Thank you very much, Anna. A warm welcome to AIXTRON's 2025 results call.

My name is Christian Ludwig. I am the Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at AIXTRON.

With me in the room today are our CEO, Dr. Felix Grawert, and our CFO, Dr.

Christian Danninger, who will guide you through today's presentation and then take your questions. This call is being recorded by AIXTRON and is considered copyright material.

As such, it cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without permission. Your participation in this call implies your consent to this recording.

All documents referred to in this call can be accessed via our website in the Investor Relations section. Please take note of the disclaimer that you find on slide one of the presentation document, as it will apply throughout the conference call.

This call is not being immediately presented by a webcast or any other medium. However, we intend to place a transcript on our website at some point after the call.

I would now like to hand you over to our CEO for his opening remarks. Felix, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Christian. Let me also welcome you all to our full-year '25 results presentation.

I will start with an overview of the highlights of the year and then hand over to Christian for more details on our financial figures. Finally, I will give you an update on the development of our business and our new guidance.

Let me start by giving you an overview of the highlights of the year on slide two. The most important messages of the day from my viewpoint are: in 2025, we have performed well in a soft market environment by achieving revenues of €557 million, a decline of 12% year-over-year.

That translates into a CAGR of more than 13% since 2020. We delivered on our adjusted 2025 revenue guidance, meeting the upper end of our guidance given in October '25.

Mainly due to the lower utilization in operations, due to one-off restructuring cost, and due to G10 ramp-up adjustments, our gross profit was down 15% to €222 million, and EBIT was slightly down with -24% at €100 million as a result of this. Similar to last year, we finished the year with a strong Q4 '25 performance.

We achieved 31% EBIT margin, a level comparable to last year's extraordinary Q4. This marks a great achievement of our operations team, as we managed to realize all shipments that customers had asked us to deliver in Q4.

The highlight of the operating performance is our cash flow generation. Operating cash flow increased by more than €180 million to €208 million, and our free cash flow increased by more than €250 million to €182 million.

With that, we concluded the year '25 with a cash level of €225 million, a good step towards rebuilding our strong cash position that we always have desired. Thus, despite the weakened net profit, we have decided to propose a stable dividend of €0.15 per share to our shareholders.

Our outlook for the year 2026 is based on an expected continued weaker market environment. We expect revenues to come in at €520 million in a range of plus-minus €30 million, with a gross margin between 41% and 42%, and an EBIT margin between 16% and 19%.

Breaking this down per segment: AI will be the key revenue driver in '26, fueling strong growth in optoelectronics and lasers through rising demand for optical interconnects. In contrast, SiC power will face a weak year due to overcapacity and slowing EV momentum, with LED and Micro LED and GaN power demand remaining broadly stable.

This concludes the short highlight section. I will now hand over to our CFO, Christian Danninger.

He will take you through the full-year '25 financials. Christian?

Thanks, Felix, and hello to everyone. Let me start with the highlights of our revenue development on slide four.

As Felix mentioned, revenues in 2025 were down 12% to €557 million. Our strategy of serving various uncorrelated end markets with our equipment proved again successful in 2025.

We saw strong growth in the optoelectronics area. This compensated to some extent the weaker demand for equipment for LED and Micro LED as well as gallium nitride power electronics.

The breakdown per application shows that 57% of equipment revenues came from GaN and SiC power, 23% from optoelectronics, 15% from LED, and a 5% contribution from R&D tools. The after-sales business contributed to total revenues with a growth of 1% to €112 million.

The after-sales share of revenues grew to 20%, up from 17% a year ago. Now let's take a closer look at the financial KPIs on the income statement on slide five.

Gross margin decreased by 1 percentage point versus 2024 to 40%, which was primarily due to lower utilization operations, G10 ramp-up adjustment expenses, and the one-off restructuring cost. Accordingly, gross profit was down by 15% year-over-year to €222 million.

As we had planned, our spending on R&D in the year 2025 decreased to a total of €81 million due to a reduction in external contract work and lower consumables costs. This helped to drive our opex down 7% to €122 million.

Combined with the lower gross profit, this resulted in an EBIT of €100 million, which is 24% lower year-over-year. Net profit was down 20% year-on-year at €85 million.

This results in an effective tax rate of 15% in fiscal year 2025. A clear positive were our Q4 2025 gross and EBIT margins at 46% and 31% respectively.

Despite the 18% lower revenue number at €187 million, we were able to beat the very strong level of Q4 2024 on gross margin level and meet it on EBIT margin level. Orders in the quarter came in at €170 million, an uptick of 8% versus last year's quarter.

For the full year, order intake came in at €544 million, slightly weaker than last year, and thus our backlog at €258 million is down by 11% year-over-year due to the abovementioned softness in demand. Now to our balance sheet on slide six.

We ended the year 2025 with a total cash balance including other financial assets of €225 million, which was well above the €65 million last year. There are a number of factors driving this increase.

Firstly, inventory levels at the end of 2025 came down by about €85 million to €284 million compared to €360 million at the end of 2024. This is the result of our adjusted supply chain strategy and corresponding measures after initially front-loading the supply chain in 2024 in expectation of stronger revenue growth.

We target a further reduction of inventory levels through 2026. Second, we have seen a solid decrease in outstanding receivables compared to the last year, and which generated some €60 million in cash.

As a result of putting on the brakes in our supply chain early on, the amount of payables have been stable during the course of the year. Advance payments received from customers, on the other hand, were slightly down year-over-year at €44 million due to the decline in order intake combined with a shift in the regional customer base and partially impacted by some key date effects.

At year-end, down payments represented about 17% of order backlog. As a consequence of all these factors, operating cash flow improved by more than €180 million to €208 million in the financial year 2025.

As mentioned already in previous calls, capex decreased significantly in 2025 due to no additional investment requirements for the innovation center. As a result of the significantly lower capex, free cash flow improved by more than €250 million year-over-year to €182 million from -€72 million in 2024.

We expect further solid free cash flow generation in 2026. Lastly, we're proposing a stable dividend of €0.15 per share.

Despite our lower net earnings, we want our shareholders to participate in the improved cash flow generation. Going forward, following an intensive investment phase in the years 2023 and 2024—capex alone for the innovation center was €100 million—AIXTRON plans to use the cash flow in 2026 to further build a strong cash position.

Also, I want to remind you that AIXTRON expressly does not pursue a fixed dividend policy, but rather adjusts the payout ratio to reflect the respective business performance and capital allocation priorities. With that, let me hand you back over to Felix.

Thank you, Christian. I will continue by giving you a brief summary of the key market trends we saw last year before I move on to our expectations for '26.

I will start with our currently weakest segment, the silicon carbide power business, before moving on towards the stronger segments step-by-step. SiC: throughout the past year, the global silicon carbide market has undergone a significant transition.

In Western markets, we're seeing a temporary slowdown driven by weaker electric vehicle demand and substantial idle capacity at several customers. This has even resulted in reduced or scrapped 6-inch capacity in some cases.

We expect the digestion period for silicon carbide epi tools to continue throughout 2026 in Western markets. China, by contrast, remained a strong pillar of demand in '25 for AIXTRON, with solid order intake and robust shipments in the first half of the year.

In the second half of '25, also in China, SiC demand has softened, and in '26 we expect the digestion to continue also in China. Despite this short-term softness, the mid-term outlook for SiC beyond '26 remains highly attractive.

Substrate prices have dropped significantly, making silicon carbide devices far more competitive versus silicon IGBTs and enabling broad market adoption, both in EVs and across industrial applications. Even more importantly, the technological transition is well underway.

The industry is rapidly moving from 6-inch to 8-inch wafers, starting with Western customers, now also in China, with a full shift expected towards '27 and '28. At the same time, the introduction of superjunction silicon carbide MOSFETs, which require multiple thin epitaxial layers instead of a single thick layer, will significantly increase epi tool demand.

Our batch-based G10-SiC platform is ideally positioned for this new operating model and has already achieved major milestones with the shipment of our 100th system during 2025. In 2026, we expect very soft demand and low shipments in SiC, contributing only up to 10% of our group revenues.

This is the main reason why we have guided '26 revenues slightly down compared to 2025. In the mid-term, looking across the next three to four years, silicon carbide nevertheless remains a cornerstone of AIXTRON's long-term growth, supported by powerful structural drivers in mobility, energy infrastructure, and increasingly AI data center power architectures.

Let's now turn to gallium nitride. Western markets have been slower in '25 due to digestion of previously built capacity and ongoing qualification and design-in efforts.

We had strong orders and shipments of GaN tools in China in '25, where the GaN buildout is gaining momentum. Utilization rates at established GaN customers were low at the beginning of '25 and have been steadily recovering.

AIXTRON maintains a clear market leadership position with more than 85% market share across GaN device classes, and we remain deeply engaged with customers expanding their GaN roadmaps into coming years. Importantly, GaN is emerging as a central technology for AI-driven power architectures, particularly as hyperscale data centers plan the transition to high-efficiency 800V platforms.

We expect additional volume from GaN for AI applications at some time in the 2027 and '28 timeframe. The exact timing for when this happens is unknown, and we will keep you posted when signs of this are getting clearer.

In parallel, we are working with a small set of customers on 300 GaN. These customers have existing 300 silicon fabs which they desire to repurpose for GaN.

Our 300 GaN tool is fully operational with our own innovation center, as we call our 300 clean room, and collaborations with Imec and leading power semiconductor manufacturers are ongoing. Now let me come to the LED and Micro LED market.

After a period of muted investment, now the market for red, orange, and yellow LEDs—we call them ROY LEDs—is showing clear signs of recovery, driven primarily by developments in China. This momentum from display makers, who are pushing the boundaries of image quality.

In fact, several major TV manufacturers are now transitioning to full RGB backlighting architectures, which further boosts demand for ROY LED epi tools. This trend underscores a broader shift.

Even traditional LED backlighting is being reinvented, establishing Mini LEDs as preliminary storage stage towards Micro LED. Enhanced local dimming, full color backplanes, and ultra-high brightness panels are now becoming standard in premium consumer displays.

These innovations are breathing new life into an application space that many considered mature. At the same time, exploratory and qualification work of customers towards Micro LEDs continues, with customers in Europe, US, and Asia.

The focus of this work has shifted away from watch and television, now strongly towards AR/VR glass applications. We expect this market is still sometime out into the future until a larger revenue contribution.

Given the fact that one wafer can serve hundreds of AR glasses, the expected demand will be much, much smaller than what we would have anticipated for television applications. Overall, we can say that for AIXTRON, ROY LEDs and Micro LEDs together translate into a solid revenue contribution of around 15% of group revenue for both '25 and '26.

Now let's finally come to our strongest segment in '26: the lasers for datacom. The global indium phosphide laser market has entered a new phase of growth, and from Q4 '25 onwards we have seen an even stronger momentum in this segment.

We have served this market for many years with our proven G3 and G4 platforms, historically for telecom and datacom applications, supporting the further adoption of high-speed broadband communications and first cloud services, with a market share we estimate well north of 90%. The demand we see today is linked to a structural upcycle linked to AI data center buildout and the development of data-hungry new generation of GPUs.

This structural shift creates the demand for indium phosphide-based lasers grown by MOCVD with a massive adoption of optical interconnects now also within the data center architectures. As bandwidth requirements move to 800G and later 1.6T, the laser content per data center is increasing multifolds to enable the required bandwidth.

Our customers are subsequently not only ramping their manufacturing, but also rolling out new product generations with higher bandwidths that are also more integrated, like photonic integrated circuits, PICs, now in order to be always faster, more compact, and more energy-efficient. For the majority of our users, their roadmap now includes a shift away from 3- and 4-inch to 6-inch wafer size.

That is an enormous step for a market that has been historically very conservative. It enables them to access the advanced manufacturing technologies for these new types of products.

Our G10-ASP product has rapidly established itself as the tool of record, as we say, for this new generation of photonic devices, replacing customer legacy systems, producing higher yield and cheaper 150 indium phosphide epiwafers. We are serving all of the top 10 suppliers to this market, and demand is coming from all regions of the world: from leading suppliers in the US, from the ones in Europe, but also from optoelectronic leaders in Japan, in Taiwan, and in China.

Looking at demand dynamics, we expect the optoelectronics business to more than double year-over-year from 2025 into 2026. With this, it makes up for a large part of the revenue that declined in silicon carbide that I illustrated earlier.

Finally, let me now present our full-year guidance for 2026 to you on slide 19. This guidance takes into account all the factors that I just described previously.

We expect revenues to come in at €520 million in a range of plus-minus €30 million. We expect a 2026 gross margin of 41% to 42%, and an EBIT margin between 16% and 19%.

The effects of a personnel reduction we have initiated in the beginning of '26 are already included in this forecast. Now let me comment on the first quarter of '26.

As usual, sales in the first quarter of the financial year will be lower than the annual average of quarters. In Q1 '26, we expect revenues of €65 million in a range of plus-minus €10 million.

This is comparatively low figure, fully in line with expectations and with a seasonal pattern of the business. For completeness, we have adjusted our USD to euro budget exchange rate at which we record US dollar-denominated orders and backlog to $1.20 per euro.

With this outlook, I'll pass it back to Christian.

Thank you very much, Felix. Thank you, Christian.

Anna, we will now be happy to take the questions.

Yes, hello. Do you hear me?

Great. Thank you for taking my questions.

I just had one on the guidance, basically, pointing to €520 million a year. Obviously, you start of the year because of the seasonality at €65 million, which is about 12% of the total.

Just curious about how you see the quarterly cadence at this stage and what might give you maybe the confidence that orders of, I think you talked about €280 million, whether that will materialize at the pace needed for a strong H2. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We expect again in '26 a pattern that we have seen in previous years, where we have the year pretty much backend-loaded towards Q3 and Q4.

I think that's a seasonal pattern which we have already seen in 2024 and 2025. If you recall, in '24, in the fourth quarter, we even shipped over €200 million.

Now in the fourth quarter, it was around €180 million. It's not uncommon that we are backwards-loaded.

I think it will not be as heavy in '26, but the Q1 is very weak. I think Q2, Q3 onwards, we should be maybe around €110 million, €120 million, €130 million, I don't know, something like this.

North of €100 million, yeah, I would say. Then clearly in the Q4, I think we will be peaking, yeah?

Don't expect the Q2 is again another €65 million, then I think we will be a little dry. That's not going to happen.

Okay.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, certainly. Thank you.

The second one is just around the G10, which is the tool of record at the leading laser customers. When a customer qualifies your tool and locks in, how long does that qualification typically last before it needs to be, let's say, re-competed?

I'm just trying to understand a bit the stickiness of your opto business and whether your position today, which is very strong, obviously, whether that's a meaningful barrier already or whether there for each new product generation that sort of, yeah, reopens the door for competition.

I think in the laser business, you have probably the most sticky and the most difficult to requalify from all the segments. With many customers, qualification efforts have been going on since one or two years already.

The complexity comes in the qualification for a laser tool from the fact that it's not just one simple layer like you have in silicon carbide, yeah? In SiC, this is our most simple tool, I would say.

You have one single layer, yeah, a thick single layer, and every customer is doing kind of almost the same. Now, in contrast, in the laser domain, typically each wafer gets not only put into the tool once for one layer, but the laser customers have very advanced structures.

In these modern architectures and high-speed devices that is currently now making up the market, many wafers of our customers see the tool three, four, five, or even six times from the inside, meaning the customer makes a layer, is doing some other steps, the wafer is put into the tool again, makes another layer, and so on and so forth. You can imagine, if something changes in a deposition and that is repeated five or six times, yeah, an error or a change is then repeated or taken to the power of five or taken to the power of six.

It depends on a very, very precise repeatability, yeah? With many of these customers, we've been working since multiple years.

That's also the reason why the G10-ASP, which we launched already in '21, '22, is only now getting the strong momentum from the laser market, because the qualification has taken such a long time.

Thank you. Just a final question is that you're launching the 300 Hyperion tool commercially in '26.

Just curious, how many customer qualifications are currently underway, and when would you expect sort of the first repeat orders to come in?

We work with multiple customers. I think it's important to differentiate.

Some customers are, I would say, in an exploratory and research stage, yeah, and there's many of these. I don't know, I think probably double-digit or so.

However, I think from commercial relevance, 300 will, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, initially only for a relatively small number of customers. That is those guys who have a very big 300 silicon fab which they want to repurpose, yeah, and convert an existing 300 silicon line to a 300 gallium nitride line.

I think all the other stuff like Micro LED and so on is more like, yeah, playing around, researching, exploring ways, but I think those market segments probably take another, I don't know, two, three, maybe four years until they're really mature. We are engaged, we work on a lot, yeah, but I think in terms of revenue and really making numbers, that's still quite some time away.

Great. Thank you.

Let us continue with the next question, please. We can take him later.

Hi there. Thank you for taking my question.

I just wanted to touch on that 300 GaN tool. Your peer said overnight that they had gotten several orders on 300 GaN already, I just wanted to check your progress on getting Hyperion ready for production volume lines rather than sort of your normal R&D quali tool that you have at the minute.

I think we are very well on track with respect to that. We have also multiple orders, again from these few customers that I was mentioning.

Great. Maybe just on the 800V AI data center opportunity for GaN, everyone's getting excited about this, just curious on how things are progressing here, what have customers been saying to you, and whether you're still sort of expecting orders to ramp up materially in the second half?

I've noticed your backlog has been building for 2027, I wonder if there's any 800V business in there.

The 800V is splitting essentially into multiple types along the architecture. You probably have seen the slides on the 800V architecture by NVIDIA and by major suppliers such as Infineon, right?

We are participating in multiple stages on that chain. The one part is the coming from the overland line on the silicon carbide, which translates or transfers from over 10 kV down to 1,200V, 2 kV, 1 kV.

This is the biggest part, silicon carbide. Then gallium nitride comes into play at 650V, at 100V, and even at lower stages like 20V, yeah?

This is where we are participating. We are with multiple customers working on 650 and 100V devices for exactly this architecture.

To our understanding, the qualification efforts of our customers—means either IDMs or foundries—again with their customers, being the board makers and the power supply makers for this architecture, is ongoing. To our understanding, there is no clear timeline on when exactly the switch is taking place yet, and that is also the reason why I commented in my prepared remarks that we know that this is coming, and we are pretty sure that this is coming sometime in the timeframe, I always say '27 and '28, but we don't know exactly when it is coming, yeah?

In the order backlog that you are referring to, I don't think there is still 800V orders in. I think this is other topics, more like EV silicon carbide-related, of course.

General tool for silicon carbide can be used for any segment, that's clear, yeah? I think the button when exactly the 800V is getting pushed, yeah, and the orders are coming in, the timing is still a bit uncertain.

I would not be able to give you the point in time at this period of time.

Great. No, thank you so much.

Hi. Sorry for what happened earlier.

Thanks for taking my question. My first one is on photonics and opto, etc.

Considering that several of your customers are talking about very significant indium phosphide capex increase this year, and I understand that the big acceleration in terms of orders was really in Q4 last year, do you think we are quite early in that capex cycle? Do you think that '26 could be the peak?

How do you think about '27 at the moment?

Thanks a lot. I think that's a very good question, yeah.

Let me try to shine a little more light on it, how we see it. Again, we only have again a piece of the puzzle, but let me try to explain what we are aware of and what we believe, yeah?

We see that the cycle really has kicked off towards the end of '25. You have seen that in the fourth Q4 '25, our photonics orders have significantly increased, yeah?

Q1 to Q3, they were still on a relatively low level. In Q4 '25, our photonics orders have increased.

We still already now in Q1, yeah, we see continued order momentum from our customers. Some orders have already received, others are in discussion with customers.

This is also, by the way, the reason you may have seen that our coverage of revenues with orders, our backlog, is lower than we have seen in many past years, because we are at the very beginning of a cycle. I think that explains this topic, yeah, and so on.

However, we have indications from a number of customers like kind of their roadmaps, their forecasts, what they need throughout the year. This is baked in our guidance, yeah?

Our guidance reflects that already, and we expect that the orders are coming in essentially throughout Q1 and continuing to come in in Q2, and covering then the revenues that we have forecasted for the year, yeah? As you see, it's a quite significant increase, yeah?

It's more than double year-over-year for the photonic side. This is very helpful for us, because I think we all are aware silicon carbide is really dropping almost dead this year, yeah, meaning pulling a bit hole in our revenues.

This hole is now just nicely getting filled up by the photonics, yeah. It's quite helpful.

Now, I think you've indicated how long this extends into '27. Of course, it's very difficult to predict the future.

My guess is it's not only one year, but it's extending beyond that. However, to comment how much or to which extent, and is the majority in '26 and is it even the same level in '27 or less in '27 or more in '27, that is too early.

I have no indications to qualify that.

Thank you. Just another one for me on GaN adoption in data centers.

I think in the past you said you could expect orders in H2 this year or in '27 for '27 and '28 revenue. How do you think about how the ramp would happen?

What I mean by this is that it looks like a big ramp, how it usually happens with your customer? Do you have already some discussion with when and how much you need to be ready, or do you really see that ramp once the orders start to come in, basically?

It's a very good question. I think both things come together at the same time.

Typically, when a ramp for a new segment is happening, we see the first orders for that particular application coming in from one customer, or typically from two or three customers at the same period of time, yeah? Because normally then a segment is coming, and also the guys who are using the chips are not only relying on one source, but typically on two or on three sources, yeah?

Typically, we then get the first orders particularly for a given segment to come in. Along with the orders that are coming in, we sit together with our customers, they share forecasts with us, and we jointly sit on the table making a ramping plan, yeah?

Because normally it's not that a customer needs only two tools or only 10 tools, but rather the customer has a plan and say, "Look here, in the first year, I need 10, and the next year, I need 15, and the year thereafter, I need 15. How do we best do it?

How do we best distribute it over time?" and so on and so forth.

This is normally what's happening. I expect when this 800V GaN ramp is really starting—we're not there yet, yeah—then I expect to have these discussions with customers.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

My first question is again back to 300 GaN. Understand that we're not expecting huge revenues upfront, but I was wondering, my understanding is that whether it's with the 200 or the 300, usually customers kind of go with one major supplier, one tool of record, to speak.

I was wondering what kind of timing can we expect for the leading 300 GaN suppliers to kind of make a decision on that?

In Q4 Q3 or Q4 of '26.

Got it. Thanks a lot.

My other question is regarding the lead times. I was wondering if we can get an update on currently where the lead times are for the major end-market categories and kind of where we expect that to trend.

Excuse me, I didn't understand your question. Are

the lead times between orders and revenues for kind of your major end-market categories?

I think it depends by the market, somewhere between 7 and 10 months, I would say. Or 6 and 10 months, something like this.

Honestly, I don't have it broken down by end market.

Okay.

We are back to normal, right? If you recall, yeah, in the post-COVID, lead times were very long.

We are now back to normal lead time.

Got it. Thank you.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question.

I just had one another one on GaN. You mentioned utilization rates were improving.

Do you have a kind of a broad sense of where they are now? Then also on this data center opportunity, obviously I know timing is uncertain, but sort of volume or demand-wise versus kind of a consumer business that made up GaN in the past, do you think it's a similar size, or do you see it being bigger?

Any color on that would be great. Thank you.

Utilization rates is always very difficult to predict, yeah, because we get more like a signs from our customers, qualitative signs like, "We need new tools. We don't need new tools," yeah?

I would guess across the market probably utilization rates are maybe 60% to 80%, I would say. On a decent level now.

Earlier we were probably around 30% to 50% after the big GaN investment wave where the demand wasn't there yet, yeah? I think it's still taking a little bit of time until the next investment wave is getting triggered.

As we said, somewhere around the '27 timeframe, early in '27, end of '27, or maybe even end of this year, we will see some investment triggers. Now, as for the size, I think with GaN, it's important to note that GaN has been penetrating across all market segments.

It started off, as you rightfully note, four, five years ago purely in the consumer market, chargers for smartphones, chargers for notebooks, and those kind of applications where the form factor was the driving topic. By now, we have seen GaN penetrate kind of across all the market segments which is addressed by silicon, means motor drives for battery-driven applications, we've seen it in motor drives for things like air conditioners, more like high-power, high-voltage topics, we've seen it in 100V and 20V point-of-loads and servers to reduce the energy consumption of servers, kind of all market segments.

I think you cannot split GaN any longer into a consumer or non-consumer segment. I think GaN is really on a trajectory of getting a very widespread application.

Makes sense. Thank you.

I know you, in your release, you flagged that there's a decent chunk of orders for 2027 delivery. Could you just kind of provide some more color on that, why is it 2027?

Is it just lead times or is there a kind of specific customer capacity additions going on?

No, no. What we have said is we expect, as we see the utilization rates of the installed base now gradually increasing, and as we see further adoption of GaN, particularly in the 800V architecture for AI, we expect that at some point, whether it's the end of '26 or sometime in '27 or at the end of '27, we don't know the exact timing, we expect at some point utilization rates to be at a level where it triggers new investments, new tool purchases by our customers, and where especially the 800V architecture is then switched to GaN.

Today, a big part is still on silicon. Once that switch has happened away from silicon to the much more energy-efficient GaN, then this will trigger, in our expectation, new tool orders by customers because they need to expand their capacities in order to serve this additional market segment.

When exactly this is happening, whether this is end of '26 or early '27 or end of '27, we explicitly say we don't know the timing.

Sorry, I get that. I was talking more kind of broad comment on your current backlog.

I think over €100 million is for delivery in 2027. I just wondered why that was the case.

This is a mix of applications. It's a mix of applications.

As a big part is silicon carbide, yeah, where customers have ordered, and as the market fell down and it became slower, customers said, "Can we have it a little later?" I think the biggest part, I would guess the number one application amongst those is silicon carbide.

Got it. That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.

First one is a bit of a follow-up on the guidance and the lead times. It looks like that you need around €300 million in new orders in the first half to make the '26 guidance.

Is that kind of the right way to think about it with lead times of 7 to 10 months? Then maybe if you can comment if you are on track to meet this kind of €150 million order run rate in Q1 already?

That's the first question.

Yes. We see ourselves fully on track.

We sleep very well. We feel very well in covering and securing that.

Great. Maybe another follow-up on the moving parts.

I think if I understood you correctly, you mentioned that you expect photonics revenues to double this year, then what are the moving parts as I think you've said also GaN should be up moderately, is it like the 3D sensing part or the LED part that should be down massively this year then?

Sorry, I didn't get the last one. I didn't get the last part of your question.

I was just asking, with photonics doubling, I think that's what you said this year, what are the moving parts within that revenue guidance? I think you said GaN should also be up moderately, is 3D sensing, LED, silicon carbide then down quite massively?

Is that the right way to think about it?

Yes, exactly. That's the right way to think about.

I would say LED/Micro LED roughly flat. Silicon carbide massively down, yeah.

This is a big hole that's in there. This hole, to the largest part, is getting filled up by the doubling of the optoelectronics, yeah?

That's why overall and if you sum it up, we come at those slightly down numbers, yeah, from the whatever, €557 million we had in the past year in '25 and now to the €520 million plus-minus.

Great. Maybe just a small follow-up on the gross margins.

Can you just break down the moving parts a bit on the gross margin guidance for this year, what is kind of the headwind from lower revenues you're seeing, what is the better product mix, and so on?

Maybe

if we think about if we go back to €600 million revenue next year, what would be the gross margins on a like-for-like basis when you assume all the benefits from the restructuring program, etc.? Should this be like 45% then?

Great question, but I don't have all the numbers prepared. Sounds like almost I would need an Excel sheet next to me to answer your question.

On a joking note. No, let me try nevertheless to help you explain as much as I can without having a computer next to me, yeah?

You see we manage to keep the gross margins around stable compared to last year or improve even a little bit. What you see here is already we did a first slight amount of headcount reductions early in '25, last year already, a part of that benefit already becomes effective in '26.

We then, as you have seen, have been able to gain further efficiencies, and we do another slight headcount reduction now or have done in January already. It's completed, yeah.

We did it very early in the year, and the cost for that is of course included in the guidance, yeah. We've been working a bit on our efficiency in operations, streamlining processes and operation shop floor work and all that kind of stuff, right?

All that allows us to keep the gross margin stable. Now the question is, how should you think about it?

If you go into next year, into 2027, again, I just do it on a like-for-like basis, yeah. I didn't do it the Excel spreadsheet for your hypothetical €600 million, yeah, but you can then take out from the cost this what we said, mid-single-digit million restructuring cost.

That's of course a one-time cost, yeah, and that's one time in '26 and not again in '27 kind of, yeah? That will help, yeah, on the gross margins.

Honestly, I haven't looked at the details of the product mix, which of course also plays a role, yeah. I haven't done that game.

It will certainly help on the margin side.

Great. Thanks.

Just to make sure, maybe one more comment, just to make sure that you get that, as you're now probably looking to get some numbers into your model. If you look at the R&D cost, we had in '24 an R&D cost on the order of €90 million, and we had in '25 an R&D cost on the order of €80 million.

In the current year '26, yeah, if you do your model, rather put in again a €90 million of R&D cost, yeah? You will come to that if you do the math anyways with gross margin and the EBIT margins, yeah, just to make sure that you get that our right numbers or everybody gets the right numbers here, yeah?

Because we have quite some new ideas for new products, yeah, and that always translates then for us into R&D. Because at some point, '27, '28, we expect the markets to pick up, and of course our investors and you guys expect that we have then a fresh portfolio winning and securing our market position again, yeah?

Now it's down, but when new markets are there, then it's a lot of fun, yeah, and we want to be prepared and we want to be ready for that.

Thank you.

Doesn't seem to be there. Let's take the next question then, please, Anna.

Can you hear me?

Sorry. I just have a quick question regarding Q4 backlog movement.

There is notably an order cancellation of approximately €11 million. Can you provide some color on this?

Thank you.

Yes, I think that was two process modules. I think it was a customer from Asia in gallium nitride, if I recall.

Okay. My second question, I'm trying to understand the overcapacity in silicon carbide.

Is it structural or cyclical?

Cyclical. We get from our customers literally the feedback that they say, "Look, gradually capacity is now starting to fill," yeah?

We looked one year ago probably at 30% utilization, but the adoption of silicon carbide continues in the market. A big element that helps is that the prices for substrates have dropped significantly, yeah?

Due to that, and as substrates makes in silicon carbide a major part of the overall cost, yeah, probably the number one cost position is substrates, those are getting cheaper. With that, the silicon carbide power devices are getting more affordable, their cost is going down.

As cost is going down, silicon carbide MOSFETs gain relative in attractiveness compared to silicon power devices, silicon IGBTs. With gaining attractiveness, the design-ins is increasing, they're getting more widespread, and the demand in terms of units is increasing.

As the units are increasing, the existing capacity gradually gets filled, and at some point, again we don't know the timing, but at some point the overcapacity will be digested, and then new orders will be triggered, yeah? Again, we expect this sometime in the '27 and '28 timeframe.

When exactly, we don't know.

Thank you. You mentioned previously that you expect some orders once annual EV production with silicon carbide inverters surpass 3 million units.

Is it still the case?

I didn't get your question with the numbers that you were just saying. Sorry, I couldn't understand.

Sure. You mentioned previously that you are expecting silicon carbide acceleration once annual EV production with silicon carbide inverters surpass 3 million units.

Is it still the case?

I think we have never given out a number of 3 million units for inverters. I think that's a very specific number, which is probably not from us.

I think it is referred to a broad assessment of how many cars we would need on the streets to see a pickup. That's where it came from.

As a proxy.

As a proxy, exactly.

We cannot comment on that.

Thank you so much.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.

My first one is on pricing. Certainly on the device side of opto, we're seeing obviously a tight market, and it seems like device makers, laser device makers are able to take price and pretty significant price.

I'm wondering whether that changes the value that you offer to your customers on the indium phosphide tool and whether you're able to see price increases, and specifically whether that's included in your more than doubling comments for 2026.

The main driver for the doubling is literally on the number of tools. It's not a doubling by price, yeah, that would be nice, yeah.

It's literally doubling by the number of tools, by the number of shipments. Historically, optoelectronic tools are on the higher side of the pricing in our portfolio, simply due to the fact that those laser tools are of a very high level of complexity, yeah?

If you compare an LED tool going into China and you take a laser tool and you open them and look at them next to each other, you see the one tool is filled with twice the number of technology inside than the other tool, yeah? Somehow that's of course reflected in the price.

Given the tightness in the end market, you're not yet raising the prices of your own tools, to be clear?

No, we don't. That's never a good idea towards customers.

They don't like that.

Understood. Perfectly.

Then you mentioned that you're still in discussion with opto customers through Q1. Some of those orders might have been written, certainly discussions ongoing.

Just wondering whether there's a change in tone with your opto customers. Are you talking on a multi-year period now in terms of delivery, or is it still very much sort of in the next sort of 6, 12 months that conversations are happening?

It depends customer by customer. We have both types.

We have some customers discussing kind of literally the next tool, "I need something very, very fast. When can I have five tools?

Please as fast as possible." I have others more engaged in a structural discussing throughout the year '26.

Then I have others more looking around a multi-year roadmap. It really depends by customer purchase team or strategic planning team.

We have all of it.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thanks for letting me on. Just had a question on your silicon carbide business.

I guess when we look through the course of the year, is there anything that you see today that could happen that could mean that the guidance that you've given on SiC could prove to be conservative in the second half of this year?

That's a very good question with lots and buts of ifs. Let me think.

Honestly, I think for the second half of '26, my gut feeling tells me it would be a bit too early, seriously, for silicon carbide and talking about revenue, yeah? Because I think there still is some capacity in the market which is still needs to be digested as we had discussed earlier.

I think if we look into '27, purely the EV demand can be a nice driver as discussed. We see now that silicon carbide devices more and more get designed into higher voltages, not only 1 kV, also 1,000V, 1 kV, yeah, but also 2,000V, 3,000V, 10,000V, 2, 3, and 10 kV, notably in the space of grid applications, yeah, for solid-state transformers and applications like that.

I think this would be too early to expect tool demand, equipment demand for that in '26. I think we're clearly looking towards '27 and '28 for these new applications and new trends.

That's my gut feeling. Maybe I'm wrong.

If we can ship more, we are happy to serve the market. We have capacity, yeah.

We can serve the market, no problem, yeah. I think realistically, and giving you the most realistic estimate, I would not expect an uptick in terms of revenues.

Maybe orders toward the end of the year, but I don't think there's a big uptick in shipments in '26.

Got it. Thank you.

Then just to follow up in terms of sort of the order momentum you're expecting in the first half of this year, when you sort of look at what the discussions you've had here to date, how should we think about the mix in your order book? Is it sort of largely opto-based in H1, or could we see some GaN tool orders coming and inflecting in H1, potentially for shipment in the second half of this year?

How should we, yeah, think about that mix in the order book?

I would expect, if I look at ongoing customer discussions at this point in time, yeah, again, there can always be surprises, but I'm just extrapolating what kind of discussions are ongoing, and we know that the discussions take between, I don't know, one and three or four months to materialize, which kind of covers the H1 quite well, I would expect in H1 a significant optoelectronics/LED-loaded order intake, whereas then in the second half, I would expect the power electronics gradually to come back.

All right. Thanks.

That's very helpful.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

I'll stick with let's say order composition of the roughly €260 million order book you currently have. I think you gave some indications already, but could you maybe give some deeper insight into how the composition is by category, power versus non-power, and maybe even going into a little more detail?

I think if we look at the order backlog of '25, I think opto is around 40%, SiC 30%, GaN 20%, LED 10%. You think so, Christian?

Yep. That makes sense, approximately.

Approximately, right. Yeah.

Understood. Thank you.

Then on GaN and let's say the next upward cycle, you mentioned at some point in the presentation that you expect AI data center power to drive the tool demand by factor three. What would be the comparison base for that factor three, just to get a better idea on how big the market could grow?

I think we look here at the comparison at the total market size, more like around 2024, 2025, yeah? The factor of three, which we've illustrated more like in an upside scenario comparing '25 versus 2030, kind of a five-year comparison, one point in time '25 versus 2030.

I think this is what we have looked at by the time.

This is 2030, this is nothing like for in two years' time, at least from today's point of view?

No. I think this is a gradual increase.

As we have discussed in this call already, yeah, we believe at some point in '27 there could be the first momentum starting, yeah, and then it's a design-in. As always, yeah, in our applications, our markets, it's a ramp, it's a new trend which is then happening, yeah, it's getting designed in.

Our customers, our IDMs, have now made devices which is in the qualification with their customers, board makers, yeah, GPU makers, yeah, rack makers, and so on and so forth. The architecture has been set.

Now the complete industry is working on it. Hopefully it's going to be fast.

We know the AI industry is a very fast-moving industry, maybe it's faster than some of the other industries. Then at some point it's being designed in, and then the volume is starting, and then gradually over time it gets penetrating, yeah, and the adoption rate goes from today 0% then whatever, 10%, 20% in the initial stage, and at some point, 2030, yeah, 100% adoption rate after the adoption is completed, and then we look at that point.

In those numbers. A gradual adoption.

Again, this is our assumption, yeah. You never know how the adoption goes.

Sometimes things go very, very fast, would be nice, yeah, but that's the assumption which is underlying.

All right. Understood.

Then one more question. Obviously, we're not yet there, but let's say the cycle does well and you're ramping capacity big-time.

When would you reach, let's say, your current capacity towards 100%, and when would you consider, let's say, reactivating your Italian capacity that is currently mothballed, and what would be the potential cost associated with that, or is that not even a planning scenario as of now?

Honestly, it's not relevant for the overall business or profitabilities. I would say capacity can always be scaled up in one way or another, yeah.

Which way we choose to take, yeah, we'll decide when we are there. I think it's nothing that affects the P&L in one way or another.

It's not a constraint, it's not a limit to us, it's not a profitability limiter or inhibitor or whatever. It's just operations.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Hi, good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Very well.

Thank you. Perfect.

I just wanted to follow up on some of the customer behavior in the optoelectronics end market. Some of them have said that they're currently ramping supply, they see demand ahead of supply maybe even towards next year.

Do you feel that comment is directed at you? When you speak to customers, do you have to disappoint them?

Are you shipping to, let's say, 80%, 70% of demand? You've mentioned as an example a customer that comes in with a shipment for five tools as quickly as possible.

Are you still able to serve those type of requests, or do you have to sort of disappoint them and saying, "Well, that's going to be quite a bit longer than maybe the 6 to 10 months lead time you've indicated before"?

In this case, good for our optoelectronics customers, the silicon carbide customers are so nice to step to the side for them in this year, leaving a lot of unused capacity both on our shop floor and within our suppliers. As we work on a, yeah, how do you say, modular system with our Planetary systems.

All our products are, yeah, closely related to each other as a family, you can say. That is now a capacity that is now being emptied or not used by silicon carbide customers because that market is currently sleeping.

We can use the same supply chain for parts and of course also the same, yeah, kind of assembly tools on our own shop floor and the skill set of our people now to do the laser parts. In other words, we have free capacity to literally serve all these demands which is currently coming in, yeah?

It might be a different game if the silicon carbide would be at the same time in a party now, but silicon carbide, as we have illustrated, is really leaving a big gap, yeah, and this gap is currently just now being taken by the laser guys. It's good for them.

No, got it. When they say, "We can't ship to demand," it kind of reflects your lead times, you think, or especially when one customer says It doesn't

It should not be us who's the bottleneck. Very clear.

It should not be us. Yes, it should not be us who's the bottleneck.

My team, my operational team, my sales team is handling it. I expect if there would have been a bottleneck, I would know it.

I'm not aware of any bottleneck across the entire industry.

Perfect. That was my question.

Then maybe a broader question. You said larger wafer size and better yield.

I think one customer said 6 inches is four times the product of the 3-inch, or yeah, their current capacity. Maybe ballpark, to give us an idea in terms of the capacity you're shipping this year relative to the installed base, what do you think the increase is, and you can serve with sort of your view on the revenue you are shipping into '26?

Oh, that's a very, very difficult question. I can only illustrate to you the various factors to that, because the installed base is first of all many, many tools, but many of them still on 3-inch and 4-inch wafer size, as you say, which is a much, much smaller capacity in terms of square centimeters, yeah, or number of chips that you can get out of it in other ways.

The other point is that while the installed base counts many, many tools, in the installed base many times those old tools, they would be dedicated to one product, and they would only be qualified for certain products, with huge inefficiencies, yeah? I think this shift in new architecture towards photonic integrated circuits, to the PICs, yeah, on indium phosphide, also much bigger chips, much more functionality, is really the world which is not comparable to the old world, I would say, yeah?

Because it's different chips, different products, with much larger wafer size, much higher productivity. I think the industry is really seeing a massive momentum.

On the other hand, as illustrated, inside of the data centers, even inside of the racks, we go completely away from electric cables and go completely to optical dataconnect, yeah, which inside of the racks is really new to the industry, yeah? The demand is massively increasing.

Yes, understood. Thank you very much.

Can you hear me? Hello?

Yeah. Thank you for taking my questions.

Just firstly, just thinking about the capacity that's coming on board for indium phosphide lasers. From what I understand, the yields are something like 50%, and that the continuous wave lasers used in CPOs are about 10th the die size of EML lasers.

I just wanted to hear your thoughts on how you think about the yield improvement, especially that combined with the die sizes going down, with the existing capacity that's in place or you will have put in place by the end of 2026. I suppose the question is, it's been asked, but how much does the capacity go up, and will there be enough demand to drive further growth in your optoelectronics business in 2027 if yields go up, die sizes go down 10x because of continuous wave laser adoption?

Any thoughts around that would be great. I've got a follow-up.

I think you ask the billion-dollar question, but I don't have the answer for you, unfortunately, yeah? I think the effect you're alluding to is a typical pattern across the whole semiconductor industry, that in a new market segment you start with a relatively low yield simply because the application is there, the application needs the capacity, the application needs a ramp, yeah?

Then over time, new generations of products step-by-step come in, which come with a die size shrink and higher yields, yeah, means you get more capacity out of your installed base. Typically, I cannot quantify this for you, yeah, I don't know, yeah, I think also our customers at this point in time don't know.

Typically, this process that you're describing is happening over a 2.5, 3, 3.5, 3-, 4-year time horizon, yeah? Because it takes one generation of chips, and after the next generation and the next generation, yeah, typically at least you need 1.5 to 2 years for one generation after the next, yeah, because your customers are simply not able to digest a faster succession of generations, and also to increase the yield takes some time.

What it means is, my personal guess—and again, it's only a speculation, but I can share the opinion I have with you is—that this is not only a 2026 trend, but at least this trend in this market will extend into 2027, yeah? That I think is very, very clear.

This does not happen within one year. Now, to which extent and how large this will extend in '27 and '28, I think that's the billion-dollar question I cannot quantify for you, yeah?

I'm very convinced that we're not talking about one year, but at least about two, and I would guess rather a three- to four-year time horizon.

Got it. Essentially, you are expecting growth in '27, but you don't know the magnitude of the growth at this stage.

Would that be a fair way to characterize?

That's a fair way. Yes, exactly.

That's a fair way. Okay.

Then

just following up on an earlier question, you talked about the epitaxy machines not being the bottleneck. To my understanding, it's the indium phosphide substrates.

Is that right, or is there some other bottleneck in the system that's preventing your laser customers from ramping capacity and meeting the demand that they're seeing?

I hear also that indium phosphide substrates is a bottleneck that's currently being addressed by the entire value chain. I know this both from the side of our customers who need the substrates in their factories, and I know it also from substrate manufacturers.

I'm aware that there is a large, very well-coordinated and well-orchestrated initiatives by our customers and by the substrate makers together in place to address these bottlenecks. Yes, that's I think a topic which is currently being worked on in this value chain and in this industry.

Understood. Then maybe just one last clarification: are you able to give any color on the divisional growth revenue expectations for the first quarter?

Honestly, I don't have the numbers.

No worries. Thank you.

Perfect. Thanks.

Can you hear me?

Good. First one is on silicon carbide superjunction technology.

Can you maybe share your view on how the timeline until adoption might look like? Then, associated to that, would your tools in the existing base require an upgrade to incorporate that?

A very good question. We are aware that all the leading device makers are currently working on superjunction technologies.

To my understanding, the first devices will be launched at the end of '26 by suppliers, means in the second half of '26 or the first half of '27, volume ramps of devices happening in the market. We think that superjunction technologies in silicon carbide will be strongly embraced by Western players because it's a major way for them to get more dies per wafer and hence to reduce the cost per chip, yeah?

It's a massive trend which is currently being strongly pushed across the entire industry. As for our tools, there's no further upgrade needed for our tools.

They are able to run as is, yeah? One point I would like to illustrate nevertheless is that the superjunction technology, where essentially you don't take one thick layer, let's say 10, 12, 14 microns of thickness, but you rather split this into three or four thinner layers, and the wafer gets put into the tools multiple times, yeah?

Most customers embrace a technology which is called multi-epi, multi-implant, yeah? You do an epi step, you do an implant, you do another epi step, another implant.

The wafer gets several times into our tool, a little bit like what we saw in the indium phosphide earlier in the discussion. That means that for one wafer of superjunction devices, you need more epi time, you need more tool time in the epi.

We expect that this will be also one driver at some point, as illustrated in the '27, '28, '29 cycle, which will trigger additional demand from our customers for more tools because they need to expand their epi capacity in order to accommodate all these superjunction MOSFETs. It's a market trend that we like a lot because it helps our business.

Understood. Secondly, on working capital.

With a shift in the product mix away from power to opto this year, can you keep your inventory target, I think that was around €200 million by the end of '26? Then secondly, with respect to the down payments, we have seen quite a significant decline over the past few years, relative down payments relative to order intake.

What are your thoughts where these levels should normalize going forward?

Good question. Inventories, yes, we expect inventories to go further down.

The shift in product mix in fact is effect which is not helping, but we are still targeting €200 million to €220 million in terms of inventories. Maybe there's €20 million more than we initially expected, yeah, due to the shift of product mix.

Let's see. Still, we target a significant further reduction of inventories, yeah.

It's gradually burning down, maybe a little bit slower as you're indicating, but still significant, yeah? Christian, maybe you can take the second part.

On the down payments, it's a little bit more difficult, yeah, because we don't have complete control on it, yeah. It really depends on end-market mix, regional mix, customer mix, and also cut-off date effects.

The number at the end of the year was really low, yeah. We expect it to recover to some degree, but to predict this in detail is quite difficult, yeah?

It's also not the major negotiation point with customers, right? It's part of the deal, but not the major major part.

It's a little bit difficult to predict. Should increase trend-wise, again.

Okay. Okay.

Lastly, quick one on R&D. You indicated an increase in R&D spending this year.

Would you expect another increase with a rising business volume generally over the next years in '27, or would that volume be more or less sufficient to support your programs you have in mind?

I think we discussed already earlier. In '24, we had around €90 million.

In '25, we had around €80 million. For '26, we expect again around €90 million.

Then

beyond '26, the €90 million is sufficient for the next few years?

Look, that always depends a little bit on individual cycles of products, yeah? At some point in the cycle, the products take a little more money, yeah, and at some point in the cycle, they take a little less, yeah, depends throughout where the portfolio stands.

Honestly, I wouldn't want to predict beyond that.

Fair enough. Many thanks.

Thank you. Thanks to all for your questions.

The IR team and part of the management team will be on the road the next couple of weeks, we'll see a lot of you, hopefully, in person. For those we do not see, we will have our next quarterly call scheduled for April the 30th, when we will report on our Q1 figures.

If we don't see you until then, then have a happy Easter and talk to you end of April. Goodbye and thank you.

Bye-bye.