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Earnings Call: Q1 2023

Aug 2, 2022

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Fesa, your operator today. Welcome, and thank you for joining the AT&S conference call for current business environment. Throughout this recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press zero hash key for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Philipp Gebhardt.

Philipp Gebhardt
Director of Investor Relations, AT&S

Thank you, Fesa. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the AT&S Q1 2022/2023 Conference Call. With us today are Andreas Gerstenmayer, CEO, and Peter Schneider, CSO, as well as Helmut Leitner, head of finance department. Mr. Gerstenmayer will start with a brief overview of the key developments of the fiscal year, followed by a market update from Mr. Schneider. Afterwards, Andreas Gerstenmayer will comment on the financial figures, our full-year guidance, as well as the midterm guidance. As Fesa mentioned, the presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Now I would like to hand over to Mr. Gerstenmayer. The floor is yours.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Thank you, Mr. Gebhardt. A warm welcome from my side to our summer earnings call after Q1. As you most likely have seen already from the presentation and the press release we have disclosed this morning, we had a record quarter again. In very intense, interesting market environment, AT&S is again able to deliver to its promises. I think this is a very strong sign from our team that is really motivated to deliver customers and stakeholders to their expectations. Let's jump into the presentation. On the top line, you can already see a very strong development. Revenue increased by 58% to a level of EUR 503 million. Also nice to be mentioned here is that all the business segments are contributing to the growth.

We have an outstanding strong EBITDA growth. It's almost 200% compared to last year's numbers. I think this as a Q1, and those who follow us for a while now know that typically, especially in the mobile device business, Q1 is still the low season quarter. It shows that we have gained a certain robustness in our business setup and business portfolio. We have definitely some positive impact from foreign exchange rates, and we also still need to consider that in the environment we are operating, energy costs are increasing still. The supply chain is a challenge and transport cost is a challenge as well. To stay on top with our technology development, to create the necessary innovations for the future, we continuously strengthen our R&D activities.

You know, we are investing into the R&D center in Austria, but also the project in regards of technology development, platform development as are continuously driven forward. That is for sure is also a certain investment into the future, into the future position of AT&S. So far it really paid off so that we can show that this is the right strategy, and Peter Schneider will touch on that later. The position of AT&S in the high-end, high technology part of the market is the strength of the company and is differentiating ourselves. Capacity expansion projects are moving on. They are completely to our expectations. Chongqing three is well on track. Kulim is developing very nicely, and also the investment in Leoben, Austria is nicely progressing. Another proof of resilience was the management of the lockdown in Shanghai.

You remember it's just few weeks ago that we had a six or seven weeks lockdown in Shanghai. AT&S team was able to maintain operations on very high levels. They could support the customers to their expectations, and we received a lot of appreciation letters from the customers because we were one of those who could support them also in this difficult time and difficult environment successfully. From the numbers you see, there's almost no impact to top and bottom line out of the lockdown in Shanghai. Again, we confirm the guidance for the fiscal year 2022, 2023. I turn over to Peter Schneider to give you the overview about the latest market developments now.

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

Yes, hello. I would like to touch in particular two topics today, and this is the overall resilience of our market areas in smartphones and the server. To give you a little background, like Andreas has shown, we have confirmed our guidance for this year and our midterm guidance, and there's a good reason for that we are very confident to achieve our targets. First of all, in the smartphone market, we are all aware of the fact that at a new highly elevated pace in the consumer market, there are now some uncertainties of global economics. If you look at the smartphone market in particular, we see overall for the whole market a small decline in the market. But this is not true for the high end.

Our external sources that we use suggest that this year, the 5G smartphone shipments will reach 700 million units compared to a little more than 550 million units last year, which gives a year-on-year growth of 25%. As very often mentioned, this is the area that we are primarily working in. But it's not only the number of phones that are being sold, it's also the number of PCBs, of printed circuit boards that are used within each phone. Whereas a few years ago, there was more or less only one PCB in the phone, and you'll see it on the bottom right here. That's the main board or the motherboard.

Of course, we are still active in this market and it's still important to us, but it has significantly decreased in share of our overall revenue over the last years. Also decreased in share in the smartphone business, because in the meantime, in the high end, there are more PCBs being used. For example, in the camera modules or in integrated high frequency and antenna modules. Whereas in the past there was maybe one printed circuit board in the phone, now there are maybe three or more in one phone. Therefore, if you look only at the unit growth, you would jump too short. You have to really look into the number of PCBs that is being used overall in the market, in particular in the high-end market where we are focusing on.

In a nutshell, we see increasing functionalities that support the demands for PCBs in smartphones. We see this market comparatively resilient to overall consumer demand. We are, in particular, well-positioned in that high-end area. That focus on the high-end area for us now pays off, and we have in the past often spoken of this diversification. We also presented in the last quarter review in the year-end result that we have, for the first time, reached more than EUR 100 million sales in this module business. Overall, this gains momentum, and we are confident that we will continue our growth path in that area. Second topic, the substrate market. In the substrate market, it's really more or less the same story.

The overall substrate market is expected to grow 8%, a little more than 8%. These are the most recent estimates. The demand-supply gap is still there. It will close for the consumer area maybe a little earlier due to current consumer demand. Could be that this closes end of next year. For the server market, this demand-supply gap will remain for several years. Independent of the known investments that we're, of course, closely observing, the general gap will remain. If you look in the server market, which is for us our key target market, also there you have to separate the various server applications. As we all know, the main driver is cloud services. This is where the interesting projects for us are going into.

The overall demand dynamics of decentralized data management and all these artificial intelligence topics are well-known. Apart from the server market itself, and here again, like in the smartphones, it's not just a unit question, it's a question of how much of our product is needed. Where it's in the smartphone, it's the number of PCBs that is increasing. It's in the server area, the surface and the layer count, the size of our substrates is significantly increasing. It's not enough to look into unit-by-unit development, how does the server market grow. Server market overall is very resilient. The growth overall is now estimated at 8% something. Whether this is 6%, 7%, 8% or 9% doesn't make a big difference for AT&S.

Decisive for AT&S is this change in architecture, which is shown here, which we have discussed before, and which will drive the need for capacity and is the main reason for the supply-demand gap in the server market. This server market has a supply chain which is, from our knowledge, contracted in the meantime throughout the supply chain. Whereas our customers contract us long-term to provide capacities, as far as we know, they're also in contracts long-term with the hyperscalers and the guys that need that server capacity. If you look at the overall ABF substrate revenue in servers, market estimates and our estimates are that from 2021 to 2025, this market roughly doubles. How do we answer to that demand in the substrate business? Like Andreas mentioned in his introduction, our expansion projects are very well on track.

We speak of our AT&S substrates triangle. We are currently ramping Chongqing 3. Chongqing 1 is fully on stream since quite a while. Chongqing 3, we are now more or less in the middle of the ramp. Kulim, you see in the picture, the construction site is evolving, and a lot is going on there. On the top, the Leoben manufacturing facility with its R&D center is also well developing. Headcount introduction, people onboarding is absolutely on track. The Leoben facility also will help us to further diversify our customer base. This is, of course, also a significant part of our strategy and reinforces our ability to grow in the future, the possibility to diversify our customer bases.

We definitely target to have a handful of customers in the substrate area, and we are very well on track in that respect as well. That's so far the market overview. Thank you very much.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Thank you, Peter. How does this now translate into our financials and other KPIs? The actuals came in, as already stated, a revenue growth by 58% on a absolute level of EUR 503 million. The foreign exchange effect in that is EUR 46 million. The profitability non-adjusted came in on 27.3% margin EBITDA. Here we have foreign exchange rate effects of EUR 32 million considered. The Adjusted EBITDA margin, which is adjusted by EUR 7 million material and labor costs, came in with 28.8%. From the comparison to last year's Q1 point of view, revenue grew from EUR 318 to 503 million. EBITDA from EUR 46 to 137 million. Net profit from - EUR 5 million up to 96 million.

EUR 900 million would have been a nice figure, but unfortunately not. EUR 96 million. Coming to the details about the quarterly revenue and EBIT margin development, I would focus now again on the comparison between Q1 last year and Q1 this fiscal year. I said already, the margin came in at 16% last year, and this year, 29% almost, which I think is a very nice number, and reflecting the strong development of our business. Mainly driven by the ABF substrate growth, for sure, because that is the area where we invest the most CapEx in. You know, this is the growth path we are following, regarding the market opportunities, as Peter mentioned before.

We are getting more and more well-positioned there, adding new customers to our portfolio and so on. We got some support from FX effects, as I mentioned before already. In our business segments, again, here we see a very strong development in mobile device and substrates business area, where we have grown from EUR 220 revenues to 386 million, comparing both Q1s last and this fiscal year. EBIT margin from 17% to 32%. This is mainly driven by the growth and additional capacity in our Chongqing facility. We have also, as mentioned before by Peter, a very nice, strong development in our PCB for modules business, which we started somewhere 2018. Yeah. Moving on to automotive, industrial and medical.

Potentially, on a first view, you would be disappointed by the margin development. Keep in mind, last year, this was impacted by heavy grants out of the IPCEI funding and national grants for innovation and R&D activities, which was kind of a one-timer. We have also additional burdens in Austria by additional startup costs from the R&D center and other capacity expansions, and also higher R&D expenditure in our central R&D activities, which we are driving forward to prepare ourselves for the next generations of products. If I would eliminate all these special effects, there would be almost the same level of EBITDA margin like we have seen it last year. Moving on to the financial position of the company.

Cash and cash equivalents, combined with each other, we have a very solid financial structure with EUR 1,446 million cash and cash equivalents, including unused credit lines. I think this is a very sound, solid financing base, which also helps us to support our CapEx programs. You most likely could ask, "Why is the credit lines reduced?" This is simply because we drew EUR 70 million out of that and used them for financing our CapEx, or supported the financing of our CapEx activities. There was no expiry or things like that, so don't misinterpret the reduction here. It's simply a usage like it was intended for. The debt financing overview on the next slide. Also here you can see that the maturity profile is quite solid and healthy.

You see we have some refinancing need in this running fiscal year, which should be nicely possible with the funds available. Also the one to three years timeframe is nicely prepared to be financed by the existing facilities. Of course, there I see the very sound situation and well prepared for the CapEx program we are driving. Coming to the balance sheet. Total assets in line with our CapEx program and also with the customer prepayments received. You know we received the customer prepayments and consider them in our contract liabilities, so it's in the total assets incorporated. They grew up from EUR 3.75 to 4.12 billion, 10%.

Equity had the same growth, mainly driven by our net income, by the support we receive from the foreign exchange rates and some other changes, which is nicely bringing us to equity ratio of 33.5% finally. Net debt also stays on an acceptable level. The ratio is 0.5. Our upper limit of net debt to EBITDA is three. I think it's also here we are well in line with our guidance. The cash flow also shows the strong operational results. Cash flow from operating activities is for sure mainly driven from the EBITDA to the larger extent than a certain participation of contract liabilities and some others. Coming in with EUR 206 million, significant increase compared to last year.

Cash flow from the investing activities is for sure mainly driven by the net CapEx. The operating free cash flow, which is calculated out of cash flow from operating activities minus net CapEx, came in with EUR -70 million, and the net CapEx summed up to EUR -276 million, which is significantly more than last year, but still our major KPIs are well on track and well in shape. Coming to the current fiscal year's guidance. As said already in the beginning, we confirm the guidance again. Summarizing it briefly for everyone who has not read it so far. Revenue is expected to come in with EUR 2.2 billion. Profitability, Adjusted EBITDA margin, 27%-30%.

Adjustment, as I said in the beginning, by labor cost and materials in the locations Chongqing, Kulim, and Leoben. Considered for the full fiscal year, EUR 75 million. You have heard it before, it's EUR 7 million in Q1. It is to be expected that the activities are ramping up for sure, mainly in Kulim and in Hinterberg. Investments are expected to come in on the upper level of EUR 1.250 billion, which is already a very ambitious number. On the other hand side, this is what is driving our growth and which is what is supporting the projects in Kulim, Chongqing, and Leoben. Midterm guidance until 2025, 2026. We expect to grow sales up to EUR 3.5 billion, which is an average growth rate of 22%.

Profitability at the end is expected to come in 27%-32%. Probably someone is asking himself, why just 27%-32%? This is the starting point where we see the first contributions of the Kulim factory, and from there is further improvement and efficiency activities possible. ROCE should be then up to a level of 12%, with the full ramp of the production lines. Net debt EBITDA should stay below three. It could happen that for a certain period of time, this can be exceeded, due to seasonal fluctuations or in between, financing activities. At the end, definitely we will come down and see a more sustainable situation again. Equity ratio also should be up beyond 30% for the full period. The same story there.

We also need to see how the CapEx spending will go on. Either you have sometimes periodic shifts between the one or the other periodic, so it can happen that we fall briefly below the 30% for a certain period of time. Our midterm plan clearly shows that we can recover very fast in that case. That's it from my side about the financials and the other KPIs. I think this was also more or less the facts and the figures about our Q1 in the fiscal year 2022, 2023, and we are now available for your questions.

Philipp Gebhardt
Director of Investor Relations, AT&S

Thank you, Mr. Gerstenmayer. Thank you, Mr. Schneider. We will now start the Q&A. In order to give everyone the opportunity to raise questions, we would like to ask you to limit yourself to two questions. Once we are through, if there are still questions and still time, we will start another round. Now I would like to hand over to Fesa to handle the questions.

Operator

Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press nine star on your telephone keypad. Please press nine star on your telephone keypad if you'd like to ask a question. The first question comes from Patrick Steiner. Your line is open.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

The allocated start-up costs for the R&D center in Leoben to the AIM segment, although you communicated the R&D center is for ABF substrates. Do you see some opportunities there for ABF-

Philipp Gebhardt
Director of Investor Relations, AT&S

Sorry, Patrick.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yeah.

Philipp Gebhardt
Director of Investor Relations, AT&S

I think you were muted at the beginning. Could you restart your question, please?

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yes, sure. Good afternoon. Can you hear me clearly now?

Philipp Gebhardt
Director of Investor Relations, AT&S

Yes. Thank you.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay, perfect. First question is in the AIM segment, you allocated start-up costs for the R&D center in Leoben to the AIM segment, although you actually communicated the R&D center is for ABF substrate development and prototyping. Do you see opportunities there going forward for ABF substrates, or what's the reason for this?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

It's simply due to the situation that we have for this year, the allocation of the activities in our location, Leoben, which is mainly driven by our business unit, AIM. Once that is progressing, we need to reconsider that and readjust the allocation of this center. For simplification reasons, we started with a setup like we have it today and did not carve it out.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Thank you very much. Second question would be about PC demand. If significantly lower future PC demand theoretically, if this would close the supply demand gap with the client ABF substrate side much earlier than expected, how would you expect utilization and pricing at the plants in Chongqing? I mean, would utilization pricing just go down, or would you be able to adjust the product mix more toward server substrates to keep the utilization at high level, given that the server substrate gap is expected to remain for several years?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

That is not fully in our hands. It is to some extent also in the hands of our customers. Our customers typically have several suppliers and optimize the capacities that they have access to. It's very difficult for us to predict how customers will react to fluctuations in the demand. It is true a supply-demand gap is an equation that is depending on the supply but also on the demand of these two factors. If there is a significant drop in demand, of course, that has impact on closing the gap. What that would mean then for us depends then on the customer. What is also clear is that our customers tell us that they continue to focus on servers, so this is unchanged. The focus of AT&S on servers.

We are considered to be, it seems, a technology leader at the moment in the market for server substrates. In the server substrate market, there's much less competition as in all the other markets. That's why the impact on pricing, if at all there is any, it should be minor.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

You're welcome.

Operator

Okay. The next question comes from Daniel Lion from Erste Group. Your line is open.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions as well. I would like to start with a question on the capacity expansion development. I think when you increased the guidance for this year, you also mentioned that you're progressing well and faster with the expansion plans. Does this have any impact on the finalization, which is currently scheduled for Q3 next year? Do you expect to be faster and maybe to have the full ramp already concluded, maybe in the first half?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

I think when we mentioned that we are pulling in and we are faster, that was then reflected in the guidance. At the moment we still, there's no change in our plans compared to the last guidance that we have issued.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Okay.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Which was an increased guidance.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Actually, that's the guidance for this year. Actually, I was asking if you'd be faster with finalizing the ramp compared to what was communicated.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

You're referring more to the midterm guidance, right?

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

No. It's like in between. Of course, you have no guidance outstanding for next fiscal year, but you mentioned that you expect to have Chongqing three fully ramped by Q3 next year, right?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Yeah.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Uh, so-

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Everything goes on okay.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

No change in that.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

No, no change to that, and this was why we increased our guidance for this year, so that we are progressing very nicely with the ramp of Chongqing 3. Once Chongqing 3 is up, fully up and running, which could be expected that next year we have the first full year, benefiting from the full capacity in Chongqing the entire year, then we still need to run through the construction and ramp of Kulim, which is more or less independent from what is happening in Chongqing. That is also a reason why we could improve the profitability level this year. Still the midterm guidance remains where it is, because Kulim is another ambitious project which we need to see that we bring it on the road.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Yeah. No, completely clear. Yeah. Thanks. More of a general question. This is very prominent these days. Do you see any intensifying of the U.S.-Chinese conflict, or is it just rhetoric? And how would you think that the Chinese will answer the efforts of the U.S. to prevent the export of advanced semi equipment? And what would the impact here and also regarding the landing of Pelosi in Taiwan, the visits, of course there's a lot of foundries in Taiwan. Do you see the risk increasing these days, or is it just rhetoric? What's your take?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

This I think is difficult for us to comment on. It's a bit more too much in the political area. What we see is that these tensions are now going on for a couple of years already. It has started under the Trump administration quite some years ago. So far on the business, we did not see any significant impact. As you can see from our numbers, we could nicely ramp our Chongqing investments. We are operating on very nice levels. We receive a lot of support in Chongqing. Business is very stable there. You can also see what I explained in the beginning, that even in very difficult situations, AT&S is considered to be a partner with the Chinese administration and with the local authorities.

So far we do not see any disturbance. For sure, this is also not a very new development. China will try to build up its own semicon ecosystem that started quite some years already with a lot of investment, and it's getting more and more up. I'm not sure whether you have read the latest news about SMIC. It's at least rumors in the market. They now ship their first 7nm chip to the market. This is also some examples that they are progressing, and for sure over time, they will come up with their own solutions and achieve a certain independence from the U.S. restrictions. This again just proves that you cannot win markets with trying to carve out any competition of the market. You just need to be faster than your competition.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Okay. Thanks a lot. I have definitely some more questions, but maybe I'll get them on later. Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Jürgen Wagner from Stifel. Your line is open.

Jürgen Wagner
Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you. Your competitor, Unimicron, most recently gave rather weak outlook. That's a big contrast to you. How do you differentiate with them as they also say they are focusing on the high performance computing substrate market? Also from Intel, we see that they have to postpone their next generation high-end processors like every other week. Now they talk about February next year. Why are you not seeing any weakness in the substrates demand from them? Thank you.

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

As far as Unimicron is concerned, we are also reading the press as you are and making up our mind. Our interpretation is that, first of all, if you look at the competitive landscape, we have also already earlier stated that we see in particular, Ibiden and Shinko in the high-end area. Unimicron is somewhere in between. It could be that they are more affected by a consumer downturn and also maybe more exposed to a spot market, which we are not at all. My interpretation of the Unimicron guidance is a quite different one, my personal one than the overall market. I find it surprising that the market reacts negatively to consecutive price increases, even if a price increase after 30% and up to 10%.

I have done my PhD in pricing, and it's very surprising that this is considered bad news. Okay. That's on the pricing and then also on the portfolio of Unimicron one more word. They have not only ICS, but also PCBs. In the PCBs, they are more exposed to the Android systems and the lower-end smartphones than we are, as far as we know. All in all, I think a peer which is interesting for us to follow. It's always good to have good competitors, but on the other hand, there are quite some significant differences in the portfolio.

If you look at their supply-demand guidance, it's pretty much the same as we have, which is for the consumer to close by the end of next year and in the server market somewhere in the year 2025. I think we all don't know exactly so far ahead, but I think that is quite comparable, the outlook.

Jürgen Wagner
Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

On Intel?

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

On Intel, I think we are progressing very well with Intel. We are doing good progress with our production. Of course, we're also here closely observing the market news and looking into that. Our production is running full and our mid-term guidance is unchanged and also our ramp schedule is unchanged.

Jürgen Wagner
Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Could it be that you gain share then within that customer or is it just not so important if they delay key products?

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

We cannot comment on that topic.

Jürgen Wagner
Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Gustav Froberg, Berenberg. Your line is open.

Gustav Froberg
Associate Director, Berenberg

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my call as well. I'll take two. First question, could you break out the contribution to your growth in the quarter by price and volume or shipments, please? Then I have a question on the end market mix or the split between PCs and servers for AT&S ABF substrates. Could you give us a sense for what the split is between PCs and servers today? Then also what degree of visibility you have on the inventory levels at your customers within ABF substrates, please?

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

I'm sorry, these details we are not disclosing as it's directly linked to our customers. We stick to our official segment reporting and not details below.

Gustav Froberg
Associate Director, Berenberg

On the visibility of inventory levels, could you give us any color there?

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

I think we have the same visibility on inventory levels like every market participant has. There are some disclosed numbers for sure. The semiconductor market in some areas is on higher level. On the higher side, this is mainly driven by the ongoing chip shortage issue in the market. If there would be a correction, a slowdown in the market, it is to be expected that a certain inventory management should happen. First, we need to get better visibility about the further development of the general market sentiment. If there is and how

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

How deep a slowdown could be needs to be seen. We observe the situation very closely and so far the indications are limited on that.

Gustav Froberg
Associate Director, Berenberg

All right. Thank you.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Welcome.

Operator

The next question comes from Alexander Peterc from Bloomberg. Your line is open.

Alexander Peterc
Analyst, Bloomberg

Hi. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I come to you from Jefferies. I hope you can hear me. Two questions from me on ABF substrate. The first one will be on your contract structure. Can you give more insights into the ASP side and duration and type of cover? A follow-up would be, if it's possible to actually store ABF in general, is that doable? My second one would be on the exchange rate that has been used for the exchange gain on the cash on the balance sheet, if you can discuss that. Thank you.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Details about contracts we are not disclosing. Sorry about that. Storing ABF, I'm not sure what you're referring to. You think storing the material, the base material or the products, or what are you asking for?

Alexander Peterc
Analyst, Bloomberg

The final product. How long it is storable, for example.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

Okay. Yeah, typically the shelf life of finished goods is round about six months. Typically you can do a kind of refreshment afterwards, so you bring it back to the final processes, run them through there again, and you have another six months. But I think this is typically not the big issue because we don't have significant stock levels for finished products. There is a very close alignment on the demand supply situation and the supply chain. Stock levels in ABF substrates are quite limited. And the exchange rates. We need to double-check, and we will, and Mr. Leitner will pass over the number to you later.

Alexander Peterc
Analyst, Bloomberg

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Teresa Schinwald from Raiffeisen Bank International. Your line is open.

Teresa Schinwald
Senior Analyst, Raiffeisen Bank International

Yes, good afternoon. I'm coming back to the wider industry topic. Quite a few U.S. tech companies seem to now favor dividends or have it in focus. This affects even the CapEx programs. What's your take on this?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

We have some problems on the line. How we see our dividend policy or that they are cutting their dividend due to the CapEx?

Teresa Schinwald
Senior Analyst, Raiffeisen Bank International

No, no. They are cutting the CapEx to pay dividends.

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

We do not see an impact on our developments. I think, as shown before, our driver is, in particular in the server market, driven by the architecture change. We will have to provide completely different kind of substrates to the market in a few years from now than we do today or have done in the past. Therefore, a minor shift, dividend versus CapEx or the other way around should not impact our business development.

Teresa Schinwald
Senior Analyst, Raiffeisen Bank International

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Okay. The next question comes from, again, from Mr. Patrick Steiner from Kepler Cheuvreux . Your line is open.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Hi. Patrick Steiner again. Thanks for taking the next question. Not sure if this is answerable. I'm just going to try. It seems to me at the moment that the majority of your customers' server substrate capacities is being supplied by the two Japanese players, even in Shinko. Do you expect an allocation of server capacities in the future to a degree that every of the three or possibly four suppliers gets just a fair share of server capacities? Or do you see yourself clearly favored due to your technology leadership?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

I think this is always somehow depending on the customer relationship and the technology capabilities you have in place. You cannot generalize it. I think it's an individual strategy of the customer who is the preferred supplier for what kind of application. AT&S target is always to be at least one of the top strategic suppliers for the intended applications.

Patrick Steiner
Equity Research Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

The last question comes from Daniel Lion from Erste Group. Your line is open.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Yes, thanks for taking me on again. We haven't really talked about auto demand going forward. I know it's not the prime focus, but still could you share your view on demand and production volumes maybe, and if this is expected to have an impact on your business in the coming quarters?

Andreas Gerstenmayer
CEO, AT&S

First, Mr. Lion, it's really hard to understand. It seems you have a bad connection, but we try to answer your question.

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

Maybe from the overall market, we do get the same figures and monitors as you do, I guess. Currently, the market estimate for the automotive market is an 8% growth of the automotive market in this year, and the figure for the coming years of 7%. To which extent a slowdown of the consumer demand will impact the automotive market, I think that's not us to answer. There are, I think, experts to work on that, and in particular the automotive industry itself. We for our part, once more, we are positioned in the high-end area, so our growth much more depends on how these very specific high-end areas develop, and in particular also when they go rather to the high end of the automotive market.

A little bit like the story in smartphone and the server. If you want to get a better understanding of the capabilities and the prospects of AT&S, you always have to look into the development of the high end rather than looking into the overall market.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Okay, thanks. That's clear. This means that there's no changes for you currently visible in the demand patterns of your clients, right?

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

No. Not at this moment.

Daniel Lion
Equity Analyst, Erste Group

Okay, perfect. Fair enough. Thank you very much.

Peter Schneider
EVP of Electronics Solutions, AT&S

May I come back to the question of Mr. Peters from before? FX exchange that we used for our translation is $1-7 .

Philipp Gebhardt
Director of Investor Relations, AT&S

Okay, thank you. If there are no further questions, we will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and questions. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact our IR team, Johannes Mattner and me, anytime. Thanks again, and goodbye.

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