Thank you for reminding me to switch on the microphone. I start all over again. Good morning, and welcome everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure to host the Microsoft Teams session of our live results conference here in Zurich. Thank you for joining the INFICON conference on its fourth quarter and full year results. With us today are Lukas Winkler, CEO of INFICON, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO. The management team will first present the results and then take questions. During the management's prepared remarks, online participants are kindly asked to turn their microphones and cameras off. You should have received by now a press release on the Q4 and full year results, together with the link to the accompanying visuals to this web conference, and also the link to the annual report.
All these documents are available for download in the investor relations section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com. We are broadcasting a live conference via Microsoft Teams. We just ask online participants to post their questions preferably in the chat function in Microsoft Teams in writing. This should be the second icon on the top right-hand menu. Management will then read out your questions and answer them after the prepared remarks. The live audience, of course, here in the room, will be able to ask questions orally. I would also like to inform you that we record this web conference to archive the audio file later on the INFICON website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this Microsoft Teams session may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts.
These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial conditions. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.
Hallo. Bernhard Schweizer
whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would now like to hand over to Lukas Winkler. Lukas, please. Thank you for your patience. We just have some issues with the presentation, but it should show presently. I think we have to live with that.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our conference this morning. Looks like we have a little small screen here live. I have to apologize for that. A few weeks ago, I would have made a funny joke and maybe even made a remark about the sudden death of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the circumstances in Ukraine, it probably would be out of place. Let me make at least one remarkable remark. I've been here probably 15x+ in this Haus zum Rüden, presenting the annual results, and we always had good and nice weather. That's a fact. That's not a joke. Even today, it's beautiful out there. It's a lovely, calm morning. With that, let me just jump. Yeah, jump is easier said than done. I cannot even move. Probably need some technical help here.
How do I go to the next slide? Now I have it, but it doesn't, the arrow wasn't working.
Yeah, that's.
Oh, it gets bigger and bigger. Thank you. Let's start with the fourth quarter 2021, with a new record quarter that we had in growth in all regions and in all markets, with the exception of security and energy market, which actually last quarter of 2021 was behind the last quarter of 2020. The sales growth was primarily driven by two facts, semiconductor market and China. Those two facts generated this huge growth that we had in the last quarter of last year. Book-to-bill ratio is again above one, which means that we have, of course, also a record backlog, which is on one hand, very nice to have.
On the other hand side, it's a pity that we had to increase our lead times, and our customers don't like that, and they have to suffer unusual high delivery times from INFICON. The organic growth rate was close to 25% above the last quarter of 2020, which again shows the very healthy market and also our healthy market position in those target markets.
It's good. Yeah.
Can I please ask you to mute yourself? Otherwise, we might get some disturbance here in the room. Thank you very much. The gross profit margin suffered. It was a little bit below the last quarter of 2020, primarily driven by the fact that we have to pay very high premiums to get our materials in order to be able, at least, to deliver certain products, especially the brokerage fees that we have to pay to get electronic components went through the roof. Nevertheless, we ended the last quarter with a new record level also on the operating income side and finished with a 21.5% of revenue. Now, let's move to the full-year figure. Here we clearly can say all markets and all regions contributed to growth.
Our smallest market, you will see that later, did only contribute a little bit to the growth, overall. Semi and vacuum coating market, I really have to say it was primarily the semiconductor market, not the vacuum coating market, that actually did contribute to the growth. If you have to highlight one region, it's clearly Asia again, and inside Asia, it's primarily China. Overall, we for the first time reached CHF 500 million. I still remember some of your faces probably heard the term 10 years ago that we like to reach CHF 500 million by 2020. Michael is smiling. Now with one year behind the schedule, we reached the CHF 500 million, and that's a good, I think it's a very nice milestone that we reached.
Even on the bottom line, we reached $100 million operating income, which was a target 10 years ago as well. Now finally, we can say, yes, we reached this very important kind of landmark and target. Now we can focus on the next big step forward. What I have said for the last quarter of 2021 is almost true also for the full year. Again, driven semi, it's China. Gross profit margin, a little bit higher, but really not much. Given the growth, we expected a better gross profit margin. But as I said before, material supply issues made it impossible for us to improve our gross profit margin. Of course, we had higher overhead costs as well, driven by more people. We now have more people in R&D and sales as well as marketing.
We had to accrue for higher bonus expenses, given the fact that we reached a record year. On the operating income side, as I mentioned, the 20% has not been reached yet, but at least we reached $100 million. Next time we have to hopefully talk about the 20% plus, on the operating income side. Graphically, you can see it here, the breakdown into our target markets, dominated now by the blue color, which represents the semiconductor vacuum coating market, and then followed by the general vacuum market, a more industrialized R&AC automotive market, and the small contribution from the security energy market, which is 4%. But more, I think, remarkable, I have to move to this side, huh?
More remarkable is the trend that you see on the bottom of the chart, where you see the breakdown into the three large regions that we serve. Asia now has reached the size of Europe and North America together. That's a kind of impressive, pretty impressive move if you look at the trend starting in Q1 2019. Now at the end of 2021, it really went up and through the roof. Again, the major contributor was China, but all the other Asian countries behaved very well as well. Now let's go market by market. I start with the smallest one, the security and energy market, where we had a little bit better result from a sales point of view than the year ago.
Nevertheless, it was a disappointing year for us, primarily due to the fact that we never reached a larger order from the U.S. Department of Defense because we did work on a new product, and I have to move to that side again. Now, the new product you see on the lower right side. With that product, we expect actually that the U.S. Department is going to start reorder again. We already had first discussions, and they tested already, so technically we are ready. Now we are just depending on the release of certain funds from the U.S. government to actually go into next round of investments for those warfare detection portable instrument. Now, having said that, at least there are two positive elements that I like to highlight, and the positive elements are coming clearly from the energy market.
On the energy side of this market, we did increase revenue based on the fact that we finally get the breakthrough with our portable gas line monitoring device that people can carry and find leaks in those gas distribution pipelines that are buried underneath the streets. We signed up an agreement with the largest U.S. service provider. They switched completely to the INFICON product, so we will continue to grow that sector as well. The second contributor to this energy positive element on energy side is the biomethane market, where we get a nice contribution to the top line based from customers in primarily from France, but also from Italy, where they now started to inject biomethane into the gas distribution system.
They have to make sure that the biomethane has the highest degrees of 99.999% purity. Otherwise, it should not get injected into the grid that distributes the natural gas. We expect for 2022 growth, primarily driven by the fact that the U.S. Department of Defense should start reordering products again. There are some programs that have been announced already. I'm quite confident that 2022 will be better than 2021. Now going to the next market, the refrigeration and air conditioning automotive market, where we now have the COVID year behind us. 2020 was clearly affected by COVID-19, especially in the car industry. Probably you remember that the car manufacturer stopped their production when the pandemic started, and so we suffered as well in 2020.
Now we are clearly in the post-COVID era, so there are some catching up effects that we have seen, again from the automotive industry, whereas the R&AC industry remained relatively robust. The single biggest contributor in 2021 is now coming from the battery testing market for new lithium-ion batteries that the eCar industry desperately need. With our know-how that we have established in the R&AC market as well as in the traditional car manufacturer markets, we were in a pole position to also get the number one position in the supply for our leak detection products to this very interesting and fast-growing lithium-ion battery testing market. Why do they need to be tested? Very simple. A leaky lithium-ion battery filled with liquid electrolytes will catch fire immediately if it gets exposed to oxygen.
Therefore, every battery package that will be built into an eCar needs to be tested at least on two levels, and that's where we have our products very well positioned to gain market share. I do expect this tendency going on even for the next two-three years because it's already clear that there is no new battery technology available, mass production for the next probably three-five years. Everybody needs to have enough capacity to build up the huge demand for lithium-ion batteries in the eCar industry. The second growth driver is coming from our handheld after-service product market, where we actually sell products that are not as expensive as a traditional INFICON product. We talk about prices around a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand. They're used in 10,000s by the after-sales industry.
For the first time, we reached more than $20 million, and we expect going to $30 million relatively quickly. We have established a nice distribution network around the world to have access to all the local and regional wholesale distribution network, so that everybody knows our products is going to use those handheld battery-powered after-sales products. Overall, we have reached almost $100 million in 2021, and I'm 100% sure in 2022 we will have a three-digit million-dollar figure at the end of the year. Having said that, let's move to our largest market by size but also by opportunities. It's the semiconductor and vacuum coating market. I really have to focus on the semiconductor side because on the vacuum coating side, I do not expect huge growth.
I'm happy enough if we can keep the normal trend that we have, defending our market share and optics business and get our business out of the OLED display technology. As I said, I do not expect huge progress on the vacuum coating side. The semiconductor market shows a number of quite interesting growth opportunities for us, driven by the demand itself, driven by technology changes. People are now going down to 7 nm, 5 nm, so they need to invest in a very expensive EUV lithography tool. Driven by process changes with new chemicals. Driven by geopolitical announcements that everybody around the world, the U.S., Europe, as well as Asia, announced government subsidies to push on establishing what they call a regional semiconductor industry to get more independent from the others.
Everybody is fully aware of the situation that today, one of the most critical supplier, TSMC, is located in Taiwan, and Taiwan is another hotspot from a geopolitical point of view that nobody wants to have a critical strait situation soon. Therefore, big players such as Intel, Samsung, TSMC, announced investments outside of their home territory. That's where we get our tailwind as well. The second element that contributes to this growth opportunities is the fact that we still gain market share, especially in the market for pressure measurement products. Here, we actually get some tailwind based on the fact that there's a huge growing industry for equipment manufacture in China, and they prefer non-American products.
Our market share for our pressure measurement products in China is much higher than outside of China, just based on the fact that the products are made in Europe and not American technology. The second part is coming from the new products. We're still looking for expanding our coverage in the semiconductor market on both sides, on the equipment manufacturer side, as well as on the end user side, with new ideas. Those of you who attend the technology day probably have heard the first time about this Expart technology, is a kind of a special coating that we offer. That business will contribute a double-digit figure for the first time in 2022 as well. Then we have two more technologies that are more targeted to the end user market.
Monitoring those advanced manufacturing processes where we have three key customers already doing tests, and I expect some, not double-digit yet probably, but close to double-digit figure coming from those new products as well in 2022. It's a combination of market share gains, market drivers itself and new products that's why we are so confident that 2022 will be another great year. I think it will even go into the year 2023 and not stopping by the end of 2022, because the bottlenecks are still out there. As you know, building up a new fab takes more than just one year. Therefore, I'm pretty convinced that we will have a growing semiconductor market for the next 24 months.
Now, last but not least, in the general vacuum market, I would call it now more post-COVID area, we profited from a rebound in the business in Europe, especially with our private label partners that we have. China is really at the top list of the growing markets that we serve around the world. Due to those elements, the European private label market and especially the American general vacuum market did contribute the most to our top line in 2021. I expect a continuation of that now having already two months of 2022 in our books. We see already that there is no change in the dynamics compared to the year 2021. Overall, again, 2022 will be a good year for our general vacuum products that we sell to the market.
Now, I will stop my part of the presentation with this outlook slide. If you read all the lines below the title, you see all the good reasons from the market point of view, why we will have a good year, market-wise. Now comes the big but, the success of what we can reach by the end of the year heavily depends on our own capabilities to fix the bottlenecks that we have as soon as possible. We're working very hard on expanding buildings, changing setup in the buildings, adding new processes because the volumes are much higher. We need a new, especially for products that are a little bit bigger. I'm thinking about leak detectors, where you have to also some physical kind of challenges because those products are quite large.
We work hard on adding new tools to be able to calibrate all the products that need final calibration. As you know, the calibration is a part of our IP. We have to build our own calibration tool. You cannot buy them. They need to be designed and built and fitted out with software algorithms. Last but not least, we are working very, very hard on fixing material shortages that we have. This is probably by far the toughest part of the expansion program because we depend on others. We cannot just influence it directly. This is also where we suffer the most, is really coming from the supply side. Inside the supply side, it's primarily electronic parts. Although it's kind of a how you call it? The snake that bites its own tail.
We supply the electronics industry, but we depend on them as well. I can give you at least one example. I have one large customer, I'm not telling the name, who insisted on using computers that have his chips built in. Now, we do not get the chip, so we cannot ship the product. This is kind of the, this, the—as I said, the snail or the snake that bites its own tail. The question is always who should influence whom, and who should suffer? Because there is limited products available, so people talk about allocation. Unfortunately, it's the sad thing about it, there is this industry in between, they call themselves brokers.
They make a ton of money just by hoarding some of the electronic components and then reselling it, not just 10% more. We are talking about factors. Give you an example, we have reached now for the first time a factor that has three-digit. So it's 100x more expensive than two years ago. With that, let me just make one final comment. This is also why we have kind of a broad range on the guides between $550 and $600, depending on ourselves, not depending on the market. On the operating side, at least we should see the 20% on the bottom line. If we don't reach that, I would be very much disappointed. With that, I'd like to hand over to Matthias, who can explain you all the details in our financial numbers. Thank you very much.
We take your questions later.
Thank you, Lukas. Yeah, good morning, everyone. It's a sunny day. After two years, again, a physical meeting. This is also very nice, I would say. On my agenda for items is Q4, the fiscal year results for FY 2021, the dividend, and the outlook. I will quickly comment. Let's start here with the sales. As you have seen in the press release, and as Lukas already mentioned, our revenue for the fourth quarter was $144.5 million, which compares to $116.9 million in Q4 last year. This represents an increase of 23.6%. Taking into account the negative currency impact and a small contribution from acquisitions, our organic growth was 24.6%. Lukas did already go into the markets.
We can highlight that the sales in all markets except Security Energy did grow in Q4, especially the Semi and Vacuum Coating market had a strong increase of about $25 million or 48% compared to Q4 last year. Compared to Q3, we had an increase of 18.2%, and all markets showed growth. Also here, the Semi and Vacuum Coating market did stand out with about 31% increase. With that, the fourth quarter was our record sales quarter in history. Now let's turn to the regional sales distribution. Compared to previous year, we had the highest growth in North America and Asia, with 33% and 31%. Both regions showed a strong growth in Semi and Vacuum Coating. Europe showed a slight increase of 3.7%.
On the next slide, we see some other financial data. The gross profit margin reached 46.7% in Q4, slightly down by 44 basis points and nearly stable compared to previous quarter, Q3. The positive impact of the higher volume was partially offset by rising material prices and strongly increased broker fees, freight, and duties. What happened on the cost side? We spent $11.5 million on research and development in Q4, an increase of 8.5%. Additional headcounts, higher bonuses, and higher internal and external costs related to our development efforts did drive this increase. In selling, general, and admin, the expense level increased to $24.9 million or 7.8%. Higher commissions and performance bonuses, plus additional headcounts, partially lowered by slightly favorable foreign currency expense, have been the main driver for that increase.
As a result, the operating profit for the fourth quarter achieved 31.1 million dollars or 21.5%, after 21.5 million dollars or 18.4% last year, Q4. This is an increase of around 45%. Compared to our previous quarter, Q3, the result did improve by 41%. The tax expense for the fourth quarter was at 4.2 million dollars, which represents a tax rate of 13.8%, due to the profit mix of our international entities lower than last year's Q4 rate. The net profit therefore reached 26.3 million dollars or 18.2%. This compares to 17.1 million dollars or 14.6% in the prior year. A 54% increase in absolute numbers. A similar increase we see in the earnings per share.
This went up and stands at $10.76 in Q4. Now let's move to the balance sheet. Our net cash in Q4 ended at $54.6 million, which is about $14 million higher than last year. Our operating cash flow, which is here on the bottom corner, developed more or less stable, and we reached a level of $19.8 million, representing about 14% of sales. The inventory turns reached 3.2, better by 0.4 turns compared to last year, and slightly better than Q3. Working capital, which consists of accounts receivables, inventory, minus accounts payables, closed at $151.8 million, clearly higher than last year.
$18 million increase in accounts receivables due to the record sales in Q4 and about $40 million higher inventory levels are the main reasons for that jump. The DSO ratio increased slightly and ended at 52.4 days, but still payment morale and behavior of our customers is still very good. The balance sheet shows a very solid structure, 69% equity ratio and no long-term debt. With that, my comments for the balance sheet in Q4 are finished, and I switch over for full year. Revenue for the full year in 2021 reached $515.8 million, after $379.8 million in the previous year, which corresponds to an increase of 29.7% or around $118 million.
Excluding currency effects of +2.5% and the minimal contribution from acquisitions, this represents an organic increase of 27%. As already commented by Lukas also here, and you can see it in the chart, we are able to grow in all end markets and the vacuum and, so semi and vacuum coating end market had a plus of 37% and the strongest growth. All end markets. In all end markets except the security and energy market, we also did reach new annual highs. Now let's take a look at the regional development for the full fiscal year. Asia, our largest region, did grow by 44%, reaching $284 million and about 48% of our global sales.
This increase was mainly driven by strong sales in semi and vacuum coating, where we had a growth of nearly 50%. North America, with a 25% share, did increase by 22% and all markets did grow. Europe has now a share of 26% and of global sales and did grow by 15%. Next page, the gross profit for the full year reached 47.9%, showing an increase of 62 basis points compared to previous year. Also here, higher volume was partially compensated by the rising material prices, increased broker fees and logistic costs. Turning to the costs, we spent $47 million for the full year on R&D, an increase of 20.5%. In SG&A, similar picture, a little bit lower, but cost increased by 14.2%.
Here we had, again, a higher variable compensation, more headwinds and some unfavorable foreign currency impacts as the main drivers for that increase. The operating income, as a result, reached $100.4 million or 19.5% of sales, after $61.9 million in the previous year. Year-on-year, the tax expense increased by approximately 82% to $19.3 million, which gave us then a tax rate of 19.4% on average, compared to the low 17.7% in the previous year. The net profit reached $80.3 million or 15.6%, which compares to $49.3 million in the previous year, an increase of 63%. The earnings per share reached $32.87, going up about the same level as the net income.
Now, also here, let's take a quick look at some balance sheet data. Some we have already seen. The operating cash flow for the full year increased to $85.1 million or 16.5% of sales from $50.5 million in previous year. CapEx, capital expenditure, were at $30.3 million, substantially higher and more than double due to heavy investments in capacity, buildings, machinery and equipment. The working capital I already commented closed at $151.8 million, and the equity ratio ended at 69%. Now let's move on to the next item, which is the dividend or the distribution.
As you know from our earlier communication in Q3 and also from the CapEx data we typically share on a regular basis, we invest substantial amounts in 2021 and also in the current year in our growth with additional capacities and we still foresee a higher distribution to our shareholders. The Board of Directors has decided to propose to the shareholders at our AGM end of March a distribution of CHF 21 per share. This is about 30% increase compared to last year and represents roughly 70% payout. 3.10 francs will come from the remainder of the capital contribution reserve and will be free of tax deduction, and CHF 17.9 will be paid out as an ordinary dividend.
This also means that with that, we will return approximately $56 million back to our shareholders. The payout is expected to take place on the sixth of April. Now, as a last item, I quickly come to the outlook.
Hold on. Here it is. It's too slow or I'm too fast. Outlook. Lukas did already go into the detail of the assessment and our expectations of the end markets. Based on our order book, our order intake, and the overall business situation in the end markets, we are quite positive for the start of the year. Also, we must say that due to the current geopolitical situation, the forecast is generally somewhat a little bit limited and difficult. Nevertheless, we expect sales between $550 million and $600 million and an operating income of over 20% for fiscal year 2022. With that, I would like to close the presentation. We are now ready to take your questions. Maybe we start with the audience privilege of being present. Michael, please.
Yes. Thank you. Congratulations for reaching $500 million.
Thank you.
The question would be: What are the ambitions now going forward for the next five years?
Yeah.
The second question would be, you mentioned that you expect growth in security and energy, and also growth for your HAPSITE products-
Yeah
From the U.S. Department of Defense. Now, given the geopolitical situation, the crisis in the Ukraine war unfortunately generates demand generally for those products. Do you expect any, or have you received already any indications that you will get more demand for HAPSITE products relating to that uncertainty?
No, directly as a consequence of the situation in Ukraine, we haven't had any additional inquiries, and the plans that we have with the U.S. Department of Defense are long-term plans. They work on a new program where we will be a part of it and there's probably. They might accelerate one or the other project, but if you ask me, did we already receive some additional requests? The answer is clearly no. Now, to your first question, which is our next ambitious goals, we are not ready yet to disclose that, but we have some meetings planned to discuss about what should we disclose or should we talk about what will be our next big milestone.
Thank you. Maybe just one add on on financials. In your guidance for over 20% margin, what's the underlying gross margin assumption? Will it remain under pressure, and is all the uplift coming from higher sales, or will the gross margin recover?
Not in 2022. Maybe a little bit depending on the product mix, but not based on the pricing pressure. I believe that we might not even have seen the worst in certain cases. We see some relief, yeah, in some mechanical components, but we do not see any relief yet from the electronic side of the business.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Yep. Going to the next one.
Digging into the margin discussion, where do you see the biggest change in the fixed cost? Because you are installing new capacity, so you should have fixed cost high. On the other hand, you have quite an average. You have said that the range of total guidance is quite broad, with 7%-13%. Could you help on that? Is it 20%+ a 7% growth, or is it already targeting 17%? Or let's say midpoint is 12.5, something like that. Where are we here?
We have not even discussed about all these details, but what I tell you is that the impact on the fixed cost might not be that dramatic. The fixed cost. There will be some increase, but based on the fact that we invest in buildings as well, not just in equipment, and usually investments in buildings have a longer depreciation rate. Matthias would know the details better, but I think we are talking about 20-30 years for buildings. For tools, we only talk about maximum of 10 years. Therefore, there will be an impact, but I don't expect a huge impact from an addition of the fixed cost.
Can you remind me of the CapEx for this year then, and do you capitalize them on risk capacity growth?
Yeah, we do. This year we probably be around CHF 20 million-CHF 30 million again. Certainly above CHF 20 million, maybe not above CHF 30 million.
The bonus increases.
No.
I'm kidding because it's.
No, it will not because.
lower because
No, it will be low. Exactly.
You heard it, right? Okay.
Way higher than last year, so in order to get the same level of bonus, we have to deliver a huge progress on the growth side.
Okay. Because you start discussion. Also another question, as Michael asked about the effect of the Ukrainian war. I'm wondering about this vessel which caught fire from VW, and now they say that it could be because of the EV cars, you know. I'm wondering, so for your testing, battery testing was in the production. Do you see new application for your battery testing, for example, for transportation to avoid fires in trains, vessels or whatever?
There are already certain ideas around that to have devices made that do monitor certain transport vehicles. They're not ready to be installed. It is also technically not so easy. You have to detect so-called electrolytes, and detecting electrolytes in an atmospheric pressure surrounding is technically not that simple because they usually disappear very quickly. To evacuate a vessel to find those molecules might be a little bit an overkill, but I know that there are at least some ideas around how those containers can be monitored with a certain simplified version of what we sell to the equipment manufacturers.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Going in this sequence.
Yeah, thanks. Maybe just quickly, your overall view on the semiconductor market. I mean, we are discussing about so much, you know, CapEx in the whole industry and, you're saying yourself that you don't expect it to go down or decrease in 2023, which is something the market appears, or what you see, therefore, in the longer term. Just to add a second question, in the past we always had this difference between your OEM clients and your end user clients, and I was just wondering, is it still true in the current situation that we have so much, new fabs being built and probably less refurbishment and these kinds of questions. Is the trend still the same that you see more revenues with end users three-four months later, or has it changed in the current situation?
No, this kind of time delay between what we see on the equipment manufacturer side and usually a little bit later comes the end user business still the same. With increased market share, especially on the pressure measurement side, there was a shift between the majority went traditionally to the end users, now shifted towards the equipment manufacturer, and probably expecting the year 2022, a kind of half of half of the business. 50% to end users, 50% to equipment manufacturers. With still a growing tendency on the equipment manufacturer side based on the fact that we get majority of the design wins in China.
Mm-hmm.
That helps because they don't like to buy American products.
They already build it into the equipment areas, for example. Just an example, so you sell to AMAT, yes, and they build it into their equipment, or you sell to someone else and they don't build it into equipment and then let's say TSMC or Samsung buys it later and puts it in their equipment. Yes.
No, no, it goes into the equipment.
Yeah.
to a Chinese competitor of AMAT.
Okay.
Very simple.
Yeah.
My overall view, this is my personal view, huh? It's not based on-
Yeah.
Scientific facts. I expect the next kind of downturn in the semiconductor not before 2024 or 2025. There will be one. It's almost clear there will because we built up now capacity, so we will have a overcapacity situation in a few years. I always have to remind everybody, last three semiconductor crisis never lasted longer than 12 months. Even if we are going to have some kind of, let's call it semiconductor downturn, it might not last very long.
Thanks.
Yes, please.
If I understand you correctly, you are supply constrained in many areas.
Mm-hmm.
Is my interpretation correct that, where you end up in terms of top line depends on your ability-
Yeah.
to deliver?
Absolutely, yes.
Okay. Maybe just to give us a bit of a feeling, if you could deliver everything, where would you end up in 2026?
Above what we guided. Clearly above.
Clearly above.
Yeah. Now let's see.
Any more questions?
Oh, I have to read them. I think there is a couple of question. Let's see there. There's a question about pricing power. I have two hearts in my body. On one hand, I don't want to destroy a good relationship with customers, although we probably could increase prices dramatically and they still would buy it. Some of them have memories like elephants, and once the prices are coming back to normal level, they might then go to the competitor. We are trying to find a share the pain deal with customers, but also share the win deal with customers. I'll give you an example. I mentioned before, we pay quite high brokerage fees for certain electronic components. Now we're in discussions with some customers, how do we deal with that?
We still want to deliver products because otherwise we would simply say, "Sorry, it's too expensive. We cannot put money on the products and ship it." We ask them, "What's the best deal to share the pain? Do they share a part of the initial brokerage fees, or do we have a temporary price increase until the situation comes back to a normal supply situation, or do we talk about a permanent price increase over a longer period of time?" This is what we are currently in discussions. What we, of course, did raise our list price, but it went up, but most people don't pay list price, but the list price is usually an indicator for the next negotiations on new net prices.
Overall, there is a tendency of going up with prices in the neighborhood of 3%-6%, but it's more inflation related and not related to the current supply crisis that we have. There's another question. Let's see. Elaborate an expectation for cost inflation in. Well, yeah, there is cost inflation. We just talked about it. The single biggest pressure is coming from the U.S. The U.S., we are faced with the fact that we have a hard time to find new employees. It's much tougher than in Europe. The number one bottleneck actually currently in the U.S. is not material, it's people. They are paid by the hour, people in the factories. If they can make $0.50 more per hour, they probably move to next neighbor company.
We have to play the game and increase our base salaries as well. We are faced with the fact that on the labor side, there will probably be an increase in our U.S. operations of above 5%. It's not as much in Europe, and the price pressure in actually Liechtenstein, Switzerland is much lower. The single biggest price pressure is coming from the material side, as I mentioned before, because everybody has to cover their costs as well. Our negotiation power on the purchasing side is clearly not as huge as we wanted to have it. On the electronic side, we have almost no power, purchasing power, I mean. Any more questions? How do we scroll it down?
I see that someone is holding his or her hand up.
Who?
We will presently know.
Yes. Who? Yep. Please speak up.
Yeah. Okay. Remo Rosenau, Helvetische Bank. Assuming that there would be no supply chain issues at all, no geopolitical issues whatsoever, a normal world, everybody could deliver what you want, how would your guidance look in that world for this year?
As I mentioned before, it would certainly be above $600 million top line. Assuming we have already installed all the additional addition and find the people and have the material, the market dynamics on our order intake book. They point clearly towards above $600 million top line growth.
Okay. What would your maximal capacity be at the moment? I mean, you are about to increase your capacities, but what would your maximal output be at the moment, and how will it develop over the next years?
At the moment, it's very limited. Assuming again, ideal world, everything installed, no problems with supply anymore, I think, and our base capacity will be closer to $700 million. Also again, based on the current shift pattern. Most production sites that we have, we work on a kind of a 1.5 shift pattern, so that the machineries are running 24 hours, but they have a main shift producing products, and then they have two smaller shifts making sure that the tools are always filled with products to be calibrated. Most of the calibration and test times take more time than just minutes, so we have to make sure that all the tools are always loaded overnight.
Therefore, we are working on a kind of 1.5 shift model. It would not help to go to two shift because the bottlenecks again would then be the tools. We have to install new tools first.
Okay. Bottom line, max would be 700, and presumably that would then be, you know, involving extra costs as well because getting to the capacity, you know, limit is always a bit tricky.
It's not just tricky from a equipment point of view, it's also tricky from a space point of view. We added space in Cologne, we added space in Liechtenstein, turning actually office space in production space, and we added space in our ceramic production site in Finland. Finland is currently the bottlenecks for certain products, and in other cases it's more the electronics components that are the bottlenecks.
Okay. Now given your expansion CapEx plans, how will that look in two years or three years?
Assuming what I have said before, that we might expect some flattening in the semiconductor market in 2024, 2025, I don't expect that we will go above $30 million in CapEx in 2024. Might then go down to more normal levels that we used to have, which used to be between $10 million and $20 million.
No, what I mean is what kind of capacity expansion is basically planned, you know. 700 is now the absolute limit. What will the absolute limit be in two or three years?
don't know that because we really carefully watch what the semiconductor industry is doing. If we see that what we predict now is not going to take place, let's see no flattening out, then we have to go into maybe next round of CapEx, but it's too early to predict something like that. Our markets are too fast-changing that we can rely on plans that look beyond the three-year horizon.
Okay. Okay. Good. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I'm not sure. Who has another question from the Microsoft Teams audience? Just please ask. I think I see somebody, Remo Rosenau. Oh, what just happened, and now they have a ZKB guest.
Yes. Thank you. It's Harold speaking from ZKB. Basically, I've two questions. Now, the first one would be on the automotive end markets. Could you please remind us how much automotive exposure you have? And in your guidance, is there any broader or longer production stoppage priced in? This would be the first question. The second one is on the inflation cost thing and also your guidance. You mentioned price increases of 3%-6% on average. If I look at the midpoint of your guidance, this implies +11% growth or something. Then subtracting the midpoint of the price raises of 4.5%, I arrive at roughly 6.5% for the volume growth. Is the math correct?
Second one is, I mean, with all these topics, shortage of employees, material costs, the broker fees, potentially some disruption of the production routes was also making transportation more expensive. Would it then be the logical consequence that I would see incrementally lower profits on the new sales in 2022? Thank you.
I certainly do not question your math capabilities, but your assumptions are wrong. I told you that our list price will go up, but nobody pays list price. Above 80% of our customers have net pricing arrangements, but the list price might be an indicator for the next negotiation round, but the impact will then be one or two years later, but not immediate impact. The immediate price adjustments on our side are much lower than the 3%-6%. Nevertheless, we have not planned for a production kind of stop overall in our guidance. We assume that we can continue to deliver, and we have a higher priority on being able to ship versus avoiding brokerage fees.
The priority is really on the shipping side and not saving costs on not paying the brokers. Having said that, I think that your questions although was also around the inflation-based kind of facts, and I mentioned that already before. As I said, U.S., the single biggest pressure on salary cost and overall, huge pressure on material cost all over around the world. The only thing that we now work on is really sharing the pain with some of our larger accounts. Some of them indicate at least they are open for discussions because they do not want to experience a disruption in their supply chain as well. Our customers are under pressure at least as much as we are under pressure in order to be able to ship the products.
Therefore, the likelihood that somebody will bite the, how you say, the sour piece of an apple, is going up and accept certain temporary price increases. I think the final remark is really going back to what we said in our tie-in to the guidance. The top line heavily depends on our ability to fix all the bottlenecks, not from the market side.
Okay. One short follow-up then, nah. For the automotive exposure, if there would-
Yes. Okay.
One quarter of production stoppage, how much top line growth might this cost when the customers do not make the call offs with you because production's not running?
If you look at our exposure to the automotive market, which is, I believe, a little bit more than CHF 30 million, but in the meantime it's all about close to CHF 20 million is coming from the lithium-ion battery manufacturing. The likelihood that they are going to stop their production is very small. The likelihood that the production of car assembly is going to stop is probably higher, but that has a smaller impact to our business than the market in the lithium-ion battery manufacturing around the world.
Because everybody now installs new capacity to make lithium-ion batteries, and as long as they get their materials, I think they are more concerned of getting those, rare earth materials, which might have an impact on the capability of being able to make the lithium-ion batteries, but nobody's looking for a production stop on the lithium-ion battery side.
Okay, thank you.
You're welcome. Yep, there's a question from the audience.
Yes, just a quick follow-up from before, regarding the capacity. You mentioned 50% increase over the next two years. Can we just simply assume that the maximum capacity from 700 now will go up to approximately 1 billion?
No, not yet. Because what we already see are the first results of the capacity expansions. I think, as I said before, what we now have as a capacity will allow us to go to a normal $700 million run rate, and then we have to most likely add capacity again.
Great. Thank you.
Yep. Follow up here.
Yeah. Quick question on the general vacuums. Can we assume that your growth in general vacuums, a part of your growth there is also semiconductor growth? Because some of your clients, I mean, a large German one for example, had strong growth also in the semiconductor industry. My question is, as long as the semiconductor growth is stable or not, you will benefit in the same vacuum growth and maybe also in the general vacuum growth.
There is little bit overlap, I agree, but it relates only to those products where our products are a component of a system that might go into the semiconductor industry. Our large European private label customers do not sell our products to the semiconductor customers directly, because semiconductor customers always have some specialties. They want to talk to their manufacturers, and they have their separate interfaces. They have their special, I don't know, connectors or cables. The likelihood that a private label product ends up in the semiconductor company is relatively small. If they are a part of a system, yes, that's true. The general vacuum market growth has some influence from the semiconductor market as well when we sell to the private label customers.
Because we don't know exactly where they will be used, but we know that some of the products are ending up being used in kind of an inspection tools for semiconductor companies as well. No more questions? At least I see nobody has raised their hand and no questions from the audience. I think we have a little bit of a delay of seven minutes. Thank you very much for attending this annual Bilanzpressekonferenz, and thank you for your patience. It's almost guaranteed that a year from now, the weather will be nice again. Thank you.