Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Anna Eaglestrom, your operator today. Welcome, and thank you for joining the AT&S conference call on the results for the fiscal year 2025 and 2026. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference over to Philipp.
Thank you, Anna. Good afternoon or morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the AT&S full year 2025/2026 conference call. With us today are Michael Mertin, CEO, and Gerrit Steen, CFO. Mr. Mertin will give an overview of the key developments as well as a market update. Afterwards, Mr. Steen will comment on the financial figures and our guidance. As Anna mentioned, the presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Now, I would like to hand over to Mr. Mertin. The floor is yours.
Yeah, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here again for my second conference call on the AT&S results for fiscal year 2025/2026. It's a very special pleasure for me because last year I was absolutely new in my function, just a couple of days in the position of the new CEO, but I gave you a promise at this point in time. My promise was, first of all, I will never tell you things and tell the capital market things we can't fulfill. Second, I promised to have a focus on cash flow. Company needed cash at this point in time. Thirdly, my promise was we will redirect the company towards a path of sustainable, profitable growth. I don't want to say now mission completed. That's definitely not the case. The mission is still ongoing, but you can see the first steps.
You saw it already step by step, quarter by quarter, all these improvements over the years. Now we proudly deliver you the total results of 2025/2026. As you can see on page two of the presentation, we ended up with a total revenue of about EUR 1.8 billion. This is plus 21% in constant currency. You know that the dollar exchange rate was going up and down during the year, so constant currency is a little bit easier. For better comparison, you see the previous year's number was EUR 1.6 billion. Okay, pretty nice growth. More than this, we delivered profitability. 49% versus the comparable previous year with an EBITDA margin now of 23.3%. The EBITDA was EUR 418 million, significantly higher than the year before.
I promised you not just to have a look on EBITDA, but to have a look on real earnings, and this especially means on EBIT and net profitability. You see the improvement over the entire year. Gerrit Steen will show you the details later on. You see the improvement quarter by quarter, ending up with a total positive EBIT of EUR 66 million for the entire year. This is a plus of 238% versus the comparable structure the last year. The EBIT margin still can be further improved, and you will see we will do it. You see it with the outlook of 3.7%. More important for me than this is that we already delivered net profit in the last two quarters of the last fiscal year. Maybe the most important number is the operating free cash flow.
The company was losing cash in a situation where our shareholder equity was relatively low and the earnings have been negative. Cash is king. We turned around our operating free cash flow from previously -EUR 498 to +EUR 236 million. This is a delta of roughly EUR 700 million if we compare it to our total revenue of EUR 1.8 billion. Cash flow profitability growth and customer orientation is key in our days in the entire company. We had a switch around. We changed incentive systems. We changed our structure towards customers, and the entire philosophy of the company is focusing away from being a provider of printed circuit boards towards an innovation partner for our customers for new products and sharing roadmaps with all of our key customers in both of our segments in the ES business unit as well as in ME.
The more or less classical, you will see it a little bit later, also advanced business of printed circuit boards and embedding, and as well for the substrate business in the business unit at ME. I put a tick on this. This was delivered as promised. Hopefully, you will agree to this. If you follow me to the next page three, you will see that we outperformed the markets. The market development of printed circuit boards was a plus of roughly 11%, and for substrates of roughly plus 12% average. Our total growth, even in the situation where we have this turnaround of the company, where we had the changes in the management, outperformed these market environments. New management, you see it on page number four. You've seen me, hopefully, already now for more than 1 year.
I started in May 1st in 2025, but now guided by two colleagues, the new CFO, Gerrit Steen. Honestly, when I discuss the numbers, when I sit next to him in my office, the feeling is that we are working together since years now. The same in an opposite direction, following technology, following innovation, following the entire competence of our production technology. Our CTO, Peter Grießnig, is deeply involved and is one of the key experts worldwide for our technology, our markets. He is recognized by all of the major customers, and he knows about production as well because he built the first plant in China. He was responsible for that. We as a team, we are now leading the company, and the big advantage is we share the same vision on the future of the company.
It's relatively easy now for us to join and to follow and develop the same strategic guidelines for the company. We do not have any arguments anymore in the board coming from different positions of different business units. The entire business now is under my leadership. Both business units are reporting to me myself. We can have this kind of a judgment between the businesses, judgment between decision making, investments, where to put the money, et cetera. What makes it a lot easier to be a fast decider in our market, as you can see from our numbers. If you come to page five, we are asked many times, are we actually in a artificial intelligence bubble? What is driving the market? Does it come to an end? So far, we have a very clear statement here.
I visited almost all big customers, all of the big ones we all know in the U.S. I have a clear statement. All of these customers, all of the big players in artificial intelligence, the big integrators and the tech companies, they have an extremely clear vision, not just on how they invest and how the technology is going on. They have an extremely clear vision of their business models using AI. This is what impresses me most and what makes me more than confident, also by sharing our long-term roadmaps, by working together now in innovation streams, that there is a long pipeline on innovation and on application later on as well. Whether it's the on-device artificial intelligence, the artificial intelligence-generated content we all use more and more.
I heard this morning on the Austrian radio, the number two song in the Austrian Ö3 radio actually was a song that was created by artificial intelligence, interestingly. A big, big driver will be in industrial artificial intelligence. Think about all the robotics. Think about humanoids. Think about quality insurance in industrials. Think about the business models of banks, of insurance companies, of the supporting processes in industrial companies, in finance. All that stuff will be strongly influenced by artificial intelligence, and it's just beginning. Technology-wise, we are now starting with higher integration and we talked about Moore's law many, many years, and we never thought it will come to a physical end. We are achieving that end.
The transistors are becoming so small that quantum effects come in place, and the big gain in further productivity, in calculation speeds, in power of supercomputing, of data centers, is not just in having better and faster chips, CPUs, or even GPUs. It's about the communication speed. The chips are already faster than the communication in all of these boards or substrates is so far. What is the consequence? The consequence is that communication substrates, our work, will become more and more important, and in the future, you will see significantly bigger substrates integrating more chips, more CPUs, more GPUs, more memory in extremely small spaces. This will go up to more than 40 chiplet structures on one board. One of these board-like structures, what we call substrate today, will have sizes of your laptop computer, for example.
Energy supply, what is needed for these super structures, will be up to 40 kW, et cetera. The main advantage is, due to the fact that the components are coming closer together and these super substrates will have communication structures inside, silicon-based, so that all the computer chips can talk to each other like they are one big chip. This will enhance the computation speed and the overall speed of these structures significantly. By this kind of an integration and further development of our core technology of substrates, we are the key drivers in the future for the improvement of AI data centers. It's not anymore the chip industry itself, or only the chip industry, it's also us.
The substrates will become significantly more complicated, and this pushes the demand of a very close innovation chain between the producer of a hyperscaler, of the producer of the chips, and us as the producer of the communication structure. We are working together on long-lasting roadmaps. We stepped into that. We are discussing the over next generations of products already yet to be ready prepared in production in a couple of years. This gives us the security that the changes into profitability and our outlook for this fiscal year is just the beginning of a very interesting journey, where just a few oligopoly structures will survive, and we will be one of them. Therefore, we are strengthening our position with future technologies. These big and larger substrates, these are just one aspect.
Another one is, I talked about 25 kW up to 40 kW of power with low voltage, and the low voltage means typically for a processor, it's 0.7 V, 0.8 V. That means we are talking about thousands and thousands of amps of current, which need to be provided through the substrate. Additionally, you have the data exchange. Therefore, high-power electronics, kind of micro transformers. You see it on the picture on page five. Surrounding the center core of computer chip and memory, these are kinds of miniaturized transformers based on, for example, silicon carbide as a material, what we are embedding into printed circuit boards, what then is put on top of an accelerator card.
AT&S is not just present in substrates, it's not just present in printed circuit boards, it's not just present in optical transceivers, even enhancing the speed of communication, but also now is present in the field of high-power electronics for significant better power supply of the future artificial intelligence data center systems. This brings us to glass cores, higher frequencies for communication coming from better dielectric properties from glass instead of the so far used plastic materials. We are talking about the innovation into optical connections, like the optical transceivers, embedding of optical connections into circuit boards for faster communication. We are also looking for other fields. We are looking for integrated radar systems for automotive, for example, all based on one of our core competencies, what is called embedding.
One of the core competencies, what we now put into application is embedding of components into circuit boards or substrates. This is a huge mega trend, so that the functionality, what so far was on top or had to be mounted on top of circuit boards, will be inside the circuit boards. For better performance, for smaller footprints, and of course, for cheaper production. This is one of our core competencies, what we are applying in different kind of fields, and we are partly single sourcers. Nevertheless, we are founding innovation partnerships, actually, especially in the field around optics, in the field around material science, and in the field of advanced packaging, because this is becoming more and more important as I try to figure out with the large-scale substrates and the higher integration.
AT&S is positioning itself not just as a supplier, but as an innovation partner, and not for this and the next year, but for the entire roadmaps of our key customers. Ladies and gentlemen, we are growing actually, and we have projects for growth we are actually executing over the entire network of our production sites. The demand, especially for our technologies, actually is huge. There are many places where we can't fulfill it, like customers are wishing we should do. For Malaysia, we successfully started high volume production for advanced substrates in the first plant in Kulim, what is successfully running now. The next generation, as I tried to figure out earlier with the larger substrates, the next generation of advanced substrates is already under development and will be in the future, have the demand for an extended production, definitely in Kulim.
We'll keep you posted on this. This is actually ongoing. We just communicated last evening that we have additional larger invests in China, in Chongqing, not just for local production, what is running like promised. We have very promising leads over there. This is a prospering business actually, more demand than we can fulfill. Additionally to that, we are filling the gaps actually in our production plants in Chongqing. We are investing in additional capacity, together with some of our key customers, financed or paid by our key customers, so that there is no risk for us. If you see the ad hoc message, if you read it carefully, you will see it's not just the financing, it's also the direct profit coming out of it, because customers are paying us for the investments and for the product profitably later on.
This is the core demand, what actually just can be fulfilled with certain products by us. We are in a very favorable situation that we can negotiate with almost all customers on, for all sides, with all projects, getting money from the customers not just for the financing, but really for the payment of our investments so that we can generate business cases which are accretive from the first beginning on, both in cash flow as well as in profitability. Shanghai is our backbone for high performance classical printed circuit boards, but also for accelerator cards and co-packaged optics and embedded optics. One of the most important future communication technologies, what we will further expand. Actually we are looking for more resources and more space and a better focus now on these optical embedding, what is a huge demand today.
We have a couple of projects, what we want to run in India, in Nanjangud. We have a huge potential over there. Our plant in Nanjangud by far is the most modern one in entire India. We have a couple of big projects actually under evaluation, also more than we can execute. We will have to choose between the one or the other. We will also inform you about how we continue here also with co-investments from partners so that we stay as promised, cash flow positive. In Austria, we have two plants. One is Leoben, one is Fehring, both in Styria. In Leoben, our headquarter, we have two different manufacturing parts. One is the printed circuit boards, where we have actually the focus on the embedding of high-power electronics, where we are partly single source for certain suppliers.
We are heavily investing here and heavily building out our capabilities. What we will see in revenue, so we are rebuilding the entire plant so far. What we will see in revenue from the second half of this year on, and more prominently in the next year. We have a strong ramp in front of us. Secondly, our newly built plant for substrates actually also was underutilized in the past. Also here we will have further investments so that it will be fully utilized in the upcoming time. We have more demand from customers also in Austria than we can fulfill.
The background is not that we are the cost leader here, but it's a very safe space and we have the combination of having R&D capabilities, an R&D production line, and the headquarters of R&D as well, so that we can co-develop on new technologies, like for example on glass and on other materials, on other structures, on other production processes, together with our customers in a very safe environment. There's of course this success story in Leoben. Also has an effect on the smaller plant in Fehring, where we will have this intense cooperation between Leoben and Fehring and cooperate on high-power electronics especially, so that we will have a full utilization of Fehring as well. We will see investments in Fehring, as we already announced previously, and we are actually executing the first wave, let me say it this way, here successfully.
We are on a growth path. We are on a very steep growth path, as you will see later on from Gerrit's team along our prognosis. We are committed to continue the way of profitable growth by having a positive cash flow as a boundary condition for us, and by integrating our customers both for innovation, but also for financing this growth. This is it from my side. I'm looking forward to getting your questions later on, and let me hand over to Gerrit now for significantly more details on the finance side.
Thank you, Michael, good afternoon, good morning, and welcome as well from my side to our full year conference call. On page nine, let's just flip over and look at the final results for the year. A strong quarter really tops a very successful year. 33% constant currency revenue growth versus last year's Q4. 21% as reported. We still had EUR 45 million of FX headwind. Brings our full year performance to 21% constant currency growth and close to EUR 1.8 billion of revenue, slightly above our guidance. When you look at the dynamic in the quarter and as well for the full year, we have seen very strong and increasing dynamic on our ME business, on our microelectronic substrate business, in Q4 especially, offset by expected seasonality in our PCB or ES business unit.
That was mainly driven as well by the continued successful ramp and improved utilization, especially in our new plant in Kulim and as well in our investments here in Austria. We have seen a margin which was in the quarter, again, above 25%, 25.4%, bringing our full year margin slightly above our guidance to 23.3%. Sequentially, quarter-over-quarter, the margin was slightly behind last quarter. We had some additional investments into R&D, especially in Q4. As you know, we started operating our very successful pilot R&D line in Leoben, in Austria, and as well some year-end adjustments, especially related to some staff-related bonuses and year-end topics based on the very strong performance we had in the company. When you look at the full-year margin, certainly very significant improvement of 560 basis points versus last year.
Certainly with the increasing volume and mix and as well the successful cost optimization, we have seen that margin increase. Actually what we are seeing as well now in Q4, a changing pricing environment, and I come back to that as well when we talk about the guidance. We have seen, especially on the business unit ME, a positive pricing effect as well in the quarter. Let's flip over to the next page and look at Electronic Solutions more in detail. We have seen that seasonality, which is mainly coming from our mobile device business, which is always having a slower Q4 as well, then in connection with the normal seasonal Chinese New Year impact in our Chinese operations. Therefore, nothing to be concerned about.
We have as well prepared a couple of our sites for future growth with some investments, which as well was affecting a little bit the output. Therefore, we are seeing still a positive constant currency growth as well in the quarter and as well in the full year in the mid-single digits. We are seeing certainly over the year, stronger volumes offset still by some pricing headwinds. Again, they are fading away and we are seeing much less of that in Q4 and again on the outlook, a very different picture on that topic. Therefore, I think, looking at higher volumes, cost optimization, and as well the missing Ansan contribution, which we still had last year, as well, an overall successful year and quarter for our business unit Electronic Solutions.
Flipping over to microelectronics, very dynamic growth, 80% constant currency or 64% reported growth in the quarter with a very strong margin of 36%, bringing our full-year growth to 53% constant currency. Very strong volume development. In the quarter, as I said, as well, positive pricing development. Also benefiting from some operational customer-related contributions based on our long-term agreements and some R&D-related grant consistent with our quarter-to-quarter development. Again, timing and magnitude can vary quarter-over-quarter. When you look at our full-year revenue, overall, very strong demand from existing and new customers, which I think is important as well strategically as we broaden our customer base step-by-step when it comes to our business as well in ME, and as well improved utilization across all our sites.
That volume leverage is really as well driving our margin and as I said, pricing as well turning positive in Q4. Looking at our overall financial position on the next page, on page 12. As we announced last night as well as part of our proactive capital structure management, we have announced that we plan to issue hybrid instruments for refinancing. I think that's important. That's the main goal here. As you know as well, our 2022 hybrid is coming to a reset early next year. We are looking at a couple of potential instruments when it comes to managing our capital structure as well on the longer term. As you see, we have significant maturities in this fiscal year, and certainly want to make sure that we have a good overall profile going forward.
Total cash position is still very healthy, with more than EUR 900 million in cash equivalents, and unused credit lines. Our net debt EBITDA has significantly improved. When you take out the Ansan contribution from last year's EBITDA, it moved from 5.3 to 3.2 now at the end of our last fiscal year. Overall, well-managed financial position as a basis, including as well last night's announcement as a basis for further profitable growth, with as well, coupled with the profitable growth path Michael pointed out as well, as a basis for further profitable growth of our business. On the next slide, looking quickly at our cash flow.
Very strong cash conversion when you look at how especially our operating free cash flow developed from EUR -489 to EUR +235 in the last fiscal year, a swing of nearly EUR 700 million, driven certainly by the very strong EBITDA development. Some lower CapEx. I think very well-managed working capital, including as well in the last fiscal year, some factoring, which overall really led us to very nice cash and cash equivalents position. Our equity position, when you look at versus last year, influenced by certainly FX again and by the weakening dollar, that still at 22.6% sequential quarter-over-quarter improvement by 1.8 percentage points, and as well at constant currency as well of improvement versus last fiscal year. Net debt subsequently reduced. Overall, strengthening of our financial position in light with our plans and guidance, and we will continue on that path going forward.
Talking about going forward, looking at our guidance for this fiscal year actually. Based on the overall strong dynamic we see in the marketplace right now, when we look at our very strong discussions and demands from our customers and as well prospective new customers, we are seeing strong growth driven mainly by volume, but as well, to a lesser extent, pricing, including as well the new expansion agreement we announced last night related to AI-related substrates in our Chongqing plant. Overall, 30%-35% constant currency growth, which would bring us to the higher end of our previously communicated guidance of EUR 2.1 billion-EUR 2.4 billion. Therefore, fully in range at the upper end of what we have communicated before. With as well, a further improvement in our EBITDA margin from the 23.3% in last fiscal year to a range of 25%-29%.
The growth we are seeing is more pronounced definitely in business unit microelectronics, driven by AI infrastructure investments. We see demand both related to GPU, but increasingly as well CPU as the ecosystem broadens, again, towards inference-driven workloads. On ES, as a more stable, diversified business, we are having significant growth, both AI-driven power modules as well Michael pointed out already, but as well in a broader demand-driven, again, by electrification, digitization across industry. Less pronounced, but still very much driven by volume growth in all our sites, coupled with as well pricing upside. Passing on increasing input costs, because I think that's important as well based on the overall supply chain situation. We are seeing some increases in our input cost from our suppliers, which we need to pass on to our customers. We are very well managing our supply chain.
You remember what we discussed as well in the past for about T-glass and some shortages. We have very successfully managed the situation intensely over the last weeks and months, including expanding allocation from existing suppliers and qualifying new ones. We are still seeing some effects of the shortage in our finished product availability, and as well, coupled with timing effects from what I just explained, inflationary cost increases, which are typically passed through to customer with some delay. We expect, and we see that in the first weeks of the new quarter, a little bit slower into the year versus our revenue guidance range for the full year. Still very nicely growing, again, a slightly slower start. Still very nice continued development in the quarter and again, for the overall outlook for the year. Investments.
Net CapEx approximately EUR 400 million, which is partly financed through our long-term customer agreements. I think that's important. It's a CapEx we invest, but partly it will be financed by customer agreements. When it comes to the significantly improving profitability and the further cash flow generation, significantly improved leverage. We are looking at a net debt to EBITDA ratio for this fiscal year, significantly below 3. We are continuing on our strong recovery path, strengthening through profitable growth and very strong customer agreements, our balance sheet, and continuing and even accelerating our very strong growth with significant improvement as well on profitability. That was the overview I wanted to give you, and then, over to you, Philipp.
Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mertin. Thank you, Mr. Steen. 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 in the first round. Once we are through and there are still questions and time, we will start another round. Now I would like to hand over to Anna to handle the session.
Thank you very much, Philipp. Dear ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question and are dialed into the conference call, please press nine and the star key now to enter the queue. I repeat, the combination is nine, star. If you wish to cancel your question again, please press three and then the star key. For now, we are looking forward to your questions. Please press nine, star. There are a few questions already incoming. The first is from Daniel Lion from Erste. Over to you.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. I would like to start with the refinancing that you announced. Can you provide us a little bit more insight what would be driving the volume for the refinancing and the mix? Is it just driven by market pricing, or would it also be maybe driven by further expansion of steps in Kulim and the amount of refinancing or prepayments covered by customers? Maybe you could talk us through this a little bit.
Oh, thanks, Daniel, for that question. We are looking at refinancing as a key goal for that financing measure. It will be mainly driven by market conditions when it comes to the final amount and as well the final mix of one or the two instruments. When it comes to further investments you are referring to, that again, that's something where we really are working with customers on basically long-term agreements with financing, and as well out of our generated cash flows. Therefore, that financing measure is really mainly for refinancing.
Okay, thanks. My second one for the time being, about cost inflation and how you can pass on, or the timing of passing on the increasing input costs. Usually, there was some delay, at least for up to a quarter or roughly a quarter that you could pass on increasing prices. Now, for example, in case of ABF, that has already been announced to increase by 30% later this year. Can you actually pass on this increase already in parallel when this is announced like this? Or do you always have to wait until this is implemented and have a delay of at least a few months, until you can basically pass these costs on?
There is, as I already related as well when I talked about our guidance, a certain delay, a couple of months probably. That always depends as well, because there are different timelines with the suppliers. There's some visibility where we have basically advance notice of price increases, so we can basically start discussing with our customers early on. Some others are more short-term, where we then need to go into the discussion with customers. Therefore, that's something where we try to anticipate as much as possible and therefore, as well minimize potential time delay between cost increases and price pass-on.
Yeah, this is Michael. We are looking, for the remaining year, quite positive to the balance between price increases we can push through to our customers and cost increases within the supply chain. The reason is we have quite a good understanding, both sides with our customers, how important we are within the supply chain. We have, with most of the customers, a joint agreement that we should be a healthy supplier, and we are in the same boat. The success of delivery is the most important thing and not details in costing. As an innovation partner, it's much easier to talk about these adaptations to the market than it was before. Of course, there's a time shift.
On the other hand, we are a little bit bullish in growing as well. We made some good contracts. Today, we do not think that this will have an influence to our guidance.
Yeah. Clear. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, also from my side. The next question is from George Chang, Aletheia Capital. Please, over to you. The floor is yours.
Hello. Hi. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Could you provide an update to your capacity expansion plans for Chongqing and Kulim? I think yesterday's announcement on high double-digit EUR million CapEx in Chongqing doesn't appear much to move the needle in terms of capacity. What is so special about this CapEx? Is this a test line for new technology that your client could be introducing?
Hey, George. Thanks for your question. Very relevant, certainly. Again, I think you need to as well look at, first of all, what we announced yesterday was the bottom line impact, when it comes to that EUR double-digit million number, right? Secondly, you need to certainly look as well at that. Basically, that's the impact for this fiscal year. You need to as well look at the long-term nature and the full-year effect that might have in the following years. Therefore, I would not underestimate that impact, but it is not necessarily a new technology. It's basically an expansion of what we are doing in Chongqing already, just really expanding the capacity there. Expanding the capacity under a long-term contract and with the support for the investments directly coming one-to-one from the customer. Therefore, we will feed it through our P&L, and that's the positive P&L effect.
There's a positive business case what is profitable from the first beginning on. That's not a prepayment against later profitability. It's a support by understanding the investment demand for such a longer time running contract, but it's a profitable business as well. There's no cannibalization from this prepayment, but it's running through the P&L. We make these discussions with all of our customers, we need to support our shareholder equity, if it should be a long-term reliable partner for them, and this is understood in the entire industry.
Great. Thank you. Can you update us on Kulim two investment?
For sure, there will once be further investments in Kulim. The problem we actually have is, if we announce something, it would be an ad hoc message. Of course, we are working on step-by-step, more or less full utilization of Kulim, but we can't talk about it now in detail. If the ink is dried, we will comment on this, and we will make the communication. Of course, we are working on this. The demand, of course, is there. The entire market is hot. We can't tell it to you now in detail.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Tim Wunderlich, Cantor Fitzgerald. Please, the floor is yours.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for letting me on. Most of my questions have been asked, but maybe one final one about the CapEx and the free cash flow that you expect for this fiscal year. Can you confirm that AT&S will remain free cash flow positive in 2026, 2027, even with the increase in CapEx to EUR 400 million? Thank you so much.
Thank you, Tim. Very relevant question because it's for us, as a management team, one of the key KPIs we are looking at and want to ensure that that is happening going forward within AT&S. Yes, I can confirm that, despite the increased CapEx amount, which again, as we explained as well in the press release, is partly as well a spillover still from last fiscal year. Despite that increased demand, we will be operational free cash flow positive. Remember last year, that was my promise.
Sounds good. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from George Brown from Deutsche Bank. Please, over to you.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, if I may. A few of them have already been asked. Firstly, just on the revised guide, from the EUR 2.1 billion to the EUR 2.4 billion, I just want to understand the assumptions there. Based on what was announced last night with this new capacity in China, in Chongqing. Let's say it's contributing EUR 60 million or EUR 80 million roughly in EBIT in fiscal 2027. I might be wrong, I assume there's a top-line contribution, right? Maybe this is high margin, say there's maybe a EUR 200 million to EUR 400 million top-line effect as well. Again, I could be wrong. My question is, are you reflecting the strong pricing tailwinds that we're seeing coming basically more or strengthening more as we go throughout the year?
Is the upside that you are reflecting in the guide this morning more of just this new investment in China and not necessarily the pricing tailwinds ahead. Secondly, just on CapEx, I think you're guiding EUR 400 million in fiscal 2027. I think you said in your press release this relates to Kulim, this delayed CapEx that you delayed last year, is now coming in fiscal 2027. My understanding is that this is basically AMD, which is your confirmed customer there, is asking you now to ramp the final production line in Kulim in K1. I think previously you were ramping three out of four . Is the assumption now it's four out of four? Can you confirm that's the case? Can you also talk about timing there?
Is that fourth production line more of a fiscal 2028 story, or could you really get some contribution in fiscal 2027 as well? Thanks, guys.
Yeah, thank you, George. This is Gerrit. Let me take the first question, and then I think Michael will comment on the second one. First of all, on your assumption, I think you are overestimating the top-line impact because you always need to see with these kind of customer agreements, there are always two parts of it. There is an operational part, and there is as well something when it comes to customer contributions, which as well over time going basically as an operational part separate to the deliveries into our P&L. Therefore, on the top line, that's definitely a little on the high end what you are estimating here. It is included certainly in our overall guidance, and that's driving as well the volume growth.
When you look at our overall guidance range of 30%-35%, majority is volume driven, but there's as well a pricing impact included there. Again, it is preliminary volume driven what we are looking at.
Okay. Where do we put the money? We are setting up for a long-term reliable profitability. We are setting up newly our plants, our PCB plants in Leoben as well as in Fehring here in Austria, towards these high-power electronics embedding components. We have, of course, some investments here. We are reorganizing all the plants, and we will see the revenue impact in the second half of this year and more strongly next year. Additionally, of course, we will fully utilize the existing plant in Malaysia with the customer AMD. Therefore, we have some additional investments going on here. We also transferred some equipment from other sites to Kulim to fully utilize the first plant. We have some additional investments as well. Maybe you remember I focused on embedding of optics.
These specialized things for high-speed communication and very special PCBs, what we are producing in Shanghai, this is also one of our self-driven investment focus parts, what all have an impact for the growth of this fiscal year. Definitely there is more to come, and as I said before, we can't communicate it before we have the dried ink under the contracts in detail with our customers. The growth pipeline will not finish with these 30%-35% this year. It will continue, and we will inform you as soon as possible about this.
This will not have the additional investments we need for the further growth beyond 2026, 2027, will not have an impact on the financing demand this year for us, because we found structures that we get investment payments from the customer and having accretive business cases from the early beginning on for everything we are actually working on. Also the further growth will be in this kind of a profitable growth environment for both, for cash as well as for profitability. What is necessary for us to improve our shareholder equity, of course, and not to dilute it and to get higher debt ratios.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay, as 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.
Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.