Good morning, everyone. Welcome. I'm Lars Dünnhaupt, Director of Investor Relations for Sensirion, and I would like to welcome you to Sensirion's full year 2024 results. Joining me today here in Zurich are Sensirion's Chief Executive Officer, Marc von Waldkirch, and our CFO, Martin Wirz. Today we will be referencing a slide presentation during the call. The PDF of this presentation can be downloaded from our webpage together with the press release and the annual report. As we begin the presentation, please note that this event will be recorded. During this presentation, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and also regarding the financial performance of the company that contains certain risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ materially from the projections described. Please take a moment to read this.
As always, Marc will begin covering the highlights and business review for the full year 2024. Next, Martin will comment on the financial performance of Sensirion in 2024. Afterwards, Martin will hand over back to Marc, who will then discuss our financial guidance for 2025. At the end, we will take questions. We will begin with questions here from the audience in Zurich. If you are here, you just raise your hands. For the remote participants, please use the Q&A functionality in the GoToWebinar app. I will then read out the questions and hand it over to Marc and Martin. Now I would like to turn the presentation over to Sensirion's Chief Executive Officer, Marc von Waldkirch. With that, Marc, over to you.
Thank you very much. A warm welcome also from my side, especially to all the local audience here, but also the ones remotely attending this morning. Thank you for attending. I think a short summary of 2024 can probably be done by three keywords: back to growth, thanks to new products and innovation. Secondly, a cost optimization program supported the improved EBITDA profitability. Last but not least, a revised strategy we have presented last November in our Capital Market Day. In detail, first of all, the return to growth. Growth was mainly driven by new products in automotive and industrial application. The automotive one with OEMs in Germany and the one with industrial mainly driven by the A2L leakage program for the US market. I will come back to more detail later on. On the other hand, we have medical and consumer.
They are still more or less flat. The established markets in all the markets are still challenging because there are a lot of geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds. Total sales grew by 22% in local currency or 18% in Swiss francs. Profitability has improved due to two reasons. On the one hand side, thanks to the growth on the top line. As always in our company, we do have a lot of fixed costs in R&D, in sales, but also in the way how we manufacture our components, our semiconductor components. We come with a lot of fixed costs in equipment and depreciation.
On the other hand, also our cost optimization program, which was initiated more or less 12 months ago, where we have focused on increasing our efficiency on the one hand side without jeopardizing all the products or projects we are running in order to drive growth either short term but also long term. I think all in all, the outcome of this cost-efficient program was more or less CHF 9 million of cost base we could reduce. We can also start now on a better cost level than before. Last but not least, the strategy we have presented you an ambitious growth strategy last November with three foci. I will come back to this on one slide later in my presentation. To the outlook of 2025, we are somehow optimistic, especially also thanks to the new projects kicking in this year again in terms of the established market.
All the running products, we are cautiously optimistic because there are a lot of turbulences on the markets, especially automotive markets show some weaknesses, but also there are a lot of Chinese uncertainties in the market. Therefore, new products, we are very optimistic with the existing business. We are somehow cautiously optimistic, but I will discuss that in more detail later on. Going shortly through all the markets, automotive first, we could increase the top line even in the second half of the year once again. I think this is more or less the sixth period of reporting with any growth in automotive despite all the headwinds in the existing business, mainly driven by these particulate matter sensor projects with German OEMs, which kicked in especially in the first half of the year, but also the second one supported the top line.
The existing business was more or less flat in some applications, even slightly decreasing because of all the problems, especially in the German automotive markets. Medical markets, this was highly volatile, which is not that typical for medical market, which was driven mainly by destocking effects. We came from a very extraordinary situation after the COVID on one hand side because of all the COVID stockings for medical ventilations. On the other hand, you might remember the CPAP event with the quality issues with one of the larger CPAP manufacturers, which was not in connection with our sensor. There was another quality issue, but this was a one-off revenue we could generate back in 2022. Afterwards, in 2023, it turned out that this one-off was great, but at the end of the day, this also resulted in a high inventory of sensors in the CPAP market.
In the meantime, you see that there was a significant decrease in turnover due to the destocking in CPAP, but also medical ventilator. Now it seems in the second half of 2024 that we have overcome this destocking effect. The customers are coming back, placing more orders now, and we should actually be back more or less on normalization now in end of Q4 2024, but also now what's going on in Q1 this year. Industrial market in our company is a pretty highly diversified market comprising sub-markets like HVAC, but also appliances, semiconductor, hard disks, all this stuff. We see a very high growth dynamic after a sharp decline in 2023. The growth dynamics comes mainly from A2L business in the US. For all those of you, they are probably not that familiar with the A2L program.
A2L is a new refrigerant, which is used for air conditioners worldwide. Europe and Asia have mainly changed already and converted to this new kind of refrigerants. They come with a lower GWP, so global warming potential. This is not an extra business for us because typically A2L can be included or can be used in these HVAC systems without any leakage sensors. In the U.S., the regulation is different. The U.S. is now converting to this new type of refrigerant and the regulations in the U.S. demand for a leakage sensor in order to prevent any higher risk of flammability of A2L refrigerants. This is a completely newly emerging market because there were no leakage sensors installed in all these HVAC systems in the past. In the second half of 2024, these programs kicked in. This was the first ramp-up. The ramp-up is still ongoing this year.
In the first half of the year, there was only minor and more sample-based revenue. In the second half of the year, partially part of the growth dynamics comes from this A2L program, which also brings us an additional growth impact in 2025. The other sub-markets were different in terms of growth. On the one hand side, we see still gas metering growing significantly from year to year in a very unspectacular way. There are different countries. They are pushing their rollouts for smart meters we can benefit from. On the other hand, we have the semiconductor industry, which is somehow slowing down, especially in 2024. Last but not least, consumer markets. Consumer market is a highly fragmented market, mainly driven also by distributions with a lot of small customers, mainly also in Asia. There we have not yet seen a strong recovery.
Mainly our explanation for that is on the one hand side, we do see still a lot of stock in these highly fragmented markets in the distribution channels, especially in consumer that the people were highly concerned during the allocation of chips in 2022, 2023. They placed a lot of orders at that time. They are still digesting this kind of too high inventories. We do not see any kinds of structural changes. At the end, we do have and we also remain all our customers in these areas. They are just somehow lower in orders. On the other hand, this market is highly sensitive on the consumer moods, especially in China. We do see that the consumer moods, the demands from the end consumers is lower than the years before.
This is more for your reference, as always, to see the growth in the top line development, not just from one year to the other one, which can be influenced by many, many different effects, but also to zoom out to a kind of a more long-term growth picture. Before I hand over to Martin to discuss all the financial figures in detail, I'd like to focus shortly on our strategy. These are the three revised strategic focus we have presented to you during our Capital Market Day in November. To shortly recap it, all is anchored, the whole strategy, and this is no change compared to the old strategy from 2021. All is anchored on the foundation of our cultural spirit, our company culture of sensory spirit, as we call it. On top of that, we have defined and we have revised the three foci.
On the one hand side, we have focus one, which is more or less all about environmental sensors and flow sensors. This is the core of our market, the core where we are generating the vast majority of our revenue. In this market still today, we do see a lot of growth potential for the next couple of years. On the one hand side, driven also by the innovation steps we have done in the last couple of years, that means we have miniaturized all our environmental sensors, either already in the third generation like CO2 or in the second generation for particulate matter, but also formaldehyde. This smaller form factor, but also the lower cost levels compared to the first generation or the bulky modules, enables a lot of new applications. This is not from one day to the other effect.
This is more midterm growth potential because now all the customers, they have first of all to design these new sensors in. They have even to think about new applications. They are not that obvious because they are just now enabled by these new kinds of sensors. This is a kind of a journey we have already experienced in humidity since 20 years that miniaturization enables a lot of new applications and can also drive volumes in their respective markets. This is the strategy for focus one. We are already by far market-leading humidity. We are among the top two suppliers for all the other environmental sensors, as we have explained in details during the Capital Market Day. Our ambitions here is definitely to drive the markets even more and to generate a lot of additional growth opportunities in the next couple of years. That is all.
We are more ambitious than just to focus on the core business we have today. Focus two deals with all beyond the core of environmental and flow. There, what we like to do is actually to leverage either our technology portfolio or the customer base in order to grab additional opportunities beyond the core. That means on the one hand side, we do see chances to make more in medical solutions, as we have explained during the Capital Market Day. There we like actually to combine our strong commercial positions in breath flow rate measurements. There we are by far number one for ventilators, but also for CPAPs, so home care, but also in the hospitals. This is all about flow today. Now we like to combine it with all the technologies we have in-house anyway for environmental.
The combination of both gives additional information not just about the flow rate of the patient's breathing, but also about the composition of the air coming out of the patients. This information about CO2 level, about O2 level, about any kinds of additional compositions gives good indications for metabolism, but also about the general condition of patients. This is a program which was initiated already two years ago. We are still working on that, also deeply engaged with customers, but this is one of the strategic focus. To give another example is about leakage. We have already discussed shortly about A2L leakage, but that's just a starting point, which was an obvious opportunity provided by the fact of these regulations in the U.S. We do see a lot of other leakage sensor opportunities, for example, battery management, so batteries in e-cars, but also in stationary applications.
They are somehow critical in terms of performance, but also in terms of thermal runaway, so kinds of malfunctions, sudden malfunctions. There is a demand in the markets to have better monitoring systems in order to get a pre-alert in case of any malfunctions of batteries. This can be done by, for example, monitoring potential hydrogen leakage. Hydrogen is a good indicator or pre-indicator for any kinds of degradations of batteries. This is more or less the same approach. That means H2 leakage or A2L leakage or all the other kinds of leakage we are talking about is more or less based on the technologies we do have anyway in-house. What we have to do is to modify the technology in a way and definitely to develop a new product.
The core technology is more or less the same as we used to have either for our environmental sensors when it comes to optical technologies or we have already developed for flow technology. This might probably be somehow surprising for you that leakage is linked technology from technological base with flow, but at the end of the day, it's the same technologies we are applying. Even that is not enough for us. Therefore, we have the same focus three as we have already defined in the Capital Market Day of 2021. We have also the ambitions to work today on technologies, on basic sensor technologies in order to be ready for in the next couple of years to grab additional opportunities where we have to first solve technological foundation. Typically, if you like to drive innovations, you cannot do that overnight. It takes time.
That means you have to develop technologies already pretty early in order to be ready to grab the opportunities when they pop up. For example, A2L, we are now harvest the potential. This was initiated already seven years ago by looking into technologies how to make leakage monitoring feasible. This additional work on focus three was the foundation as well as the precondition in order to harvest now these additional opportunities in the markets. In this focus three, by nature, I cannot disclose what we are doing in details because you might be interested. There are even other people, they are even more interested in that. That means our competitors, and therefore we are somehow cautious to disclose too much on what we are working on in terms of technological foundation. That brings me to the end of my short business review.
We can definitely dive into Q&A later on after the presentation. Before, I'd like to hand over to Martin and welcome you specially today because it's your first earnings presentation as our new CFO starting at the beginning of the year. Martin, it's your stage. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone. Good morning also from my side and a very warm welcome to our earnings presentation. In addition to Mark's elaboration on the market, I will give you some more background on the key financial figures. As Mark or as in the previous years, we report our financial figures according to the Swiss GAAP FER standard and have been audited by KPMG. As Mark mentioned, we present adjusted figures. They are adjusted for our closure of the AiS ight activities in Berlin, which consists of restructuring cost, write-off, and recycling goodwill.
I have to report that this is exactly the same as during the half-year presentation. There have been no additional costs or no changes compared to what we presented there. That includes the goodwill recycling of about CHF 26 million, as well as write-off that we will see later on. Marc has already highlighted the KPIs and that we ended the financial year with both the top line and the gross or the EBITDA margin within or slightly exceeding our guidance. While this positive development, of course, is encouraging for us, we definitely strive towards bringing that to our midterm guidance of mid to high teens on the EBITDA margin. Now, if we look at the top line, our revenue development from 2023 to 2024 was driven by a broad-based return to organic growth, in particular, as we heard before in the automotive and industrial segment.
This brought us an increase by 22% if you look at local currencies. We faced FX headwind that resulted summed up to about CHF 8.2 million due to a lot of export on our side and, of course, also invoicing and billing in the foreign currencies. That reduced the top line by 3.5%, bringing it to 18.6% compared to the previous year. On this slide, we summarized the market development over the years, both on a regional perspective, but also on a market perspective. This reflects what Marc presented beforehand. We see definitely a significant growth, and we start a significant share in the industrial side, which is now close to 50%, which is, of course, driven by the A2L activities that Marc mentioned before. Automotive stands at 30%, medical at 16%, and the consumer segment at 5%. Revenue by region shows a strengthening of the Americas.
Also, this is driven by the A2L activities because a majority of customers are in the Americas. If we look at gross profit and gross profit margin for the full year, it was 49.2%, which is an improvement over the first half-year results where we had 47.5%, but it was lower compared to 2023. This is due to two main effects. In the first half year, we still suffered from an underutilization of our component production, which then negatively affected the gross margin due to a high portion of fixed cost on our side. In the second half of the year, we could gradually reduce the underutilization, and that improved the gross margin. The second effect is a shift of our product mix from component to a more higher share of these low-margin modules, of course, namely the A2L business, and that impacted the gross margin.
This is within what we expected and within plan. Regarding overhead cost development, we reduced both R&D and SG&A as a percentage of the revenue compared to the previous year. In absolute terms, the SG&A is below the previous year. On the R&D side, we also have to say that we have a slightly lower portion of capitalized R&D. Two main aspects led to this improvement. On the one hand, the discontinuation on the Ai sight business in the first half that then impacted positively the second half. On the other side, as Marc already mentioned, an active cost management throughout the year throughout the whole organization, also on these cost blocks here. If we move on towards the EBITDA, let's have a look at the operating results. After a weak 2023, we improved the adjusted EBITDA margin to 10.5%.
This increase was driven by the increase in gross profit and, of course, then also through the cost management in the other cost blocks. By having a look at the overall income statement here on adjusted level, but also on the reported one, we see the effects from the AI side closure. The reported one is according to the Swiss GAAP FER standard. As I mentioned before, we had there the effect on the closure on the recycling of the goodwill that we have to report above the EBITDA line, which is here represented as an R&D expenses. Again, the same as we reported in the half-year reporting. In addition, we had an effect on the taxes, which was due to the write-off of the tax benefits that we had there.
With that, we can see that on an adjusted basis, the profit for the period after taxes was CHF 4.5 million. With that, I would like to continue with the net working capital. Net working capital in absolute terms increased. That was also due to the higher top line and the increase in the top line. Relatively, it decreased. The effect there is that on the inventory side, we could reduce the inventory by CHF 11 million, whereas we had a strong receivable position. For me, very important to mention there that we do not see a risk on that side. Regarding CapEx, we follow our plan to invest mainly in infrastructure in Switzerland and also our production site in Hungary. We further strengthen our position also on our presence in Stäfa. There we had an investment of CHF 8 million in land and buildings.
In addition, we had CHF 10 million in machinery also to support our growth that we expect also this year. About CHF 5 million is associated to the linked to the A2L business that we ramped up last year and continues this year. Now moving on to the cash flow statement, we had a positive cash flow from our operating activities. The investing activities included CHF 26 million cash outs for PPE, CHF 7 million for activated R&D that we have seen before, and CHF 20 million is an investment in our equity account that invests in Lumiphase during their last financing round to maintain our share in the company. If we look at that, excluding our investment in Lumiphase, the cash flow from operating activities could finance our investments. Therefore, also compared to last year, we are at a turning point towards normalization of the cash generation.
Last point, I would like to focus on the balance sheet. Our cash position compared to the previous year reduced by about CHF 19 million. However, if we compare it to the half-year, we could already build up and strengthen our cash position compared to the reporting in the summer. The equity rate is 84.1%, which remains at a very healthy level. For me, important is that this is a strong balance sheet that also gives us the sufficient freedom to follow our growth strategy. With that, I would like to hand back to Marc for the outlook of 2025. Thank you, Martin. To finalize this initial presentation, a short look at the full-year guidance 2025. I have already discussed shortly before in the beginning that we are optimistic in terms of new business.
New business should drive another year of growth this year, which is indicated to be between 12% and 27%, mainly driven also by A2L in the U.S. HVAC market. With the existing business, we are somehow cautiously optimistic due to all these headwinds and the turbulences we are all well aware of. Uncertainties definitely are in our world today, on the one hand side from a geopolitical situation, but also from a macroeconomic situation. Beyond that, more severe and specific, whenever you are driven by a ramp-up, you never know what happens in detail. There can be some shifts there. Therefore, I'd like us to outline to point that out. There are some uncertainties linked to this A2L ramp-up. On the other hand, there is a completely unpredictable U.S. trading policy at the moment. You might also see that every day once again.
In profitability, it's our clear ambitions to come back to normal levels, to normalize EBITDA levels this year. That means to be in line with our midterm guidance of being between mid and higher teens % of sales. A short comment to our midterm guidance. The midterm guidance was revised in our Capital Market Day of November. I would like also to take the opportunity once again now also to confirm this midterm guidance. We are still optimistic to fulfill this midterm guidance for the next growth cycle of three to five years, as we have indicated during the Capital Market Day. That brings me to the end of today's presentation, and I give back to Lars for the Q&A round.
Thank you, Marc. Thank you, Martin. With that, as stated earlier, as stated earlier, we would start with questions here from the audience in Zurich.
I see in hand from Michiael in Poland.
Yes, thank you very much. I have two questions, one very short. The medical, I call it a little bit the one-off in China. Can you quantify that a little bit how much it is? Just so that we have an understanding of the normal medical business, I would say, which has nicely recovered. On A2L, I tried to quickly make a calculation how much you probably had in the second half of the year, just checking if I say that you make probably CHF 15 million-CHF 20 million in the full year or so in H2. Is that a number that makes sense in A2L?
If yes, if you say then you expect even further growth in 2025, and the potential was 30-50 million in my idea, has the potential changed for you in A2L that it can be actually more than maybe 50 million? Just around this A2L to understand a little bit.
The first question about the one-off in medical 2023, which was not an official one-off, to be precise. This was more a kind of this was driven to look back to the reason for that. In 2023, it is not longer than that. There was the exit of the Chinese government from all the COVID measures. This was one year after our end of the pandemic. In this sudden change of their policy in corona measures, a lot of our customers in China, they were highly concerned about the next wave of people going into hospitals.
Therefore, they asked for additional sensors for medical ventilators. This was this one-off, which ended up because the last wave, even in China, was not that strong. They ended up with another destocking to come to the level. This was a single-digit million of one-off in 2023. Coming back to your second question, typically we are not going to. Sorry, Mark, how much was the Chinese effect in medical in 2024? It was no one. In the press release that you had. Oh, that was of the transitory or inventory . This was just a good support at the end of the year. Not just completely neglectable, but it was low. The other one I referred to was more the one-off in 2023, which was the base year to compare with for 2024.
To A2L, typically we are not going to disclose any revenues by product types. The reason for that is not to give you more insight. This is more our policy in order to not disclose too much to our competitors. Especially our two competitors in A2L, Cubic and Sensata, they love to learn more about our business there. What I can disclose is definitely we are number one in the A2L business. About last year revenue, yeah, your calculations are completely wrong. I do not like to give too many details. To the outlook for this year, the potential has not changed dramatically. There are some shifts. Typically, you are in a setup with the HVAC manufacturers that you are dual sourcing. There might be some additional upside potential by getting a higher margin, a portion of the in a dual situation.
On the other hand, there is also a downside that you lose one part of your portion. This can change, but it has not significantly changed since our last update in August. Last time, I disclosed the revenue potential to be between CHF 10 million and CHF 100 million, also referring to my background as a physicist, which is typically just thinking in orders of magnitude. Therefore, I can indicate you CHF 10 million to CHF 100 million. Go more or less in the middle of that roughly, and then you are not completely wrong. The reason why I said it is I just quickly looked at your revenues in Americas that jumped from CHF 11 million to CHF 15 million. I assumed part of it is A2L, and I just took more or less everything.
We have also to keep in mind that A2L is not only America-based because definitely at the end, the air conditioner goes to the U.S. because the U.S. is the only country having these kinds of regulations for leakage sensors. Some of the customers are located in any other parts of the world assembling the air conditioner in China or whatever and importing or exporting it afterwards to the U.S. This might also happen. Michael?
Yes. Just two straightforward questions. The first one is related to tariffs, obviously any impact that you are seeing or expecting on that side. The second one is just clarification on your midterm outlook. You say low to mid-teens. I think in the past we had 10-15%, which is not exactly the same, but I do not want to play with words.
Just clarify the percentage numbers that you have in mind.
Tariffs, first of all, the word of the year, no doubt at the moment, it's a very intransparent situation with tariffs coming in, going out within 24 hours. More or less, most of our U.S. business, except for A2L, I will come back to A2L afterwards, but all the other remaining part of the business with the U.S. is typically for U.S. customers, but not shipped to the U.S. because most of our U.S. customers, they have production lines anywhere in the world, but definitely not in the U.S. This is, by the way, also one of the big challenges when it comes to tariffs because nobody actually in our industry assembles in the U.S. because of cost situations. That means most of our U.S. business is shipped to any other countries rather than the U.S.
In A2L, it's more or less a similar situation. Most of the HVAC manufacturers are located in Mexico. We are going or we are doing production in Hungary and in Mexico. Our products are shipped either domestically in Mexico or from Hungary to Mexico. All our products are handed over to our customers if they are US-based customers in Mexico. Either our customers import them to the US as a sensor or, in a larger portion, they do the assembly in Mexico and import the whole HVAC system. That means our exposure, or I assessed our exposures to tariffs against Mexico to be more from an indirect perspective rather than a direct one because we are not going to import these products to the US. The indirect effect might be stronger. That means inflation in the US.
It might be a reduced demand of air conditioners in the U.S. A short word about our competitors. Our competitors have more or less the same setup. That means they are either producing in Mexico or they are producing in Hungary or in China. At the end of the day, we are all in the same boat. The main risk there is lower demand due to macroeconomic slowdowns in the U.S. market or inflation. Second question, there is no change in the midterm guidance. We just changed in the Capital Market Day of November. We changed from figures in a mathematical way to more a kind of a prescription, but it is more or less the same. Low to mid-teens for top-line growth. That is 13-16%. No, it is roughly low is 10, 11. Mid is 15.
That means at the end of the day, we are on the same range as before. There is no change.
Can I ask a question on the cost side? You've reduced by CHF 9 million the cost basis. Is it mostly due to AI sites or have you really reduced your cost base, your OPEX, and is that sustainable going forward? If it's AI site, it's obviously sustainable, but have you also made reduction in your core business that are sustainable going forward?
Yeah, it's a combination of both. There is a sustainable aspect in that one. We could reduce that on, but throughout the whole organization. From operation, R&D, SG&A, on all that one. On top, it's also the AI side activity. In figures, probably to give you more guidance, the AI side affected more or less 44 employees.
The FTE reduction from year to year is somehow slightly more than 100. So it's one-third, especially if it comes to personal costs.
Good. Let's maybe take a question from the online audience. I got a question from three questions from Sandeep. We'll start with the last one. Is Sensirion intending to source any US products or even do US manufacturing given the new geopolitical environment?
We are flexible when it comes to manufacturing. If we see that there is, on the one hand side, longer-term tariffs, more than 24 hours. Secondly, also there is a cost benefit, including the tariffs, to go to the US. That means also to provide an advantage to our end customers. We definitely look into that. We are more or less flexible because we are not running our own production site in Mexico.
We are working together with a partner there. That means we can also switch to a US partner in case of necessity. Time level, probably six months. At the moment, it does not make sense because on the one hand side, costs in the US are even higher, including tariffs, because of the lack of skilled people there, but also the levels of salaries in the US. On the other hand, at the moment, there is no clear transparency on the sustainability of all these tariffs. We can also move to Hungary in case of necessity. This can even be done quicker because there we are running around production sites. We have some kinds of flexibility in terms of setup. Especially at the moment, our customer base is outside the US as well.
It would have to leave the U.S. and then be imported through our customer finalized products.
The second question is, can you please elaborate on the gross margin trend for 2025?
We have decided during the Capital Market Day or for the Capital Market Day not anymore to guide the gross margin because it can also be influenced by the product mix between modules and components. As a kind of informal guidance, we expect to be more or less on the same level as this year. Last year, sorry, to be precise. We guided last year's 47-49%. We ended up with 49.2%. It is the same, on the same level. The last question from Sundie is a growth question, sales growth question. The guidance implies CHF 55 million of incremental new revenue in 2025.
This would be the highest absolute growth at Sensirion except 2020. How much of this would be A2L? How much other new products like PM2.5? And how much is the rest of the historic business?
Yeah. With the risk to disappoint, Sandy, sorry, Sandy, but again, we cannot disclose product-based revenue splits. Definitely, as I have indicated, A2L is definitely one of the big drivers. It's not the only one, but it's the big driver for the growth of this year. There are some others, definitely, but A2L is number one as growth contribution for this year.
Thank you. Are there any additional questions here from in the room?
No. I have no additional online questions. Chris?
Now just the question came in. What is the building project? What is the situation currently in Stäfa? Is it approved?
How are you going to, how are we going to finance it?
Shortly, to recap for all those that are probably not familiar with this project. We are running our central cleanroom in Stäfa. This cleanroom in Stäfa is more or less full. We have no flexibility on the one hand side to grow additionally in the next couple of years. On top of that, we like also, and this is a project we have already started three, four, five years ago. We like also to increase our resilience. That means to have a kind of a double source situation for our central cleanroom where all the products on components levels go through. Therefore, we have intensively looked around for an additional plot to build a second production center in Stäfa. This was a pretty long journey to come to a conclusion.
Also, thanks to the support of the local community, local authorities, we could buy at the beginning of last year one plot, which is very close to our main building, which is ideal to build up a second production site. This project, at the moment, the current status is that we filed in all the plans to the local authority at the end of last year. We are waiting now for the approval from the authorities. As always in Switzerland, you have to hope that there are no neighbors. They like actually to delay the project. At the moment, we are in good terms with neighbors. We have also good discussions with them. We are not that highly concerned, but at the end of the day, you never know it till the very moment the period to oppose to these projects has ended.
Therefore, at the moment, we expect to get the approval by the local authorities in the next two, three months. Providing that there is no opposition from neighbors, we might get the full approval in Q3, and then we like to start in Q4. This is the best scenario to start the building, the construction. Construction is expected to last for more or less two years. We would be ready to move in with the second cleanroom end of 2027. This is the rough schedule at the moment.
Can I have one question that has nothing exactly to do with the numbers that you reported today? You have invested CHF 20 million into Lumiphase to keep your shareholding there. This is quite an amount. I think the last such big investment was probably AI site in that region.
How far are we from seeing a commercial success of that investment? Is there anything on the time horizon that you could share?
Yeah. Definitely. Whenever you are a startup, especially with a completely new technology in a new field, it's always not that reliable already, the schedules. What I can disclose with you is that they make significant progress on development levels. Now all these different layers on these chips are put together. At the beginning, just to give you more insights there, typically, if you have so a complex project on chip level, you have actually to develop all parts separately first. Then there is the proof of the pudding to put all these steps together. This is exactly what happens today or in these months.
Unfortunately, not in one day only, but in these months, all these steps are now put together in order to get the very first full blast chips in our hands or not in our, but in Lumiphase's hands. They are also commercialized. They are in very close contact with the leading customers, one of the leading manufacturers of these optical transmitter systems. Commercialized, but also technology-wise, there is good and very promising progress. Coming to your question about when the first monetization starts, I expect to be there probably in two years from now on, roughly spoken.
One more time, are there any additional questions here in the room?
No. I do not see any additional questions online either. With that, thank you very much for your interest in the Sensirion results 2024. With that, I would also like to thank Marc and Martin.
With that, we would close the call. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.