Good morning, this is Lars Dünnhaupt speaking. I'm the Director of Investor Relations at Sensirion. Welcome to the earnings call 2024. We apologize for the technical problems we have had on our end, but I hope that you all can hear us now well. Please note that this event will be recorded. With me today, I have Marc von Waldkirch, our CEO. He will walk us through the first half year 2024 and provide an update on the markets. After this, we hand over to Matthias Gantner, who will provide a financial update on the first half of the year, and at the end, Marc will provide an outlook for the full year 2024, and we end the session with a Q&A session.
Please use the chat or the question function of the webinar, post your questions into the chat, and then I will read them at the end of the section at the end of the session. With that, I would like to hand over to Marc.
Thank you very much, Lars, for the introduction, and also a warm welcome from my side to this short earnings call this morning. I want to start first with a short executive summary. Clearly the highlight of the last six months are, and the take-home message as well for you is, that we are back on growth after the very challenging and difficult year of 2023. We ended up this half year with a plus of more or less 9% in local currency. Unfortunately, there were some headwinds with the FX compared to H1 2023. That means we ended up in Swiss francs with a plus of slightly less than 4%. On the other hand, growth came mainly from two sub-markets.
One was automotive, mainly driven by new business projects, and on the other hand, by industrial, mainly driven by recovery, especially in air purifiers . We have also two markets, they are still somehow weak. This is on the one hand side, medical, still suffering from severe destocking effects, as expected, by the way. And secondly, on the other hand, consumer, which is a kind of a mixture between, on the one hand side, destocking effects, they are still ongoing. On the other hand, just reflecting the pretty bad commercial or economic situation in the consumer markets in general. I now lost the slides. Okay. It's okay? Then in R&D and in operations, we are very disciplined to focus on capturing the next growth cycle.
So especially, we are focused on preparing all what is needed in order to meet the requirements of our customers for the A2L. Ramp up A2L means this kind of gas leakage sensor, a new business opportunity. We have already explained in the March communication, about, air conditioners in U.S. I will come back to this point later on, in more details. Then we have, you might remember, in our ad hoc communication at beginning of April, we decided to close and to cease our activities in the condition monitoring in Berlin. So this was one of the topics, we definitely like to cover again in, more details later down the road in the, presentation today. What I can already share with you today is that the execution of this decision is actually progressing very well and is fully on track.
Last but not least, also on track and progressing very well is all what we have done or we have started and launched in terms of the optimization in productivity and efficiency, not just in operations and administration, but also in R&D. So that brings me to a short look at the figures. Again, revenue went up by 4%, roughly speaking, in Swiss francs, or in 9% in local currency. We have a gross margin, which is more or less where we had expected, but definitely significantly lower than last time. I will comment that also later on. EBITDA margin, more or less where expected. All these figures, and this is also what we are going to talk in priority. The first priority is about the adjustments.
The only adjustment we are doing is all what is linked to the AiSight or these activities, condition monitoring activities in Berlin. There are no other adjustments in the line of adjustment figures. Short look at the business outlook. This can be done pretty fast because we can fully confirm what we have already communicated in March. There is no change compared to our guidance in April or in March, to be precise. That brings me to a short dive into all the respective market segments. Starting first with automotive. In automotive, we are recording again a growth of 14% compared to H1 2023. It's the growth again over multiple reporting periods. This is mainly driven by new projects.
So what we see is the existing business, on the one hand side, in our module business, tier, as a Tier One player, but also in our component business, where we are playing the role of Tier Two. In both existing business, businesses, we have seen a pretty resilient demand of our products, but there is no growth momentum. On top of that, we have started new projects. They are kicking in now, and they are also are causing or driving the growth we see here in H1 results. In medical, the picture is completely different. There, we have a significant drop of our revenue by 42%. This is actually not surprising, and it was also guided already at the beginning of the year. This is mainly driven by two different aspects.
On the one hand, we are still suffering from severe destocking, mainly in CPAP, but also in medical ventilators. In medical ventilators, but also CPAP, these are the two main applications we are supporting in medical today. And both are highly, still highly influenced by the allocation, but also by the pandemic, and thirdly, by the fact, you might remember that in CPAP, there was this kind of quality replacement initiative driven by Philips in the last couple of years, that brought up significantly higher revenues in kind of one-off revenues. We have also carved out pretty well in these years in order to have very clear transparency on that. What is now the drawback is that all the stocks at our hospitals or at the EMS side are significantly too high, and we are still suffering on that.
On the other hand, we have also, that's the second reason why we have a significant drop by 42% compared to H1 2023. This is not a full, fair, comparison, because H1 2023 was significantly higher than historically normal. This was driven by some additional demands at that time, which was not fully carved out, but commented at that time, about additional demand from China, because this was at the beginning of 2023, when the Chinese government decided to go out of all the COVID countermeasures. Our customers in, in China, they were somehow concerned about what is the outcome of this decision of the government, and therefore, they ordered additional medical ventilators in order to be pre-ready for any kinds of short reaction to this, governmental decision.
And this drove our revenue at that time, which is definitely now the opposite. That means, again, destocking. On the other hand, also, we compare now H1 2024 with pretty strong 2023 half-year result. These are the two reasons. All in all, we are expecting that this destocking will last till end of the year. This is the same statement as I have done in March, so we can still confirm that, but in the fundamental aspects, that means that our customer structure, our application structure, all the products we have, there is no change, so that is just the effect of destocking compared to former years, as explained, then we come to industrial. Industrial is a pretty highly diversified basket of different applications in our company.
This is including sub-markets like appliances or white goods, but it's also HVAC, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, gas metering, and all other kinds of diversification of the applications like semicon and so on. Here, we see pretty significant growth of 31%, mainly driven by three effects. The major effect is air purifying recovery. So you might remember last year, we suffered a lot from destocking there. Now it seems to be over, so the customers are coming back. They are placing orders, especially H1 of this year. So this is one of the main driver for this big growth in industrial. Secondly, there was also first, moderate revenue contribution given by this new opportunity of A2L gas leakage sensor for the air conditioners in the US. Not the main ramp-up.
The main ramp-up is actually planned for the second half of this year, as already communicated, but there are already some moderate contributions from this side. And third, there was gas metering. Gas metering is still growing from period to period again. On the other hand, we have some reduced revenue contributions from semicon just driven by the cycles in semicon industry. Well, I think this is all what I'd like to share now with you in industrial, and then we end up with consumer. In consumer, we are still lower. It's more in relative figures than in absolute figures, because the market is anyway small, but there is even a lower revenue recorded compared to the already pretty weak H2 2023 or the also weak H1 2023. This is mainly driven by two aspects.
On the one hand side, we see still there, especially distribution, that the destocking is not yet over. So some of the distributors and consumer, by the way, is heavily driven by distributors. Because there are a lot of smaller companies, they are ordering our products, they are still suffering from stock too high inventory levels. On the other hand, I think consumer is highly sensitive to the globally economic situations, and there, definitely, we have some headwinds, especially in China, from the generally not really strong economic situation in some of our main countries. Then let's move on to some comments about the decision to close our condition monitoring activities in Berlin. I'd like to shortly recap for those that missed probably our ad hoc communication at the beginning of April.
What was the business rationale behind this decision? And secondly, I'd like already to be very transparent on what has influenced also the closing of our books for that first half of the year before I hand over to Matthias to dive into all the figures afterwards. So Sensirion has communicated to stop the activities in Berlin at beginning of April. And we acquired this, a startup, a really small startup three years ago, with the clear goal and ambitions to become number one in this condition monitoring field. I think this is the DNA of Sensirion, that whenever we like to jump into a new field, we have the ambitions to become number one. And in the meantime, the market condition has changed in a way.
So the markets, and this is a new emerging markets, to be honest, have developed in a different direction than anticipated the moment we acquired the company. On the one hand side, what we see today, and this was not anticipated that way, is a high level of fragmentation of, a lot of smaller, customers compared, but also is a lot of competitors, smaller, larger ones. And on the other hand, it's pretty hard to differentiate technically. And our company has. We are not the company, they are fighting with price only. We like actually to be attractive in price, there's no doubt about that, but we like to differentiate in technology and innovation.
And so it turned out in these three years, we have learned a lot about markets, about market development, and in this field, it's really hard to have this differentiation in technical terms, which is a kind of a precondition to become number one and to become the leading company in the respective field. Therefore, we decided to stop this business in April. What is very important to note again, and also to point out again, is that we remain committed to this data-based service business, which is also strategic goal of the company. We focus now on the other activities we have launched three years ago. This is about methane emission monitoring. There, the situation is completely different. There, we see a good attraction on the markets. There's also kind of another customer structure.
We have also by far more chance to differentiate technically. This business is also heavily affected positively by new regulations in U.S., but also in the European Union. Financially, coming back to AiSight and the condition monitoring, financially, there is almost no significant impact on revenue because it was a startup phase. On the cost blocks, we have some extraordinary impairments of CHF 28.6 million in EBITDA level and CHF 33.4 million on EBIT level, mainly non-cash relevant because it was recycled goodwill and write-off of tax loss carry-forwards. The only cash relevant aspects are the restructuring costs. All the costs are well within those guidance we have given in our April communications.
What is also important, also, before I hand over to Matthias, is that all these extraordinary expenses are now charged in the first half year. There's no plans and no estimations or expectations that there will be another kind of load for H2 of this year. And for comparative reasons, we are going to adjust these parts of extraordinary impairments. But again, it's important to note that the only adjustments we have done are linked to AI. In fact, there are no other adjustments done in our adjusted figures, as Matthias will comment afterwards. So last, my last word here is that execution is fully on track, not just financially-wise, but also operational-wise. That means the whole, not that easy, activity to shut down such an activity is actually progressing extremely well.
Also, thanks to the people, they have done a really great job internally. That brings me to the end of my comments, and I'd like to hand over to Matthias.
Thank you, Marc. So, good morning, everybody. Also from my side, a warm welcome. Thank you, Marc, also for this first introduction about some financials and all these topic adjustments. So, for the report in accordance with Swiss GAAP FER, the presentation or the discontinuation of activities in Berlin is, of course, or was very essential for the reporting according to the standards.
When we talk about the profitability, P&L in financial terms, I think we are very early in a situation where we say, "Okay, it definitely makes sense to in the favor of having better comparability with previous periods and reconciliation also with our current guidance, then really to look at adjusted numbers." You see here with our key figures on this slide, and when it comes to gross margin, when we talk about EBITDA, adjusted numbers. Because, yeah, the main point, the main trigger point, when it definitely comes to deterioration, compared or looking at the pure Swiss GAAP FER standard accounting P&L, definitely is this CHF 25.6 million recycling of the goodwill that we have to report according to the accounting standards as a part of the costs above EBIT line.
And so we show that as part of the R&D. But to show this complete linkage and bridging between Swiss GAAP FER reporting and adjusted numbers, here this slide indicates on which line which adjustments have been done. So in total, I think we talk about CHF 33.4 million impact on the net profit. And as said, the main block there is the goodwill recycling with close to CHF 26 million, and then also already mentioned by Marc, we have some restructuring costs, one-off costs, mainly valuation on inventory that is even part of the gross margin. But we have also then, of course, with the nature of closing down an organization, personnel costs with severance payments, et cetera.
This reduces down and is according to our announcement that we had in April. This is in the dimension of all in all, CHF 3 million. And this, of course, also reflects the pure cash impact with this project, with this closing down. And so, especially for the balance sheet, it's quite overseeable what has happened here and what is the impact. Talking about adjustments, we can focus on the PNL, and we can focus also on H1 2024. As mentioned already, we don't foresee any further costs coming in that are not accrued with that numbers shown and indicated here. For the next slide, we can really focus on adjusted numbers.
Starting with a headline, we could report increase in our revenues of close to CHF 9 million, if we calculate that with fixed FX rates. Yes, even with the ongoing strongness of Swiss franc versus Euro and U.S. dollar, of course, we have to pay another 5% minus due to FX effects. That is, as in the previous periods, mainly driven by those core currencies. Definitely, there we have with our export quota of higher than 90%, we have this exposure on the FX side for the top line. In terms of the gross profit. Next slide, yeah. In terms of the gross profit, as mentioned, and already also given in our guidance with three main factors, we show a reduced gross profit. It's not no more over the 50%.
So three main factors, three drivers. It's still an underutilization with this volumes we produce and operate for the time being. This is the underutilization in our manufacturing. The second one is the product mix. It's this higher sales portion of lower margin modules. And third, of course, it's within the existing business, it's a lower portion of really gross profit favorable products in the medical market. So all in all, that comes down to this 47.5% gross profit, but that is very well in line with our expectations, with a given sales volume that we could record for the first six months. So that is definitely according to our plans and estimates.
With this underutilization, given for this actual periods, actual months, of course, we exercised some active cost management projects, and we were quite successful in that. Even with the fact that we look for further innovation and keep all the projects running, we at least could contain our cost in the overhead, in the overhead section. So also with that, there are still activities running, and some of them will fully materialize in H2, or even starting to materialize and have a definite cost effect then from 2025 on. So also here, I think we, of course, took measures to improve profitability to that extent that is given. But all in all, and if we look at the overall EBITDA, that is calculated down out of that. Next slide.
Then, of course, with a CHF 5.9 million achieved EBITDA or 4.6% EBITDA ratio, of course, we still suffer, and this is also what we have commented on already in the past, this high volatility and profitability with this cost structure, with a given fixed cost. And so underutilization definitely is a big driver there, upwards. And when we come in better situations with the utilization, I think we have a quite high leverage on scaling up also here, profitability. So, looking at the PNL, again, completely talked down. Also here, the bridging from Swiss GAAP FER accounting to H1 2024 numbers adjusted. Here you see line by line, where are the impacts from this closure of the Berlin activities.
Here, looking at net financial result, we could collect some interest. We have some as per closing date, June. We have some unrealized currency gains, FX gains here on our open positions, receivables and cash. On the other hand, we have a loss, a partial loss here of our equity-accounted investees, so this balances out close to zero. Also on the tax, I think you see here for the H1 2024, reported, the 4.8. This is million tax loss. That is definitely this piece of the loss brought forward correlated to the Berlin activities. All for the rest, for the operating activities, tax result balances out to zero.
Looking at capital bound and capital spent for capital expenditures in H1 2024, as per the closing date, end of June 2024, we see a very high net working capital. That is really definitely higher, but the drivers here are quite high receivables as per closing date. I can tell you in the meantime, this has normalized. This is just the look at this closing date, thirtieth of June, midnight, and it has normalized. Look, talking about the debtors management overall, we are active in that, and we can definitely state once more, we see no risk with that receivables that are open. And our DSO is now a little bit more than forty-five. It's going towards fifty, but still with a very, very marginal risk on the debtors.
On the other hand, we could, apart from still having the quite good safety buffers on our wafer, which is a strategic topic for us, we could reduce some inventories here in the magnitude of CHF 5 million-6 million, compared to January first, 2024. The CapEx, I think, also higher compared to previous periods. One driver here is that we have bought land in Stäfa to have an open flexibility to increase our growth at the location in Stäfa. That kicks in with CHF 6 million. And on the other hand, of course, broadening up our product portfolio in the younger days now with building up production lines for A2L. Of course, it also asks for invest.
All in all, I think the main driver, one of the main driver, and a little bit kind of extraordinary and strategic, is of course the purchase of land here for the long-term strategic growth path. With this cash outflow just mentioned, or cash burn, having a look at the cash flow, I think what is positive is that we could generate a positive cash flow from operations in the first semester, 2024.
But with the investing activities of, in total, CHF 42.2 million, and here it's not only the just mentioned CapEx, land and machines and production equipment, but here it's also that we participated in the capital increase for our equity accounted investment Lumiphase, with another CHF 20 million, and then, of course, it's a pure cash out for that at that time. So in total, we reduced our cash position with around CHF 35 million, and it comes down to close to CHF 40 million as per end of June. So last but not least, then a look at the balance sheet. How does that look like? Even with a reduced cash, we are still in an overall net cash position status.
What is here a little bit the eye catcher is, of course, the PPE now above CHF 101 million, with a continuous increase CapEx here. And of course, it is the trade receivables with up to CHF 40 million. It is a plus of CHF 60 million. But overall, I think we see that we still have a strong balance sheet that gives us enough space to maneuver the projects to come.
When we look at the equity also here to close net now again, with a recycling of the goodwill, it is of course that within the equity, it's just a zero calculation in the equity here with this recycling of the goodwill, because the offset had taken place at the time when we acquired AiSight in 2021. Yeah, with that, I'm closed. That brings me to the end of my comments, and I'll hand back to Marc.
So thank you, Matthias. A short comment about the outlook. So the short message is there is no change compared to the March guidance. Nevertheless, I'd like to comment it again. On the one hand side, we are still in a very challenging market conditions. Also, the load and the visibility remains low for the next months to come. Nevertheless, we see also good growth momentum, especially in the second half. We can confirm that this A2L gas leakage opportunity should actually kick in first time on significant level to our growth. On the other hand, what has driven growth a lot in our first half of the year, that means the recovery of the air purifiers there, we expect that the growth momentum to level off in the second half of the year.
And so it's not going down, but at least not to contribute again to the growth. But this should be replaced by these A2L campaign, which starts now, because I want to remind you that these A2L regulations in U.S. is starting to be in place by January first. So also these HVAC manufacturers, they have now to start to build up their new HVAC system to be compliant with the regulations from January next year onwards. In existing business, we are still somehow reluctant about a significant recovery. We see now, as I have commented before, that in some submarkets, the destocking seems to be over. On the other hand, medical, as already guided in March, is very likely to last again till end of the year.
So in numbers, on the one hand side, we confirm the revenue target of CHF 250 million-280 million on unchanged foreign currency exchange rates. And this would reflect the organic revenue growth of 7%-20%. Gross margin, and now this is the only change we have done, this is definitely adjusted gross margins, ignoring this AiSight closure in April. There, we expect still to have 47%-49% for the full year and EBITDA margin between 5%-10%. So all in all, no change. That brings me to the end of this short review, and we are very happy to answer your questions now. And I hand it over back to Lars to moderate the Q&A session.
Thank you, Marc. Thank you, Matthias. With that, I will start to read out the questions I have received via the chat. We start with Mr. Sandeep, and Marc, question to you: It's clearly too early to look into 2025 , but of course, what is your expectation? When will we leave the downturn completely? And what kind of revenue potentials do you see for next year?
So Sandeep, thank you for this question, and I'm always extremely pleased to get questions that have already been answered. In a way, that today it's too early to say anything about 2025. In serious terms, it's really difficult now already to talk about 2025. But I have five minutes ago, I commented in a way to say the visibility is still low, especially in the existing business. I think nobody knows exactly how the economy is actually progressing in the next couple of months. There are some discussions in the U.S. about recessionary phase, or at least some risk to fall into recession. China is still of high concerns, what's going on there. So I think at the moment it would not be serious to talk about any kinds of figures, financial figures, about 2025.
What I can share with you is that we are still optimistic in terms of new business, and there definitely the focus is, as already commented, these good chances about these categories of HVAC. Air conditioners, they should start now in the second half of the year, but definitely they will hopefully also continue to 2025. But in figures, we have to be somehow patient in order to have a better foundation to give you a good guidance for 2025.
Next question, also from Sandeep. It's a question which goes into utilization. What is your expectation in terms of utilization in the second half of the year, but then also moving into 2025? Is there anything you can say about this?
This is highly depending, especially on our humidity sensor sales and all the components, but this is mainly dominated by humidity, as you know, but also somehow flow. Flow is now suffering from the medical destocking. This is my expectation, should come to an end by end of the year. So we do not expect any kinds of support by flow, medical flow, in the next six months, but hope or now it's already four months only, that mean for the full year, 2024, but hopefully next year it should actually come to get normalized in flow medical. In humidity, it's hard to say.
So we see now some step-by-step moderate recovery there, but it will definitely take another six to 12 months in order to come over to a normalized situation therefore in terms of our utilization. What we have probably. I'd like also to comment that again just to keep you to have a very transparent communication. What will continue is the fact that the growth in the next couple of months is mainly automotive, which has already been recorded in the first half of the year, but also the A2L. They are all linked, or most of them are linked to modules, which come with lower margins. So if we have the underutilization, the statement before is actually valid. When it comes to gross margin, we have two contradicting effects.
On the one hand side, we should actually come up with this underutilization issue and solve it step by step. On the other hand, we have a kind of gross margin dilution, which comes with the higher portion of modules, which does not come to an end at the end of the year. I think these are the two different aspects we have already pointed out in the March communications. On the other hand, we have also to keep in mind that modules comes typically with a lower R&D intensity, because whenever you like actually to generate, let's say, 10 millions of revenue in modules, you don't have to invest in the same amount of R&D and sales in order to generate these 10 million. So the intensity for sales, and especially R&D, also goes down. But these are...
Slow changes and transitions in the company, but it's definitely worth mentioning it already in this context.
Then I would like to combine a question both from Sandy, then also from Reto Huber. It's a question for the auto market. One thing which is, of course, interesting, how do you see the shift from traditional cars to electric cars, but how does it impact the Sensirion product portfolio, and also especially with the Tier One European OEM business, how many customers do we supply, and how do you see developing this business then moving from 2024 into 2025?
The first question about the change from combustion to EV cars, I think it's not affecting us heavily, because most of the existing business we have today is anyway completely unlinked to the type of engine. So what we are in, very dominantly, is all about air quality and comfort in the cabin. So from antifogging up to particulate matter, humidity level in the cabin, air quality in the cabin, all this stuff. So this is, in first order, completely unlinked to the type of engine. What is supporting our business is the fact that in e-cars, typically, you are even more concerned about an energy consumption of all these functionalities, because your energy consumption of all your systems is directly linked to the range you can drive with your car before loading the or charging the battery again.
In combustion, it's more or less the same, but the people, the end consumers, are not that concerned because at the end of the day, it's not linked to the range you can drive around, and it's more about running costs and about CO2 emissions. So typically, you see a higher sensitivity of end consumer when it comes to energy consumption, all the supporting functions for e-cars rather than for combustion cars. So this is somehow supporting our functionalities. On the other hand, we do have still some ongoing business with which is directly to combustion. There, it's likely to vanish but it's not a question of one to two years. It's more a question of the next ten years. This is air intake to control the engine, and this really is directly linked to combustion cars.
What is surprising is that these figures are still growing at the moment, and this comes to the fact that definitely the number of combustion engine car-based cars are decreasing already today. But on the other hand, all the regulations from European Union, Euro 6 and so on, they force the OEMs to implement and to equip this functionality to even lower-end cars in order to be compliant with the new regulations in combustion cars. So that means at the moment, we see still growing volumes. We do expect that probably 2025, it will be the tipping point, and then it starts to decrease slowly, but this is a transition of ten years or even longer than that. So this is directly linked.
And the last answer, part of the answer about EV car change is that we are looking now into new applications, like, so for example, battery management systems. They are not yet part of our revenue on that, our portfolio. This is upcoming new applications, and these battery management systems, they might be optimized by our sensors. This is directly and obviously linked to e-cars only. And last but not least, we have highlighted that in our March communication, and we are working on ADAS systems, so autonomous driving systems. There we see additional potential for the future, which is not, honestly, not directly linked to e-cars. You can even drive a combustion car autonomously, but it's one of the mega trends in automotive for the future. Tier one question in Europe.
We cannot name our customers, but generally speaking with more than 50% of OEMs in Europe, we have some kinds of collaboration. But it's at the end of the day, it's not just kind of black and white, do we have collaborations or we do not have? It's always interesting to widen up our relationships and especially also the business potential with these customers. So typically, we are in with most of these leading Tier 1 OEMs in Europe, but now it's our chance, our challenge to increase the footprint with these OEMs.
Another question to the A2L ramp-up. What can you share around the second half of the ramp-up, and how do you see the ramp-up to develop into the first half of 2025 ?
Yeah. Ramp-up, to comment the ramp-up down in a granularity of months, this is always difficult because ramp-ups can change pretty quickly. What we see today is a high, high fluctuation. That means there are some customers, they like to pull in their orders now to be ready, but slightly earlier than expected. Some others, they are pushing them out. So there is a lot of nervosity. Definitely, it's balancing out in a way, because some customers are pulling in, the other ones are pushing out. What I can share with you that is, that we expect the second half of the year to have first significant contribution, but the ramp-up is not yet over at the end of the year. So there should be, again, a growth contribution next year, H1 mainly, and probably even H2 of 2025.
In figures, to say, okay, it's X millions or Y millions. I think that would be too granular because it's already changing tomorrow.
Of course, the question from Mike, the medical business, of course, is very much... has been very much distorted in the last couple of months. What is your expectation of the normalized medical business? Is it CHF 50 million-60 million .f This is hard to say, though I have probably also shortly to look at the figures again, because I don't have all the figures in my mind, in absolute figures. Well, I would say in H1 2022, looking back there, it was without the one-off, CHF 22 million on half year base, and very spontaneously spoken, I think it's reasonable to come back to the level of, to double it, so it's CHF 40 million-CHF 45 million in normal times again, in, after all these destocking optimizations. And then definitely we are also working on new businesses, but as usually in medical, it's always a pretty long-lasting adventure to go through all these certifications in order to have the ramp up.
But the good story behind it is whenever you are in, you are pretty safe to stay in, in medical. So it's another market dynamics compared to appliances or consumers.
Next question is a question on Lumiphase, also from Michael Foeth. It's: What is the valuation of Lumiphase in the recent capital increase, and what is the book value of your stake in Lumiphase when you mark to market?
Yeah. Honestly, I don't have the valuation, the pre-money valuation before the capital increase in my mind. Probably you can comment shortly about the book value. What I can share with you, and that's also the reason why we have participated in this capital increase, that the company is progressing very well on developing this kind of optical manipulation to say it in a non-scientific way, optical manipulation or the manipulation of optical rays in order to guide the optical communication, and this is definitely one of the mega trends that the whole world is actually asking heavily for higher bandwidth, faster connections.
So the mega trend is definitely here, and I think technology is turns out to be very promising in that terms, in order to contribute to the next step of increasing bandwidth and speed in data communication. And for our company, it's great because it's a technology which is very, very close to CMOS and CMOSens, as we are traditionally in and which is probably the core of our technology for the whole company. But probably you can shortly comment about book value. Do you have it in mind?
Yeah, that's quite an easy one. If you look at our consolidated balance sheet, I think the equity accounted investment that is shown here with CHF 22 million, and here Lumiphase, it's the one and only that is in here. So, with the initial CHF 3 million we have invested there, and now with the CHF 19 million or close to CHF 20 million, it's up to this 22.2. And it's just the book value that is shown here is definitely the valuation is the cash here.
Next question is a question on the management changes. Matthias Gantner and Mr. Orsatti are leaving the company. What are the reasons behind that?
Andrea Orsatti has been with the company for almost 16 years or something like that. He became CEO of another, not startup anymore, but it was usually a spinoff of ETH as Sensirion was. So he became CEO of Zurich Instruments located in Zurich, in the city of Zurich. This actually is his next career step, also to become CEO. Unfortunately, in our company, we have only one CEO position. Therefore, he decided actually to leave the company in order to make his career step. Then, Matthias, it's completely different. You are not becoming CEO, but you are going to retirement. These are two reasons for these changes. In case of the CFO, we have an internal successor.
In case of sales, we could engage Simon Sonnenfeld. He is coming from Bosch Sensotec, and he will start at November first with our company.
There is a question on the outlook and the midterm guidance. The outlook still has the same range. What is the reason that the range is still as wide as it is? And is your target expectation the midpoint of the sales and EBITDA range? And the second part of the question is the midterm guidance, when do you expect to reach the midterm guidance? And again, is it still valid, the midterm guidance?
The first question, typically I have a range, so I don't like actually to reduce the range again by saying, "Okay, it's our target to get to the midpoint." Definitely our ambitions are always to be as good as possible. That's no doubt about that. And, but we do need this kind of range because there is too much fluctuations. Now, what is the reason why that we keep the range in the very same level, on the very same level compared to the communication in March? This is simply down to the fact that mainly it's influenced by the ramp-up of A2L, and the A2L ramp-up is taking place in the second half of the year.
That means, a ramp-up is always challenging in connection with guidance, because whenever we have just a shift by one month, which is absolutely without any concerns, but then you have the shift of December revenues to January, which already hits the top line significantly without any strategic changes. And therefore, we need this kind of range still today in order to reflect the risks we do see by the ramp-up, which is not just done by the fact that we are probably not ready, but also our customers, they might push out some of the orders in this ramp-up situation. That's actually the reason, and this is not yet over, so we should actually keep the range on the very same level.
About mid-term guidance, there, I like to refer to our capital market day in November. There we like actually to wrap up also the long-term view of the company to give you an update on strategy. We have worked heavily on strategic discussions with the board in the last couple of months, so therefore, we are also now ready to come out and to share the strategic update with you in November, so in the next couple of days or weeks, we are also coming to communicating the date for this capital market day, and then we will, we like also to comment about mid-term guidance and when are we back on the levels we have indicated in mid-term?
There are some additional questions from Simon Staehelin. The question goes into the A2L ramp up. Can you be a little bit more specific on the products which are driving the A2L business and other product categories in the future we could support the growth in 2025 ?
To briefly recap this opportunity. AC systems provide a kind of a coolant inside in order to... This is a sample, liquid, which is typically in an AC system, in order to, to an air conditioning system, in order to have the functionality of cooling down the room. Now, in former times, it used to be a coolant, which is great in terms of functionality, but it's not that great in terms of global warming potential, so this was pretty high. Therefore, all the companies, not just U.S., they decided to switch to regulate this and to say, "Okay, now you need this new category of A2L." So this is a category or a basket of different coolants or refrigerants, and you have actually now to change. For new ACs, you have to change there.
There is one drawback comes with this lower GWP refrigerants, and this is the flammability. So whenever you drive down the GWP, the global warming potential, on the other hand, the flammability goes up. And Europe and Eurasia, they just decided to regulate in a way to say this coolant has to be changed. In U.S., which is the last continent or larger country to change, now from effective as of January first, they also decided not just to change the coolant, but also to force the manufacturers to implement a leakage sensor for this refrigerant in order to reflect the high flammability of these new refrigerants. And this is exactly the opportunity we see now.
So this is a newly emerging market, not AC itself, but it affects all the air conditioner market manufacturers, not those, only those located in U.S., but also those that like to ship their products to U.S. They need not just to change to this new refrigerant, but also to implement or to design in a A2L sensor. And this is we are one of the three suppliers. They went also in the past all U.S. certifications, and we were pretty successful also to promote our sensor. And this is actually the business opportunity. Now, the second question was, comes afterwards. Hopefully, this will be a continuing business for the next couple of years, because air conditioner, it's not just the one-off of a rollout.
They all the new machines to be manufactured from January first onward, they have to be equipped with this kind of functionality, that Pascal says. We expect to have a business which ramps up, but then to hopefully be more sustainable over the next couple of years. What we see on the horizon, not yet really tangible, is about the next class of refrigerants. I explained before that the advantage of A2L class is the fact that the global w- the GWP, the global warming potential, is lower than the traditional ones, but still not zero. There is an A3 category, which comes, you see now, coming up on the horizon, where you have even lower GWP or even zero GWP effects, but on the other hand, they are even higher in flammability.
One of these is very well known, this is propane, which is definitely not even flammable, but even explosive. This might be the next chance, but we are still already working on that. We have also some first discussions with our customers to think about this new opportunity, but it's not yet fully clear when it kicks in. Second, it's not clear how the regulation will look like in non-U.S. about that. The U.S. will definitely change, not in the next couple of years, because they are just digesting this change to A2L now, but this is at the horizon, longer term, might be the next opportunity to catch.
Marc, there's an additional question on China. Is it still fair to assume that China is approximately half of the Asian business of Sensirion? And how did China perform in the first half of the year? And how do you see the risk between China and the U.S. with the upcoming election, how that region is going to evolve?
Well, China business is probably half of the Asian business is a fair estimation. I think it's diverse to comment the market conditions in China. What we see on the one hand side, the consumer, all these, the distribution, all the smaller companies, they are pretty fast also in designing in our sensors when it comes to a table-based air quality monitors and all this stuff. They are really suffering, because they are highly sensitive to the consumer moods of their customers, that means the end customers, just the people. And in China, at the moment, the mood is pretty bad, especially also reflecting this real estate crisis, a lot of increasing costs and a higher also unemployment rate in China. So there we see a direct link.
On the other hand, we see a booming automotive industry, where we honestly are not yet very strong in, so this is one of our ambitions in future to increase our footprint in the automotive business in China, which is heavily driven also by governmental support. But this is definitely one of the booming situations. In medical, on the other hand, this is more or less stable. The only what we see there is now, again, also in China, the restocking effects. But all the end consumer group is not very sensitive and relevant in that terms, and when it comes to the U.S. and the China trading discussions, at the moment, we do not see strong headwinds. Definitely, somehow, some Chinese customers, they might be somehow reluctant in working together with a non-Chinese company.
I have also the impression sometimes that the government is pushing the, like, at least incentivize some of the larger companies in China to work in first priority, to work together with Chinese local brands. So there, look, in the longer term, it might increase, the headwinds might increase. But we are not a U.S.-based company. We are a Western company, but we are not U.S.-based, and I think this is definitely helpful for our relationship to our customer. On the other hand, what is always the best protection is to have innovative products. They are not that easily replaceable by any other products, then also Chinese people are pretty pragmatic to source their product from outside of China. What is more, on our monitoring is about production in China.
We are running a production site there, and there we see more and more that some customers in U.S., they don't like to be sourced by or to be served by the operations centers in Shanghai. So this is definitely one of the topics we are looking into. It's a trend. It's not yet here, but this has also the need to be advanced in that context.
Good. Thank you, Marc. We have no additional questions, so we have also reached the end of this session. It's 11:00 A.M. I would like to thank for your interest in Sensirion, for the interest in our H1 results, and with that, I would like to close the call and wish you all a nice day.
Thank you for attending.
Thank you.
and have a good day. Bye-bye.
Bye. Bye.