Okay. Good morning and welcome everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations contact from INFICON. I have the pleasure to host this Microsoft Teams session. Thank you for joining the INFICON web conference on its first quarter 2021 results. With us today are Lukas Winkler, CEO of INFICON, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO of INFICON. The management team will first present the results and then take questions. During the prepared remarks, participants are kindly asked to turn their microphones and cameras off. You should have received by now a press release on the Q1 results, together with the accompanying visuals for this web conference. All these documents are available for download in the investor section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com. As we are in an MS Teams session, you can pose written questions during the presentation using the chat function. This should be the second icon in the top menu.
Management will take these questions after the prepared remarks. You can also signal that you would like to ask a question over the microphone. We ask you to use the third icon function to raise your hand, and then you will be added to the queue of people who would like to ask questions. 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 MS Teams session may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to 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 as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would like to hand over now to Lukas Winkler. Lukas, please.
Thank you, Bernhard. Grüezi. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to review the results of the first quarter of 2021. I do not really want to talk about COVID-19 anymore, but it still bothers us. Much less, luckily, than a year ago. The impact to our business became less cumbersome. Nevertheless, we still have many hygiene and behavior procedures in place. Home office is still quite common as well. Now let's talk about the first quarter results, where we presented in the press release this morning that we had growth in all markets, in all regions around the world. Semiconductor, from a market point of view, and China, from a regional point of view, being the most prominent contributor to this growth.
As Bernhard already mentioned, you can download this information also from the homepage, and I will start with the current slide right now, where you see where we had growth and what the result was out of it in total. We did grow more than 30% over the first quarter of 2020, sequentially to a very strong last quarter 2020, another 5%. I think looking forward, even more important that also our book-to-bill ratio was above one. With improved sales and the gross profit margin now again over 50%, increased OpEx, primarily on the R&D side. We ended the first quarter with operating income of $24.6 million, which is about 20% of sales, after $14 million a year ago, which was 15.1% in the first quarter of 2020. The applicable tax rate was an average one. Matthias will talk about that later.
Net income was close to $20 million, or 16% of sales. Let's go to the next slide, where you see the breakdown of our four target markets. With Semiconductor and vacuum now reaching 50% of overall INFICON sales, Semiconductor being the heavy contributor. The Vacuum Coating part was relatively flat from a growth perspective comparing Q1 2020 with Q1 2021. The increase of the Semi and Vacuum contribution was basically at the expense of a little slower contribution from General Vacuum, Refrigeration, Air Conditioning, and also a little less from our Security & Energy market, which still is by far the smallest market that we serve. Regional-wise, on the right side of this slide, you can clearly see that Asia again has been able or was able to keep this very high level that we already reached in the last quarter of 2020.
Finally, now we see an improving tendency from Europe and also from Americas. Asia did represent in Q1 about 46% of overall revenue in the first quarter of 2021. Let's go into the first market that we talk about, starting with the smallest one on slide number five. In the Security & Energy market, we did increase our revenue over a relatively weak quarter a year ago by 8.6%. As you see on the graph. It's really a growth compared to a relatively low volume already a year ago. The major contributors in the first quarter was coming from Energy application, not from Security applications. Those Energy applications can be split into two elements. On one hand side, it's these alternative biomethane markets, primarily in Europe.
On the other hand side w e have the landfill monitoring applications as well as gas pipeline monitoring for the last mile of the gas distribution network, again, mostly from the U.S. We had some environmental applications from China. That's also what we see. If I look ahead for the full year 2021, we expect some delay in the new program from the U.S. Department of Defense with the new website. Therefore, our expectations for 2021 are not very positive. We are very positive on the Energy side, but we keep kind of a cautious outlook on the Security side because we know that there might be some delays on the introduction, not from our side, but from the U.S. Department of Defense. We will know certainly more by the end of the fiscal year, which ends in September in the U.S.
Having said that, for the smallest market, the expectation for 2021 are not quite optimistic overall. Let's go to the second market, the Refrigeration, Air Conditioning, and Automotive market, where we clearly had a nice first quarter at the record level, 23% above last year's first quarter, and even more than 3% above the already strong last quarter in 2020. After the COVID-19 crisis, which really had a big impact on this market during the second and third quarter as of last year. We clearly see a recovery, a rebound. It's almost like some catch-up investments happened during the first quarter, especially from the Automotive side, but also from the manufacturers of every refrigerator and air conditioner that we see a nice rebound compared with the middle of the year 2020.
On top of that, we see also a growing contribution from the e-car manufacturers, especially on the lithium-ion leak checking application side, which is by far the single greatest market in this Refrigeration, Air Conditioning, and Automotive market. There is certainly a shortage of high-tech lithium-ion battery for e-cars now in the market. You probably have read in the newspapers how many new gigafactories are planned around the world. Overall, we expect a very nice 2021, reaching new record levels for this year. Having said that, let's go to the third market, which is by far our biggest. Now reached a contribution of 50% of overall market, which is the Semiconductor & Vacuum Coating, which does include, besides the semi, also some solar applications as well as display and optics applications.
The major contribution for this nice growth of 44% over the first quarter of 2020 was coming from increased CapEx spending in the Semiconductor market. Now, not just from logic and foundry, but also from Automotive chip manufacturers, from memory chip manufacturers, and other industrial chips that are used in a growing environment to catch up for the losses of 2020. Looking ahead, what we see now in the Semiconductor cycle is a wave from different sides. The already known investments for high-tech applications such as 5G, Internet of Things, big data, and so on, now combined with a memory market rebound together with some Announced subsidies, let's say, from China as well as U.S. into Semiconductor capacity created this, I would say, never-before-seen huge growth rate in the Semiconductor market. We expect that will continue definitely throughout 2021, eventually going into 2022.
Now, having said that, on the other hand side, on the Vacuum Coating market, we remain less optimistic. We don't see huge investment going into OLED additional capacities, and we do not see a lot of capacities going into, let's say, old-fashioned optics application. On the other hand side, we see some modest increase in spending for new solar equipment manufacturing, primarily in China. Having said that, let's go to the last market, which is the General Vacuum market, where we sell our products throughout indirect and direct sales channels to hundred thousands of different customers. Most of them are not served directly. We even sell a lot of our products private labeled under the brand of our distribution partners, which are primarily vacuum pump manufacturers.
This diverse customer base that we serve did show a nice increase in Q1, which was 23% above last year's first quarter, and another 3.5% sequentially compared with the last quarter 2020. What we see in this market for 2021 is an optimistic view that we have. Driven by the Chinese recovery on one hand, but also some nice rebound in Europe. We also have some products in new markets such as the food packaging market, but also we have introduced some products into the life science market. We even get some tailwind from some COVID-19 related investments in the health market. Therefore, we remain positive throughout 2021 regarding the General Vacuum market. Before I hand over to Matthias, I like to give you a summary of the outlook that we see for 2021.
Again, heavily driven by a very strong Semiconductor market on all levels. We don't see any weaknesses there. We might have some double bookings just to avoid some shortages, especially in a chipset with a high demand. On the other hand side, I already mentioned there are some subsidies planned in the U.S., Europe, and China continues to invest heavily in catching up on the Semiconductor technology side. Those elements really lead to a very positive outlook for the Semiconductor market for the full year, combined with this nice growth trends in the Automotive market, driven by the lithium-ion battery manufacturers, together with some recovery in the General Vacuum market. We remain very optimistic for the full year 2021, and therefore we increased our previously guidance by an average of $30 million. Now we expect sales between $450 million and $480 million and an operating income of 18%-20%.
With that, I'd like to turn over to Matthias Tröndle, who give you more details on the financial results of our first quarter. Matthias, please.
Thank you, Lukas. Good morning, everyone, and welcome also from my side to our first quarter conference call. I will cover our Q1 financials and briefly comment also our 2021 guidance. My commentary starts with slide 11 of the PowerPoint. As you have already seen in our press release, we achieved revenue of $122.7 million in Q1. This compares to $92.6 million in Q1 last year. This represents an increase of 32.5%. Taking into account the positive currency impact, which is driven by the weakening U.S. dollar of 5.2% or $4.8 million, we achieved an organic growth of 27.3%. Mr. Winkler has already gone into the details about the development in the individual markets. We can clearly highlight that sales in all markets did grow, most of them with a double-digit growth rate compared to Q1 previous year.
In particular, sales in the Semi & Vacuum Coating market increased significantly by 44% or nearly $19 million. Also, compared to the previous quarter, all markets except Security & Energy showed growth. With that, the first quarter of 2021 was after Q4 last year, another new record sales quarter. Let us now turn to the regional distribution of sales. Compared to previous year, all three regions did grow. We had the highest growth in Asia with 65%, followed by Europe with 17%. Both Asia and Europe showed a strong growth in Semi & Vacuum C oating, as well as in the General Vacuum market. North America showed also an increase in sales of 8%, driven by Semi and also the Security & Energy market. Let's go to the next slide, please.
The gross profit margin reached 50% in Q1, up 89 basis points versus last year and improved by 280 basis points compared to previous year Q4. Higher volumes, a good capacity utilization, and the market and product mix could compensate rising material transportation and still some COVID inefficiencies we had. What happened on the cost side? Sorry. We spent $12.1 million on R&D in Q4, an increase of 32% or $2.9 million. As a percent of sales, expenses decreased slightly to 9.9% in the first quarter from 10% in the previous year. Focus on our development efforts with additional headcounts, higher R&D material costs, higher external costs, plus some negative foreign currency impacts, did drive this increase. In SG&A, selling general and administrative, the expense level showed a $2.4 million increase.
Unfavorable foreign currency impact, which account approximately for 50% of that increase, headcount additions, and performance-related costs did drive this increase. The operating profit for the first quarter was $24.6 million, or 20% of sales after $14 million or 15.1% in Q1 last year. This corresponds to an increase of about 76%. The tax expense for the first quarter was at $5.3 million, which represents an average tax rate of 21.2%. Last year's $1.5 million tax, which represented a tax rate of around 12%, was impacted by some favorable impacts coming from our German subsidiary. The net profit therefore reached $19.6 million, or 16% in Q1. This compares to $11.4 million, or 12.3% in the prior year, a 72% increase in absolute numbers. We see similar development in our earnings per share. This went up also up by 72% and stands at $8.01 in Q1.
Let's move on to the balance sheet highlight on the next slide. Our net cash position reached $48.4 million, which is $7.5 million higher than end of last year. Operating cash flow, which you can see on the bottom right for Q4, reached a good level of $13.4 million, representing about 10.9% of revenue. This was substantially higher than last year and improved by $9.6 million. The inventory turns reached 2.9, and with that, have been slightly better than in the previous quarter. The working capital, which consists of accounts receivables, inventories, minus accounts payables, closed at $137.7 million, clearly higher than at the end of last year. The majority of that increase is contributed to a $9 million increase in accounts receivables due to the record high sales we had in the current quarter. The DSO, days sales outstanding ratio is slightly higher and reached 51.8 days that quarter.
The balance sheet shows a good solid structure, has a 75% equity ratio and no long-term debt. Those were my comments on the balance sheet and Q1. Final words on the outlook. Mr. Winkler did already go into the detail on the assessment of our markets and how we see the situation. The business and the assessment of the development in our end markets looks quite positive for the started year. There were some global uncertainties. INFICON assesses the outlook for the current year optimistic. We expect sales of around $450 million-$480 million, with an improved operating income margin of 18%-20%. With that, I would like to close the presentation. We are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you, Lukas. Thank you, Matthias. We have a series of questions. Marta Bruska was the first one to raise her hand. I would thus like to ask Marta to go ahead, switching on her microphone and camera and ask her question. Marta, please.
Hello. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. Congratulations on the fantastic performance. I have a couple. I will take them one by one since more than three. Firstly, could you please tell us a little bit more about the Security & Energy market in particular with regards to the environmental type of applications growth profile, into 2021? What sort of growth we are seeing there and, with regards to the Security part, at what level the Security sales are in Q1 2021 versus where they were in 2019, so two years ago? I just would like to gain a bit better understanding what sort of recovery potential we may see, in 2022.
Good morning, Marta. I certainly can take that question and go into a little bit more details to maybe give you a little bit more flavor about what happened. As I mentioned already, the majority of revenue in the first quarter went into the Energy market, not Security market. I do not have all the details and usually do not disclose it, but it's clearly around the two-thirds of the revenue that is now Energy and not Security anymore, which used to be more like the opposite for quite long of time. Now it's clearly above the two-thirds level that is now going into Energy and environmental applications. If you talk about the environmental, as I mentioned, they have two elements there. One is in the U.S. monitoring the landfills, and the second application goes into China, doing air monitoring for the big cities.
We are a part of the program to get the pollution down in the big cities together with a partner in China. We don't do it ourselves. We use an integrator, which is also our major distributor in China to get access to the Chinese government because as you know, it became quite tough to ship American-made products into China if there is a Chinese alternative. Therefore, we are using a integrator, a Chinese integrator, so that the final package is not seen as an American product. It's seen in the eyes of the government as a Chinese solution. We are a little bit more cautious about the outlook in 2021, based on the fact that we learned from the U.S. Department of Defense that eventually a larger project might get delayed. Not canceled but delayed.
They do the test already with the new product, but it is not clear, yet when they are going to start the program itself, which is quite a big one. We are talking about a double-digit million-dollar figure, just for this program, and therefore it might get postponed into 2022. Therefore, for the full year guidance on the Security & E nergy market, I would not expect to being
To see a huge growth at the end of the year, it might be at about the same level as 2020.
Thank you. What about in the civil application when you had the new sniffing device for civil applications, how is this going?
I didn't understand the question properly. I'm sorry.
Sorry. For the civil application. I understood that you had the sniffing device now launched also for the departments, for the police department and for civil application.
Okay.
How the launch is going?
That's for more Security application outside of the Department of Defense. We are still in the test phase because this will only happen with the new product, not with the old one, and the new product has not been officially launched. We are still in the test phase to detect some drugs that could be detected. This will be a small contribution anyway in 2021. If it will really work out, we might get a better visibility for 2022.
Thank you very much. If I may just please, very quickly on OLED, if that market shall start to recover in the second half of the year, what sort of upside would you foresee for INFICON?
As I mentioned before, I'm not so optimistic about OLED, but if it would come back surprisingly, of course, we take it. We will contribute in two ways. We will ship our products that are used by the equipment manufacturers, the guys who make the tools, but we also have access to the end users, and if they surprisingly will come back, we would, of course, be happy to take the orders, and it could be an upswing of $5 million if it actually would happen. I doubt that it will happen.
Thank you very much. Just a quick one on solar. That's the last one. Could you please give us an update of how much solar is at the moment? Just to clarify, the $5 million would be on the full year basis, right? For OLED.
Yes, it's just OLED. On the solar side, we experienced an uptick in investment in new equipment to make so-called silicon wafer-based solar panels. Not thin-film solar panels, but silicon wafer-based solar panels, primarily in China. It looks like that the huge installations that have been made in 2012 throughout 2014 now are used up because the demand for solar panels is still going up. There was enough capacity in the market, and now it looks like the capacity is running out, so they have to replace some of the equipment. We see a nice kind of a rebound in the equipment manufacture for solar on the ingot side to make silicon ingots. Also, on some etch tools to make those solar panels more efficient if you apply certain etch applications at the end of the day.
As well as some coating applications to get higher efficiency out of every single solar panel that are made. Those are the three applications where vacuum is actually used. The majority of those equipments are now made in China. The market is in China.
Thank you very much. I really appreciate this. Super helpful. Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Thank you, Marta, for your questions. The next questions come from Michael Foeth. Michael, please.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Three questions. The first one on the Semiconductor market. I was wondering how the demand for yield enhancement products is developing given the shortage of chips in the market. How much that makes up of your sales. I guess that's Semiconductor end users. The second question is regarding your guidance change. I was wondering what has changed so much in the last six weeks only that triggered that $30 million increase in guidance. The last question is if you are seeing any impact on INFICON from various component shortages in the market that you would experience. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Yep. Let's go through the list of questions. The first one, yield enhancement programs, which are usually based on two kind of product ranges that we sell or a combination of them. It's usually sensors together with software. We also have some standalone software applications in the meantime. This Semi growth was, let me say it that way, less prominent than the growth in the equipment spending. Overall, we had a huge increase as you have seen, but the bigger part is coming from the growth for equipment manufacturers and a little less to the end users. It's very typical because there's usually a certain delay between when we see an increase on orders for equipment manufacturers compared with orders coming from the end users. Nevertheless, there are at least two elements that we see very positive.
As you know, we acquired a software company about three years ago. That is primarily approaching with yield enhancement programs to the so-called Tier 2 manufacturers. Many of those Tier 2 manufacturers are chip manufacturers for the car industry. There we see a nice growth. Of course, still on a relatively low level, but it's a growing software business, and it carries, of course, a very high gross profit margin, as with all the software businesses. This is also the part of the business where we have, in the meantime, I would say, the majority of revenue coming from so-called software as a service with recurring revenue. A lot of those Tier 2 manufacturers, they prefer a subscription-based kind of model for their software applications for the yield enhancements. We clearly see, get a positive kind of boost from those shortages.
On the guidance change, I think there are many elements, not just one single one, standing out. First of all, we got more promising outlooks, forecasts from our equipment manufacturer. They even ask us now to increase our capacity. That's the one element. A second element is the announcement of investments around the world for new fabs, including some government-sponsored projects, especially from the U.S. That triggered our, let's say, more optimistic view with even a higher number of new fabs that will be built over the next 12 - 18 months. Last but not least, also the CapEx outlook of some larger end users that have been disclosed, which we really appreciate. I think the last element is also that we are more optimistic about the growth even outside of Semiconductor market.
Meaning, what we see now in the General Vacuum applications as well as in the Automotive, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration market, with increased spending on automated tools and more kind of labor-independent kind of investments. That triggered our change of now being more optimistic, not just on the Semi side, but also on the non-Semi side. One element I mentioned already before that we are a little bit more worried about is the development in the Security market, because we expect some delay there. That's a very small contribution. Overall, we became much more optimistic, driven by the latest increase of forecast from our largest customers. Now, unfortunately, there's also a negative impact on the shortage side. Yes, we are affected as well. We now go to the gray market.
We are still able to ship the majority of our products, luckily, I have to knock on wood. We pay much more, because we have to go through the gray markets, and we have to spend some expediting fees just to get the electronic components. It's really a shortage mostly on the electronic side, not on the metal and the material side. Yes, we suffer, but so far, we have been able to still get the majority of the products, just with a higher price.
Thank you. Very helpful. Thanks.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Michael, for your questions. Michael seems to be a popular first name. The next question comes from Michael Inauen.
Need to unmute first, I believe.
Right. We don't hear you, Michael. He cannot unmute. Can you then please write your question into the chat function? All right.
Okay. I see the question, more details on inventory build-ups. That's not so easy to answer a question because we do not have the details on how much of, let's say, the additional CapEx spend went into the orders that have been based on some build-up of inventory or even some double ordering just to be on the safe side. We have not a clear picture on that, therefore, I cannot really answer the question. Is it $5 million? Is it $10 million? We simply don't know. If I told you that we expect some build-up of inventory and we expect on some double ordering, but that's a message that is based on rumors and on hearsay and not based on facts.
Even some information from our salespeople, especially regarding the ongoing dispute between the U.S. and China about what can be shipped to China and what should not be shipped. How much of those orders are based on fear that they might not get the products anymore? We simply don't know all the details. You can assume that there have been some build-up of safety inventory around the world. How much? I'm sorry, I cannot answer that question.
There is another.
Yeah, I see a question regarding, is the Q1 the strongest? If I have to make a best guess, I would say we will most likely have a little weaker second and third quarter, and again, a very strong last quarter. Typically, we have some seasonality during the spring and summer season, and so therefore it might be a little weaker or flat, and then having a stronger Q4 again. That's what we usually see as a pattern.
Thank you, Michael. Lukas and Matthias, you've probably seen that Marta Bruska had another written question. Would you like to answer that? Marta asks about more details about the health application in General Vacuum that you just have mentioned, the applications that see some tailwind from the pandemic.
This is a very small business that we do not sell directly, but we sell to companies that are in the life science instrument manufacture world. There we get some additional gauge products that we sell to those instrument and laboratory manufacturers around the world. I would not put too much emphasis into that, but it is just a nice addition that we see so far. We are not talking about more than a small single- digit figure for the full year.
Thank you, Lukas. I see that Serge Rotzer has another question.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. Only a quick one. You mentioned already, this was basically my question about the seasonality. Is this related to sales or also to EBIT? You already had a good start in 2017, 2018, with the change sales mix mainly with semi. Can we expect that this margin level will remain on that high level? Do you see also their weakness in Q2, Q3? You started already weak with the shortage and then this issue with the negative impact. This should disappear over the year, yes or no?
There are two big impacts on the gross profit margin. One is clearly the product mix. So far, we don't expect a huge change in the product mix, at least for the next three to six months. There is a second big impact coming more from the price side, either material, but also on the sales price side. As you know, we had last year some negative impact from auction-based pricing shipments in China. There might be less impact from that side, at least what we see so far. We expect that we should be able to keep the gross profit margin at least a higher level than in the previous year. Can we keep the 50% throughout the full year? Remains to be seen.
We certainly work on that because we also invest in new automation and calibration tools, which would help then to keep our nice gross profit margin. Last but not least, we expect the pure software revenue to go up, and the more direct software or the pure software that we sell, that's usually good for our gross profit margin. I certainly would like to see the 50% throughout the year. Can we really keep that? As I said, it's not always that easy, but we do our most best to keep it. Last, maybe there's at least two elements that we really do not really like. One is we still pay quite a high price to customs. The details, Matthias would know but believe it's more than half a million just in one single quarter.
We still pay a premium now for transportation and cost, as well as getting those products which are kind of short in the market. On the material and freight costs and customs costs, we will not get a release compared with 2020.
Okay, many thanks. This was super helpful.
You're welcome.
I see that Michael Foeth has still his electronic hand up. Would you like to ask a follow-on question, Michael?
Yes. Thank you. I was just wondering, you mentioned that the vacuum part in Semi & Vacuum Coating is expected to be more or less flat for the year. I was wondering, how much does the Vacuum Coating part now account for at all in that mix, just roughly? The second one on the Americas region grew much less than Asia and Europe, and I was wondering what explains that relative weakness, if we can call it like that.
Okay. Maybe to the first question, as you probably know from the past, that it was usually one-third, two-third Vacuum Coating to Semi. Now it's less than 20% going into the coating application, 80% plus is now Semiconductor related. Clearly, the bigger part is now semi, by far. Now, weakness or if you call it less strong thing, it's two-folded. First of all, in Asia, we clearly see a huge growth rate in China. China is the main driver in Asia, now being the single biggest sales territory for INFICON overall. That's not just for semi, that's for all industries. Therefore, I think that's really the locomotive on the Asian side is coming from China. In Korea and Taiwan, it's more semi-related, we are all aware of those large accounts. In China, it's not just a few accounts.
There are many accounts, even some accounts that have not been known five years ago. New equipment manufacturer popping up, a new lithium-ion battery manufacturer popping up, new chip makers, new device makers. All levels, we clearly see a growth rate that we have never seen before, just China. If you compare that with Europe and Americas, I think in Europe, it's nice that we see a growth coming after a weaker 2020, recovery from COVID-19 impacts. There, it's across all markets. It's not related to one or two. It's really across all markets. Whereas in Americas, it's just still behind, I would say. They did suffer also pretty heavy on COVID-19 issues. As you know, there were these debates, the political debates in the U.S. that was not always positive, at least not for INFICON.
Last but not least, the largest, so we call them private label partners that we have. They are in Europe. We ship to Europe. The products might then end up still in the U.S. or in Asia, but our direct ship-to partner is a European partner. It's not 100% true if the products are actually used in Europe or not. Our larger private label partners are all in Europe, and therefore, that represents more worldwide based growth and not just European-based growth.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Do you still have a follow-on question, Serge? I see your electronic hand is up.
No, sorry, I missed it. Take it down. Apologize.
No problem at all. Any further questions from the audience, please? Edouard Picart? Yes.
Yes. Good morning. I have a question regarding your comments on Asia. Most of the growth has been driven by China, as you just explained. In Asia, Taiwan foundries have announced huge CapEx plans for the current year, but also for the next years. This has not been seen yet by you. How do you expect this to impact your own business? It remains to be seen, or it has already been seen in your numbers in the past?
Given the size of Taiwan, I think if you would do the business that we do in Taiwan per capita, I believe Taiwan has the highest INFICON revenue per capita. Having said that, Taiwan is, of course, relatively small, but very concentrated on a few large accounts. I can assure you that our Taiwan business is doing very well. On top of that, we will probably see the majority of growth coming out of those investment announcements a little later once the tools are installed. Taiwan is a typical market where chips are made, not necessarily equipments are made. Equipments are made outside of Taiwan, most of them, then imported into Taiwan, and then usually three to six months later, we see also the impact then on the end user side. Taiwan will certainly contribute to the growth overall.
From a percentage growth point of view, still double digit, but in absolute terms, far behind the big China. Therefore, I did not mention that specifically. A similar pattern we see in Korea. Korea, heavily dominated by large memory and chip makers, and also some display makers. We clearly expect a nice growth in Korea as well, relatively spoken, but in absolute terms, again, they are much smaller than in China.
Thank you.
You are welcome.
Any more questions? If not, then maybe I can draw your attention again to the upcoming events of INFICON. I would like to invite Lukas or Matthias for a closing remark.
Thank you, Bernhard. First of all, I like to thank all of you for this new way of communicating with each other, even seeing us from time to time, which is better than just using the phone call. Second of all, it's a little bit more lively if we do it over video conferencing, and you have seen the next announcements. I'm looking forward to eventually see you physically face by face sooner than later. If not, we might see us again on the next video conference when we disclose our half year figures and Q2 figures. Thank you very much. Have a nice day and a good rest of the week.
Give us another minute, Lukas. Rolf Renders has another question.
Oh, okay.
Rolf, please. Can you switch your microphone on?
Yes, it should be on. Good morning.
I can hear you now.
Yeah, sorry for that late entry. What came up to me is that, of course, you mentioned after the full year presentation that you wanted to start the year with the guidance cautious because it was early in the year, and then given the industry and even country information we got, and you refer to, you've now given an upgrade to that. Most of these players have now given their guidance. Is there another wave expected? For the half year, do you see, actually it's coming? Are you still conservative, basically, compared to your previous stance? That's kind of the question.
Okay. First of all, you owe me a beer because you have asked your questions after we closed the call. Secondly, you know us. We are usually trying to stay, let's call it a little bit more on the cautious side than being too optimistic. Having said that, you're absolutely right, now we have already almost four months of bookings, that was one of the reason why we said, now we really have to increase our guidance, we still remain, I would call it, on the cautious side, a little less than maybe two months ago, still a little less on cautious side. If we see that the dynamics in the market will continue like it did for the last two quarters, we eventually have to adjust again by the middle of the year, it's too early to talk about that. That's why.
I would not consider this current outlook more optimistic or less cautious than two months ago. I would consider that about the same level of cautiousness, just with a little bit more certainty, because we have already four months of orders in our books.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's great to know. I look forward to paying my debt.
Thank you very much.
Have a great day. Thank you.
You too. Thank you.
Is anyone else inviting Lukas for another beer? More questions?
No more beer.
No more beer. Would you like to close the presentation now again, Lukas?
Finally, close it. Looking forward for the beer, of course. The weather gets warmer anyway, so it's time to have a beer outside and have a very good weekend and a good day. Thank you and bye-bye.