Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our Q4 earnings call.

With me today are our CEO, Hichem M'Saad, and our CFO, Paul Verhagen. ASM issued its fourth quarter 2025 results yesterday at 6:00 p.m.

Central European Time. For those of you who have not yet seen the press release, it is available on our website, together with our latest investor presentation.

As always, we remind you that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements, in addition to historical information. For more details on the risk factors related to such forward-looking statements, please refer to our press releases and financial reports, all of which are available on our website.

Please also note that during this call, we will refer to profitability metrics primarily on an adjusted basis. Reconciliations to the reported numbers can be found in the press release and in the investor presentation.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Hichem M'Saad.

Thank you, Victor, and thanks to everyone for attending our earnings call. I'll start with a few of the highlights.

Even with the revenue at a lower level, results in Q4 remained solid, and the quarter marked a re-acceleration in demand. For the full year, our sales increased 12% at constant currency, our ninth consecutive year of double-digit growth, and operating profit increased by 17%.

Strategically, we strengthened our position with key customers, with the current generation of Gate-All-Around going into high-volume manufacturing, and with strong traction in R&D engagement for the next nodes. To power ASM's next phase of growth, we continue to invest in our people, our global footprint, and in innovation.

I want to thank all our people for their relentless dedication and collaboration, which contributed to another successful year for ASM. As for the agenda today, it's the standard format.

Paul will start with a review of our financial results. I will then discuss market trends and provide our outlook, followed by the Q&A session.

With that, I'll hand it over to Paul.

Thank you, Hichem, and thanks everyone for joining our call. Let's start with the review of the fourth-quarter results.

Revenue in the fourth quarter of '25 was €698 million, as pre-announced on January 19. This represents a 7% year-on-year decline at constant currency, but came in above the guidance range of €630 to €660 million, which we provided with the Q3 results.

Logic foundry was our largest customer segment in the fourth quarter. Within this segment, advanced logic foundry accounted for the majority, with sales approximately flat compared to the third quarter, and somewhat down from a very strong level in Q4 of '24.

Mature logic foundry sales, mostly from the Chinese market, dropped sharply, as anticipated, both compared to the prior quarter and to Q4 of '24. Memory sales were relatively steady, both year-on-year and compared to Q3, with solid advanced DRAM sales offset by lower NAND.

The contribution from the power, analog, wafer segment remained at fairly low level overall. Our spares and service sales were up 22% year-on-year at constant currency.

This represents a very strong performance, especially considering the tough comparison with Q4 '24, when sales grew roughly 50%, driven by accelerated demand in China. Gross margin of 49.8% in the fourth quarter was down from 51.9% in Q3, but still at a solid level, supported by favorable mix.

SG&A expenses were down 1% year-on-year, while net R&D expenses increased by 6%, largely due to phasing of R&D investments. Operating margin dropped to 25% in Q4, explained by lower revenue and related gross margin, partially offset by lower OpEx.

The results from associates increased to €26 million in Q4, which was for a large part explained by a one-off benefit in ASMPT's results. Our Q4 net earnings dropped compared to Q3, mainly as that quarter included a non-cash reversal gain of €181 million related to the recovery in the market value of ASMPT.

Our new orders in the fourth quarter amounted to €803 million, up 19% year-on-year, and also better than indicated with Q3 results. This was driven by very strong advanced logic foundry orders.

Mature logic foundry orders from Chinese customers were relatively soft, but showed an acceleration in demand towards the end of the quarter. Memory orders were steady compared to Q3.

Power, analog, and wafer orders showed some recovery and reached the highest level in '25, but were still at a relatively soft level. Please note that starting in 2026, we will discontinue reporting of quarterly bookings.

This change reflects the high volatility of quarterly orders, which has been driven more by timing effects than by underlying demand trends. We will continue to disclose the year-end backlog as part of our Q4 results.

In addition, beginning in '26, we will report sales by key customer segments, logic foundry, memory, and other, on a half-yearly and annual basis. Let's now have a look at the full-year results.

At €3.2 billion, our sales increased 12% at constant currency to a new record high. In terms of customer segments, logic foundry accounted for the largest part of equipment sales.

Within this segment, advanced logic foundry represented the clear majority. Gate-All-Around-related sales increased very strongly as customers stepped up in investment in 2-nanometer high-volume manufacturing.

Mature logic foundry sales, mostly from the Chinese market, also increased, but at a more modest pace compared to the leading-edge segments. In memory, sales dropped to 16% of total equipment sales, down from 25% in '24.

Advanced DRAM for HBM-related applications continued to be solid and accounted for the large majority of memory sales. However, this was offset by a normalization of memory-related sales in China.

As discussed in previous quarters, memory in China is typically a small market for ASM, but in 2024, it showed an unusual high demand. The overall drop in memory sales was also explained by lower 3D NAND sales, which were still at a relatively higher level in '24.

Power, analog, and wafer sales dropped for the second consecutive year. As part of this, silicon carbide sales, which were still resilient in '24, dropped by more than 50% in '25, reflecting the sharp deterioration in this market.

At constant currencies, equipment sales increased 10% in '25, primarily driven by strong double-digit growth in ALD. Spares and service sales grew 18% at constant currency, an excellent performance, which was driven by strong growth in our outcome-based services.

Gross margin for the year increased further, rising from 50.5% in '24 to 51.1% in '25. This improvement was primarily driven by stronger product and customer mix, including a resilient contribution from the Chinese market.

Additionally, the margin benefited from the gradual impact of cost-saving initiatives, such as more move to common platforms and ongoing cost optimizations across our manufacturing and supply chain operations. Gross R&D increased 9% in '25, reflecting the continuous growth in our pipeline of new opportunities.

As a percentage of revenue, net R&D expenses increased slightly to 12.5%. Our target remains to keep net R&D in a low double-digit percentage of revenue.

SG&A expenses decreased 7% in '25, on the back of disciplined cost control, as well as the benefits of earlier investments made to scale the organization for growth. As a percentage of sales, SG&A decreased from 10.6% to 9.2% in '25.

For 2026, we project SG&A to show a further decrease as a percentage of sales. Operating profit increased 17% in '25, thanks to improvements in revenue and gross margin, SG&A discipline, and with continued growth in R&D investments.

The operating margin increased from 28% to a record 30.2% in '25. Now turning to the balance sheet.

ASM's financial position continued to be in good shape. We ended the year with cash slightly north of €1 billion and no debt.

Excluding M&A-related cash payments totaling €881 million, free cash flow increased 12% to a record of €615 million in '25. This growth was driven by improved profitability and lower working capital, partially offset by higher CapEx.

Working capital decreased to €347 million at the end of '25. This was mainly due to the phasing of revenue during the year, with Q4 2025 sales at a relatively lower level, together with very strong cash collection.

CapEx increased from €168 million to €218 million in 2025, fully in line with our guidance range of €200 to €250 million. This increase is for a large part driven by spending related to the completion of our new Korean facility and ongoing construction of our new facility in Scottsdale.

2026 will be a year of continued investments, for a large part related to our Scottsdale site, which remains on track for completion in the first quarter of 2027. Regarding cash spent on acquisitions, in December '25, we acquired AXSYS Technologies, a provider of CMP solutions, for €81 million, net of cash acquired, along with a potential earn-out up to €30 million tied to performance targets over '26 and '27.

In addition, we paid €100 million in earn-outs as part of the earlier LPE acquisition, and as already communicated with the Q3 reporting. In terms of shareholder remuneration, we spent close to €300 million in cash on dividends and share buyback in 2025.

With our Q4 press release, we announced a new share buyback program for an amount of €150 million, as well as a proposed dividend of €3.25 per share, up from €3 in the prior year. With that, I'll hand over to Hichem.

Thank you, Paul. Let's now review the trends in our markets.

In 2025, the semiconductor market continued to be driven by AI. It reflected in a wave of new AI data center and infrastructure expansion plans from hyperscalers and other leading industry players.

These drove solid capacity investment in leading-edge logic foundry and in advanced memory, areas where our ALD and epi technologies play an increasingly central role. At the same time, several other end markets, including smartphones, PCs, automotive, and industrial, remained relatively soft due to persistent macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties.

Looking ahead, the fundamental technology drivers remain firmly intact. Demand continues to rise for faster, more power-efficient semiconductor devices capable of supporting the massive growth in data and compute intensity.

This will further accelerate the industry transition toward more complex 3D device architectures and the introduction of new materials. These trends increase the number of ALD and epi layers required at future nodes, supporting healthy long-term growth in our key markets.

The main engine behind our growth in 2025 was the continued strong momentum in leading-edge logic foundry. Our Gate-All-Around-related sales rose substantially as customers ramped 2-nanometer capacity and started to move into volume manufacturing.

At our Investor Day, we reconfirmed the significant expansion of our served available market by about $400 million in the transition to first-generation Gate-All-Around. We also highlighted the increase in our epi layer share from 22% to 33%, and the reinforcement of our leadership position in ALD.

Our product penetration included new applications, such as moly ALD and area-selective deposition, entering high-volume manufacturing at the 2-nanometer node. In 2026, we expect customers will continue investing in 2-nanometer expansion, supported by rising end-market demand across AI, high-performance computing, and advanced mobile applications.

Based on public commentary from several of our customers, the 2-nanometer technology node is expected to be large and long-lasting. While 2-nanometer will continue to represent the majority of leading-edge logic foundry investment in 2026, we have also seen an uptick in 3-nanometer-related demand.

The pace of innovation is not slowing down, and customers are already advancing toward the 1.4-nanometer node, with pilot line investments expected to start in the second half of 2026 and volume production in 2027 and 2028. This transition is projected to expand our served available market by a further $450 to $500 million.

A significant driver of this increase is the rising importance of functional layers in the transition area, which is a core strength for ASM. As also highlighted during Investor Day, we expect this transition-related layers to increase to roughly 60% of all ALD layers at the 1.4-nanometer node, up from about 50% at the 2-nanometer node.

Based on the breadth of R&D engagement and the production tool of record selection secured so far, we expect to gain further market share as the industry moves to the 1.4-nanometer node. Let's now talk about memory.

Our sales in the memory segment decreased in 2025. As discussed, this reflected a normalization in China after an unusually strong 2024.

At the same time, momentum in the advanced segment of HBM-related DRAM remained robust. AI-driven data center investment continued to require high-performance DRAM, and in this segment, ALD high-k metal gate has become essential to achieving the performance and power efficiency levels customers demand.

During the year, we strengthened our position with new ALD wins for layers that are expected to ramp in 2026 and 2027. We also recorded our first epi win in the DRAM segment.

We expect healthy growth in our DRAM sales in 2026, even though memory is likely to remain a smaller share of our business than logic foundry in the coming years. Looking further out, DRAM scaling presents a significant long-term opportunity.

The transition to the 4F² architecture will require more complex 3D channel structure and additional ALD and epi steps, expanding our served available market by $400 to $450 million. Let's now look at the power, analog, wafer.

In 2025, the power, analog, wafer market remained in a significant downturn. In 2026, and based on early signs of stabilization, we expect for this segment a modest sales and to recover.

We remain well-positioned, with a strong portfolio, including our PE208 platform for 200-millimeter applications. China remained an important market in 2025.

After 2 years of exceptional growth, we had anticipated a period of normalization. Revenue from China did decline in 2025, but the decrease was milder than expected, and mostly supported by continued robust activity in the mature logic foundry segment.

Sales softened in the second half of the year, particularly in Q4, but we saw demand accelerating toward year-end. Based on this momentum, we now expect higher sales in China in 2026, an improvement from our earlier forecast of a double-digit decline.

As Paul already discussed, we continue to invest in R&D and CapEx to capture the opportunities ahead of us, in logic foundry, in DRAM, and also in new areas such as advanced packaging. In 2025, we completed our new expanded innovation and manufacturing center in Dongtan, Korea.

Combined with our key manufacturing site in Singapore and ongoing efficiency improvement in our supply chain model, we believe we have sufficient capacity in place to support our growth well into the next decade. I'm also excited to see the progress at our new Scottsdale facility, which will enable substantial expansion of our ALD and epi product development activity in the coming years.

Last but not least, in December, we announced our intention to invest in a new site in the Netherlands, which will house our new global headquarters and a state-of-the-art cleanroom. In December, we also acquired AXSYS Technologies, a provider of differentiated equipment for chemical mechanical polishing, focused on markets such as compound semiconductors and More-than-Moore manufacturing.

CMP fits well with our capabilities in chemistry and interface engineering, and plays an increasingly critical role in emerging technologies such as 3D integration. In 2025, we made further progress in accelerating sustainability, which remains one of ASM's strategic priorities.

We maintained 100% renewable electricity for the second consecutive year. We also deepened collaboration across our value chain, including a new initiative to support suppliers with energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy adoption.

In addition, we continued to advance product sustainability through initiatives that improve the energy efficiency and precursor consumption of our tools, contributing not only to reduction in Scope 3 emissions, but also helping our customers lower operating costs. Let's now look into the outlook for 2026.

Let me recap the key points of our guidance, as included in yesterday's press release. We expect advanced logic foundry to be our strongest business in 2026.

In memory, we anticipate healthy sales growth. In power, analog, we expect a modest recovery from a low base.

For China, we expect sales to increase in 2026. For the first quarter, we expect revenue to increase to a range of €830 million, plus or minus 4%, with a further increase projected in Q2 compared to Q1.

We anticipate our revenue in the second half to be up from the first half. With that, we have finished our prepared remarks.

Let's now move on to the Q&A.

Thank you, Hichem. We'd like to ask you to please limit your questions to no more than two at a time, so that everyone has the opportunity to participate.

Operator, we are ready for the first question.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question.

The first one is on 1.4-nanometer. I remember that last time when you said you are expecting ramp-up pilot production in second half of the year, you were talking about only one customer, but hoping for another one.

I'm just wondering, what is the progress? Did you get more interest of more customer ramping up 1.4-nanometer than just one?

Thank you for the question. I think that 1.4-nanometer is a technology node that all key customers are looking for.

Right now, I cannot really be more specific on whether one or two or three customers are ramping up the 1.4-nanometer node, but we see interest from all leading suppliers for the high-end logic and foundry to work on 1.4-nanometer. We are very excited about the opportunity, and we see our customer really continuing to increase their investment in the next-generation Gate-All-Around.

The other thing that we see is that customers are very serious about going into HBM in the 1.4-nanometer node in 2027 and 2028.

Thank you. Then second question is on China.

Your peers also talked up China comparing to their expectation from Q3 last year, but your comment from down year-on-year to growth year-on-year, and also we all know that China has been a lower visibility market comparing to the rest of the market. Is that something you've seen significantly changed over the past few months made you to have this call at such an early stage of the year?

Or is that just basically customer conversation has been giving you the confidence that it will happen?

I think that I think what we have mentioned before, it was very tough for us to really give a very clear projection for China. We we mentioned very very very very often that it was very tough because of many many factors.

One of them is the changing trade restrictions and also the funding releases, which are really are very unpredictable from our customer. We did see we did see that at the end of actually, at the end of the year, that customers are becoming much Chinese customer are becoming much more bullish about their business in 2026, which really was very exciting to us, and that's why, we feel that 2026 is going to increase with us for us.

We see visibility with them, and we see strong momentum from that point of view.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tammy.

good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question.

A sort of related one on China, but really as it pertains to your business mix and how you think that will shape up over the course of 2026. If I go back to how you were framing things in October and indeed at the capital markets day in September, you had cautioned us that business mix as pertains to gross margin would deteriorate in 2026, and the decline in Chinese revenue was going to be a large part of that.

Today, as you've just mentioned, China's going to grow, maybe not quite as quickly as the advanced logic demand, but still it's going to grow, and so your mix isn't going to deteriorate as much as you had previously suggested it might. How should we therefore take that into consideration when looking at gross margin for 2026?

I think for our gross margin, it's like you mentioned, it really depends on product and also customer mix. China would actually help our gross margin, with the change in the mix, then the gross margin will also depend on that.

We see that in 2026, I think we have made in 2025 and 2024 significant improvement, we made significant improvement in reducing our cost structure in our tools with commonality, we have initiatives to commonize more and more of our products, giving us economies of scale and more leverage with our supplier base to reduce costs. I think with the way 2026 will materialize, if the customer mix goes further and further positive on the China-wise, then yeah, we expect our gross margin also to be positive from that point of view.

I think overall, I think that we have made an improvement in our basic gross margin in the past few years with better cost control, and I think China also would help in gross margin in 2026.

Just so that I'm clear, Hichem, you're suggesting with less of a change in customer mix year-on-year and with those structural improvements you've made, maybe we shouldn't see much change at all in gross margin relative to last year?

Let me take that, Andrew. Basically confirm what Hichem said, the mix, given that China is now better than what we anticipated before, is of course a positive, plus all the structural measures that we've taken.

I think it goes too far to say that it will be the same as this year or maybe even higher at this stage, but I think what we're confident to say at this point already is that it will be at the higher end of the range that we guided for. That we guided for, what is it, 46% to 51%.

At the higher end of that range, I think is a reasonable assumption to take given what we know today.

That's very clear. Thank you both.

Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions.

I've got two questions. First, I think if we take the sort of baseline WFE growing 15% to 20% constant currency, are you comfortable to tell us that you will at least be in line with that at constant currency, or do you see any reason why you should be better?

Thank you.

Thank you, Didier, for your question. I think that for our market, WFE market in 2026, we see that our growth will be at least at the level of the WFE growth.

If the market is going to grow by 20% WFE, then we grow at least at that level, at the 20% level. We are really upbeat about our position, and our growth this year and actually in the future.

At constant currencies,

Didier, as you already mentioned in your question. I want to repeat that, because there's quite a difference, of course, between the current rate that we of course project going forward and, of course, the average rate of last year.

The question was right: at constant currencies.

Sorry, that I don't want to use my follow-up for that, but Paul, since you opened the door, can you tell us what your average was in '25 so that we know what the starting point is?

I think it was around 1.12.

1.12, okay. My follow-up is, I think there is a bit of confusion in the market as to what you're actually trying to say when it comes to the outlook for '26, because it feels like you're saying, yeah, foundry logic or advanced foundry logic is going to you're going to be the key growth driver for the business, and then memory is going to have healthy growth, implicitly that memory will grow less than advanced logic foundry.

I guess, is that the right way to interpret that? If that's the case, why wouldn't memory outperform given how bad it was in '25 and given that DRAM WFE looks pretty healthy, at least from a top-down perspective?

Let me take that question, Didier. Basically what we said is that we expect growth almost on all fronts, to be honest.

The base from which the growth starts is very, very different, and I think that's the key. Of course, by far our largest business is logic foundry, and within logic foundry, the largest part is advanced logic foundry, and then in China, in particular mature logic foundry.

Especially advanced logic foundry, we continue to see, yeah, strong investments supported by continued investment in 2-nanometer, but also 1.4 pilot, as we mentioned. Mature, you just heard our comments on China.

We expect to grow, so that's a positive. Memory, from a much smaller base, in particular DRAM, we also expect good growth, but will still be, yeah, the much smaller part of our overall business, as you've seen also in '25.

In addition to that, although it's also from a lower base and modest, we also expect this year, yeah, a modest improvement in power, wafer, analog, excluding silicon carbide. Silicon carbide will still take longer, as Hichem already explained.

Also power, wafer, analog, which is partially in China, by the way, and partially outside of China.

Okay. Your commentary was based on euro incremental growth as opposed to percentage of growth.

Is that correct?

That's correct. I think that's really what we're trying to say here, Didier, because our logic is a higher base.

In percentage-wise, the growth in DRAM is higher than percentage-wise in logic foundry. Percentage-wise, in DRAM is higher, but we're starting from very much lower base.

Perfectly clear. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Didier.

Thank you very much. My first question is, Hichem, on your comment on the epi.

You mentioned an epi win on the DRAM side. Can you give more colors on what this win is, when it's going to start kicking in, and was it competitive?

Just more color on this comment. That would be great.

Yeah. Thank you very much for the question.

I think that we're really excited of getting a win in DRAM, and this is really in HBM, which we have realized in 2025, and it's going to be incremental to our revenue starting this year, in 2026.

Is it going to be for multiple customers or just one?

As I mentioned, okay, we had the win in 2025 for this particular customer. HBM is happening this year, but at the same time, we have significant engagement with other customer in high-bandwidth memory with epitaxy, and we expect some good news also happening hopefully in this year, too.

Great. Thank you.

Maybe on the advanced logic side, as the pilot line is getting in order this year, I just wanted to check your market share. You mentioned some moly ALD and area selective deposition design wins as well potentially.

Can you maybe give some color on your market share here? On the pilot line, how do you think it's threading?

Is it higher? Is it similar?

Selective deposition, I thought it was something a bit later on, I was a bit surprised to see selective deposition in your comments. Just did anything happen on the selective ALD front to accelerate the roadmap?

Let me answer your question first about ASD, and then talk about molybdenum. If you look into ASD, or area-selective deposition, I mean to be honest with you, we are I myself, I'm very pleased and that we got someone in area-selective deposition in the Gate-All-Around area.

The reason the the reason we saw this win is because actually it's higher yield that's experienced by customers. I think the simplification of the process flow and the reduction in the number of process steps have given rise to improvement in yield.

We see that happening, and actually we see that also going to happen more and more into the future, and I see even acceleration in that. A very exciting area.

There's lots of possibility going on in this in this realm. When we talk about the moly, we're also excited about winning HVM capability at the 2-nanometer node.

I think we have mentioned very very often that that the moly adoption in the industry is going to happen, but it's going to be happening at a very slow pace. We mentioned that it started with the 3D NAND, a second logic adoption is happening, and third is going to happen in in DRAM.

The the change in the for us, this is this has penetrate this win is the first time that ASM has moved into the metal deposition area. We're very excited about it.

It's an area that we have we didn't have any experience about many years. We didn't have any experience because we didn't know, what how to integrate metal layers, we don't know how to characterize that.

Right now, I feel this this win shows that, okay, yeah, not only we can develop this new area, but actually we can achieve HVM capability at the customer. We're building the we're building the expertise within within our our development team and our teams, and this is something that really is exciting for us.

As I mentioned, the moly adoption in logic is going to take a while, and I mentioned before, it's going to start a little bit at the 2-nanometer, you're going to have a little bit more at 1.4-nanometer node, a little bit more at 1.0-nanometer node, but it's not going to be at the level of what tungsten and copper is. This is really exciting for us, to be honest with you.

Great. Thank you very clear.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking my questions.

I had a couple. Firstly, just on the CMP acquisition, I just wondered, Hichem, if you could give us some color on which end markets you want to focus on, what sort of applications in the end markets, and whether you intend to have any partnerships with your CMP tool, especially when it comes to advanced packaging?

There's a lot of debate there, any color there would be helpful. Then secondly, I wondered, Paul, if you could give us some color on how you're thinking about your OpEx growth in 2026, with a focus on R&D and SG&A.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you for the question.

When it comes to CMP, when we looked into this market, okay, we talked in our Investor Day that we have a focus on also some M&A, and especially in area where it can do two things for us: it's an area that's strategic to ASM, and it's an area where we can add value to it. Also we mentioned, okay, that when we do some M&A, really want to make sure that there's some technology component to it.

This is really what we saw in this CMP acquisition. The company has a very good technology, very exciting technology to be honest with you, that's very unique by itself.

They have a great footprint, and also very good cost of ownership, very competitive cost of ownership. We think that this technology, CMP, is actually complementary to our strength in interface engineering.

As you know that when you do the bonding at the end of the day, it's really to bond interfaces together. After you do polishing, you have a new surface, and if you can make the surface better and you can actually control the engineering of the surface, that can help you also do the bonding.

Also it's also complementary to our deposition technology. We have CVD deposition in advanced packaging, and CMP would be also complementary to that.

From all this point of view, we think that we can add value to this technology. We're going to see how it works for us in the future.

This is a very small acquisition, about €80 million acquisition, and we're going to test it. We already mentioned that we're going to test it in advanced packaging area, and we'll see how it's materialized.

Definitively, the technology is differentiated. We like the tool architecture, and we think that also cost-wise, it would be very competitive.

Then on the OpEx, what I can say is that let's start with R&D. We will continue to invest in R&D, so that will grow further.

Our net R&D will grow at a higher pace than our gross R&D simply because of the increased amortization expense, because more and more films that we have been working on in the last few years have entered into HVM, we start to amortize those. I think net R&D at constant currency again, because also not going to give you a percentage now, but a decent chunk of our R&D cost is also dollar-based, and another decent chunk is also euro-based, net around 10%, I think, is a good guidance to take into account.

Gross will be slightly below that, because net will grow faster than gross. On the SG&A, we will continue to be very strict on SG&A.

There will be some increases, of course: annual inflation, merits, but also we invested in as we had a global big bang of our new ERP system that costs, under IFRS, need to be capitalized, we will start amortization of these costs as well. We might have some higher variable expenses in '26, but overall, I think if you take into account a few percent increase, that's what we try to manage.

We will be very strict on SG&A, and as a percentage of revenue, for sure that will go below 9%.

Got it. Understood, Paul.

Maybe, Hichem, just to clarify on the AXSYS acquisition. Do you have a specific focus on hybrid bonding or is it more generally bonding applications?

I think we're really looking into the advanced packaging as not only hybrid bonding, it's really packaging as overall market from that point of view.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you, Adithya

Hi there. Maybe just if you could just discuss a bit about what you see in terms of cleanroom constraints at your customers.

Obviously we've seen some companies talk about that. Obviously your tools don't take up as much footprint.

In terms of looking into '27, do you see significant capacity opening up, and how does that set you up for next year? Thanks.

I think that we see if you look into 2026, we do see there's a constraint in fab space in multiple area, which limit the expansion for our customer. I think it's very clear.

It's very public information. Also we see growing sense of urgency from our customer really to get some of the tools.

Based on that, we see that there's a good momentum as more and more capacity come in in 2027. See momentum really continuing in 2027.

Not only we are excited about 2026 and very positive about 2026, but we see the fact that there's constraint right now in fab space, but that fab space is going to open up in 2027 means that also 2027 is going to be very good year for our company.

Great. Just a quick follow-up, just a clarification on foundry logic in '26.

Are you saying that's going to grow or are you just saying it's going to remain the largest part? I didn't quite understand.

Maybe I missed that if that was asked already.

Both. Yes and yes.

It will remain the largest part and it will also significantly grow.

Significantly grow. Thank you.

Thanks, Rob.

Yes, hello. I just wanted to come back on the decision to stop giving the orders on a quarterly basis, because, yes, indeed, some of other players in the industry have done the same.

It seems to me that the volatility was not such a high volatility as for others, and that given your lead time, it was a good indicator. What are you going to give apart from more granularity on the current level of sales?

Thank you, and I have a follow-up.

Let me take that question, Stephane. Actually, multiple let's say stakeholders that we have discussions with gave suggestions that we should maybe, like our peers, stop with quarterly bookings, because, yeah, the risk of an overreaction is there.

As we said already, it's not always demand-driven, but it's timing. It's phasing, nothing else.

We see overreactions up if it's really good or overreaction down if it's really not good, which is not helping, of course, the stock and increases volatility. That's a key reason why we're stopping.

On the other hand, I think with the hopefully improved transparency on segment information, that might help. We will continue with revenue guidance, of course, like we do today, and maybe some qualitative guidance if we believe that is necessary.

With that, I hope that you guys have enough to model and to come to a view on, yeah, on how we will develop in the coming period. These have been the considerations, and based on that, yeah, we have yeah, made this call.

Okay. What about the evolution of spares and services, because it has been outgrowing the equipment parts in 2025.

What is your view on 2026? Thank you.

I think on 2026, I think with the fact that the fabs are at maximum capacity, we expect a continued growth in 2026. The other thing, as the market moves more and more into more advanced nodes, we see the service part of our market also growing even higher than the rest, because of the complexity of the equipment at the very high-end node, which favor outcome-based services or solution that are much more valuable and add more value to the customer.

Very optimistic also on the service market this year and in the future.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Stephane.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. Just on AXSYS, could you maybe just help us understand how you plan to cross-sell CMP tools, and if you have any idea what share of your customers are currently already using CMP in their processes?

I just want to make it very clear, for AXSYS as a company, it has a very low revenue. We're talking about revenue between $20 to $30 million a year.

This is the latest revenue they have in 2025. This is a very small acquisition from this point of view.

We're going to leverage our expertise to bring this technology to larger customer from that point of view. As I mentioned, okay, this is all about a technology buy, where we think that, okay, we can add some of our strengths into the CMP market.

If you look into CMP, C stands for chemical mechanical polishing, and that chemical part, that really means chemistry, and that's where we play with. I think we have some idea on how to make the chemistry better, especially when you go to 3D integration, whereby the chemical part of the CMP becomes most predominant than mechanical part, especially as you go to 3D and the structure becomes more and more fragile from that point of view.

We think we can play a role there. We're going to see how it goes.

Again, this is something that we think that we can improve. It's a very small acquisition.

As it plays on our strengths, and going into a market that's growing a lot, which is the advanced packaging. We're very excited to look into how can we make it even better, and improve our penetration into the advanced packaging in the future.

Great. Just a quick follow-up as well, just on CapEx.

Can you provide any commentary on CapEx for '26, especially in light of the expansion in Almere?

No, the CapEx as per our guidance from the Investor Day, I think it was €200 to €250 million in years where we have CapEx expansions, in '26, this year, it will mainly be CapEx related to Scottsdale still. Then very likely, as we see it today, then in '27, you will start to see the first more material CapEx for Almere.

Understood. Thank you.

Thanks, Jakob.

Hi, thanks for letting me on. My question is back to the M&A you've done.

Has the policy of ASM changed at all with regards to M&A? Those of us who have covered the company for a long time, the company did a lot of M&A, then made a lot of exits.

Now you've started doing M&A in a small way again. Has the overall policy towards M&A changed at ASM, and are there more areas apart from now this CMP acquisition that you plan to do?

Does the company plan to become stand-alone players in this, or is this just addition to existing tools, which is probably a less risky proposition then? I just want to try to understand your thought process behind the M&A.

No, did it change? At least in the last 5 years, it did not.

Although indeed we made three acquisitions in the last 5 years, and in the 10 years before that, we made none. From that point of view, you could maybe think there is a change.

I think it's not really a change, because also before that, what I understand from my predecessor, they've looked at certain opportunities, but for whatever reason, they never materialized. We look into M&A if we see an opportunity where we see clear value-creating opportunities and that helps us to grow and build our position further in certain areas that we have, yeah, labeled as important/strategic to us, then we want to act.

We did that now three times. There's always a very clear link to strengths that we have.

It leverages, let's say, our strengths with the capabilities of the company that we buy. It can build and leverage on our global network that we have.

The logic at least for the last three have been actually exactly the same: for Reno, for LPE, and now for CMP, Sandeep. We will continue to scan the market.

We have continuously said that our first priority in terms of capital allocation is growth. Number one is organic growth, that's why we continue to invest in R&D, very important, and infrastructure expansion, as we explained.

The second is also inorganic. If we see true value-creating opportunities, we try to do it in a very disciplined manner.

We're not throwing money away because we have it. No, we only do it if we truly believe that there is a medium- to longer-term strategic play that can create a lot of value to us based on the capabilities that we have in combination with the targets.

That did not really change as far as I'm concerned, Sandeep.

Thanks. A quick follow-up.

In terms of the earlier question on your improvement seen in the logic/foundry market, earlier last year, you had talked about a slow start to '26. Did something change in the last few months in terms of the slow start, that some key customers changed how the trajectory of how they're taking delivery of the tools, or was this the guidance and the market was underplaying what you expected?

No, no, absolutely it changed in the last whatever 2 to 3 months. You've seen announcements from some of our customers that have significantly increased their outlook, especially a large foundry customer, which I think that's where it started with.

We just explained the improved sentiment in China in combination with a pause of some of the export control measures that were initially put in place, but then paused, some customers will take advantage of that. At the same time, also clearly improved sentiment there.

You read about the hyperscalers and their investments in data centers and infrastructure, hundreds and hundreds of billions. It's definitely a different situation in the last two whatever maybe 3 months than what we thought before.

We always thought '26 would be still a good year, but starting in the slow, as you said, and then, yeah, accelerating more towards whatever the second half of the year. That acceleration that we actually had expected maybe somewhere in the course of the year literally starts now.

There's clearly a change, yes.

Thank you.

Thanks, Sandeep.

Great. Thank you so much for taking my questions.

I had two, please. One for Hichem and one for Paul.

The first one is just on the CMP business model, just with respect to consumables, slurry, and pads. I know it's a small business, but is that going to be something that you provide, or is that going to be provided by an external or a third party?

Then I had a follow-up. Okay.

To answer your question, okay, regarding the CMP part of the business and the acquisition, once as the technology in packaging moves more and more into high-end, it's going to move from PCB to hybrid bonding in the future, then what happened is that we're going to go to lower temperature processing, and the surface of the interface becomes very significant in the hybrid bonding part of the advanced packaging. For such, interface control is very important.

We have solutions, organic solutions, from our ALD know-how to engineer interfaces and engineer surfaces. Also, CMP is part of the whole process flow, and by definition, CMP also affects the surface of the deposition layers of deposited film.

It's important for us also to understand how that interface from CMP works with our deposition films that we develop in CVD and ALD to engineer a very clear interface. I hope that's very clear from where we stand.

This is a new market for us, and we try to understand this market very well. As we mentioned, we have organic offering there.

These organic offerings are in ALD, in the area of ALD. This organic offering are also in the area of CVD, like PECVD, but also the organic offering is also in the area of epitaxy and silicon photonics, where we also have some traction in those things.

CMP plays a significant role in engineering the interface. It's complementary to our deposition technology, and it's very important for ASM to really know how CMP also engineers the surface and interface in addition to the offering that we have in deposition, both CVD and ALD.

The next thing regarding the question that you have asked about slurry and so on and so forth, as I mentioned, the CMP part is moving more and more into the chemical part. You have CMP, you're trying to polish, polishing both with force, okay, that's the mechanical part, but also the chemistry, which is the slurry and so on and so forth.

That slurry thing or the chemical part is becoming much more important than the mechanical part, because of the 3D drive that's happening in our device. When you talk about advanced packaging, you're going to put things on top of each other, and you also have wafers that are very thin, they are very brittle, you cannot put too much force.

The chemical part becomes much more important. We are a company that knows a lot about chemistry, and we have know-how and knowledge in that, which we have applied for ALD and other parts, and we think we can do the same for the CMP part of the business.

Great, that's very clear. Just moving on to Paul, sincerely appreciate the improved disclosures.

For one, I'd probably request for a quarterly rather than a semi-annual, but the disclosure improvement is much appreciated. I just wanted to ask about the cost saves and the run rate, and just kind of get a sense as to kind of what the exit rates were or are for '25 coming into '26, and maybe just trying to think about the cost savings contribution and how that might scale, how that sizes relative to the increase in R&D, which I think you're guiding is going on a gross level rise by about €40, €45 million.

I just wanted to get a sense of maybe the extent to which cost saves might offset how much of that they might be offsetting. Thank you.

Are you specifically referring to SG&A and R&D or also to cost of goods?

I'm referring to the broad A to Z cost savings and efficiency programs that you guys have across the company, and just trying to scale those relative to the specific cost increase that you're guiding for in the gross R&D spend.

No. On the real cost savings, that's more, let's say, margin-related, where we have explained before on the, for instance, the standardized platforms.

We have more and more products now that are qualified by customers based on standardized platforms, which have a better cost structure, lower cost structure, more common parts, et cetera, which leads to cost reduction, but also to, yeah, a reduction of complexity in terms of logistics, will lead to somewhat improved inventory simply because of more commonality. I'm not going to give you a number there, but it's, yeah, a meaningful improvement, let me say it like that.

The other part, but also that will go slow, every year you will see some benefit there, is the MIT that we talked about before, the merge in transit, where we don't have everything come to Singapore first, assembled, tested, but have the platform go straight to the customer, the process chamber that comes from Singapore then straight to the customer and assembled there and tested there, which skips one big step, which is also a big big improvement. Of course, we have value engineering initiatives on our products continuously.

We have material cost savings, commercial savings, yeah, there is across-the-board savings going on. On the R&D part, there, the name of the game is selecting the right priority from the many priorities and many opportunities that we see, which, of course, to a large extent are based on the, yeah, the overall market opportunity that we see and whether or not we can have a differentiated proposition or not.

It's not so much about saving costs, although we try to be very efficient, of course, in what we do there. For SG&A, it's literally doing more with less.

We grow and grow, but we want to automate more, we want to make our processes better, we want to leverage AI better, there, instead of just adding people more and more, it's all about doing more with less and maybe more with the same, to be honest, to support this growth without adding too much cost. Every line has a different dynamic, if you wish.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Thanks, Timm.

Yes. Thanks for taking the question.

First is a follow-up on the market share in memory. I think now you very clearly state that, yeah, whatever the industry of WFE is doing, you expect to be growing faster.

Does that also imply that in the more advanced parts of the memory market, your market share is getting closer to the market share that you have in the advanced logic foundry?

Let me take this, Marc. No, absolutely not.

I wish, because then we would be looking at very different numbers. No, no.

What I think we try to say is that on the small revenue base that we have today in memory, especially in DRAM, we expect significant growth, significant growth, even more as a percentage than in advanced logic foundry. Having said that, for '26, we also expect significant growth, in particular in advanced logic foundry, maybe a little bit less as a percentage than DRAM, but still very high.

If that growth would, let's say, change significantly during the year, the percentage, so that advanced logic foundry, which we don't expect, happens in this scenario, would grow much lower and DRAM would suddenly go even more and stronger than what we are today, yeah, then the statement that we make would become maybe invalid, because if all the growth would be in DRAM, of course we would not be saying what we were saying. Also, we say what we say because we believe that also the growth in advanced logic foundry will be very significant.

That is the reason why we say what we're saying.

That's clear. Then my second question, it's more like a organizational question.

You're adding R&D capacity. You have introduced a new IT system.

You have now a new board member. With the growth of the company, you're adding this kind of let's call it another layer of professionalization within the company.

Is that the way to look at it? Is there more to come and is there more that you have to scale in the coming years given the high growth that you have going forward and what you had in the past?

Maybe one small adjustment, Marc. You said we did not add a new board member.

It's a new ExCo member, senior leadership, but it's not a management board member, the guy that we talked about is an ExCo member. I think what we're doing is we have actually and this is something that's happening for many, many years in a row.

Of course, we're trying to professionalize the company and trying to, yeah, get ready to scale the company in an efficient and effective manner. For instance, the new ERP system, which we have globally implemented through a big bang, is, let's say, the foundation for further, yeah, let's say, growth in a more automated fashion, in a more productive way than we would have been able to do without this.

Because with the previous system, had to do much more manual work than what we can do today as an example. Also AI applications, we can leverage better with the foundation that we put in place now than what we would have been able to do without this foundation.

Yes, it's all about scaling. Yes, it's about professionalization of the organization.

I'm not sure if that answers your question, but this is what I can say.

The question was also a bit is there more to do on this side? I think we had quite some announcements over the past few years.

Is that a large part behind it now or are you still taking another steps here?

Not sure what you're referring to, because so many announcements, I don't think we've had. We have an ExCo, we have a number of KPOs.

We professionalize our way of working, which I guess every company does. We will continue to do that.

We will not stop. It's not like, okay, from now on, you will not see any announcements anymore.

I think what we do is for the reasons that I just tried to explain, is to scale the company in a controlled, professional, and highly productive manner. That's what we are trying to do.

Okay. Hey, thanks.

That is clear.

Thank you, Marc.

On behalf of Paul and Victor, I would like to thank everyone for attending today's call. We hope to meet many of you guys very soon in the upcoming investor events.

Thanks again, and goodbye.