jump into the end markets, first, the semi and vacuum coating market. There is, in general, a softening in the market. Of course, we know there was a lot talked about this this year. For us, it's a mixed picture for 2023 and into 2024.
Mid and long term, very strong growth drivers for Semi, also for INFICON, we have a very strong pipeline of products and new applications and solutions in the works, and we are very optimistic for that. For this year, the main weakening is in the sub-market of memory chips, which is one of the sub-markets that INFICON plays in, but it doesn't have an as a dramatic effect as it maybe has with some of our peers. We assume also a recovery in 2024 of the usual semi cycle. What we've seen this year is some delay of some logic projects. There were also some delays in Q3. Not a dramatic falling off the cliff of the orders, in general, because also some of the markets have shown resilience.
One is the second-tier market or also the business with EUV. One important statement around EUVs for us, this partnership is a long term. The immediate development of the market is not noticeable necessarily for INFICON because these are long-term shipment plans. It's also important to notice that ASML is only one of our top customers, and our customer base is pretty spread out. We are probably the top 10, 15, so only makes up maybe a third, 30% of our customers. For ongoing investments in leading-edge nodes, we see a lot of interest in the new products, and we work with quite some customers on new R&D together with on R&D projects.
We see a general trend for increased sensors and process monitoring, even in a down cycle, and in a down cycle, it's more R&D than maybe projects, but the positive dynamic. Of course, the same initiatives are still globally ongoing, while maybe they are on the timeline a bit moved out. With that, I'll move on to the next market, automotive, R efrigeration, Air Conditioning. Very positive dynamic. We have, also here, a number one position in the market. Yes, the most dynamic market here is, probably the battery market. We have shown a good increase, sales increase also in this quarter of 38%, year-on-year. Strong across regions and product lines. It's a record quarter for us. Next to the battery, EV market, that shows very good, future opportunities and good growth right now.
Also, the RAC market has a very positive dynamic. In HVAC, we are number one player as well, and market have a good dynamic, also in this year and in this quarter. Also here, we see a good, strong R&D pipeline for INFICON with new products, applications, and solutions. With that, I'll move on to General Vacuum. Also, the General Vacuum market is in this year developing nicely. Of course, also here is the factor in it, where we ship more from the backlog when the supply chain improves more and more. But at the same time, orders are also not bad. And we have actually been able to show in Q3, again, a good sales increase of +44%, year-on-year. Strong growth in Asia and Europe, a record quarter also here.
Next to a couple of larger markets, you need to imagine that General Vacuum really has maybe 10-20 sub-markets that have very different dynamics. In there is solar and pharma and food and R&D centers, and a lot of OEM business and a lot of private label business. So it's a very mixed market that shows good resilience in 2023 as well. And with that, I go on to my last market, Security and Energy. As you probably know, Security and Energy has a bit of a different dynamic. A lot is driven through specific government initiatives. The most noticeable one is probably the HAPSITE DoD program, where we won quite a large amount of orders, and we also have a positive outlook.
This product line, and maybe in general, these product lines within this market, they struggle a bit more with the supply chain. They're relatively complex products. So here we are not able to ship as fast as we would like to, and we would also aspire to more stabilize this on a higher level, even beyond where we are right now. But also here, a very nice growth of +85% year-on-year, quarterly growth. And we would expect that we here will continually have a good momentum also in the future. With that, I would like to come to my last slide, the expectation for 2023. Given what I have said just now in the different markets, we see a solid order situation with a lot of different dynamics, but in aggregate, it's mostly optimistic.
For 2023, we're able to increase the guidance, and we will move the guidance from the prior level, $610 million-$640 million, to $650 million-$670 million, with an operating income approximately of 19%, where there we see also some upside potential. But we remain cautious in a general macroeconomic environment with a lot of risks and volatility. So thank you very much for attention on my part. Now I would like to hand over to the CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for some more details on the financials. Matthias?
Yep. Thank you, Oliver. Good morning. Good morning to everyone, and welcome to our Q3 call. I will cover, no surprise, the Q3 financials, and also will quickly comment our guidance. So now let me first start with the highlights for Q3. As expected, our orders ended lower than the Q2 , and we had a book-to-bill below 1. Our sales did grow by 18%, and our gross margin improved by 1.3 percentage points. And we achieved a 33.6% growth in operating income and had basically with 19.9% of sales the second best results so far in absolute values, I must say.
From a balance sheet point of view, CapEx has been lower than last year, but ended higher than in Q2 and also higher than in Q1. So this is increasing the cash flow, and net cash made a big jump in Q3, with a cash flow generation of close to $38 million and a net cash position of positive $17 million. Our equity ratio showed a solid and unchanged 60%. Now let me go a little bit into the details. First of all, we achieved revenues of $170 million in Q3. This compares to $143.8 million in the previous year, Q3 , and an increase of 18.2%.
Without foreign currency impacts, we had an increase of 17%. Oliver did already comment the development of the end markets. I think we can point out that sales in all markets except Semi and Vacuum Coating did grow. The biggest changes have been in Security and Energy, which increased by +85%. The General Vacuum expanded by +45%, and Refrigeration, Air Conditioning, and Automotive did grow by +38%. The Semi and Vacuum Coating, as mentioned, did decline by -6% compared to Q3 last year, but also and also had a decrease against the previous record quarter of about -13%. With that, the Q3 ended very close to previous Q2 level of $171 million.
The regional distribution of sales shows growth in all regions, and we had the highest growth in Europe with 34%, followed by Asia with 15% and North America with 9%. Gross profit margin increased by 22% in absolute numbers and reached 46.3% in Q3, up by 136 basis points compared to last year, Q3, and also higher than previous quarter by 128 basis points. The positive impact of higher volume, we had somewhat lower freight and duty expense, and finally, lower broker cost, was only partially, fortunately, partially compensated for by higher material prices, which are still existing in certain areas and some inventory-related costs. What happened on the cost side? On R&D, we spent $12.3 million, a plus of 7.9%.
Additional headcounts to support our development efforts on our projects and initiatives and some slightly unfavorable foreign currency impacts did drive this increase. In SG&A, the cost level did increase by 17% to $32.7 million. Here, personal expenses due to increased headcounts, higher performance-related compensation expense, but also several costs for initiatives in service, digitalization, and other areas are some of the drivers for this increase. The operating profit, as a consequence for the Q3 , reached a level of $33.7 million, or 19.9% of sales, after $25.3 million in Q3 last year. This corresponds to an increase of 33.2%. The tax expense, for this, for the Q3 was at $7 million, which represents a tax rate of 20.9%.
It's significantly lower due to one-off tax adjustments in Q3 of the prior year. The net profit, therefore, did grow by 47.8% to a level of 23... 26.3 million dollar, or 15.5% of net sales. This compares to 17.8 million dollar, or 12.4% of sales. Now let's move to the balance sheet. Our net cash reached $16.6 million, which is about $14 million higher than end of last year, and it's $32 million higher than at the end of the Q2 . So this was a big, big step forward. Returns for inventory decreased slightly to 2.4, and the DSO ratio had with 52.6 days, a similar level like Q4, but also like in the previous quarter.
Our working capital reached $222 million, or 32.6% of sales. The majority of that increase is contributed to around $16 million increase in inventory. Compared to previous quarter, the inventory level could be reduced, and this is now fortunately for the second time this year. So we could reduce in Q3 and also Q2 and also in Q3. Our operating cash flow, which you can see on the bottom right, developed very well. We improved clearly and reached $37.6 million and the best level we had so far. Balance sheet shows a solid structure with a 60% equity ratio, and yeah, which you can see on the left side in the balance sheet structure. Yeah, those were my comment on the Q3 results.
Let me now come quickly to the outlook. Oliver did already comment the assessment for the end markets and our view of the situation. Based on our situation, order book, order intake, and the overall business assessment in the end markets, we are mostly optimistic, and we expect a solid Q4. With that, we have increased our guidance for sales from up to $650 million to $670 million, and the overall income margin of around 19%, and in brackets, of course, we hope with some upside potential for the fiscal year of 2023. With that, I would like to close the presentation, and we are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your explanations. We have a couple of questions, and I would like to start with Martin Comtesse. Martin, please.
Good morning, everyone. First of all, congratulations on a very resilient Q3. I have three questions. First one would be on the gross margin. You've shown a pretty good uptick now in the Q3 . Can you just help us understand what the main driver is here? Is it really purely the improvement in procurement, or is it also an improving product mix? That would be the first one, and the second one is on the EBIT margin. Can you help us understand why you've actually lost 80 basis points, sequentially from gross margin to EBIT margin? You improved by 130 basis points on gross margin, but just on 50 basis points on EBIT margin.
Last but not least, it would also be really helpful if you could give us an update on the new U.S. export controls. Just help us understand how INFICON is positioned in that new context.
All right. Thank you, Martin. I will start, and then maybe start with question one and three, and question number two would be probably something more for our CFO. So yes, the gross margin is largely affected by the reduction of the cost in the supply chain, and the biggest part there is this broker cost for the chips. We have started out the year with some improvement in Q1. I think we said maybe a third reduction, and then we said just above half in Q2, and now this has further reduced. Important to note is that we still have inventory with the higher cost that we're eating through to the end of the year.
There is some smaller fluctuations in there always, product mix as well, but I would really say this is the biggest chunk in there. Maybe if you want to add something on the first question-
Yeah.
Matthias.
I also refer a little bit to my comment in my prepared remarks. So it was really one of the drivers, really, the broker cost, which did come in, or which now finally come in step by step, lower, at a lower level and not comparable, again, like the high levels which we experienced last year, especially last year. So it's getting lower. Also freight and duty, there is a little improvement in there. Nevertheless, yes, there is in some areas we still have broker cost to realize into our PNL, which are sitting on the balance sheet, so there's still some impact in there.
But overall, the trend is, I think it's good and positive and basically then the result at the end of the day, with some favorable improvements in broker, freight, and duty, and so on, but also we have some unfavorable entries and impacts with some inventory costs, where we had to adjust a little bit. So with that, we could increase by these 136 basis points from quarter- to- quarter. So it's improving, yes, and maybe I just continue, because one of your question was, why do you lose, right? Why are you losing in your margin, and the 1.3 percentage point is not flowing through?
Well, the explanation is basically in the green, and it's the operational costs. They are increasing, as you can see, over proportional to the sales and gross margin development. We had basically 26.5% in OpEx, as a % of revenue, coming from 25.5%... so there is an increase in there in terms of % of sales. And if you would ask, okay, well, where's the increase coming from? I try to explain a little bit. The majority is really people and performance-related bonuses and some of our initiatives, which we started quite some time ago, especially IT security, digitalization, cost some money.
We must make sure that we are safe and, and, also progressing and improving in some of these areas, and, and these are the impacts of that.
Yeah, maybe a general note on this. We're trying in these volatile times to stick to our overall long-term strategy for the next five to seven years. So there's a number of strategic initiatives, be it in developing markets or building up product development or developing new products and new applications are also on the internal with these initiatives that Matthias mentioned. And we try to go and independently a little bit from the specific quarter, develop further on these. So it's not directly connected with a specific quarter, if that's helpful. So maybe not to forget your third question, Martin. Yeah?
Would you mind me just following up? Sorry, just a quick follow-up on this one, 'cause it, it sounds very constructive, and don't get me wrong. I think you're close to the 20%. This is what we all looking for, so that's all good. I'm just trying to, on that note, to understand why Q4 should drop. 'Cause if I look at your new guidance, the top end is basically a sequential flat development on top line and, and on volumes, but yet you imply a significant decline. Is it just a, a cautiousness, a conservative measure, or should we expect some, some further decline in, in margins really in the Q4 ?
Maybe let me recommend, Martin. When we take a look to the year-to-date level, right? We are at 19.4%, right, of sales or in operating income. Q3 was very good, right? Really close. We touched really the 20% mark. And so we are year to date at 19.4%, and even if you continue with that one, we have a chance to, and we mentioned this, that there is upside potential in the margin if we can achieve it and realize it.
There are some dependencies and, to make this happen, the sales top line that we are able really to achieve maybe the high end, right, of the guidance. If this is happening, there is a chance for some upside a little bit, as we mentioned, but year to date, we are at 19.4%. Yeah, we try to work it and make it 20%, but we cannot be sure, right? There are so many influences and risk and revenue recognition issues typically at year-end, where you don't know exactly can you ship all what you intend to ship, even if it's ready.
There are still some unknowns, but for sure, we try our best, you can be sure.
Yeah, we keep pushing in a difficult year, I'd say, right? So, so yeah.
Yeah.
And maybe to the, to your last question, Martin, not to forget it, U.S. export controls. Something certainly that we've watched closely for many years. I think the most notable one is the one a year ago from the Biden administration, which really changed course in China, away from Tier one for now. And we've seen this uptick in second-tier investments. It's certainly also something that drove our revenue this year in Semi. If you look at other steps that happened since then, the one in the first half year, in the Q1 with Japan and the Netherlands, didn't affect us much. There was materially not so much that came out of it, that would affect us. Maybe something important to note is also that our business focus is largely in EUV versus DUV.
EUV this change has happened already, 2019, with these export controls to China. When we look at most recent news we had, we're analyzing it. At this point, we do not see a material negative impact for us. One thing is also important to note, maybe for INFICON, through our constellation, and being, a European-focused, company, where we ship a lot also, out of Europe, even though there's also U.S. business, of course, we have, in summary, rather more plus points than negative points as it turns out with the current export regulations versus maybe others in the market.
While at the same time, of course, we are not at all in favor of more export controls, quite the opposite, but for now, INFICON has shown to be well-placed to play in this more difficult times. And I would expect this to be roughly also like that in the future, while there's so much uncertainty, right? We have to closely monitor this and react, whenever there is new developments that are relevant to us. I hope this helpful, Martin.
That was very helpful. Thank you both.
Good. Thank you.
The next questions then come from Michael Foeth. Michael, please.
Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The first one is regarding the semiconductor industry and your relatively resilient sales into that market, and I was wondering if you can be a bit more granular, which products are doing particularly well and which are not doing so well? Which sort of sub-markets you're seeing more resilience in in semiconductor whether it's more end users or OEMs and which market segments? That would be the first question. The second one is regarding your strong sales level in the Q3 . You mentioned that backlog you can now finally work some backlog down because supply chains have eased.
I was wondering what the impact of that backlog effect is, if you strip that out, what is sort of the sales run rate that you have from orders that come in during the quarter and are shipped during the quarter? To help us understand what the run rate is going into Q4 and going into next year maybe. Thank you.
Mm-hmm. Sure. Thank you for this question, Michael. So maybe first on semi. To be honest, the statement though is not much different from what we have been saying prior, in prior quarters. For us, the semiconductor market breaks down into 5-10 sub-markets with different dynamics. We have roughly 50/50 business with OEMs and chip makers. With both, we have a high customer intimacy. That's also why, often during these times when it's a bit slower, we do a lot of joint development, which we very much appreciate, that we can work together with our customers on long-term projects. If you now look at the different sub-markets, I've maybe look at the two extreme.
One is, memory, in specific, a few of- not even actually all of these memory customers, be it OEM or end user, have of course shown quite some drop. However, what we feel and what we hear, and I think also is a bit market consensus, is we, we should be at rock bottom somewhere now. The question is now more, how is the optic? In what shape? Then, there's a few customers that have different investment strategies. If you just look at the Tier one logic, which is certainly an important segment for us, TSMC is a bit different than Samsung, that powers through with investments. And then Intel, who focuses and pushes in one area, and another area just slows down. So there is even there, a mixed pictures in leading-edge logic.
Maybe to add some more color, second-tier, NXP, Infineon Automotive, the ICAP space, is actually been relatively resilient. In particular, China has shown good momentum recently. That, of course, has a lot of political, geopolitical, and trade factors in it, but this has been a positive momentum there so far, with a lot of volatility and risk, in particular in China, of course. And then if you look at litho, for instance, no change really. The pace of the shipments is still high. The ramp is there. We continue to ship. Even if maybe the Dutch customers are not taking in as many orders, they still have an order book more than a year. So for us, there's no noticeable change really.
So for us, if that helps with this color, it is a pretty mixed picture between the regions and and sub-segments. Then maybe if I go to the second question, the book-to-bill or the order outlook, yeah, we've been diving deep into this topic many times this year, and it is a confusing situation, right? It's pretty mixed when we analyze. What I can tell you is that the book-to-bill in Q3 was, as expected, below 1, not significantly, and for the year, definitely not significantly. So we actually think that the order level, as we've seen it in 2023, is pretty flat. We look at this a little bit like the floor for next year, even though the dynamic of next year has a few question marks, specifically on the upcycle for semi.
But other markets have, though, a bit of a different dynamic, also. So we would say also there, it's optimistic look with a lot of question marks and a lot of things we have to monitor. Does that help, Michael, to add some color?
Yeah. Yes, thank you. But maybe just to put it differently, the midpoint of your guidance suggests sort of $160 million revenues in Q4. Would that be a good approximation for the run rate, or are you still expecting a lot of backlog effects to help in Q4 as well?
I mean, right, we were at one point there where we had Q11 of book-to-bill above 1, and of course, this has changed the last Q2 , but it hasn't dramatically changed. So while we have improved delivery times, specifically in some product lines, it's a bit schizophrenic. At the other end, there are still product lines where we really need to manage and push to really try to reduce the backlog. So also there is still a bit of a mixed picture, and the supply chain is still a factor for us that lets us not exactly determine how much can you ship in a quarter for a certain product line. So there is for us, we are mostly optimistic for Q4, too.
We see upsides, but we also see risks with downside potentials. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a difficult year, right, for making clear predictions.
Okay, thank you. That's, that's helpful. Thank you.
Sure. Certainly.
Thank you, Michael, for your questions. The next questions come from Jörn Iffert. Jörn, please.
Hi, and thanks for taking my questions. I will take them one by one, if it's okay.
Mm-hmm.
The first one, please, to come back on the book-to-bill. When you say it's slightly below one, I assume maybe 0.9 or so, around $150 million, which is still a pretty good run rate. But can you maybe help us to a little bit better understand, in the different segments where book-to-bill is significantly below one, where it's slightly above one, for example, that we can better understand this? This would be, the first question, please.
Yeah. Yeah, look, it's actually interesting. If you break it down into the three regions and into the four end markets, it's almost like waves going back and forth, the way we see it. There is nothing that really falls off the cliff, where we'd have to say, "Oh, no, this is going far away." You with your estimate, you're not far off. I think we, we'd probably be a bit more optimistic. But in the end, we would say that, semi has slowed down, yeah? But as expected. In a sense, you could almost say it came a bit later, and it was a little bit more resilient than maybe we thought, 12 months ago or 6 months ago, even.
There is also in that, some submarkets that, as I just explained to Michael, that do not show much impact, and some they show a lot. However, if you look at the most dramatic one, memory, we also believe it's somewhere around rock bottom. We don't know how much longer this is gonna go, but if you look in terms of trend, you would see an upward trend there, right? Somewhere. Might be slow. So, we are not so negative around semi, if that's the question. Of course, for us, GenVac has been very interesting. RAC Auto has been very interesting, and we there are pretty optimistic that this will continue. You need to imagine, for instance, the battery business this is a priority in China. It is pushed.
It becomes more and more in a priority in the U.S., in North America, and in Europe as well. So this dynamic is, of course, positive and long-term and relatively independent from the semi cycle. But if you look forward, there's no reason to be pessimistic for any of this for the short term, right? Well, again, yeah, there's macro. There was this question before from Martin on the export controls. This is all difficult territory to navigate, and so far it went really well, and we are also optimistic for the future, but there is so much unknown in there. Does this help a bit, Jörn?
Yeah, and just that I concluded correctly, it seems that you also, all the trends going into Q4, you don't see this to change a lot versus Q3, the remaining are relatively good levels, right? This would be my conclusion. Is this fair?
I mean, so far it was-
So far
... relatively flat, in general, right? There is, of course, product lines and regions that have ups and downs. Yeah.
Okay.
We are only at day 19, right, of Q4.
Yeah.
So the rest is-
Nobody knows exactly, but I just wanted to get a feeling how you think about it.
Yeah
... what's your thoughts about it? Okay, but got it.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
The second question, maybe please, on GenVac. Very strong results in Q3. You said order backlog was supported, but at the same time you also mentioned in the call the order intake was pretty good. So book-to-bill also only slightly below one, as I understood it. To what extent is this coming from market share gains, from your point of view?
Yeah, yeah. So certainly a question we also think a lot about. Again, this breaks down into 20-some markets, and then each region also, some even in the countries, you have a little bit different dynamic. I mean, what we see, maybe a few points, and then Matthias should also add a few thoughts from his side. I mean, North America has been positive in many of these submarkets, also in terms of order trends. Europe was a little bit catching up, but there is some kind of ups and downs, right? Then China has been resilient for us in these markets. I know, there's a lot of uncertainty, and there's a lot of things that change. But so far, this has been good on a broader basis.
It's not just battery and solar. So maybe that. A few thoughts, Matthias, you-
Yeah.
Can I add?
I only can add. Yeah, it's really across all regions, we must say. So the GV growth is in all three regions, but we can point out that the strongest growth is really in Europe and North America. Asia is more flat, but still green, right? So still growing, but a little bit lower than the other two regions. And there is a certain portion, of course, of private label business, which is going okay. And I also would assume that there are certain market share gains in there. Can I measure it and describe it?
It's difficult in the moment to give a good answer on that one, how much it is, but I'm pretty sure there's a certain portion in there. But it's mainly Europe and North America, if I compare Q3.
The last question, then I will go back in the queue, on this topic in GV. Which end markets exactly in North America and Europe? Because when we talk to other industrial companies, everything is weakening. The GTP-related businesses historically, GV was usually should also weaken. So it seems that something structurally is going on here, also on orders, not only on sales. So can you tell us which sub-end markets exactly in North America and Europe was good in GV?
Yeah, that's very difficult to say, Jörn. I don't think we have a clear answer for you to give you today in this platform. We look at them separately. W hat makes it difficult is first of all, we do not track all these sub-markets as much as we track the real big markets, specifically semi and its sub-markets. And the other thing is there is a lot of little peaks there that the supply chain causes. You need to imagine when you start to be able to ship in a certain product line to a certain region, then suddenly the customers change their order behavior, and then you have a little bit of an effect back and forth.
So there is a lot of dynamic in there. Well, where it's difficult in the specifics to find a trend. What we know is in the aggregate, it's, as just noted, it's pretty resilient. And above actually just reducing backlog and improving supply chain. I believe we have maybe go back to the products. You need to know we have a number of leading products in these markets, and there is a lot of OEM business where we are designed in. It's not something that radically changes for us.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you, Jörn. The next questions come from Marta Bruska. Marta, please.
Hi. Hello. I would actually like to follow up on what Jörn was discussing with you with regard to the book-to-bill ratio. Because you made a comment that the book-to-bill is below one, but not significantly. Then for the full year, it's definitely not going to be below one, even less significantly. So I was... I understand it's very difficult to predict, but it seems like the start in Q4 from the order intake was actually quite good. Or am I overinterpreting? Because I'm a bit more positive than Jörn. So I just wanted to ask whether you could give some further detail on that, and then I have two other questions.
Yeah, maybe a quick correction just to make sure I express myself correctly there. Year to date, I made a statement that it is not much below one, also Q3 did not fall off the cliff and is not so much of a change. What comes from here on out, I don't know exactly. We're analyzing, and we are mostly optimistic. There is no reason now to believe that anything should fall off the cliff as it hasn't during this difficult year, right, with the many different dimensions. But maybe just clarify, Matthias, if you-
I only can repeat what I said to Jörn, but at least the first 19 days, right, of October and Q4, they look okay. There is no negative surprise. Maybe it's even maybe slightly better than maybe the last three to four weeks, but this is just a little indication, right? At least it's not dropping. It's developing okay at the first 19 days, and then we will see what's happening the other 60, right? Something.
Yeah. It's also... There's a seasonality portion in there, right, regarding orders. July and August traditionally have been slower. That's just because of the season, and it's actually going across the regions.
Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.
So-
With regard to the Security and Energy, is that the increase still driven by the big order that you won back in Q4 2022, or are there new orders coming as well?
No, there is an ongoing flow of orders, but of course, this was really the biggest single order, right? So that's why we talked about it. But I mean, this is a new product line. It's just starting to ramp. This takes relatively long. So there's an order development dynamic, but that doesn't really actually much affect the current quarters, frankly. Even looking forward, we need to ship now, and then we need to ship more, and the shipment has been part availability and part quality from our suppliers. So it's a relatively complex product, and so we're working on that. And then you've seen that there's an overall increase, but also with some setbacks in between, right?
It's not a step forward all the time. This is not order-driven. This is mainly the supply chain.
All right. Thank you. That's very clear.
Mm-hmm.
And lastly, if I may, please, is it fair to assume that the sales guidance upgrade is driven predominantly by General Vacuum outperformance, or is it really broad-based, everything better than expected?
... No, I would say, this year has turned out, better than expected. Six or nine months ago, there was so much uncertainty, there was some uncertainty. There still is, I think, to be honest, but now we of course, are very close, to the end of the year versus where we were, in the beginning of the year. So, so we see a bit better what happens short term, always, and also specifically here, so, so we can be, more certain. We're still mostly optimistic, I have to say, but, but, but INFICON showed now, is, is a lot of resilience in difficult times, and, and at this point, we see no reason that, that it would, reduce. And we also don't see any, again, any kind of specific region or market falling off the cliff.
It's up and down, right? Sure. But in the aggregate, no.
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
Mm-hmm.
That was all from me. Thank you.
Certainly.
Thank you, Marta. The next questions come from Doron Lande.
Hi, good morning. Thank you very much. I have two questions. I want to come back, maybe to this ASML story from yesterday again. You mentioned that these are more long-term partnerships, but maybe you can elaborate how this difference between short-term and long-term looks like in those, in these dynamics, or more precisely, like, how would a weaker year of ASML still come back or trickle down to INFICON? Maybe a word of the sensitivity of that.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can just say that there is not much effect really. What orders they would take that they would be able to ship probably in 2025 somewhere. This doesn't change our shipment table. You need to understand that ASML is a very organized company. We learned to be very organized to work with them. So this is a fixed cycle time track that we go through, and this doesn't go up and down because of some orders really, that are maybe 12 months, 18 months out, right? So for us, this didn't change noticeably.
Hey, it's possible next year somewhere, if this continues, depending on the semi-cycle recovery shape, that there will be delays of the shipment, but this is so far out for us, and highly hypothetical at this point. It's important to know ASML is just among our big customers. But INFICON has, the last 10 years, really evolved a lot in this direction, to spread out the customer base. And this is what you maybe also see as a factor in this year's resilience. So even if a larger account, be it any one of these large semi-OEMs or end users has a slower CapEx year, this doesn't throw INFICON off the rails.
It's actually this year specifically, really like that, that they all have a different, a different dynamic. So one balances the other out pretty well, right? In summary. But ASML is a driver right now. It's one of the ones pushing, so in our perception, also looking forward.
Okay, thank you. That makes sense. Then my last question refers to the margins. You, we mentioned now the procurement costs are the main driver to, to relieve those inefficiencies in the margin. What could drive a margin expansion beyond that? First of all, what is the impact of the remaining inefficiencies in the procurement costs, and what could drive the margin expansion beyond that when we talk about margin in 2024, for example?
Yeah. I say, I will say something general, and I think, Matthias can flesh out a little bit. Look, with this question, we have, of course, almost every earnings release, and it's a fair question. Where is our gross margin development? Where is our OPING development? Look, profitability is important to us, but the number one is really go and gain the market share and develop new markets, open new applications, and that's what we're pushing for. You see this in our long-term investments, R&D or in CapEx. You see this in our long-term perspective, in our partnerships, and, we've been able to, push that forward, as well. So, for now, we see potentials, and we work on them, as a bit of a lower priority than the growth.
It is still a priority to further increase there, but the priority will always first be to get the markets, make the growth, and ship. That's why we accepted this additional cost in the supply chain. We accept the cost inflation while we, at the same time, renegotiate and develop. We work on our customer pricing, and we work also on our supplier pricing. But it is secondary to these growth opportunities that we will see, and we want to capture and exploit for the future. Maybe if you have a few more-
Yeah, maybe just to add, we commented that there is some progress, some easing of the broker costs, and this was one of the drivers in Q3, so we made some progress. I would assume that for Q4, the broker cost will maybe a little go down a little bit further, and maybe getting some relief. But I also must say that, for example, in Q3, we had some inventory-related costs we had to cover into the cost of sales, which did partially compensate some of the favorable developments. But I would say I'm a little bit optimistic that there is some little room, right, for to improve in Q4 on the gross margin.
At least I would not expect that it goes down based on today's knowledge. And yeah, as I said, your broker costs should lower in Q4 again, and that's basically the same assumption. Yeah, but then at the end, it's really what I mentioned also a few times, it's some mixed issues, right? Or mixed impacts which we also always have. Is it more, example, more low-margin business which you ship, and then at the end you have a mixed margin on that one.
You have this inventory costing and broker costs, which are impacting a little bit, and which we need to have under control and avoid surprises in there. But overall, as I said, I'm a little bit optimistic that there's a good trend.
Maybe one more word to give you some color on what we do in longer term. Look, the margin of INFICON is largely driven through leading-edge products, which you can then sell at a premium because you truly solve problems at the customer. So this is a long-term R&D effort. So there is a significant amount of effort going into that and into partnerships and into R&D projects to push that forward and make further steps forward. And this will translate, if successful, like it has in the past, into margin improvement. At the same time, we also launched a number of initiatives in the company for productivity, digitalization, optimization, operational excellence, how we work with the customer to streamline processes. So this, of course, has this target as well.
It is not something you will see quarter- to- quarter. So we strategically address it, and it's being worked on, and it is taken serious, and there's commitment behind. And over time, you will see the effects, when we make the respective achievements and gains. Hope this was also helpful.
Yes, very much. Thank you.
Thank you, Doron. The next questions come from Marie Ganval.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I'm just following up on the previous question that has been asked. So I'm just trying to understand the dynamic for your Q4 in the Semi Vacuum division. So given that the cycle is actually bottoming out at the moment, would you actually expect your Semi Vacuum division to increase sequentially in Q4? Or are you more expecting to see sort of like a lagging effect versus the cycle and see actually like recovery in the later part like in FY 2024? And what will be the drivers for Q4 in this division? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. That's a very specific question where, probably have to disappoint you. We'll not be able to give you specific guidance on the, on the end market for, for, for Q4, but I'll, I'll give you some, some, color for sure. Look, of course, this—many of these projects are a bit long term, we just before talked about, UV, right? This has absolutely nothing to do with what exactly happens in, in the current order situation and what we will ship. And then on, on some end, it does. I think the biggest impacts on... when you are in the quarter, what then will ship in the quarter is, is maybe, project delays, and we have seen some of them during this year.
It was specific customers that just moved out some projects, I think most notably, TSMC, Arizona, that we all read in the news. We also saw that these products, they exist, they will be shipped when we can ship it. So that is maybe something that will impact it. But, from where we came and all the different statements made of how we saw the development of orders this year, and how the supply chain improves, you can make a sequential, little, extrapolation based on that for Q4. But having that said, right, that would give you a lot of optimism. At the same time, we have seen so many volatilities, and we have been affected by them. Just because of the mix, it is a bit more hidden away in the aggregate.
So we still are cautious because we have been affected by different effects like this, and it needed a lot of navigating through this with our customers and partners through this during the years. I don't know, Matthias, if you have-
No
... anything else to add?
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Helpful, Marie.
Thank you, Marie. Next questions come from Reto Huber.
Good morning, everyone. Two left from me. The first one relates to your capacity that you have expanded. I was wondering, the $82 million revenues that you had in semi last quarter, I mean, in Q2 , and how close is that to your maximum capacity of a typical quarter in 2024?... if there were no external factors like supply chain issues.
Hmm. Okay.
But then maybe, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, you can, we come back. And so maybe to answer this question... Thanks, Reto. It's actually, that's a very refreshing question, because that's truly what I'm thinking about now with the management team. How do we prepare for when, the, the next jump comes, in specific, in, in semi? In order not to maybe, have a, a similar slow ramp as, as we all experienced after this COVID, slow down and then speed up.
Not much has changed in our strategy in a sense, if I could quickly recap, because we actually haven't talked about it, at least for Q1 . We have now two years where we dramatically invested, and somewhere 50%, and actually some sub-product lines even have a higher factor of output versus prior. This, the growth spurt. So we do have enough capacity to make a growth step in most product lines. Right now, we are restrained actually in our high runner, still to the supply chain, and they're actually a bit less through part availability, but more the quality. It's also about stabilization of the processes, and there has been a little bit of a movement in the supplier base as well, right? So some struggled more than others.
So, the focus right now is a bit more on supply chain, to really make this more resilient and more scalable for the next step. And now also, of course, will help us in the immediate, next quarters or current quarters. But, as you can see, when you look at our CapEx numbers that have been above $30 for the last two years, and also this year is not much of a reduction. As you maybe recall from my Q1 , I believe, we already had to make a little bit of a correction upwards back then for this year, because of the demand we had from different areas, different markets, but also including semi. And this is still an ongoing program that hasn't finished.
We're just currently at the step of expansion, and then there will be another step end of the year, and we look as we go, how we can increase. The advantage is a bit now that the lead times for the expansion is not as long anymore, as before, because the tooling doesn't have as long, delivery times as before. So we get a little bit more flexibility there. But again, if you look at our CapEx, you see our commitment to the growth and trying to stay ahead, of what might come and when it then exactly will come, right? Let's say, I think the consensus is around, Q2 next year, maybe mid-year. So if you think, investment programs, this is not so far away.
Okay, but if you, if you stop today, your limit would be at around $90 million or $100 million per quarter in semi?
Yeah, that is difficult to say, right? So many different products.
It's... I think maybe, just let me comment a little bit. Just to give maybe a broad picture, right? So today, we forecast $650 million, around $650 million+, in that area. If you would ask me, "Okay, what can you do, right, with your maximum capacity?" Maybe we have capacity in place, assuming a normal mix and ups and downs and so on, and of course, some question marks, maybe the capacity can support a revenue level of $750 million, right? In that range, plus, minus, maybe even to $800 million-
Yeah
... depending on shift models and so on. There's some room to maneuver around, but this is something we should be able to do, right? With the installed capacity, with the planned capacity. You, Oliver mentioned, right, we still plan to have around $30 million this year in CapEx, which is a substantial number for the third year, basically. So that's just to give you a feeling, right? So we are not at the end, I cannot tell you, but in security energy, we are at 110, and the other, we are at 98. That's not the way we manage the business, but overall, I think that's a realistic number what I gave you.
There's room, certainly.
There's room, yeah.
Yeah.
So we are not-
Okay, there's room. Okay.
Yeah.
Very good, thank you.
Thank you.
And then the second one, you sounded quite upbeat on the RAC market.
Mm-hmm
... refrigeration, air conditioning. What, what is driving that? Is that the heat pumps or, or, what's going on there?
Yeah, I mean, this is a big variety of products in there. In general, the RAC Auto market is really also again 5, 6 markets, if you look at big, bigger chunks, and then it breaks down. There's also after sales service in there that goes pretty well, handhelds. But then there's battery in there that goes really well, obviously. But then HVAC has been pretty resilient. There is certainly also a China effect in there, certainly for the first half of this year, and there is a supply chain easing and more shipment effect in there, but we don't see a slowdown of orders necessarily.
Okay.
Your question is, has that something to do with energy transition? Potentially, possibly, yes. We haven't identified respective trends yet. We're actually looking into this currently. It's not entirely clear for us yet. We'd happily say yes, but we wanna really fully understand, right? There's actually kind of interesting dynamics there. That's a fun question maybe for another time to talk about new markets, new opportunities from hydrogen, green fuels up to carbon capture, whatever. There's a lot of fun stuff, right? We could talk about energy-wise. I can't give you that today as a clear trend.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Interesting. Many thanks. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Reto. We have two more questions in writing. Tobias Schulte wanted to know by how much did the brokerage costs impact Q3?
Uh...
I can give a big picture. While you can crunch numbers in your head. Look, last year were 15%-18%, and the trajectory this year was one-third fell away roughly in Q1, a bit under a half fell away in Q2, and in Q3 it was a further improvement. So we're definitely below a half of this. Now, what I gave you is a full year number, but you are, of course, very good at numbers, so you could break it down a little bit.
Mm.
I think it will go away until end of the year. We have been, though, a little bit surprised with this during this year, right? We have actually expected this to much more reduce already earlier in the year, and it hasn't, and we needed to ship. We needed to ship more, and we needed to also go on a difficult supply chain to acquire more of these chips. One point is important also there. It is not one chip and one product line. INFICON has, while maybe a few key product families, it does have variations of it, and they use different chips, and it has jumped around a bit where the bottlenecks were. So some have really truly improved, and I think they are probably in the green for future, and some haven't.
So a lot affected by automotive chips, because many of the same product family we use in our sensors, 'cause they have the right type of specs for us. So while this has been motoring away this market, this has a little bit given us the trouble in the supply chain. So again, I think until the end of the year, it will probably be mostly disappearing with our current understanding.
That's what we hope, and to give you a feeling, it's what we account for in the Q3 is in the range of 0.4%-0.6% of sales.
Thank you for that. Christoph Grau looks into world regions again, and he writes: "You said that you see some signs of improvement in China. Could you perhaps elaborate on this a little bit more? In which areas do you see improvements, and how sustainable is the growth, in your opinion?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe then that needs to be a little bit corrected. We don't necessarily see improvement in China. The dynamic in China overall has been, for us, the following: there was the opening up, and there was a tremendous boost in orders, and there was also a tremendous improvement on the supply chain, so we could ship from the backlog. So at that point, the orders and the shipping was almost disconnected. And then there was this change of first tier, which, as you know, a lot of our advanced sensors go into, and they changed to the second tier because of this new export controls.
That also happened in the course of H1, and what then happened is this doubling down on second-tier ICAP automotive chips, and we have seen great dynamic there, in Semi, in China. Now, then, there's a couple more markets. I'm repeating myself here, but trying to give a good picture for you as an answer. Battery, solar, and a couple of other of these industries where we are supplying our products to, these are state-sponsored priorities, and China's leading the market, and they push forward with this. So they're nearly independent of a specific market dynamic. Also, when China now seems to have quite some structural issues and other macro issues, so that's one of the dynamic. So you could say, yeah, battery is...
We expect growth, and we expect it in China because that's the biggest market today. Other markets will certainly also invest and might even catch up quite a bit. We will see. But for now, these markets, they have been pushing. Now, the general Vacuum market goes back to what I said earlier. This is so many submarkets, and we do not always see to the end of it. We have private label partners a lot in there. We have distributors in there. Our products go to OEMs, get integrated in a larger product, so there's a bit more murky there. We have been in the high-tech industry with most of this, and this has shown good resilience this year.
As for an outlook, I would struggle, because there is so many adverse factors in there. At the same time, China has time and again shown its agility and its ability to push and grow. I think many people have analyzed this. I would not be able to make a better analysis than that. It's a bit uncertain for the future, but but it will stay an important market for us, and the recent dynamic has been good. Maybe if you want to add something.
I think that's a-
Mm
... good summary, well, of it, right? But maybe, yeah, maybe one more comment. It's more we see. We did see in Q3 a very good refrigeration, air conditioning-
Mm
... automotive market development, so this was a positive development, not negative, not stable. We did see in GV, in General Vacuum, more stable development, so no slowdown to be seen versus the previous quarter. So I see positive. GV stable. Security, energy, very, very difficult, as we know. It's very volatile and project-driven. I think there is no real trend to be mentioned, and semi is a little bit weaker, as we mentioned, right?
Mm.
But that's a high-level summary, I would say.
Hopefully that was helpful.
I'm sure it was. Thank you, gentlemen. That was the last question that we have so far. Maybe you want to close our session with a closing remark.
Yes. Thank you very much, Bernhard. Thank you, everybody, for joining today, for the lively discussion, the good questions. I'm looking forward to seeing you again in the new year. We'll give our best to push forward. We are really happy of what we see in the horizon and what kind of things we can do mid-term, long-term in particular, so more to come soon. But for now, I'd like to close the session and wish you a wonderful day. Thank you.
Thank you.