Dear ladies and gentlemen, we would like to welcome you to Sensirion Holding AG conference call on the results of half year 2021. From Sensirion, Marc von Waldkirch, CEO, Matthias Gantner, CFO, and myself, Andrea Wüthrich, Director of Investor Relations are present. There will first be a presentation, followed by a question and answer session. Please note that this event will be recorded. Currently, all participants are set to mute. Please keep yourself muted and turn off your camera to support bandwidth. Before the question and answer session, we will present how questions can be registered. The presentation can, of course, be viewed online during the call via the GoToMeeting access. Alternatively, in case you only dialed in by audio, the presentation can be accessed at Sensirion investor relations website under Reports and Publications. With this, I hand over to Marc von Waldkirch.
Thank you, Andrea, and also a warm welcome from my side to this earnings call this morning, and thank you for your attending and for your interest in Sensirion. You hopefully see the slides, the shared slide; otherwise, you also have them on our investor relations site on the internet. I start with a short business review before I hand over to Matthias Gantner for the financial details. As we are looking back at the first half of the year 2021, this was again an extraordinary time. It was different than 2020, but it was still extraordinary. Besides all ongoing corona restrictions, we have faced a very strong recovery and demand increase across all markets. In parallel, we had a very strange and challenging supply chain situation, and the supply chain situation will also remain extraordinary in the upcoming months.
It was not just for the wafer supply, but it was also for any other materials. I'd like to start here, probably also in an extraordinary way, with a big thanks to all our employees in that respect. At the end of the day, all the financial data we can present today, and they are pretty good, is actually based on the great effort all our employees have done in these very strange and challenging times. A great thanks to all the employees. If we come to the business short review, first of all, we have our core business. That means all we are doing in normal times, excluding the additional sales from the COVID-19 ventilator business. In these core businesses, we recorded very strong growth of more than 35%. This was driven by two different parallel aspects.
On one hand side, our established products like gas flow and humidity sensors have recorded a significant post-pandemic recovery. On the other hand, we have a numerous number of successful ramp-ups with new products. CO2, but also formaldehyde and particulate matter, and they also contribute significantly to the growth rate. In the COVID -related and extra businesses, medical ventilator sensors, we have seen a decrease as expected. We still have a contribution of CHF 17 million to the revenues this year. As communicated in March already, we assume that this extra business is over and will continue as normal business from now on. Beyond the normal business, we were able to further strengthen our technological base through targeted acquisitions. In line with our long-term growth strategy, which was in detail presented in March on our Capital Markets Day.
Finally, before I come to the financials, I would like to say a few words about the current allocation situation in the semiconductor industry. As I have already mentioned at the very beginning, the situation is and remains very difficult. It's not limited to wafers and semiconductor -related products. It also affects other material groups, such as chemical adhesives or compounds. We do not foresee any relaxations in this regard in the coming months. However, we are proud that despite this tense situation, we can continue to offer reasonable, not the normal one, but reasonable delivery times to our customers and provide our customers with added value compared to certain competitors. Some words about the financials. The favorable condition in this half year is also reflected in the financial figures.
We closed the half year with a strong growth all in all, including the extra business, with a growth rate of 20% to CHF 144.3 million. Profitability reached an extraordinary 61.9% for the gross margin and an extraordinary 31.8% for the EBITDA margin. The details will be provided later on by our Chief Financial Officer. However, I would like also to emphasize already at this point that these current profitability levels are exceptional and not sustainable. We benefited from strong short-term economy of scale effects, but also from one-time effects. On the other hand, we are in the process of further strengthening our efforts in R&D and business development in order to be able to address additional longer -term opportunities as we have outlined them in the Capital Market Day in March.
However, the necessary increase in personnel has not yet fully impacted the cost structure today. For the full year 2021, we confirmed the revised and raised guidance as communicated in July. I will comment on it further at the very end of this short presentation. Now on slides numbers four - eight, I would like to shortly review the business market by market. First of all, about the automotive. We recorded strong growth of 33% in this market. In contrast to the previous years, this was mainly driven by the tier two sensor component business rather than by tier one, which was actually very strong last year. At present, we do not see any reduction in demand as a result of the numerous automotive production closures due to the shortage of raw materials. We therefore assume that part of this demand will be used to build up stocks.
This is just an assumption we have. We do not have any hard facts from our customers. We see a steadily increasing market share as well as an increased penetration rate of our sensor solutions. In the medical market, as already outlined before, we are back in normal business. In the first half of the year, COVID -related sales reached another CHF 17 million of special sales. The backlog has now been processed. We do not expect any further special sales in the second half of the year. The normal sustainable business developed flat and stable. A completely different picture can be seen in the broadly diversified industrial market. Here, turnover increased or exploded by a very strong 68% to CHF 61.9 million.
The main drivers here were important customer ramp-ups with our environmental solutions, such as CO2, particulate matter (PM 2.5), and also our new formaldehyde sensor. We recently launched an environmental combo module, which consists of 5 parameters in one single housing. This is best suited especially for air purifier applications. Air purifier applications, on the other hand, are highly driven by the post-pandemic discussions about aerosol infection. By the way, anyway, the pandemic has greatly increased the sensitivity to good indoor air quality. It's actually not just a driver for air purifiers, but we also see a triggered demand for CO2 sensors, not just limited to school rooms as they typically are; we have the discussions here in Switzerland also in the newspapers. Last but not least, the consumer market. Some words about that.
This market, again, to remind you about that, is a highly fragmented market. They are not actually main players there. There are a lot of smaller or mid-size customers there. Here we see a similar picture as in the industrial market. Also there, the demand for gadgets to monitor indoor air quality, which means a small table-based gadget to indicate the CO2 level and so on, is strongly increased, which also triggers the demand for humidity. I would like now to hand over to Matthias Gantner for all the details about the financials and his comments . Please, Matthias.
Thank you, Marc. Dear audience, also, welcome from my side. Of course, it's a pleasure for me to report about these good numbers we achieved in H1 2021. Here you see again the set of KPIs. Marc has already spent some words on that. We are very happy to see that from our perspective of our KPIs, we can see this set in very good shape from the perspective in terms of the market demand, in terms of profitability, and in terms of cash generation. For us, it's a number-wise very successful period we can report about. For the sake of good order, I just want to recall that with this first report of H1 2021, we for the first time report following the accounting standards of Swiss GAAP FER. We have communicated this change early this year, in March.
As you might remember, if you look at the profitability numbers, KPIs, especially EBITDA, there is no significant change following this change in the accounting standard. Looking at the revenue development, we see overall 33% organic growth. When we eliminate the COVID-19 impact, which was declining from CHF 21.4 million down to CHF 17 million, during the last six months, this is a decline of -3.8%. Also, if we look at the contribution that we got from our newly acquired companies, young companies in a more or less startup phase, this contribution is only marginal at CHF 1.5 million.
For 2021, the FX impact is according to the currency development, where our main portion is in US dollars and euros, with a minor impact also from Korean won; we lose here another CHF 4 million. All in all, this ends with the already mentioned CHF 144.4 million of total revenue for the first semester. With strong growth on the top line, of course, the result is much better gross profitability. Gross margin is jumping up to CHF 61.9 million. The driver here is that we now see a much better capacity load on our operations facilities. This is valid for all three production sites that are up and running: Switzerland, China, and Korea. We look forward to having the opening of our new production site in Hungary quite soon.
That will give some relief, especially to the operations organization in Switzerland, and take out a lot of pressure here and also, of course, support further growth. Also here we get out some economy of scale by not increasing our overhead costs linearly with the growth on the top line. Of course, we would have liked to engage and to empower our R&D resources much faster, as Marc already mentioned. The job market is dried out, so it's very difficult to find good talent for us, but we do our best. For R&D and SG&A, the increase in cost is mainly driven by the overhead cost of the newly acquired companies and, of course, by initial costs that are coming up with the startup period for our production site in Hungary.
As a result of these variable and fixed costs deducted from the top -line revenue, we see this already mentioned impressive 31.8% EBITDA margin in absolute numbers close to CHF 46 million. On the bottom half of this page, it is illustrated with a waterfall chart: what is the driver for this? As mentioned, it is mainly the increase in the gross profit by more or less stable overhead costs and depreciation. A look top -down at the income statement, especially below the operating profit. Net finance results are driven by unrealized and realized gains on FX and especially the income tax, which is here if you calculate it down in a lower 10% . This is mainly influenced by all the initiatives we took with the Swiss tax revision STAF 17, where we can get quite a good benefit out of that.
We, of course, calculated all these elements focused on R&D expenditures, the patent box model, and all that is possible. Also for the midterm, we can calculate with a tax rate for the group. If there are no structural changes to the group structure, we can also, for the future, calculate with a tax percentage rate in the lower 10%. A look at net working capital. The inventory has only marginally increased in 2021. This was not our ambition. We even would have liked to build up some buffer stocks due to the harsh situation in the supply chain. Driving here, the net working capital is up to CHF 56 million compared to the CHF 46 million as per end of year 2020. It is just the trade receivables as per end of June, which amounts to CHF 36 million.
Looking at the receivable situation, we see absolutely no additional risk in our debtors' management. DSO remains stable with around 45 days. Talking about CapEx, we see this very stable compared to the previous periods. Also here to recall all the investment that is done in Hungary, especially about the building. This is a build-to-suit project. Here we don't spend money on concrete. We have a long-term lease contract for those facilities there. About the statement of cash flows, here according to the Swiss accounting standards, we can report a CHF 39 million operating cash flow, and accounting standards asked us to report some proceeds of CHF 30 million of financial assets that we had deposited over the year-end 2020.
To make it more readable and suitable for your calculation models that you might have, we just transfer this CHF 30 million down to cash and cash equivalents, as you see in the left column of the numbers. Really show a cash flow of investment of CHF 19.5 million cash out, which definitely represents the spending for CapEx and the spending for our M&A activities, the two companies we have acquired, IRsweep and Qmicro, the Dutch company. Again, here is shown free cash flow development; just visualize CHF 33 million in free cash flow before merger and acquisition activities. This, of course, gives us quite a bit of headroom in terms of available cash also for future activities and underlines, also with 71.9%, a very good cash conversion rate. A look at our financial position as of the 30th of June.
The balance sheet, also here according to Swiss GAAP standards, of course, is dominated by the strong cash position, which is more or less 40% of our total balance volume. All the other positions have no disruptive changes compared to the previous statement from end of December 2020. This, of course, gives us, as said, a strong position for operations and investments for the future. With that, I'll close with my remarks and hand back to Marc.
Thank you, Matthias. I would like now to shortly summarize the achievements on a strategic level in the last six months before closing the presentation with some comments on the guidance. As we have outlined in the Capital Market Day in March this year, our growth strategy is actually based on four pillars. I'd like today just to focus on the achievements of the last six months and not to comment again on the growth pillar individually. The basis of our growth and also our innovative strength is and remains our corporate culture. That's the fundamentals. Also, the basis is all our employees worldwide. I think this is extremely important, especially in extraordinary times. I have already mentioned that at the beginning.
In these times, in the last six months, it was more than important that all our people, they went an extra mile, either to organize more wafers than our suppliers could actually deliver, or to find good ways in order to make the shipments to our customers ready in time and not delayed. I think this is also what reflects in the strength of the financial figures we have seen today. We are also very proud that we have once again been awarded by the world-very -well-known organization, Great Place to Work, as one of the best companies for employers in Switzerland. This is also a clear commitment for our executive board and our board of directors to continue this way to take care of our culture.
In focus area one, we were able to offer our customers an additional unique selling point through a favorable delivery time, which is not standard now in the market. We could also gain some market share in certain areas thanks to this delivery reliability. In addition, we launched the fourth generation of humidity sensors to underline our clear technology leadership. Last but not least, recent weeks ago, we reached the 1 billion sensor mark we have shipped since the foundation of the company 20 years ago. In focus area two, we successfully launched various new products. I have already mentioned them before. For example, this miniaturized CO2 sensor, which is significantly smaller compared to what already exists on the market. We have also launched our first formaldehyde sensor. The environmental area, excluding humidity, is now already generating 25% of sales with a clear rising trend.
As our third strategic focus, we intend to develop or acquire technologies or technological pieces for further long-term growth. Looking back, successful technology acquisitions in recent years have often been the starting point or an acceleration point, at least, for successful internal product development. For example, formaldehyde or our PM2.5 sensor was actually kicked off by an acquisition of technology. Also, our Tier 1 automotive business. As part of this strategic goal, we could close two additional strategic acquisitions. On the one hand, the Dutch company, Qmicro. The founder-managed company that develops and produces compact and highly efficient micro gas analyzers for the ongoing analysis of the composition of gas mixtures for sophisticated applications in environmental monitoring, as well as in the natural gas market. These are applications we cannot address with the sensors we have in our portfolio.
It's a very good extension of the portfolio we have anyway in the company. On the other hand, we completed the full acquisition of the Swiss company IRsweep. They are anyway located in the same area as we are here in Stäfa, after having been minority shareholders for several years. This company develops, manufactures, and supplies mid-infrared optical spectroscopy solutions, although this is on the higher level of performance but is a good extension for the portfolio we have within Sensirion. These are some remarks about the strategy. I close with the outlook. Overall, we can actually confirm the raised guidance as we have communicated in July 2021.
However, I'd like also to point out here that the outlook, still now, we are at the end of August, but still now, the outlook for the 2021 financial year remains volatile and difficult to assess because of the unclear course of the global COVID pandemic and the allocation situation. We continue to face unexpected plant closures due to COVID, not here in Switzerland or in Europe, but in Asia, either on customer, but also on supplier side, which may affect the supply chain or the ability to ship to our customers. In addition, it is currently unclear how long the challenging situation in the supply chain lasts, and this also triggers some inventory effects which might stop or being even increased again. The supply or the allocation situation is one of the big unclear situations for assessing the full year 2021.
Coming to the period, we expect a significant growth rate of 32%-43% in our core business. Again, core business means as defined as excluding the one-time ventilator business. If we could calculate them in, we expect a revenue increase by 3%-10% due to the fact that the COVID-related business is going down significantly from CHF 70 million extra business downwards to CHF 17 million, as we have already recorded in the first half of the year. The gross margin is expected to lie in the high 50s. What is exceptional, as already commented, is above average. On EBITDA level, we expect the profitability in the mid to high teens. Both profitability levels are exceptional and driven by the strong economy of scale effects and some one-time effects this year.
Again, I would also like to point out here that thanks to the promising business opportunities in mid- and long-term and a very pretty, fully loaded R&D pipeline, we are working on intensifying our R&D and business efforts, but they are not affecting the cost structure fully this year. These are my comments about the guidance of 2021. So we come to the end of this short presentation by comments. We are open for questions from your side. I give back to Andrea.
Thank you, Marc. We now come to the Q&A session. To register a question, please use the raise hand function, after which the hand that into you; your turn, please. Please wait a second. Wait till the moderator asks you to speak. I'll also unmute you at that moment. When it's your turn, please turn on your camera, state your name and affiliation, and then please ask your questions. Afterwards, please turn off your camera again, and then we will mute you and go with your hand raised. Thank you very much. Varun, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, we do.
Perfect. Thanks for letting me ask. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, on your comments around inventory levels, you refer to that in your press release. What do you see in terms of your channels and inventory levels at your customers'? How do you see the inventory levels at the moment? Also, what is your order backlog and the duration of your backlog? That is my first question. Second question on your guidance. Your full-year guidance essentially implies a flattish sales development half on half if you exclude the one-time COVID-19 effect. Is that because you're constrained by your supply constraint, or is there any other factor that we should consider here? On your EBITDA margin for the second half, can you help us understand the bridge between the first -half and second -half EBITDA margins? You reported 32% in the first half.
Your full -year guidance implies somewhere around a 24%- 25% EBITDA margin in the second half. Can you help us understand what are the factors driving the reduction? Clearly, there were some one-time effects in the first half, but we would just like to understand what the different moving pieces are. Thank you.
Okay. I'm not fully sure whether I have got your second part of the question, but I start with the first one about the order backlog and about inventory levels. Order backlog is actually not an extremely promising or reliable indication of KPI for Sensirion, because typically, especially in automotive, you have rolling orders. They can also be shifted; they can pushed out. At the moment it's hard, but they can actually pull in. The backlog, typically, we experienced in the last couple of years; the backlog is actually a pretty bad indication for the upcoming business for the next couple of months. What we do, and this is actually the base of the guidance we can share with you, is we have a kind of a best -estimate forecast, which is based on a lot of discussions we have with our customers.
We ask them about their demand for the next upcoming months. Especially now it's more important because we have to organize the supply chain, and, based on these indications, we actually build up, open up a kind of best estimate forecast, which is the base for the guidance. Backlog is the wrong KPI for us. About inventory levels, we have no indication from our customers, and it's even harder at the moment about their inventory levels, because at the moment it's the same as we do with our supply chain.
When we are in hard discussions with our suppliers to get enough raw materials, we would never disclose on which level of inventory we are, especially if we have some, because otherwise it's very likely that you will be reduced in allocation because all the suppliers are at the limit of what they can actually produce and ship. This is an indication we typically do not get from our customers. What I can say is that up to, and I'm really proud of that up to now, we could actually serve all our customers in a very agreed version. There were definitely moments we had also to shift out some limited shipments, but all in accordance with our customers, who are fine to get the material one week or two weeks later than expected.
We had no hard discussions with the customers if it came to some delays. We are really there in a very good situation, but it's hard work every day. About the second question, probably my colleagues can support me shortly. Okay. About the comparison of H2 - H1. I think more or less, at the moment, we expect that the second half will be pretty similar to the first one, limited to the core business, definitely. Note that without the extra business of a ventilator. If we calculate it shortly, we have generated CHF 130 million in the core business, roughly spoken. This doubles; we end up actually with CHF 260. Additionally, the CHF 17 we gained from the first half with this extra business, and then we end up with CHF 260-CHF 280.
The only risk we still have in the systems is, as I have outlined before, the supply chain and the situation and this extra demand, which is driven by inventory buildup. Assumingly, we do not know how long that lasts. I experienced, for example, in 2018, the very same situation: we had a very strong demand in the first half of the year, and then it changed. It can change pretty quickly. We have no indications at the moment that it will change now, but there is some uncertainty in the system. In EBITDA, I think more or less we are a company; we have a pretty large portion of fixed costs and not variable costs. That means typically our EBITDA is highly influenced by the top line.
Whenever the top line is stable, you can, roughly spoken, also expect that the EBITDA level is on the very same level. The only what is affecting more and more is our efforts to intensify R&D. We are in the process. We have a lot of open positions. We are in the process of hiring more people to address all that we have in our minds to address in future. These people are coming in more and more, and they will affect or will increase the cost structure step by step. That's the reason why we expect to slide. Even with the same level of top line, we expect a reduced EBITDA level in the second half of the year. All in all, we indicate in the high 20s for the whole year.
Thank you, Marc. Just to clarify, the flattest sales guidance for the second half is more a function of your demand visibility rather than supply constraints.
I think it's influenced by both concerns, supply chain concerns, but also the demand, which is definitely the demand at the moment that is not sustainable. Especially in automotive, as I have outlined before, there are some plant closures, COVID-19 -related or supply chain -related. On the other hand, we see a strong demand for our products, and I don't think that all these are already consumed. I think we have risk on the customer side but also on the supplier side at the moment.
Thank you. That is clear.
Michael Inauer, please go ahead.
Yes, thanks very much, Andrea. Good morning, everyone. I have also a couple of questions. The guidance topic I think, was discussed. Maybe just to clarify here on the guidance. The CHF 260 is more of a, let's say, base case scenario, and CHF 280 would be kind of a best -case scenario? Let's say best case scenario would be even higher than that, just maybe on the guidance. Also, I think it's very difficult now for most of us to assume the financial estimates going forward because of such an exceptional year now in 2021. I was just wondering, when we try to look into 2022 now without any figures, but do you think that there will be a hit on demand in general?
Do you think certain things have changed that will keep demand high also throughout 2024, for example, CO2 sensors as an example? I would assume that this has just started. It's a topic, but still minor at the moment, and I think this can be much higher. I was just wondering, can you give a bit of an outlook in general going forward? Maybe as a last question, when I look at your midterm targets, particularly on the R&D spending, 22%-24% of the revenues. When we look at revenue growth that you have seen now in 2021, assuming your 10%-15% going forward, that will end up to be a pretty high number, absolute number in R&D, 22%-24%. Is this really a realistic assumption also for the real longer term? Will it fade at some point in time?
I fail to understand how you can get all these people or how you can have so many projects. Is that just me being a not -technology guy? Maybe just one; sorry, just one very last one before I have to do a follow-up then. Maybe on the M&A. You have now over CHF 100 million net cash. Are you also looking at some larger things potentially, or will it remain in the area that you are doing right now, smaller pieces with a single or two projects? Thanks.
Thank you, Michael. First of all, about the guidance of CHF 260 - CHF 280. We do not differentiate between a best -case and a worst -case scenario. We like actually just to give you comfort as much as we have comfort about the ongoing next months. All in all, I think we try actually to define the range in a way that there is a high likelihood to be, at the end of the year, within this range. Definitely CHF 260 is the worse scenario than CHF 280. That's more than obvious. I think more or less, if the business is going as we are used to having in the last couple of months, I think then it's very realistic to have CHF 270 or slightly more than that, or even in a very good scenario, CHF 280.
It might also change, and we do not know it. The changes are pretty fast. I am coming back to the question of Varun before with the backlog. If there are any changes in the market, then typically our customers, especially in automotive, they are immediately starting to push out orders. This affects the top line very fast. This is actually the reason why we are still uncertain in a range of CHF 20 million. It is not a best and the worst case or a case of if there is one project picking up, then it is the best case and otherwise it is not the case. About 2022, though I would be very happy to have this crystal ball to know more about the demand of next year.
Again, my gut feeling is actually that we have, on the one hand side, we have definitely made significant progress, and this is definitely sustainable in generating more revenues from other products than humidity and flow only. 25% of the revenue is already recorded in all the other environmental fields, and this will definitely continue this way, also in a rising trend. On the other hand, we have also increased market shares in different fields, including humidity. We have also increased penetration rates, although this is highly likely to continue that way. The increase we have recorded this year is definitely also, that's my gut feeling, also driven by some kinds of concerns of our customers not to get enough raw materials. We call that in German, in a way that the people like, actually to get whatever they can get.
This effect I officially call the inventory buildup effect. I think this will definitely come to an end, but I don't know when. I think there will be a kind of relaxation. To which extent is just speculation? I don't know. I have no indication when we are coming to this point. I'm in very intense discussions and exchanges with our founders. They definitely have more market intelligence on semiconductors than I have, but also they have no indication how long this situation will last. About the R&D of 22%-24%, I can give you good comfort that we definitely have a lot of ideas. We can also spend 22%-24% of R&D in an efficient way, definitely, and an optimized way.
I think definitely our commitment, as we have outlined in the Capital Market Day, is to go our way, the successful way of the last 20 years, to drive innovation and to also address new aspects. If we are looking back, we have invested a lot of money in the last years into PM2.5, formaldehyde, and so on, or CO2. These are effective product lines. They are now contributing significantly revenue. At the end of the day, it's just a question of time where we can also transfer R&D efforts to additional top-line contributions. In this respect, we like to continue that way. On the other hand, definitely, there are some bandwidth limitations in hiring good people, because at the end of the day, you would not like to actually hire just people.
You like , actually, to hire the best talent because they are just able to drive these innovations, and this takes time. Looking forward to 2022, we have this jump now in the revenues. We need some time to increase R&D to the level we like actually to feel comfortable, also to address all these opportunities, and this will also affect the 2022 results. In this respect, in a favorable situation because we are not yet on the level of 22%-24% next year. On the other hand, I like also to keep in mind that we are not fully unclear at the moment about the continuation and the development of the top line. Again, our company is now benefiting from the fact that we have a low portion of variable costs.
If next year might end in a less favorable situation for the top line, and we do not know, then we have automatically the opposite impact on the EBITDA level. At the moment, it's just too early to give any indications about that, but at least I think I can give you comfort that we have good ideas also to increase R&D in an efficient way. About acquisitions, you're right, we have a lot of cash. I think that's also a great opportunity ; we can react pretty fast. There are also some acquisition targets in the pipeline we are looking into. Nothing is actually decided yet.
They are smaller or larger, but typically we feel comfortable focusing on them. This is not limited to that. This is actually our first priority to, in identifying acquisition targets, they have great technology, but they are not yet fully established in the market. Whenever you already have the revenues, you just pay that at the end of the day. If we can acquire technologies and we can bring in our expertise in transforming promising technologies to reliable mass products, and this is exactly where we are strong , then I think we have the best efficiency of spending money, because we spend just the money for technology but not already for the established revenue later on. This is exactly where we can actually bring in our expertise. Therefore, this is actually the focus we have, but it's not limited to that.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Can I just have one add-on question? Sorry, I don't want to steal, of course, anybody's time, but you were talking about 25% already now environmental sensors. I assume there was a pretty high growth rate there as well. I was just wondering there, can you break it down into certain regions? Is it a bigger topic in Asia, for example, now, or is it more in Europe? What are actually the drivers here behind that? It's clear what the environmental drivers are in general, but now that you are already at 25% and a lot of your exactly new environmental products are so successful, where are the real drivers coming from?
Well, I think it's pretty global. On the one hand , one of the contributors was definitely some global account. They have just started their products; our products are designed in, and they are global anyway. I can also disclose one of the companies because it's anyway on the market. We are one of the premium suppliers for an air purifier of Dyson. Dyson, at the end of the day, it's actually a European company. They are manufacturing in Asia, and at the end of the day, they are selling worldwide. On the other hand, what we see is actually that CO2 is especially a topic in the western part of the world; that means Europe and U.S. California, for example, is talking about CO2 monitoring for school rooms. We have the same discussion here in Europe.
On the other hand, formaldehyde and particulate matter are actually more focused in Asia. It's not limited to these regions, but it's probable there are some foci with these respective product lines.
Thank you very much for that.
Thank you, Michael. Are there further questions? That doesn't seem to be the case. With this, we would like to thank you very much for joining today's earnings call, and we wish you all a good day on behalf of Sensirion. Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.