Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the INFICON first quarter results conference call. I'm Myrtle, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and One on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and Zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Lukas Winkler, Chief Executive Officer of INFICON. Mr. Winkler, you may now proceed.
Thank you, Myrtle. Greetings, good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today to review our results for the first quarter of 2020. Besides the COVID-19 crisis, I have three more main key points that I like to start with. First, on the positive side, I like to highlight the very high order intake coming from the semiconductor market. OEM as well as end user customers contributed equally to this upswing. Secondly, again, on the positive side, I have to mention the strong rebound in the Asian market after the COVID-19 lockdown. My last point refers to the security market where we experienced the expected weak start into 2020. Overall, it was an unexpected, challenging first quarter with a very strong semiconductor market. You can find a PowerPoint presentation on the investor relations tab on our website that supports our conference call.
Please turn to slide number four, where we start with the key features for the reporting quarter. In total, our revenues were almost 3% below last year's first quarter organically, and we finished with sales close to $93 million. Sequentially, that represents a decrease of 3.8% compared to the last year's fourth quarter, primarily due to a very weak February in Asia. I already highlighted the high order intake driven by large orders from semiconductor customers around the world. With decreased sales, somewhat lower gross profit margins, and stable operating expenses, we finished the quarter with operating income of $14 million, slightly above 50% of sales, compared to $16.7 million or 70.5% of sales for the same quarter a year ago. Sequentially, the operating income decreased by 12.6%. With the relatively low tax expenses, net income reached $11.4 million or 12.3% of sales.
Matthias Troendle will review the detailed numbers with you later, while I now highlight some important developments in our target markets first. Please turn to the next slide, number five, where you see the sales breakdown into our served four key markets, as well as the regional sales trends. The pie chart shows an increased contribution from the semi and vacuum coating market, primarily at the expense of an expected reduction from the security and energy market. The trend chart on the right-hand side indicates increased sales to European customers, a stable contribution from Americas, and a slowdown from Asia. Considering that we had only two months in Asia, the result was remarkably stable. Now let's do a quick analysis market by market, starting with the smallest one.
In the security and energy market, on slide number six, sales decreased 39.7% year-over-year and more than 55% sequentially and reached $3.5 million only. We had an expected very weak start into 2020. First time in a single quarter, we had the majority of sales to customers in the energy market, driven by investments in environmental-friendly biomethane applications in Europe, as well as gas monitoring activities in the U.S. Sales of our flagship product, the HAPSITE, used for security applications, were very low, and we did not book any large order from a government agency such as the U.S. Department of Defense. Looking ahead for the full year 2020, we do not forecast on getting larger government orders either, but expect successful first tests with a new generation of the HAPSITE, which will be available for sales in 2021.
On the energy side, we foresee a growing demand from green energy initiatives as well as an increased demand for environmental and gas leaking applications in Europe and the U.S. Overall, we expect a weak 2020 in the security and energy market. Moving to the refrigeration, air conditioning, and automotive market on slide number seven, where sales decreased 6.5% year-over-year but increased 2% compared to the last quarter in 2019. The first quarter sales analysis showed a very inhomogeneous picture. First of all, sales to Asian customers in February were close to zero due to the known reasons. Secondly, in the RAC manufacturers market, we experienced a kind of stagnating or rather hesitant investment pattern in new manufacturing capacity.
On the other hand side, sales of our handheld products for service technicians in the after-sales market increased. Third, in the automotive market, sales to traditional car manufacturers crashed, but we continue to increase our exposure in the e-car business with new applications in the lithium ion battery market all over the world. We expect a flat sales development in 2020, assuming a recovery in the automotive market in the second half year, as well as continued investments in e-car battery manufacturing capacities. Let's go to the semi and vacuum coating market, which includes solar display optics and semiconductor applications on slide number eight, where sales increased over 8% year-over-year to $42.5 million, which is almost at the same level as the fourth quarter 2019, despite a missing month in Asia. A breakdown into the two main applications showed a huge increase to pure semiconductor customers.
While sales to vacuum coating customers, primarily OLED display and optical coating manufacturers decreased. Successful design wins at equipment manufacturers or OEM, as we call them, over the last few years now pay off, and we enjoyed nice increased orders during the reporting quarter. Sales of new innovative products that have been developed together with key customers start to contribute to the top line as well. About half of the orders came from device manufacturers or end users in Asia and the U.S. for advanced process monitoring applications, including larger contributions from pure software applications. Our software package is modular and gets sold more and more as a service package, software as a service. The modules are either tool-based or process monitoring, or sold per fab line for scheduling and maintenance purposes. Modules are linked to each other and enable better tool utilization and increased fab productivity.
The investments are driven by applications such as 5G, Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, and home office computer and communication appliances. The other driver is the technology. Smaller, faster, less energy consumption and so on. Recently, one of the large memory chip manufacturer just announced the first shipment of a 10 nanometer NAND chip made with the new EUV lithography technology. That will push other memory chip makers to invest in EUV technology as well. The China Semi initiative continues despite some negative impacts from COVID-19 and some threats from the U.S. trade barriers. We just started to continue to work in Wuhan again at one of the largest new Chinese semiconductor companies. Looking ahead long-term, semiconductor market will remain the most attractive growth opportunity for INFICON. New chip designs, new material and manufacturing processes are asking for more accurate process control and monitoring.
We continue to work very closely with OEMs and end users to develop new sensors, solutions, and methods to assure high quality mass production of new chips. We expect 2020 to be a good semiconductor year. Investments in OLED display remain flat, and the optical coating market seems to be more challenging than originally anticipated. Finally, we had a mixed first quarter in 2020 in the general vacuum market on slide number nine, with sales of $26.6 million, which results in a year-over-year decrease of 9.2%, mainly due to the missing months in Asia. Sales was a little bit better than in the last quarter of 2019. As you know, we sell analysis measurement and control products for many different industrial applications through private label partners, primarily vacuum pump manufacturers, and via direct sales channels to industrial OEMs and distributors.
In Europe, we had a good start into 2020, but sales to Chinese customers fell sharply, both compared to last year's first quarter as well as sequentially. The last month of the quarter, on the other hand side, showed a sharp increase in China, indicating a positive general market rebound after the COVID-19 lockdown. Looking ahead, we expect a difficult second quarter in Europe and Americas, but eventually a mild rebound in the second half year 2020. Before I close my part of the presentations with a 2020 outlook description, let me give you an update on where we are in regards to the COVID-19 measures. I start with Asia. We are back to almost normal operation in China, Korea, and Japan for sales and service activities, with some domestic travel restrictions, of course. Our Taiwan business never had a seriously negative impact.
Only our Southeast Asia activities suffer from shutdowns in Malaysia, Indonesia, and India. Luckily, this Singapore-based business is our smallest one in Asia. Our manufacturing company in Shanghai is running at almost 100% again. The main production sites in the U.S., Germany, and Liechtenstein are fully operational and are thus able to meet the customer's high demand. They are operating partly on the grounds of special permits, complying with strict measures, employing special shift schemes, and working from remote offices.Nobody travels internationally, and we experience outbound logistics issues and start to have some supply shortages for certain electronic components. Overall, we have been always up for business and supported our customers without any interruptions. Now to our outlook 2020 on slide number nine, where the uncertainty has not changed since we presented the full year 2019 figures at the beginning of the March.
In the meantime, it became obvious that everybody underestimated the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, INFICON continues to refrain from issuing the official guidance for the business year 2020. Anyway, overall, we remain cautiously optimistic for the coming nine months, mainly due to the strong semiconductor market. As I mentioned before, the growing investments in new equipment are driven by new technologies and advanced IT applications. With new product ideas and an excellent customer reputation, INFICON is well-positioned to expand within the semiconductor business. All other non-semiconductor-based activities remain more challenging, with a few exceptions, such as the lithium-ion battery activities or new applications in the energy and food packaging market. With that, I'd like to turn over to Matthias Troendle, who will give you more details about our financial performance. Matthias, please.
Thank you, Lukas. Good morning to everyone to our first quarter 2020 conference call. My commentary starts with slide 11 of the PowerPoint on our website. As always, let me begin with our revenue segmentation. Revenues for the first quarter of 2020 came out at $92.6 million, compared with $95.7 million in the same quarter of last year. Total sales decreased by $3.1 million or 3.2%. We had a negative exchange rate effect of 0.3%, which means we had an organic sales decrease of 2.9%. Looking at the end market development, the semi-and vacuum coating market had a good performance and increased by approximately $3.3 million or 8.4%, while the sales to the other end markets declined. On a sequential basis, sales in the first quarter decreased by 3.8% compared to the sales level in the previous quarter, Q4.
This decrease is almost exclusively driven by lower sales in the security and energy market. All other end markets showed a stable or slight improvement compared to the previous quarter, Q4. Let's take a look to the regional sales performance on the next slide. On a geographic basis, Europe reached about 33%, North America 29%, and Asia-Pacific ended with 37% of total first quarter sales. As you can see in that chart, Asia developed overall stable despite several weeks of shutdowns and operational restrictions, with growing sales into the semi and vacuum coating market. Europe had a slight increase and North America did decline by approximately 10%, mainly due to the lower sales in the security and energy market.
Compared to previous quarter, Q4, sales did increase in Europe by 10%, North America by 6%, and Asia, which was of course, as mentioned now several times, impacted by the shutdowns, had a decrease of 17%. Let's go to the slide 13. Gross margin for the first quarter of 2020 reached 49.1% and ended 96 basis points lower than Q1 last year. Compared to previous quarter four of last year, the margin ended exactly on the same level. Moving on to our operating expenditures. R&D expense in the first quarter reached $9.2 million, and as we continue to invest and push ahead with our strategic projects, increased by plus 7%. This represents 10% of sales. SG&A expense did decline slightly by -1%. As a % of sales, this represents 24% after 23.6% last year. Turning to the bottom line.
For the first quarter of 2020, we achieved income from operations of $14 million or 15.1% of sales. This compares with income from operations of $16.7 million or 17.5% in last year's first quarter, which means the result did decline by roughly $2.7 million or 16% compared to last year. Let's go to the next slide. For the first quarter, we recorded tax expense of $1.5 million, which represents an average tax rate of about 11.9%. This is substantially lower than the same period a year ago. This is due to the taxable income mix of our various entities in the different jurisdictions, as well as due to some lower accruals and repayments in some of our subsidiaries. As a result, the net income for this year's first quarter reached $11.4 million or 12.3%, compared to $12.8 million or 13.4% in the same quarter last year.
The decrease of about 11% for both net income and earnings per share is driven by the operating income development and the lower tax bill. Let's move on to the balance sheet highlights on slide 15. Our net cash position was $49.8 million, which represents roughly 18% of our total assets. This level is more or less unchanged compared to the end of last year. The operating cash flow, which is in the first quarter of the year, in our case at least, typically very low due to full year performance payouts and other beginning of the year impacts, reached $3.8 million and did decrease from previous year's level due to higher AR inventory and some lower income tax payables. For the first quarter, our day sales outstanding was 52.2 days, more or less stable.
Inventory trends have been unchanged at 2.8 trends, while the working capital level increased, driven by our inventory and AR balances. On the balance sheet graph, on the left side, you see structure composition of assets and liabilities. The equity ratio, which goes to high 79% in Q1, after 57.9% in Q4. We have no material long-term liabilities and a net cash position of close to $50 million, confirm a solid balance sheet structure. With that, I covered our current quarter results. Finally, one more word or comment regarding our guidance. Mr. Winkler already gave some comments and insights and status where we are. In general, we assess the outlook for the current year cautiously optimistic, mainly due to the strong semi market. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, presents ongoing global uncertainties. INFICON, therefore, continues to refrain from issuing guidance for the business year 2020.
The last slide shows, as usual, our corporate calendar with the upcoming dates. The next date is in July. This concludes now the formal part of the presentation. We are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question for better quality. Anyone who has a question or a comment may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Iffert Joern with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be please on the order intake. We are aware you're not showing the exact number, but can you maybe make some comments, how strong the order intake was year-over-year? Is it also fair to assume that the order intake in the division Semi and Vacuum Coating was as high as the record sales in Q1, Q2 2018? Second question would be, please, you mentioned the memory market is likely recovering. You're seeing first investments. Is this something bigger to support the whole semi industry over the next 12 to 18 months? Do you really have visibility already on new projects? Third question and fourth question, just technical questions. The third question on R&D, it was up 7% year-over-year.
Are you further engaging with clients on new design wins, gaining market share, or is this normal quarterly volatility? The last question on the gross profit margin. Would have expected with the rising share of semi sales that the gross profit margin would be potentially a little bit stronger. Can you maybe just explain what are the negative impacts here? Thank you.
Thank you, Joern. Let me give you a little bit flavor to the order intake. I think there were two surprises on that side. First it was pretty high, and if I say pretty high, it's clearly above the net sales. We usually do not comment on order intake because of two reasons. First of all, it fluctuates more than our revenue due to the nature of some of larger orders that might not be immediately realized as revenue because you have to do installations first and have long lead times. Secondly, because of this timing of revenue recognition as a challenge for the order intake, we don't like to disclose order intake because it's bookings and not revenue yet. As you know, bookings can be canceled, can be pushed out, can be withdrawn. Therefore, we continue to refrain from giving you detailed order intake.
It was unusually high, and you asked the question, was it as high as two years ago? I don't know exactly, but you're probably right. It was, I would assume, as high as two years ago from the pure semiconductor side. The second thing I like to give on, which is kind of a surprise, not necessarily a surprise, but is kind of expected, that the uptick came from both sides, from end users as well as from OEMs, which is a good indication for us that the positive trend continues.
We started seeing upticks on the OEM side about at the middle of last year. Now we see the same pattern as usual with a delay of six months also on the end user side, which is a clear indication that they continue to invest in new capacity, not just on foundry and logic side, but now also on the memory side. Now, I wasn't so sure about your second question again. What was it? Can you repeat your second question?
Yeah. Thanks. It was on the memory project and your visibility you have. If you really think this is strongly supporting the semi end market over the next 12 to 18 months, or does it more look for you like smaller projects to come up?
We never 100% know exactly when we get orders, especially on the OEM side, are they for memories or not for memories? We only see on the end user side. On the end user side, you can assume that most of the investments in China are memory fabs. There is a clear indication they continue to invest in capacity. The big company that I mentioned before that now ships the first EUV-based memory chips, that's outside of China. That's a clear indication that now also the memory market moves towards EUV, which will certainly trigger another wave of investments because everybody now has to follow, making the next generation of memory. I don't see that as just a one-time effect. I think this is the beginning of some of the recovery in the memory market. How long does it last? Hard to say.
Right now, we just enjoy the nice order intake. On the R&D side, yes, we did spend more than a year ago, and this is clearly due to the nature of those new projects that we started, mostly on the semiconductor side, with one big exception. Actually two, but one is almost done. The one exception is in the HAPSITE business. I mentioned that we are working on next generation. We are almost done. We do now tests. The second project outside of semi is in the lithium-ion battery market, where we see a nice growth potential. All the other growth projects are mostly in the semiconductor area. We continue to believe in those projects. That's why the R&D expense was higher. This is basically the groundwork for the revenue in three to five years. Not tomorrow, but in three to five years.
Especially in the semiconductor and the battery side, the projects are in very close cooperation with key customers, always. We never just do something and then try to sell it. It's always together with two or three key customers. On the gross profit side, I think that was your last question. I think you have to take into your considerations that the first quarter was a very strange quarter in terms of the timing pattern with a very low February. We rebound in March. The mixture of products and the legal entity combination with ups and downs made it pretty tough to increase our gross profit margin on overall. On top of that, we face logistics problems, so we pay more for transportation. We have more issues with some customs clearance.
Last but not least, we start to see some issues on the supply side, where we have to go into the gray market to get some electronic components, and they're usually more expensive than on the traditional channels. Therefore, the gross profit margin did suffer based on the very strange mix and the very strange behaviors in the market.
All right. Many thank you. Sorry?
Maybe one last comment. Having these new shift patterns with double shifts and no overlap and making sure that people are always having a 2-meter distance between each other and so on and so forth, had a not necessarily positive impact on the productivity on the production side. Even there, we might have to face some higher costs.
All right. Very helpful. Many thanks.
You're welcome.
The next question will come from the line of Marta Bruska with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Many thanks for taking my questions. I have couple of them. Firstly, I would like to quickly confirm that I understood correctly that your gross margin issues, so to say, in Q1, are largely temporary and they should be ironed out as soon as we have an improvement with regard to the pandemic, going forward, perhaps in Q3, Q4 this year. Is that correct?
That's correct, yes.
Okay, perfect. I have two questions that are a little bit more basic. I remembered recently about your consumable business, with the coating for aluminum substrates for the wafer production. I was just wondering if you could update us on how big the sales are currently in this business and what's the outlook for 2020?
It is not just consumable. It's both. It's for initial investment as a whole and some consumables. We do not disclose those figures yet, but we expect a high single-digit figure for the full year.
That is from some mid-single digit in 2019?
Yes. No, in 2020 we expect a high single, Oh, it was a mid-single last year, and this year we expect a high single digit. That's correct.
Thank you. With regards to miniaturization, ongoing, making smaller and smaller nodes, basically what I'm referring to. What is the increase in INFICON content per node with each step, if you could just roughly estimate that for us, please?
We don't know, to be honest. We never really went into the big deep dive and tried to figure out exactly what is the increase on INFICON. What we see is that on the OEM side. To have more basic sensors built in to make sure that the basic processes are, how should I say, prepared for those 7 and 5 nanometer process step, and especially towards cleanliness and metal-free contamination issues. What we also see is on the end user side that now going into 7 and 5 nanometer applications, people are using more and more ALD processes with very ALD and high sophisticated CVD and etch processes, where the gas composition play a dominant role. Having the perfect accurate gas mixture inside the process chamber requires more sensors that they never used with, let's say, 10 nanometer or above.
Now they are going to use them for 7 and 5 nanometer applications. How much more it is, clearly, we don't know. We see it is they use more instruments, they use more sensors. They even ask for even more because of the increased cost of one single wafer. Exactly how much, I would have to lie to you if I would give you just a number.
No problem. Thank you. Then with regard to this new HAPSITE device to be launched next year, what is the sales potential? Do you expect a significant cannibalization with your previous product, or would that be some sort of a new revenue driver?
There are two elements to it. First of all, we have to defend our market share. This is clearly a defense mechanism. Recently, at least there was one competitor popping up about a little bit more than one year ago. We have to defend our position. Secondly, with this new generation, we expand, of course, the capabilities of the existing product. It might open the door towards more directly non-military application. Today's product is primarily for military applications, and the next generation can be used for both military applications, but also for some more police-related security activities. It can open a little bit the market to more applications, but the primary purpose is to defend our market share in the military space.
Thank you. Have you seen a market share erosion over the last year? I had the impression that the drop this year in the security and energy market sales was mainly due to some cut in the U.S. budget simply for defense. Do you see some market share erosion here?
No, in our home, let's say, space, in the military part, we haven't seen any issues yet. We see that on the police side, the needs for doing more with, let's say, drug detection and so on is going up, and therefore we like to expand towards that direction as well. That's where the competitor started to promote the product, which was outside of our home territory. We see that as an opportunity to grow.
Thank you. That's interesting. Thank you. If I have one more please, really. Just with regard to the pure software applications from INFICON, how much of your sales are now related to the pure software applications, and how much of the revenue shall we see as recurring?
It will be, let's say, it's already double-digit dollar for a full year but not big double digit yet, and about one fourth of it will be subscription-based.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Foeth Michael with Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. I have three questions. I was just wondering if considering the strong order intake, if you could give us an indication of your expectations for the second quarter. Maybe if you expect your overall result to be above or below the first quarter. The second question would be regarding the component shortage. You mentioned the impact on the gross margin. My question is, do you see any such shortages basically impacting your ability to generate sales at all? Are there any critical components that could go into shortage? The third question would be, you mentioned that business travel obviously is reduced to more or less zero.
My question would be, first of all, what sort of savings are you seeing from that effect, and do you plan any lasting changes to your business model post-COVID resulting from those impacts, basically?
I leave the third question then to Matthias. First one on order intake. Yes, it has been very strong. You're asking for how does it look like in second quarter. I think it depends more on the development outside of semiconductor business, especially in Europe and the U.S. How strong will be the negative impact from the COVID-19 in those two areas? We don't see that in Asia, in Europe and in America, we expect a slowdown in some non-semi-related activities, and therefore it's hard to predict. Will it be better than Q1? It could be. That leads me to the second question. I think it also depends on will there be a serious impact on our delivery capabilities coming from shortages on the components.
It could, unfortunately, I have to say, because we use some components that only one manufacturer makes and that, especially on the electronic side, some of those components are now under observation from even the U.S. government, and they are U.S. suppliers and of course, highest priority for them are the medical applications. Also we are basically considered being essential in two areas for medical applications as well as for communication applications. Therefore, we try to use a little bit our power also in the U.S. to convince those suppliers that they should see us, although we are not located, in that special case, not in the U.S., that we are a critical supplier to the medical instrument manufacturers. Therefore, they should consider us as essential as other tier 1 suppliers in the medical market, and we try our best.
It's too early to say if there will be an impact or not, but there is a risk that we might not be able to ship a few products for a few weeks, and that could clearly have a negative impact on our second quarter revenue. That's our main concern there. The last question may be on the travel cost side, I don't know. I have to give that back to Matthias. The second part of the third question is, will there be a longer lasting impact based on the experience now with COVID-19? We don't know yet. Eventually, yes, because we see that some of the home office work actually does work.
Therefore, there might be some models that we have to consider, even on the long term, if some of those new experiences now that we gain, if they can be used inside INFICON, and to avoid maybe unnecessarily travel, that are more costly than video and telephone conferences. Exactly about the cost, maybe Matthias knows a little bit more about this travel cost breakdown.
Yeah. Maybe let me try to give some comments. Of course. Yes, I agree. There are some savings because more or less, travel and meetings, personal meetings, are close to zero. Probably like the number of flights in Zurich Airport, which is decreasing more than 90%. I assume they have the same situation around the world, in February, March time frame, there was only very few travel. There will be some saving, yes, I agree. How much it will be? It will not be $ millions in a quarter, but there will be a substantial decrease, that what I expect. On the other hand, we also had to invest, unfortunately, in a few other things.
Like this home office work did bring some technical challenges to us, we invested also there in infrastructure, in getting the equipment out to the employees, because not everybody necessarily has a laptop or has a nice screen or whatever. Here we had to invest. On the other hand, we also had to invest in systems, had to communicate, whether it's Microsoft Teams or any other thing. We had both, savings, but also investments. Overall, if it continues, I expect there will be some savings, but will be limited, but will be a positive impact.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Reinders Rolf with Mirabaud. Please proceed with your question.
Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. I have a question on the operating income, which you report was $14 million in the first quarter. Then you have tax of $1.5, then you have net income of $11.4. What is the other part which is in between?
Okay, let me try to answer this one. There were two impacts. Basically, one is the foreign exchange gains or losses, which are impacting the line between, EBIT, I would say, or operating income and net income. It's foreign exchange losses which did impact. The other is some losses which occurred from money investment. We had to cover some work time accounts. Because in March, as we know, February, March, there have been heavy decrease on the stock exchanges, and which did also impact somehow. These two elements did impact the line in between.
Okay, that's great. Thank you. You mentioned this China Semi initiative, that is ongoing. Also, of course, the tensions with the U.S. Can you elaborate a bit more to understand what's going on there? Is there difficulties to be expected? Is there pre-ordering from the Chinese, or how should we-
Let me try to answer that question. China obviously wants to become one of the, let's say, major players in the semiconductor world because they are also using a lot of semiconductors for their own purpose, but also to make products that get re-exported to the Western world, like mobile phones. China decided to invest a lot of money. People talk about $50 billion plus that the government already has invested to become a serious player in the semiconductor world. Of course, they started with memory fabs, which is a little bit easier than logic. The major new suppliers or customers there are making those memory chips. What happened in the meantime is that, of course, the U.S. government is afraid that China could steal technology from the Western equipment manufacturers.
They put a lot of pressure on suppliers, but also on governments to consider not shipping high technology equipment to those semiconductor manufacturers in China so that they might be able to copy it. What actually happened as a real fact is that the government in the Netherlands did issue an export control limit to the EUV tools of a dominant manufacturer in the Netherlands. Those EUV tools cannot be shipped to China. Under the pressure of the American government, the government in the Netherlands basically decided that the EUV tool is considered a dual-use tool, so therefore cannot be shipped to China without an official approval from the government. This is one example, and they are looking into other examples to avoid that the Western technology can get into China, and that's what's going on.
It makes it more difficult for the Chinese manufacturers to actually go ahead and get the latest and greatest equipment to make the chips. What happens then on the other side, of course, typically, that now small Chinese startup companies try to fill the gap and start to make equipments to make semiconductor chips. What they do is basically they look into some existing tools and try to copy it and improve it and then show up as a competitor to the Western suppliers of semiconductor equipment. Are they successful? Short term, I would say not very much, but long term, eventually, yes. That's the threat to this whole China Semiconductor initiative.
That's great. Thank you. Should I then see that this is a temporary additional demand? Then you basically benefit from it now, but afterwards, when they've built up this massive capacity, it has cannibalized other parts or?
No, I don't think so. It's always an opportunity both. First of all, the demand for semiconductors is not going down. It's still increasing day by day, and big data even pushes them to get more memory chips. There's also always an opportunity because whenever a Chinese supplier starts to make equipment, they need our components as well. That's an opportunity to grow. They start to compete with some Western suppliers, and we supply both. From that point of view, our products are not banned from being exported to China, but some of the large equipments will be banned from being exported into China.
Okay, that's great. That's very helpful. Good luck with Q2 and the rest of the year.
Thank you very much, Rolf.
The next question comes from the line of Rotzer Serge with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. I think many questions are already answered, but I still have one or two. The first one is, could you please remind me the sales split of semi and of vacuum coating in the division? This would be the first one. The second one is, how big is the share of the order intake coming from canceled orders in Q4 or even before? Third one, did you see any cancellation still in Q1 and in which segment? The fourth one is, you mentioned that order intake was sound, but has it been small orders, medium orders, or large orders? What is about the split of these three categories of the order intake in semis in Q1?
A lot of questions. Breakdown between sales, semi and OEM, semi and vacuum coating, we never really do it precisely, but I can give you an indication that it shifted towards semi. It used to be more in a half and half. It's clearly 2/3 semi and one-third maximum semi coating and display. It shifted towards semi. We never really had canceled orders. We had push-outs in Q4 that went into Q1, never canceled. Even in Q1, we never had canceled orders. We just had some delays in installations. We have some push-outs due to some travel restrictions and transportation restrictions, never had cancellations. Even now, all the Wuhan installations, of course, they have been pushed into Q2, because Q1, we couldn't do anything there. I think your last question was regarding the size of large orders.
There, you always have to distinguish between more recurring OEM-related business, where we are directly linked to the ERP systems of our OEMs. They basically order piece by piece. It's an online link that whenever they need something, they place a digital order in our system and we ship. Some of those orders can be as small as $500 or $1,000. They come by the minute or every day. There are many smaller orders for low-cost items to OEM customers. We have some products that are relatively expensive. Those are, for example, instruments that go to the EUV application, which is still OEM business. There we are simply linked to this OEM manufacturer's schedule. Whenever they start building a new system, they place an order with INFICON, and we are very close contact. We know exactly what they do.
They visit us, not now anymore, but they used to visit us on a weekly basis. On the end user side, it's different. On the end user side, we really talk about projects, because there the orders can be as large as $2 million per piece, and consisting of software and sensors. Those are more large orders that come in whenever a chip manufacturer decides to expand the capacity and place an order for advanced process control for a full fab line, basically. As I mentioned, that includes software and instruments. On the pure software side, we usually talk about large projects. Most of our software projects are not just per piece, but they also talk about full fab lines or even full fabs be equipped with an additional module or an additional piece of software.
Here we always talk about the size of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per order.
Okay. Can I ask again? How big was the share in the order intake of pushed out orders?
Oh, hard to say.
More or less. Was it material?
I would say it's a mid-single-digit figure.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. Enjoy the day.
Bye-bye.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Huber Reto with Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have two questions remaining. The first one is, how much revenue did General Vacuum earn in Asia in Q1? How much remained, basically? The second one, since the EUV lithography is the bottleneck. Your customer that produces those systems, can they increase their production capacity for those systems? Are they basically running at their full capacity currently, or let's say in Q4 and maybe also in Q1?
Let me start with the second question. Everybody knows who that customer is, because there's only one. They expand their capacity. They made it public, how much they like to ship this year and how much they like to ship next year. I think the official number somehow is between 35 and 40 systems for this year. Next year, they like to go to 50 per year. They're actually expanding their capacity, and we just have to make sure that our expansion is in line with their expectations. We are, as I mentioned before, very closely linked to them. We increase our capacity as well.
To be in line with the needs of our customer, which the figures that they disclose are for new installations. On top of that, we also have some replacement and maintenance and repair business. For the first question, revenue General Vacuum Asia, we never really disclose those figures in detail, but I can maybe highlight you a little bit how much it went down. It's basically about a reduction of somehow roughly 20% compared with a year ago that the General Vacuum sales went down in Asia.
In General Vacuum?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Bruska Marta with Berenberg. Please proceed.
Yes. Hello. Thank you for taking up the follow-up. Quickly, just on the 2020 tax guidance, do you expect the tax rate to remain at such a low level, or with what shall we more or less count for the full year please?
Well, let me try to give you some comments on that one. Yes, the tax rate was really very low this quarter. Also was very low, maybe you remember, in the last quarter of Q4, we had even negative taxes. Overall, last year, we had 15% or 15.5% for the full year and the year before 20%. I still would expect somehow between 16% and 20% as a reasonable tax rate under the assumption there are no major profit shifts and business shifts around the world. I always can repeat myself, we have 19 different entities in different countries with different tax rates, and we have tax rates from close to 5% up to 35%, so there are always some changes in there. As an indication view, I think 16 to 20 is a good number.
Thank you.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone now. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Lukas Winkler for any closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you very much for being patient, listen to our call. Obviously, based on the number of questions, the interest is pretty high. I'd like to thank you for that. I will see some of you, hopefully, even in person. Otherwise, we just do it over the phone or video conferencing. Definitely, we will come back to you on July 29th, when we disclose our half year figures and the second quarter revenue details. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Stay safe. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
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