Dear ladies and gentlemen, we would like to welcome you to Sensirion Holding AG's conference call on the results of the half year 2026. From Sensirion, Marc von Waldkirch, our Chief Executive Officer, Martin Wirz, our Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Lars Dünnhaupt, Director of Investor Relations, are present. In addition to the press release we issued earlier today, we will be referencing a presentation during today's call. The PDF of this presentation can be downloaded from the Sensirion Investor Relations page. As we begin, please note that the conference call is being recorded and that all participants are set to mute. During the conference call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events or the financial performance of the company that can involve certain risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ from the projections described in such statements. Please take a minute to read it.
Let's take a look at the agenda. Marc will begin today by covering the highlights and business review of the half-year results 2026. Next, Martin will comment on the financial performance. Martin will then turn the call back to Marc, who will address the outlook 2026. Afterwards, Marc and Martin will take your questions. As remote participants, please use the Q&A tool of the GoTo Webinar app. I will read out the questions. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Marc.
Yes. Thank you, Lars. Also a warm welcome from my side to this earning conference. It's great to have you with us this morning. Let's start with a short executive summary. I think the headline today is simple. We continued to grow in a pretty volatile environment, broad-based, and on the back or on the base of a pretty strong first half of 2025 as reference base. Revenue came in at CHF 179 million. This is an up of 7% in local currency, - 3% in Swiss currency. The prior year period was highly influenced by these front-loading effects in the A2L ramp-up scenario, which normalized in the meantime, and this high reference base makes also the continued growth even more encouraging. The growth, once again, is based on a pretty broad base.
On the one hand, all the four end markets contributed to this growth with a particularly strong momentum in medical business, in distribution business, but also consumer markets. The softer development in the U.S., so in Americas in general, in this region, reflects the strong prior year base from A2L sensors and could be offset by other regions. On profitability level, we held the profitability EBITDA level of a healthy 19.5%, supported by an expansion in gross margin to 52.6%. A particular highlight this year is the improvement in net income, which has grown by roughly 80%, driven by a normalized financial result. Operating cash flow came in at CHF 34 million and up of 20% compared to last year's result. On the back of this strong first half year, but also backed on the strong momentum looking forward, we have raised our full year guidance for 2026.
I will comment it in details at the end of the presentation today. I think all in all, we can summarize the ability to keep growing in a pretty volatile and demanding environment and off a high base is the fundamental message I like to share this year with you. This also underscores the market position we have, the strong technology platforms we have, and the close engagement with customers, which was the base to record these figures. But first, I like to go through all the four individual markets to comment them in details. Let's start with automotive. Automotive market delivered strong growth this year, up 11% in local currency, despite the structural challenges in the Western automotive industry.
The existing business or the existing applications proved resilient, but the more important message strategically is the fact that the growth came from the new growth fields, mainly or in particular from the first launch of a battery management systems for EV cars with a larger European OEM. Apart from this thermal runaway detection system, we're also working on a lot of other RFQs, either for this application, but also in all the other applications we present during the Capital Market Day related to our growth fields in automotive. On the one-hand side, also refrigerant leakage or the new mega-trend of autonomous or partially autonomous driving. In medical market performed as well, pretty strong, with revenue of CHF 28.7 million, and up again 10% in local currency, even up roughly 39% compared to H2 of 2025.
Growth was mainly driven by our established applications of CPAP and ventilation application. Part of this demand might also be reflecting precautionary inventory built ups from our larger customers seeking to strengthen their supply chain security in these volatile times. Strategically, we are progressing well, in all our growth fields, as presented in the Capital Market Day, namely in particular about smart gas sensing in medical, about resuscitation applications, about capnography, or also about advanced respiratory diagnosis. Coming to the industrial markets. Industrial market is pretty broad, diversified market. This market helped the Priory revenue in local currencies, with +1%. This is against a first half year of 2025, was heavily influenced and benefiting from these front-loading effects in A2L.
A2L in the meantime is progressing as expected, so we have this kind of normalization and it's moving forward as planned, as also presented in the last earning call in March. So in A2L, we could retain our market leadership worldwide, while we are progressing in the next gen of leakage sensing for HVAC systems. That's the A3 story, which is more hitting the markets in Europe and Asia in some years from now on. The normalization of A2L could actually be offset completely by other growth fields, namely the gas chromatograph, especially the gas chromatography with Qmicro on the one hand side, but also pretty strong growth contribution from gas metering in this industrial field. Next slide is more for your reference. This is the very same slide as we have presented in detail last time in March.
It is just to give you reference again about the upcoming dynamics and momentum in the A2L markets after the front-loading back last year, the normalization phase now, this market is translating into a robust solid market with a moderate growth anticipated for the next couple of years. There is no change in this slide. It is more for your reference. Coming to the last of our four end markets, that is about consumer. Consumer, a highly fragmented market, posted strong growth this year with 45% in local currency, up to CHF 12.3 million. This was driven primarily by very strong demand from our distribution channels across all the three regions, Asia, Europe, but also Americas.
There we have a very broad customer base, which is also for strategic value in order to seek for new solutions for new lead customers. This broad base of distribution market is a significant asset for the company looking forward. Portfolio-wise, we were also supported by the new miniaturized CO2 sensor, which has a good traction in the distribution and the consumer markets. Before going to some kinds of a strategic recap, I would like also to answer probably very likely questions about Lumiphase. From Lumiphase side, there is no significant updates to be shared today. They are still fully focused on fixing the last open technical issues they have to do, especially about stability of their technology.
They are still continue to deepen their relationship and collaboration with leading customers, in order to tackle this challenge of going up to the next bandwidth in data communications. There is no strategic update which is significantly different to what we have shared last time back in March. A short view going back to the strategy. We had our Capital Market Day in April this year. I just selected some of the slides. They are the same as we have presented there in order to give you a short recap of the strategy. We have presented our ambitious growth strategy under the banner of we measure gases precisely, reliably, and at scale. Sensirion today is, at my knowledge at least, the company with the probably most comprehensive portfolio of technologies to measure small amounts of gases in any kinds of application.
That is the unique edge our growth strategy looking forward is actually based on. On top of that, of the technology portfolio, we do have deep relationships, long-term relationships with important leading customers in all the fields we are in. Secondly, we have also a deep application expertise in-house to combine technology with the problems of our customers. That is the base of our growth strategy. The market we are in and we are looking for is smart gas sensing, a fast-growing multi-billion market driven by secular megatrends, such as the health issue, the demographic changes, aging society on the one hand side. We do have the climate and environmental protection. We have energy efficiency as a megatrend. Last but not least, also the regulations and norms in order to increase safety for people. All these megatrends translates into mission-critical applications.
They are coming up in this field of smart gas sensing from breath analysis about patient monitoring, about the emission of hazardous gases, or the leakage of critical gases in any kinds of application. This is exactly the market we are fully targeting at the moment. In this market, it is not just about components, it is also all the way up to full solutions to solve the full problem of our customers' sensor challenges. Our vision in this market is clear. Our ambition is to become market leader in this high-value smart gas sensing markets by 2030, solving and focusing fully on these mission-critical challenges as a trusted partner of our customers in regions. To do so, we have defined four strategic pillars.
On the one hand side, it is about dominating the core of flow applications, but also environmental sensing application, and to even expand our dominant position in this field. Additionally, the second pillar is about building up leadership, market leadership in the leakage market, a market which is growing fast, which is coming up at the moment. A2L is just a starting point to do so. It is about A3, but also battery management is, at the end of the day, a leakage detection application. Third pillar is about expanding to medical and industrial solutions, always focused on mission-critical applications, as we have presented in the Capital Market Day. Last but not least, all these solution-oriented, innovation-driven application is not a value if we cannot strengthen our resilience in this volatile environment.
Therefore, the strategic pillar number four is about the increase of resilience in our supply chain in the way we operate our business model. This is the ambitious growth strategy we have. It is not just a dream, it is built on concrete growth fields we have presented you in details during the Capital Market Day. All of them have a significant growth potential for the next couple of year. It is important, it is not just about the far-out future. Some of these growth fields have already contributed to the first half of 2026 financial results, in particular about battery management, but also about gas chromatography with our company in the Netherlands, Qmicro. So it is not about future, it is also about reality today. The first contribution are already recorded from our growth strategy.
Saying that, I would like to hand over to Martin to dive into all the details of our financial results.
Thank you, Marc, and also from my side, a very warm welcome to the audience. Over the next few minutes, I will take you through our financial performance for the first half year of 2026, the top line and the development by market and region, our margins and profitability, and how this translates into cash and future strengthening of our balance sheet. Marc will then come back to walk you through our raised outlook for the full year. Let me start with the headline numbers. We delivered revenue of CHF 179 million, up 7% in local currencies. In Swiss francs, that is a reduction of 3%, as the strong franc continued to weigh on reporting figures compared to half year one 2025. A theme you will see running through the presentation today. Importantly, the underlying momentum of the business is clearly one of growth. Profitability remained healthy.
Our gross margin improved to 52.6% from 51.5% a year ago. The EBITDA margin held at 19.5%, essentially stable versus 19.8% in the prior year period. Cash generation was a real highlight. Operating cash flow rose 20% to CHF 34 million, leaving us with a cash position of CHF 83.8 million at the end of June. So growth in local currency, margins held, and strong cash conversion. To briefly recap, market development growth was genuinely broad-based, all four end markets grew in local currencies. You heard it from Marc, automotive was up almost 11% in local currency, despite the well-known structural headwind in the Western auto industry, thanks to growth with new applications. Medical grew close to 10%, driven by strong CPAP and ventilation demand, and consumer as a standout was up 45%, carried by the strong distribution demand across all three regions.
Our largest market, industrial, at 54% of revenue, held its prior year level in local currency up around 1%. That is a strong result when you recall the first half year 2025 was benefiting from a significant A2L front-loading effect as heard before, and driven by growth in other industrial application, smart gas metering and gas chromatography was mentioned, and also the strong distribution business offset this expected normalization of A2L. By regions, APAC and EMEA both grew double digits in local currency, while Americas declined, also reflecting the strong prior year A2L base. The picture is one of underlying momentum with FX and A2L comparison masking the true strength of the first half year 2026. Turning to the next slide. This slide shows the margin profile.
Gross margin was up 110 basis points to 52.6% on the back of operating leverage, favorable product mix, and our continued efficiency programs. That improvement absorbed both currency and elevated raw material costs. The margin strength is what allows us to keep investing. R&D intensity was 18.4% of the revenue, and this is fully in line with our midterm innovation strategy. SG&A was 20.9%, reflecting targeted investment in our customer-facing functions. In short, strong gross margin is comfortably funding the innovation that drives our future growth fields. On profitability, EBITDA came in at CHF 34.9 million, a margin of 19.5%. That resilience reflects the gross margin expansion just before elaborated and OpEx discipline, while we continued to absorb FX and higher material costs and keep investing in growth. Below EBITDA, the net profit rose 81% year-on-year to CHF 18.9 million.
A minor driver there is a normalized financial result. The prior year period was heavily impacted by foreign exchange losses from the strengthened Swiss francs. The equity accounted contribution from Lumiphase came in inline with our expected run rate at the comparable number then last year. Networking capital was stable at 33.5% of last 12 months revenue. Inventories came down as A2L stock level normalized, supported by active inventory management while we preserve the flexibility to serve the demand of our own customers. CapEx was elevated and in line with our communicated plan. It reflects the continued investment in manufacturing capacity here in Switzerland, including CHF 8.2 million of growth CapEx for our second clean room in Stäfa, which is progressing on schedule and within budget. Depreciation and amortization are rising in line with our investment cycle. Turning to the balance sheet and the highlights of the balance sheet.
Our balance sheet remains a real source of strength. Net cash increased 14% to CHF 81.7 million compared to the end of 2025, funded entirely by operating cash generation. Our equity ratio stands at a very solid 80.8%. This gives us substantial financial flexibility. Our capital allocation priorities are clear. Organic growth first, then capacity expansion and selective M&A, while maintaining a conservative leverage profile over the cycle. In other words, we can fund our ambitious growth from a position of strength. Finally, the cash flow statement puts this all together. Operating cash flow was up 20% to CHF 34 million as a result of the improved profitability and disciplined capital management. The investment outflow of CHF 23.4 million reflects the capacity expansion on one side and capitalized development expenditure. That leaves a free cash flow of CHF 10.6 million after the elevated clean room investment.
Crucially, our growth investments remain fully funded from operating cash flow, with the net cash position still increasing. Free cash flow conversion of around 30% will normalize once the clean room program completes. To summarize, with a broad-based growth of 7% in local currencies across markets, margin held at a high level, net profit up substantially, and a further strengthening of the balance sheet with 20% higher operating cash flow concluded a strong half year 2026. With that note, I would like to hand over to you, Marc, for the outlook for the remaining year and the increased guidance for 2026.
Thank you, Martin. Before giving you the chance to ask questions, a short comment on the raised revenue guidance for 2026. Based on the strong results of first half of year, but also looking forward based on the continued momentum we see in the market for this year, we decided actually to increase our revenue, but also profitability guidance for the full year 2026. We are fully aware that the environment is still and will remain volatile and challenging. On the other hand, our broad-based end market approach, but also the market diversification supports and continues to support the resilience we have in these volatile markets despite all these macroeconomic and FX headwinds.
At the same time, we see that our growth initiatives, broadly distributed across all the markets, across all the regions, will gain attraction or are gaining attraction at the moment already and are more and more contributing to the results. On the back of this analysis and assessments, we came to the conclusion to increase our revenue guidance from CHF 335 million to CHF 360 million, which was the range in March, to CHF 345 million up to CHF 365 million. This reflects a growth of 8%-14% in local currency compared to last year's full-year results. As a consequence of that, also to expect the EBITDA level to be at the upper half of our range of mid to high teens. This underlines both the resilience of our business, but also our confidence in continued growth for this year, but also looking forward to the next years to come.
With that, we would like to close our presentation of today's results and give you the chance to ask questions. I would like to hand over to Lars to moderate this Q&A session.
Yeah. I said before at the beginning of the call, please use the Q&A tool of the GoTo Webinar app and submit your questions. I will give you a little moment to submit questions. Currently, I did not receive any question. We should probably I still see no questions. I am looking here in the room. Okay. I think let us wait another minute, maybe then some questions come in. I think.
Apparently Marc and Martin have done a very good job and.
Does it work properly?
I think it works. There is the first question.
The update. First question. Could you please remind us of the total amount of CapEx for the new building and its spread over the years?
I can comment on that. Total CapEx is around CHF 40 million spread over this year and predominantly next year, about in the same amount. So half-half.
Good. Next question is on sales. What are the swing factors from the lower and upper end of the sales guides?
Well, I think at the end of the day, we have to be realistic that we have now a range of, I think, CHF 20 million only, so this can be influenced by one or two bigger orders from some customers and also their inventory management. At the end of the day, it's not modeled in a way that we say, "Okay, if this happens, then we are ending at the lower end, and if that happens, we end at the higher end." It's more about the pretty large amount of different customers coming in and the dynamics in the markets at the end of the day. There is not a strict scenario A and a scenario B.
I think this range of CHF 20 million today, looking forward for the second half of the year, is more reflecting the volatility of the markets and the inventory management of customers, whether they will put the last orders in December again, or whether they are going to push them out to next year's demand for January. This is reflected by this CHF 20 million range.
Then there's a question on Lumiphase. Could you please explain the results for the equity accounted investees?
Yes, that's basically their run rate since they are now heavily in the R&D side. That's basically the cost based on our share of the company. We hold almost 50% of the shares, therefore, it's almost 50% of the run rate loss of Lumiphase we have to reflect in our financial results.
Then another question related to Lumiphase. Could you explain again the issues, the challenges around Lumiphase?
Well, I don't like to dive into a very technical discussion because it's pretty challenging to understand the technology behind, but at the end of the day, I think that's the normal way we have to go through with a new technology to pre-apply it for one specific demanding application. That means the technology, the so-called BTO layer, this barium titanate oxide layer, which can manipulate light. That works. That can manipulate light. It can also manipulate the light fast enough in order to reach this level of bandwidth. That's a good message.
On the other hand, going forward, you have also to fix a lot of different issues, process-oriented issues, in order to scale it up to higher volumes, but also on the other hand, stability issues in order to keep the performance of the material, even in very challenging environments, high temperature, long operational run times, and all this stuff. This is exactly what happens now. We are pretty used to that. Each new sensor, you can take the CO2 sensor, but also flow sensor, humidity sensor, all of them underwent through this kind of process. That first of all, sensor works, it can measure humidity. In this case, with Lumiphase, it can manipulate light. But then you have to go through another phase.
That means to fix all the issues that the performance can also be kept even over the whole time of operation and even in pretty challenging environments. This is exactly what happens now, to fix all the stability issues, and there, not yet all issues are fixed. We have actually to go step by step to fix all these minor but also major parts. This is actually the job they are doing today. In parallel, the engagement is continuing to talk about and to design the applications, to check and to validate the performance of these chips in the very application of customers' products. This is in parallel, progressing well with customers.
Next question is twofold, is A2L. Can you provide a rough run rate of the A2L sales in H1 and H2 in absolute terms. Then what are the main developments you are expecting for H2 2026?
Well, as usual, we are not going to disclose any product-based revenue splits, also in order not to give our competitors a good chance to analyze Sensirion. So it's also kind of a competition. The reason behind then not to disclose this application or product-based revenue is the competition in the field. That means we cannot disclose this. What I can share with you is, again, as illustrated on slide nine, I think it was slide nine. It doesn't make a You can refer to the slide in your own material, that we had the first phase of ramp-up back in 2025, H1 2025, with the front-loading effect. That means all the customers, they have ordered more than they could consume at this moment in order to fill up the whole supply chain, in order also to mitigate risks, ramping up risks, but also supply chain disruption risks.
Afterwards, H2 of 2025 reflected the normalization, kinds of de-stocking in order to stabilize and balance out this supply chain situation. Now we are translating more and more in a stable business, where at the end of the day, it's a kind of we are delivering what the customers are consuming in their business because there are no front-loading effects anymore, but also no de-stocking effects anymore. Looking forward, we have this kind of moderately growing business, based on the general increasing demand of HVAC applications in U.S. This is the non-absolute, but at least relative development we anticipate for A2L. For development in second half of the year, I'm not sure whether the word development is more referring to the market revenue development or more the R&D development, but some words about the R&D development.
The R&D is now fully focusing on the second generation of A2L in order also to remain our strong and defend our strong market position. In parallel, we are working heavily on these A3 solutions for the other markets in Asia and Europe to come in, hopefully in the next couple of years.
The next question is on auto, the EV battery management solution, which was mentioned for a big German OEM. Is that an exclusive solution for this OEM only, or can it also be designed in with others?
Yeah, definitely. We like to also to bring that into other OEMs. I like to refer to one slide we have shown you during the Capital Market Day. That's our go-to market strategy. Whenever we are going into a new application, a mission-critical application, we like actually to look for a leading customer. We can go through this process, we can also learn about the application. Afterwards, we like to broaden up our field by approaching all the other typically top five manufacturers in the world. We are coming back to the EV application. We are exactly in the second phase. That means we started up with a lead customer, and now we are broadening up the field by reaching out and getting engaged with other leading OEMs in this field.
We are already in discussions, and there are also some nominations on the table for the very same applications, but not yet launched. We cannot disclose names of these OEMs due to some also agreements, NDA agreements we have signed with them, and we like also to respect. But it's definitely our focused strategic goal to bring that application into a broader market, and at the end of the day, also to position Sensirion once again as the market leader in this newly emerging application.
Next question is a consumer question. What drove specifically the growth in the consumer division? Is that related to the sales to IKEA?
Once again, we cannot comment specific business fields or even customer developments. In general, I think once again, consumer market is heavily driven by distribution business, and distributions at the moment is extremely strong across all the three regions. The main contributor to the strong consumer business is coming from the distribution markets from U.S., Europe, but also Asia. It is based on the environmental sensors, primarily, on the one hand, humidity, but also all these kinds of environmental nodes, particulate matter, and so on. Therefore, IKEA is a good example of this kind of applications, but it is not directly related to IKEA only.
The next question is on FX. Which currency explains the 18% FX impact on the consumer sales, and how is this developing in the second half of 2026?
I think a forward-looking statement on FX is like rolling dices on the set. We definitely have most revenue in non-Swiss francs, and they are predominantly U.S. dollars. That is definitely. If you compare the base compared to last year, that is where we also had the biggest changes in U.S. dollar Swiss francs FX pairs.
Next question is on medical. How much of the growth in medical was related to inventory build-up? Is the revenue expected in medical expected to be lower in the second half of the year?
Well, the first question, that is hard to assess and difficult to assess. It is not a significant portion. I mentioned it before that a part of these dynamics might also be driven by inventory ups with our customers to secure their supply chain. This cannot be boiled down into clear figures because it is more a gut feeling, because medical market is not so volatile typically. That means if you have short-term increases of demands, it is a pretty high likelihood that it comes also from inventory management, but we do not have a clear picture on the inventory of our customers. I think a significant portion is definitely also consumed by the customers because medical is going forward pretty successfully. The second question was about, can you help me again? It was not just about how much comes from inventory management, but there was a. Oh, about second half of the year.
The second half, yes, correct.
All in all, I expect to be on the more or less same level as in the first half of the year.
Good. Thanks a lot for all the questions. Thanks for looking into our results and showing interest here in this call. I see no more questions right now online. With that, I would like to thank you a lot for your interest in our result call. I would like to close the call. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the attention. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye bye. Have a good day. Bye bye.