Right. Good morning, everyone. Let us start. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact from INFICON. I have the pleasure to host this Microsoft Teams session today. Still more people joining. Thank you for joining the INFICON conference on its fourth quarter and full year 2020 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 Q4 and full year results, together with the PDF of INFICON's annual report, the accompanying visuals to this presentation, and also the invitation to the upcoming AGM. All these documents can also be downloaded in the investor section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com.
I'm just letting additional people in who are requesting to get in. Just bear with me for a moment. As we are in an Microsoft Teams session, you can pose questions during the presentation using the chat function. This should be the second icon in the top menu. Management will take those questions after their 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. You will then be added to the queue of people who would like to ask questions. I would also like to inform you that we record this Microsoft Teams session 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 or 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 Lukas Winkler. Lukas, please.
Thank you, Bernhard. Before we start, I like to do always a kind of a historic introduction. Today, exactly 85 years ago, on March 4th, the largest ever built Zeppelin had its maiden flight in Friedrichshafen. Why is that important for INFICON? As you know, about one year later, the Zeppelin, or better known as the Hindenburg, crashed in Lakehurst, because they used hydrogen as the filling material for this huge Zeppelin. This is important for INFICON because two things happened there. First of all, hydrogen became or got the reputation of being a very dangerous gas, and we'll talk about hydrogen later on as well. Secondly, helium, which they originally first thought of filling up the Zeppelin, has been banned by the U.S. to be shipped to Germany, so that's why they had to switch back to hydrogen, and helium became a political gas.
As of today, helium is still a political gas. Last but not least, a Zeppelin should be very tight, and the leak detection of tightness instruments is one of our core competence. Just to give you some figures, the Zeppelin tightness was pretty good for this 1934 time period. It had a leak of about one liter of hydrogen per square meter per day, which sounds like only a few amount of hydrogen. Given the fact that the Zeppelin had a surface of 34,000 sq m , that ends up with a loss of one cubic meter of hydrogen per day, which is quite a big leak measured with the instruments that we make today, where we get to much smaller leaks. Having said that, let's start with the Q4 figures first. Bernhard, could you please switch to the slide number three, please?
In Q4, we did grow in all aspects. Time-wise, quarter-over-quarter, also year-over-year. From a regional point of view, growth in all three main regions as well as all markets. That's probably the first time where we can report a single quarter with having growth in all aspects. Secondly, I like to highlight that the foreign exchange changes, especially the weak dollar, had quite a large impact on our figures from a top-line, but also from a bottom-line point of view. Last but not least, even despite the fact that we had a record quarter from a top-line point of view, our book-to-bill ratio remained above one. The order dynamic is very positive in terms of INFICON figures.
Now from the bottom line point of view, we had a, if I start at the lowest line, with 14.6% net income based on, I would say, a reasonable tax rate. We had double of the absolute figures in operating income. That's driven by very large R&D costs, but operating sales and marketing costs under control. Of course, with a top-line record quarter and a, I would say, slightly improved gross profit margin, especially compared with the low figures in Q3. We ended up with a very good result for the last quarter of the year itself. Now, going to the full year figures. I think you have to go back one slide. Bernhard, I think you are ahead of the slides. If you go to the full year figures, we had, of course, an impact from the foreign exchange currency as well.
The full year figures have been driven more by the growth on semi-only, not in all regions, but primarily in Asia and in Europe. Detailed figures for quarterly as well as annual figures will be given to you after my part of the presentation by our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, in much more detail. I like to spend more time on talking about the markets, and I would like to go to the next slide, where you see graphically the breakdown of our revenue into the four main markets. I think something happened with the presentation, and maybe we have to reload it again. Can you do that please, Bernhard? I'll continue to talk about this slide number five.
Yes. Sorry about that. I will try. I think someone has taken over on my behalf, but I'm starting the presentation anew.
Let's continue with the explanation. On this slide, on page number five, you see two pie charts. On the left side, the breakdown of the last quarter of 2020, and on the right side, the full year breakdown. If you look at the detailed figures inside this pie chart, you will find out that they are very similar to each other, but with a slightly decreased contribution from the semiconductor and vacuum coating market. That doesn't mean that this market became smaller, but it's an indication that in the last quarter, actually, the non-semi and vacuum coating markets contributed quite a lot to the top line of the full year figures. If you look to the bottom part of this chart, you see a huge contribution coming from Asia. Asia clearly was the big driver from a regional point of view, followed by Europe.
If you break down the Asian market, we know it, but it's not disclosed in details, but China was the single biggest contributor of the growth in Asia, followed by Taiwan, and then the other countries in Asia. Having said that, I like to go now into details market by market, and I will start with the smallest one on page number six, which is called security and energy, where you see that in the last quarter, the contribution from this market was almost as big as the three first quarter of the year 2020 together. We had a very strong last quarter, primarily thanks to the increased revenue coming from biomethane application in Europe, from landfill monitoring application in the U.S., but also from environmental protection applications in China.
The contribution from the pure security part of this market was relatively small. That has been expected already at the beginning of the year, because we had only a small contribution from the usually largest customer in this segment, which is the U.S. Department of Defense. We expect, now turning to the 2021 expectations, that the U.S. Department of Defense will become a large customer again, because we are going to launch a new product, and the U.S. government already announced a new program, and the new product will be part of this new program. We believe that in 2021, the contribution from the security part will go up again as well. On the other hand side, the growth path coming from the more energy and application side of the market will continue to grow.
Overall, for 2021, we expect a nice growing in the market of security and energy. Going to the refrigeration, air conditioning, and automotive market on slide number seven. We have to refer to the Hindenburg, because this is probably the major part of our market where gas, hydrogen, as well as helium play an important role. On one hand side, we use helium to detect leaks. On the other hand side, hydrogen is more and more used also to store energy and will be used as a source of energy for e-cars or maybe better for e-trucks and e-trains in the future.
Having said that, it's already clear that in this market for refrigeration, air condition, and automotive applications, leak detection is the key technology that is used to help our customers to improve the quality of their product and make sure that they are safe from a pure security point of view, but also safe from an environmental point of view. Now, if you look at the Q4 figures, finally, the weakness based from COVID-19, or the impact, during especially the summer quarters has been reversed, and we see a nice rebound in the manufacturer's market for refrigerators, air conditioners, and cars. On top of that, we expect the continuation of the use of new lithium-ion batteries. Again, we help them to make the lithium-ion batteries very safe. We also see the first round of investments going now into the hydrogen fuel cell powered e-cars or e-trucks.
With the help of our hydrogen sensors, we can detect smallest leak and make those cars actually very safe so that people can start to forget about the dangerous hydrogen image that this gas still has based on the accident with the Hindenburg. For 2021, we expect a growing contribution coming from this market as well. The major drivers are, as I said, e-cars, environmental friendly quality assurance programs, and an initiative with after sales products, handheld, battery powered for all kinds of applications in the refrigeration, but also in the automotive market. Turning to our single biggest market, the semiconductor and vacuum coating market on slide number eight. We clearly get a nice tailwind from the upswing in the semiconductor market. Really have to highlight that this is semi driven, not vacuum coating driven.
Display or more specific, the OLED application, which we see as a part of the vacuum coating market, is not doing that well. It was basically flat, but on a much lower level than compared with 2018, where we had a peak in the market of making OLED flat panel displays. All the drivers are well known. Everybody talks about the 5G or maybe soon maybe even 6G. We have artificial intelligence applications, we have autonomous driving applications and so on. On top of that, now we also see a rebound in the memory market. You might have heard from the press that we have these component shortages all around the world. Even government started to spend more money and even subsidize certain infrastructure projects to enlarge the capacity to make semiconductors around the world. China announced this program a few years ago.
We hear similar voices from the White House in the U.S. that they should start to invest in semi-fabs in America again. Even in Europe, the car manufacturer realized that they are heavily depending on the Asian semiconductor manufacturers, and they like to get rid of being too dependent on just one or two suppliers. We might see a recovery or a rebirth of investments going into the European semiconductor industry. Looking ahead for 2021, we are in the midst of an upswing, especially in the semiconductor area from a technology point of view, from a demand point of view, but also from a new application point of view.
Therefore, I'm very positive for the pure semiconductor applications, but I remain kind of less positive or even, say, pessimistic for the vacuum coating applications where we have not seen yet a rebound of investments. On top of that, I think the OLED technology might get some competition from improved QLED, Mini LED or Micro LED applications over the coming years. Let's go to the last market that carries the title General Vacuum. Actually, a better title would be everything else, because we sub summarize all applications outside of the three specific target markets that I just talked about in this more general vacuum market that covers applications from CERN in Geneva to a coffee capsule filler somewhere in Germany or in Switzerland.
It covers a broad range of applications from high tech like CERN to maybe a little bit more low tech because we all prefer coffee. Behind the coffee manufacturing processes is high tech as well. That's why they use our instruments. In this general vacuum market, we have seen a nice rebound in the last quarter of the year, driven by heavy investment in China, not so much in Europe and the U.S. We clearly see that China has basically completely recovered from the early COVID-19 pandemic or at the beginning of the year. They are in full swing again and with almost double-digit growth rates again in China itself. From an outlook point of view, since we expect some recovery and on top of that, we see new applications, in especially food applications.
Last but not least, this anti-U.S. sentiment in China really helps us gaining market share with our full line of especially gauges that you see on this lower side of the page. The China market became a very important market. Not just that they grow, but also we are able to gain market share from our U.S. competitor because China doesn't like U.S. supply anymore. Having said that, let's go to my last slide, which is slide 10, which is the outlook slide for 2021. We expect a record year in 2021 despite some ongoing COVID-19 issues. It might take a little bit longer than we hoped, but the impact from COVID to our part of the business has been diminished to almost nothing. Therefore, we continue to grow in all of our markets, in all of our regions.
If you summarize all the facts that I have listed on this page, we have a very strong semi market, very strong recovery in the memory market, as well as some politically supported initiatives in U.S. and Europe. We can expect very good semiconductor year 2021. On top of that, with our big new line of helium leak detectors going into lithium ion and hydrogen-powered e-car markets, we will see a nice growth coming from this part of our business as well. Last but not least, I really like to highlight that with the huge number of new products that will be launched in 2021, we might not add a lot of top line, but we will have a lot of door-opening activities. It demonstrates also technical capabilities of INFICON in the long term, because we invested a lot in new products the last two years.
Now we finally see the result, going into new applications with some breakthrough new technologies, and that is really the basement foundation for continuation of growth for the coming years. With that, I'd like to close this part, maybe closing remarks again on the Hindenburg. Forget about the dangers of hydrogen. It is not as dangerous as it was 85 years ago. We have to get used to hydrogen, because one day we might even drive around with hydrogen in our cars. Secondly, they will be safe because they will be checked with instruments from INFICON. Thank you. With that, I give over to Matthias.
Thank you, Lukas. Hello? Okay. Thank you, Lukas. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this year's virtual meeting. The first virtual one we have, you just heard the echo. Hopefully, this will be the last echo today. I will cover the Q4 financials, of course, and the full fiscal year results. In addition, I will briefly comment the dividend proposal and our guidance for 2021. As you have already seen from our press release this morning, we achieved revenue of $116.9 million in Q4 2020, which compares to $96.3 million in Q4 last year. This represents an increase of 21.5%. Taking into account the positive currency impact, which is driven by the weakening U.S. dollar of 4.7%, we achieved an organic growth of 16.8%. Mr. Winkler has already gone into the details about the development in the addressable markets.
We can clearly highlight that sales in all markets did grow and all markets had a double-digit growth rates compared to Q4 last year. In particular, sales to the semi- and vacuum coating market increased significantly by 23% or nearly $10 million. Also compared to Q3, all markets showed strong growth, and our smallest end market, security and energy, recovered and sold even by 85%. With that, the first quarter was our record sales quarter in history. Let us now turn to the distribution of sales. Compared to the previous year, we had the highest growth in Asia with 36% increase, followed by Europe with 19%. Both regions showed a strong growth in semi- and vacuum coating, as well as in the general vacuum market. North America showed also a slight increase of 3%. Let's go to the next slide.
Gross profit margin reached 47.1% in Q4, down 198 basis points, but improved by 216 basis points compared to the previous quarter, Q3. The market and the product mix, as well as costs related to COVID inefficiencies, are the main issues here. What happened on the cost side? We spent $10.6 million on R&D in Q4, an increase of 26%. As a percent of sales, expenses increased slightly to 9%, coming from 8.7% in previous year. Additional headcounts, some negative foreign currency impacts on the cost side, plus higher internal and external costs related to our development efforts did drive this increase. In SG&A, which means selling, general, and administrative costs, the expense level developed more or less stable and showed a small $0.2 million increase. With lower spending and lower third-party expenses on the one hand side, and some unfavorable FX impacts on the other side, did drive this level.
The operating profit for the fourth quarter was $21.5 million, or 18.6% of sales, after $16 million in Q4 of FY 2019. This corresponds to an increase of around 34% compared to our previous quarter, where we only had a $10.5 million profit or 11.4%, the result is basically double. The income tax on the next slide. The income tax expense for the first quarter was at $3.7 million. This represents a tax rate of 17.7%. Last year's negative $0.7 million tax benefit was significantly impacted by the U.S. Tax Act and by Germany's investment tax reform. Now we are back on a more normal level. The net profit, therefore, reached $17.1 million, or 14.6% in Q4. This compares to $15.8 million or 16.4% in the prior year, an 8.2% increase in absolute numbers. Consequently, we see a similar development in earnings per share.
This went up by 8.5% and stands now at $7 in Q4. Let's move on to the balance sheet. Our net cash position reached $40.9 million, which is about $9 million lower than last year. The operating cash flow, which you can see on the bottom right side, reached a good level of $20.1 million, representing about 17% of sales. This was a little bit lower than last year, but improved by nearly $5 million compared to the previous quarter. The inventory turns reached 2.8x, the same level as last year, but slightly better than in Q3, coming from 2.7 x. The working capital, which consists out of accounts receivables, inventories minus accounts payables, closed at $128.9 million, clearly higher than last year. What did drive this up?
A $13 million increase in accounts receivables due to the record high sales in Q4 and about $9 million higher inventory levels are the main reasons for that jump. The DSO ratio improved slightly and could be reduced to 51.1 days. I can say that the payment morale and behavior of our customers remained very good. The balance sheet shows a solid structure with 73% equity ratio and no long-term debt. Those were my comments on the balance sheet in Q4. Let's move on to the full year results. The full year revenue for fiscal year 2020 ended at $397.8 million, after $381.7 million in the previous year, which corresponds to an increase of 4.2%. Excluding currency effects of positive 1.6%, this results in an organic increase of 2.6% in 2020.
As already commented by Mr. Winkler, and as you can see on that chart, we were able to grow in two markets, in the refrigeration, air conditioning, and automotive end market, and the semi and vacuum coating end market. Here we also reached a new annual high with $191 million. This market contributes now to 48% of our group sales. Let's look here also to the regional development. Asia, our largest sales region, did grow by 12.2%, reaching $173 million, about 43% of our global sales. This increase was mainly driven by the strong sales in the vacuum coating market, which had a growth in Asia of about 20%. North America, with a 26% share of global sales, did decrease by 6.9%, where all markets, except the semi and vacuum coating, did decline. Europe has now a share of 29% of global sales and did grow by 5.1%.
This is driven by the semi and vacuum coating sales. Let's go to the next slide. The gross profit margin reached 47.3% in FY 2020, showing a decrease of 205 basis points compared to previous year. I can say COVID inefficiencies and pandemic mitigation efforts, tougher competition in Asia and China, and import duties had some negative impacts. Turning on to the cost, we spent $39 million on R&D for the full year, an increase of 13.4%. The increase was again due to our continued development efforts, new R&D resources we added, and some unfavorable foreign currency impacts. The SG&A costs decreased by $2.2 million despite also here some unfavorable FX impacts, but lower variable compensation, third party expenses and cost control did compensate the cost. Operating profit, therefore, reached $61.9 million or 15.6% of sales, mainly due to the lower gross margin and slightly higher R&D costs.
Year-over-year, tax expense increased by approximately 9% to $10.6 million. This gave us a tax rate on average of 17.7% compared to the low 15.5% we had in last year. The net profit reached $49.3 million or 12.4%. This compares to $52.8 million or 13.8% in the previous year, a decrease of 6.6%. Earnings per share reached $20.18, down about the same level as the net income. Let us turn to some balance sheet data. The cash flow for the full fiscal year decreased slightly to $50.5 million, or 12.7% of sales, from 14.1% in the previous year. The CapEx were at $14.1 million, lower by $4.3 million after a relatively high level in 2019. The working capital and equity development, I already commented in my Q4 comments. Equity level still, I would say, solid, with a 73% ratio.
Now let's move on to the next slide and the dividend. We communicated this morning that we want to distribute CHF 16 per share based on our robust annual results and the financial strength of the company. The Board of Directors decided to propose this to the Annual General Meeting end of March. The CHF 16 per share represent an 88% payout ratio, and with that, the payout remains on the traditionally high level. This also means that we will return approximately CHF 39 million to our shareholders. The payout of the dividend is expected to take place on April 8, right after Easter. Finally, I come to the outlook. Mr. Winkler did already go into the detail and the estimates for the different end markets. The business situation looks quite positive for the start of the year. Our current economic situation remains fragile.
We assess the outlook for the current year optimistic. With that, we expect sales around CHF 420 million-CHF 450 million and an improved operating income margin for the new fiscal year 2021. With that, I would like to close the presentation. We are now ready to take your questions.
As far as I can see, we have no written questions, but Martin Comtesse has a first question, and I would like to ask Mr. Comtesse to switch on your microphone and start discussion with management.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations to a very strong fourth quarter. I'll just go with three questions, and then go back to the queue, if that's okay. My first question would be on your very strong exit rate in the semiconductor market. Could you specify a little bit more, what the share was from OEMs and from device makers? Also, the demand that you've seen in China, are you seeing any sort of changes in the follow-up contracts regarding the margins here? Can we already expect in 2021 that you are coming back to a more group level margin with the semi customers in China? That would be my first question. The second question is on the cash conversion, which was a bit lower, in particular in the fourth quarter.
Does that have to do with different payment conditions in China, or is it an impact of COVID-19? The third question would be on your guidance regarding improving operating margins. I think that's an important point here. Can you be any more specific? Can you try to quantify what range you want to go into, or is that still dependent on the recovery as a whole and in particular, the situation in China? Thank you.
I will take question one and three, and then I hand over to Matthias for the second question. On the semi side, split between OEM and end user tilted. Let's say if you look historically over the last 5 years, the contribution from end user used to be much higher. Used to be more on the 2/3 level and then one-third from OEM. That slowly changed over the last five years. Now it's more like a 50/50 contribution. The main drivers behind that is that, first of all, we did gain market share with gauges at OEMs or equipment manufacturers. Last but not least, with the starting point of using EUV tools. The EUV maker became a very important equipment manufacturer's market for INFICON as well. Now it's more in the 50/50 range.
If I would have to take a guess, for the next two to three years, it might even go higher. The contribution coming from equipment manufacturers might even go above the 50% threshold. Now, on the China side, you asked about the specific questions. Do we expect the continuation of some of those lower prices that we had to accept based on public auctions? It is not 100% clear yet, to be honest. We have seen already follow-up offers that did not go through a public auction. We have been able to increase certain prices because the setup changed. We are not talking exactly about the same specifications, and we have been able, in the meantime, to add some
Additional instruments and additional software modules. They are not apple by apple comparable anymore with the original public auction specifications. Therefore, I personally expect that we might still, from time to time, get some public auction issues. Overall, I'm more concerned about the Entity List that is now out there from the U.S., that we still struggle getting orders from the company that is listed, which is SMIC. The others are not listed. Therefore, I'm quite optimistic that we will get improved gross profit margins overall in China, because now we have established a relatively high market share, and now we can add piece by piece and more value. Therefore, in the long run, the margin should become more similar than we had in the past. Now, on the guidance from the margin point of view, maybe just some indications.
We provided the top-line range of CHF 420 million-CHF 450 million. If you are more on the low side, I think the margin will be somewhere between 17%-18%. If we should end up more on the higher side of our sales guidance, it will get closer to the 20% range. That's depending on the product mix, I have to say. If our speed of gaining market share with equipment manufacturer will continue, then that has a little bit negative impact on the gross profit margin because we sell a lot of products that have below INFICON average gross profit margin. On the other hand side, we expect a recovery from the security market. We expect a recovery in the RAC and automotive market, where we enjoy a very nice gross profit margin. It's a little bit product mix dependent.
For the second question, this cash conversion rate, I like to give the question to Matthias.
Thank you, Lukas. Regarding the cash flow. You're right, the cash flow in relation to sales, it's a little bit lower than last year. We had about 17%, and reached above $20 million. Last year, I think the peak was above 20%, 23%, something like that. Yes, it's a little bit lower, but it's not driven by changes in payment terms or changes in payment behavior. That's also something you can verify with the DSO ratio. That's still good or even improving in these tough times. Why it's a little bit lower has more to do with the changes in the balance sheet, and here, especially with the sharp increase in receivables in Q4. We had high sales, as you know, and due to that, we increased our accounts receivable position in the balance sheet by about $9 million from Q3 to Q4.
This change in the balance sheet, of course, has some negative impact on the cash flow number because it's basically a calculation using all these balance sheet items like inventory and receivables. Receivables was one of the major changes with this increase and therefore that's one of the main reasons for that. There's no change in payment behavior, morale, or change in payment terms. Also not in China. There's no worries. We monitor, of course, carefully. So far we did this quite good. No bad debts, no major reserves we had to take, and with that I feel okay.
Excellent. Thank you for your detailed answers. Go back to the queue.
Who has the next question?
The next question would come from Marta Bruska. May I ask Marta to switch on her microphone?
Yes, good morning. Congratulations and thank you for taking my question. I have three, and I just ask them one by one, if I may please. Firstly, I would like to ask regarding your sales guidance, what are your underlying assumptions regarding both the semi CapEx growth in 2021, as well as the shape of the general economic recovery that maybe some see some risk for the second half with the vaccine rollout that is relatively slow in Europe. What did you bake in these numbers, CHF 420 million-CHF 450 million? That's the first one.
Okay. Let me take the first question on sales guidance for semi and general vacuum. We clearly put the emphasis on the pure semiconductor market of semiconductor vacuum. We don't expect growth coming from vacuum coating market. We expect the growth coming slowly from the semiconductor part. There we assume that the semiconductor part itself will be most likely above the 10% threshold, but the vacuum coating being at 0%. Overall, you end up maybe something which could be slightly around the 10% kind of a point, depending on the timing and depending on especially the timing of getting design wins. On the general vacuum side, yes, I'm with you. Maybe three, four weeks ago, I was a little bit more optimistic about the speed of getting people vaccinated.
Now it looks like it will take a little bit longer, might get a small impact on the general vacuum market. On the other hand side, as I mentioned before, in at least one area, which is in China, we definitely don't see any impact from COVID-19 anymore. There we actually enjoy a very nice growth, also based on those sentiments against U.S. products. We get some benefit and tailwind out of this negative reputation. Therefore, overall in the general vacuum market, we think it will be a high single-digit overall just for the general vacuum. Depending a little bit also on the speed of getting more access to food packaging customers and the rollout of this new product into new applications around the world.
As you know, we just started to sell in the U.S., and we've seen our first successes, and eventually we'll move to China as well with this new product line.
Thank you very much. I'm just trying to sort of assess what would be the baseline of the expectations for the market. Is it that when you say high single digit in general vacuum for 2021, it seems like it's a combination of both the recovery and market share gains. Is that correct?
That's correct, yes.
Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's not too aggressive in my view. Thank you. The second question is, what is the impact of the recent news on the SMIC planned purchases of ASML equipment on INFICON, if anything, please?
All good news for ASML are also good news for INFICON. Therefore, we as a supplier for one core component to this specific EUV tool is always good news for us, I don't think that the ASML can ship the EUV tool to China yet. Might still be blocked by some export control laws from the U.S. I'm not too much into the details, and I'm not a politician, so you never know what kind of surprises we will see in the coming years.
Have you seen anything moving on that front? We're maybe expecting Biden a little bit of the easing. Nothing dramatic, but a little bit of some action on that front. Have you seen any early signs of that yet?
No, we haven't seen any signs. We know that at least large equipment manufacturers in the U.S. tried to convince the new White House administration to do something so they are not blocked out in the development of the Chinese semiconductor market. I don't know. I haven't heard anything about the results from those discussions.
Thank you very much. I have two very short ones still. Firstly, if you can give us any update at all on the trading environment development in Q1. Secondly, and lastly, with regard to the new product launch, I remember from my fireside chat, it's a really exciting initiative. Would that be more for the sales development in one to two years or more three to five years when we see significant contributions? Thank you.
I think the first question was regarding the order dynamic at the beginning of this year.
Yes.
This is very positive. We see a continuation of the trend in Q4, even going into Q1 2021. That's good news. On the new product launches, you're right. They are not going to contribute a lot of top line in the first and second year. It usually takes about three years until we get, let's say, a reasonable larger contribution from new product. As I mentioned in the initial presentation, it's always appreciated by our customers that we come up with new technologies. We give them early test kits so they can do some tryouts. It puts a lot of value into our brand awareness and brand reputation in the high tech world. Last but not least, it really demonstrates our ability to come up with new ideas never heard before.
That helps, especially these high-tech applications around semiconductor, but also around this new battery technology that you will see to really improve the quality of the batteries on one hand side and enable very advanced manufacturing processes in the semiconductor environment, going down to three nanometer or eventually even below three nanometer.
Thank you very much. That's all from me. Looks like really exciting times ahead. Thank you.
Yep, we are.
Thank you, Marta, for your questions. You may now switch off your microphone again as we have the next question coming from Serge Rotzer.
Yes, good morning. You can hear me now, I guess? My first question. Well, many thanks for the guidance for the margins, I'm wondering also on the fixed cost level, probably the CFO can elaborate on that. Do you see SG&A is going up? What's the R&D level? Is it only driven by gross profit margins? You could split a little bit or differentiate between gross profit margin and fixed cost to achieve a margin of 17%-20%. This would be question one, I will ask then the other question later.
Without going into all the details, I might have to refer them to Matthias, but I can give you my gut feeling and how I see the world. There is no tendency of generally increase the fixed costs. We will certainly see some recovery on, let's say, an increase in SG&A aside from some variable parts of the compensation. We did not fully reach our goals in 2020. Therefore, assuming that we reach our goals in 2021, we will have a higher contribution coming from our profit-sharing program on especially SG&A cost. On the R&D cost, we will continue to be on a very high level to push out those new products. There's also initiatives to go more into data analysis application on the software side.
The R&D spend level will remain relatively high for two reasons, to support those product launches, but also make sure that we adapt very quickly once we get the first feedbacks from customers so we can improve those or integrate new features. The R&D part of the cost is less dependent on variable costs, therefore, that's more like a fixed level. The SG&A has more flexibility based on some variable performance-based salary components. If you look at the bottom line, that does not depend on the OpEx only. It also heavily depends on the gross profit margin level. The gross profit margin level, we have improvement programs in place, working on improved efficiency, working on putting more emphasis on automation, which might then lead to a little bit higher CapEx in order to install those fully automatic calibration systems.
On the other hand side, it will reduce our cost of goods sold and therefore improve our gross profit margin. Overall, we expect improved gross profit margin for the full year 2021 and therefore at slightly higher OpEx rate. That's basically the calculation that we end up with this roughly guidance that I indicated just five minutes ago on the bottom line. You have to unmute yourself first.
Sorry again. Thank you so much. You mentioned higher CapEx, I have to ask this question. What is your level of the CapEx for the current year?
If the dynamics continues like it does the last two, three months, we have to invest a little bit faster in new calibration tools, especially here in Liechtenstein. We also have some CapEx plans that go into buildings, also improve our CO2 footprint with energy recovery systems to reduce our energy bill. Therefore, it will be higher than in 2020. It could be more like towards CHF 20 million.
Okay, got it. Probably next question is, you had some project gains in security and energy. This is volatile. You mentioned that you see further projects awarded next year, I'm fine with that. What about the catch-up impacts in [RAC]? Is this now the new level, or do you see further catch-up potential in Europe or the North America, as you have seen this in China last year?
I certainly expect going back to the levels that we had before COVID as a basis. The other accelerations are coming more from new restrictions on refrigerant to make them more environmentally friendly. That requires some investment in new leak detection instruments. On top of that, what we have seen, especially in those countries where labor costs play a more important role, there is a lot of automation projects started in the area of refrigerator and air conditioning manufacturers. People like to get less dependent on human errors or human factors and move towards robotic and automatic vision-supported leak-checking applications that are fully automatic, and so the human error can be minimized.
Okay, many thanks.
Therefore, we expect a round of investments going into automation tools.
Okay. It's very helpful. Probably the last question. What is the game changer in your guidance between the CHF 420 million and CHF 450 million? Where does this CHF 30 million are coming from mainly, then?
The simple answer is it's the beginning of the year, so we have 10 more months to come, and we will certainly reduce the range the more we are going into the 2020 year. Secondly, as you know, we have very short lead times, at least in two of our main businesses. We rely on forecasts and on projects, and not on real bookings yet. Therefore, we just remain a little bit cautious at the beginning of the year.
Okay, got it. Many thanks, and bon voyage.
Thank you.
Thank you, Serge. We have another question from Michael Inauen. Michael, can you turn your microphone on now? Thank you.
Yes, of course. Thank you very much, Bernhard. I have actually just two questions, but one is more on the market in general. Lukas, how do you see the semi cycle at the moment? There are a lot of discussions around it and the wafer CapEx. Expectations from many analysts around the globe are moving up and up, and we are approaching already expectations of $70 billion wafer CapEx for the full year. I was just wondering, first of all, how do you see the cycle? Second, what kind of wafer CapEx number would you use for your guidance? Would you also see that if memory is really turning up, in 2021, particularly in H2, that we could even see higher spendings than the market maybe currently expects? That would be the first part of the question.
Okay. Let me start with memory. The answer is clearly yes. There is now a catch-up going on with investments going into memory capacity in order to really cope with the demands of not just this year, but also coming years. We see first investments of EUV technology even for memory chips, which is quite new. That might trigger another wave of investments. To the first question, how do we see the cycle? I don't have a crystal ball either, but the indications are all positive, and it's like a, I wouldn't call it perfect storm, but there are three elements going on at the same time. I think the global consumers or the global users of electronic components are more aware of bottlenecks that we have around the world. Secondly, the dependency on just a few suppliers. That frightens a lot of users.
That triggered some, even government, to look into that and maybe invest in a second source type of a strategy. Last but not least, on the technology side, we are really now at a level where only a few companies can afford to go beyond the 5 nm or even go to 3 nm, which is very expensive, very capital-intense. Also good for INFICON because for those advanced 5 nm or even lower semiconductor processes, you need more instruments that do not exist yet. Having said that, we are not really looking into this, is it $55 billion, is it $60 billion or $70 billion CapEx spend? We rely more on two things. One is the ability of getting design wins. We count the design wins that we make with equipment manufacturers, especially to secure the future over the next five or 10-year cycle.
Secondly, we look into projects coming from end users, such as Intel, Samsung, and so on, and TSMC, what they plan to do as a next step and what role can we play for those expansion plans. We never made our forecast based on those figures that are well-known in the industry. A lot of people now talk, as you said, might go up to $ 70 billion. This is not a figure that we really rely on. We rely on design wins and future projects, and our ability to come up with new instruments for the future needs at end users.
Perfect. Thanks very much. Maybe a second part you are always referring to, or often, to new product. I was just wondering what kind of new products, particularly in the semi industry, are we looking at, and what's the difference to your competitors? Your main competitors like MKS, Advanced Energy, they are also trying to find their perfect spot in some of the markets. Looks like they are moving a bit more into radio frequency power areas at the moment. I was just wondering, what new products, as specific as it can be, of course, but what new products are we looking at and what's actually the differentiating factor here to your biggest competitors?
As you know, we always looking for new niches. In many of those new niches or new applications that we found, there is no real competition yet. There are many niches that companies such as INFICON can play a prominent role. We decided on purpose not to go into the power supply business because there are too many competitors there. We decided to spend more emphasis on really helping our end user customers improving their yield by now looking into. Simply spoken, we like to get to know better what exactly goes on 1 nm above the wafer. That's exactly what our end users would like to know as well. We have, I would say, a handful of new instruments that indirectly determines the quality of a process chamber during the coating or etching or deposition process as accurate as possible.
We do that with a combination of different sensors that are linked with a piece of software where we now use some artificial intelligence-based kind of algorithms. The sensors look into pressure, they look into frequency changes, they look into the deposition speed rates or etching speed rates. They look into changes in the harmonics for plasma measuring. They are looking into specific gas compositions or the ratio between different gases, are they out of spec or are they in spec, and so on. It is a combination of a couple of new niche technologies linked together by a powerful software tool that enables us to, or enables our customers to actually make chips at the 3 nm technology base. The number of competitors, you mentioned a couple of them. In most cases, we do not directly compete with them.
If we have some competition, it might be more like a smaller startup company somewhere, or sometimes even the internal R&D department might be a competitor that we have to talk to. At the end of the day, it's all about enabling the next step of semiconductor manufacturing.
Thank you very much. Really interesting. It is really helpful. Thanks. I will take my hand down now.
Thank you, Michael. I see that Martin Comtesse and Serge Rotzer still have their hands on. Do you have a further question, Martin?
Sorry. Yes.
Serge, is there another question from your side?
No. Sorry, I don't know how I can take away this hand, so I can't.
Just click on the third icon, and then your hand will disappear. Martin, you had another question probably.
It was actually the same with me, but I do have another question. One on hydrogen, actually. I think there's lots been said about hydrogen currently. I know it gets people dreaming. I'm just trying to understand. We've heard the European initiative for the hydrogen build-out in the next five years. Do you already have a feeling to sort of look at the opportunities for INFICON in hydrogen and sort of where the applications are? Do the applications really sit with leak detection for the actual fuel cell in the cars, or do you also have applications for, let's say, the infrastructure build-out where INFICON tools might be required?
The answer is yes and yes.
Okay.
On top of that, there's even more, because as you know, hydrogen might be an easy way to store energy based on the surplus. If there's a lot of wind and sunshine out there, we have too much energy, and turning that into hydrogen is one way to store the electricity. Secondly, there's also a tendency of certain countries in the world of moving away from natural gas as the primary source of energy for heating and cooking and replace it with hydrogen. That's another application that we have some instruments that actually can analyze the content of the pureness of hydrogen. Overall, if you let me count, we have pure hydrogen leak detectors. We have sensors that find leaks in hydrogen gas pipelines. We have special dedicated sensors for alternative energy sources that uses hydrogen again.
It's about four or five different products that we already have that are able to be used in building up equipment for hydrogen, building up equipment to store energy for hydrogen, the fuel cells itself, as you mentioned, but also pipelines, leak tight as of pipelines for hydrogen transportation and tanks that need to be tight. There is a nice array of products that we have already available for this market. Last but not least, it looks like we might get a combination in the future of either battery-powered smaller cars, but eventually more hydrogen-powered trucks, something like that. There is, for both technology, there will be a market, and we just have to make sure that both technologies are safe enough just to drive around. On the lithium-ion battery, we have products to check the security level of those batteries, which are quite dangerous.
[Fabian], you're.
On the other hand side, hydrogen is known to be dangerous, so we have instruments to make the use of hydrogen safe as well.
Understood. Can you quantify that by any means for the next-
Oh, yes.
sort of five years?
We tried, we believe there will be a market opportunity in the neighborhood of CHF 30 million-CHF 50 million totally. If you get a high market share out of that, it might be more in the CHF 20 million-CHF 30 million range. It is another global niche market that we like to have a leading role in.
Yes. Great. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Ladies and gentlemen, any further questions? Just raise your hand. I don't see any further hands. Lukas, maybe it's time for your closing remark.
Okay. First of all, thank you, all of you, being patient enough to listen to this new type of Bilanzpressekonferenz, which I do not really prefer. I like to see you face by face and having a cup of coffee and the Gipfeli together with you. Next year we will do that again. Secondly, I'm happy to see that we had quite a large participation and some very detailed and interesting questions. Last but not least, if you consider changing your car, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day if you're using a lithium-ion battery powered car or a hydrogen battery powered car. Both are relatively dangerous, but we make sure that they will be as safe as a car that you use today. With that, there is a nice future for us, nice future, hopefully, for you, too.
It's a beautiful day out there, so have a good day, and hopefully see you face by face the next time. Thank you very much.
Thanks.