[CEO?] Klaus Fiedler, and our CFO, Peter Mömmler.

Klaus and Peter will walk you through the business development for the first six months, and provide an outlook for the current financial year. After that, we will open the floor for your questions in a Q&A session.

The conference will be recorded and published for a period of two weeks on our website. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements.

These statements are based on current assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We do not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

With that, I would hand over to Klaus.

Thank you very much, Bettina. Hello and welcome, everybody, to our first half-year results.

I want to give you, of course, a key summary of what happened in the first six months, will dive a little bit deeper into the individual businesses, but of course give you a deeper insight what's happening in the advanced packaging sector, where we see our positioning, and what we expect as the next steps. Let's get started.

First half of 2026, a challenging first half that we expected and anticipated in our planning. We had a weak core business, the only growth sector we saw was in the Electronics segment, and as expected and planned, we have a very weak year in Solar because the transition to perovskite is happening, and we are in a transformation phase with Welding.

That burdens our revenue and earnings for the first half. One aspect of countersteering, and Peter will later give you more detail, is our North Star program, where we reduce fixed costs, transform the organization, raise efficiencies.

We are about halfway through, the second phase is initiated and running, we are on track here. Our strategic focus stays unchanged.

We want to enter significantly larger TAMs than we do with our current market fields, and we want to become strategically relevant in these fields, meaning offering more than a process step, becoming a strategic partner to our companies, to our customers. This sector is, of course, advanced packaging with the transition to glass happening, where we see, now that we expanded our portfolio and with AI driving the market and the wafer starts strongly, that we have a significantly larger TAM than we modeled a year ago.

I'll show you more details about that later. Our mid-term market ambition stays intact.

Despite short-term headwinds, we stay the course, enter a much larger TAM with advanced packaging, and also bring our costs and our structure to a level that we reach a sustainable double-digit EBIT margin by '28. Let's come to key takeaways and insights from our markets.

What we see and also anticipated in our planning range is that we have a persistent macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. We have the Iran situation in the first half, which of course brings uncertainty to our customers and into supply chain and causes cautious investment behavior.

When we look at the Solar sector specifically, as expected within our planning, at the moment there is very limited investment happening because the transition to perovskites is running. We are positioned in perovskites both in the USA and in Asia with first prototyping lines, and the activities are going with a very strong efforts from our customers.

Once perovskites are have reached maturity for high-volume application, we see a very good market potential for a long period of time. That's also the reason why we basically manage through a very difficult year for Solar, where we expect and plan for less than half the revenue we had in our record '24 Solar year.

In the semi-con industry, you can see it in the press, you see the public announcements of large players in the field, we are now in the phase where the transformation towards glass-based packages for AI, for advanced packaging is becoming real. Joint ventures are formed, are getting capitalized, large companies make announcement about their ramp-up and volume plans.

We are now in the phase where LPKF needs to prove that our very good positioning that we have achieved supporting our customers in development for many years now gets transitioned into being qualified into the equipment stack and participating in the ramp-up and in the high-volume phase. We have updated our market model based on the latest projections from analysts on wafer starts for high-performance computing, and are now looking at a total addressable market in 2030 that is very significantly larger than what we anticipated.

Now it's time to prove that we are in the equipment stack and in the operations for this market. Overall business development, advanced packaging with LIDE being basically our entry ticket into that market, we have a very good positioning.

A big share of the players in this market are already working and have ordered LPKF equipment for the development and qualifications. We now, as mentioned, need to transition that into broad orders for the ramp-up.

We have expanded our portfolio already now with additional process steps, basically already at the start of this market, becoming more than a one-trick pony, becoming a strategic player. Rapid prototyping, slightly lower revenue in the first half, but higher order entry.

Basically we see ourselves on track here. When we look deeper into the markets, we see a healthy demand above expectations from China and Europe.

We are seeing a weak US market, which is largely driven by uncertainty about availability of grants in the in the public sector from the US, but in the big picture it evens out. In our SMT sector, which is dominated of course by our laser depaneling for PCBs, we saw, especially in Q2, an investment restraint and some shifts of projects due to geopolitical tensions.

Still see a clearly stronger first half, specifically in order entry, and continue to stay the course. We see that laser depaneling is a long-term relevant portfolio element for LPKF.

We talked about Solar. As expected and planned, a weak year, significantly lower revenue, which also is that dominating factor why we have overall LPKF lower revenue in the first half.

Delayed capex decisions because people want to invest into perovskites once they are ready, and these activities are still in a qualification phase. Welding, revenue down year-over-year, earnings negative.

We had a large consumer business supporting us in this year in last year. We have made it into smart robotics that is giving us a good foundation for the year.

We have to transition, and that's what we're doing this product line. We have to significantly change the cost structure, Peter will talk about it in a minute, but we see that we make the right progress getting into consumer electronics, smart robotics, medtech, that we can make our planning target for the year and set up the product line in a way that it can get back on a profitable growth path.

A lot of this has to do with North Star and changing how we operated LPKF. I hand over to Peter to give you more details about that.

Thanks, Klaus. Operations, North Star program.

The first restructuring wave is completed. We really finalized it now in the first half-year, and the future organization in the second wave, and I will get in the next slide a little bit deeper on this, will sharpen and improve LPKF overall again.

Objectives is really...

...driven by what's happening right now in the advanced packaging market, I want to give you a brief overview on our strategic direction, where we stand, what next measurement points are ahead, and how we see this overall market as a total addressable market now. As you all know, LPKF has the clear strategy, we want to leverage the excellent technologies we have into much larger addressable markets.

Larger meaning factor of 10 and more above what we currently have. One market that we identified is the advanced packaging market, where a transition to glass as a material is happening, and we for many years have been providing to the market the right process solutions there as a pioneer, as a frontrunner with a strong IP portfolio.

We achieved in this ecosystem that you see here that the dominating part of players that have made an equipment decision here have selected LPKF, have for many years been working with LPKF to fine-tune the processes, get all the qualifications done, and get ready to ramp. What we are now seeing as first of these players, by far not all of them, have reached the total process maturity to be able to place first ramp-up orders, first operational orders, and this of course is now a key measurement point for LPKF.

Nobody in the world doubt that we are a great technology partner. We know technology.

Will we now also be chosen to be the operations partner and participate in the first ramp-ups and in the very high potential that comes with high-volume production for glass? Positioning is good, but with one process step you cannot achieve the second strategic goal, and that means we need to become strategically relevant in this field.

We need to be on the table in roadmap discussions. We need to be the go-to partner for whoever thinks about glass in packaging.

As next slide, already in Q1, we expanded our product portfolio. We are offering now three process steps instead of one.

The one is LIDE, that's basically our entry ticket, nothing more. That of course comes from deep, year-long insights and discussions with our customers on where do they have true pain points and where can we offer highly differentiated solutions.

That's out in the market, that's done, and that's good because now is the time to position ourselves in a broader way. When we see the timeline and phases, we see them unchanged to what we already showed you a year ago.

Next slide, please. '26 is still a positioning year.

I would say we successfully executed on the positioning. Right now is the time where the first ramp-ups happening in '27 are distributed, and that's the information we want to provide to you as investors once the whole deals are done.

Yes, we made it into the equipment stack. There will be other players who are not part of the frontrunner team who will place their ramp-up orders in '27, and we will do the same: position ourselves, provide the best solution, win, and that's our ambition, the majority of the deals, not all of them.

It cannot be a single-source market, to then be also the partner for the high-volume phase, which we expect '29, 2030, with deals being distributed of course in advance, around '28, and at the same time being there with a broader portfolio with ABF ablation, with glass-glass bonding in roughly a similar timeline, while using our markets insights now to do the same, first positioning, then be there for the ramp-up, when for us the next logical step in this market happens, and that means the glass is used also as a medium for optical data transmission. Now, when we look at the addressable market in that field, next slide.

A year ago, I was telling you, yeah, we did our estimate for 2030. We see a total addressable market for equipment that LPKF can provide of about 500 million.

Now, it's a highly dynamic market driven by AI, we updated our market model, of course incorporating the much more tangible insights now we have into the production chains and our customer ambitions, of course incorporating our expanded portfolio, but the biggest impact factor, incorporating the latest public information from various sources about, hey, how do we see the wafer starts for high-performance computing, driven by AI developing for 2030? That number has been corrected upwards drastically.

That's public information. Of course our addressable market follows.

What we show you here is the total addressable market for 2030. Total addressable market meaning in 2030 suddenly everybody switches to 100% glass, and installs all the necessary equipment in the same year.

That's of course not what the specific addressable market and the obtainable market looks like. Impact factors are what will the share of glass be in 2030?

I talk to about 100 investors who are very deep also in the semi-con market in the past months. There the estimates still go from bearish cases like 30% glass in 2030 to very bullish cases of 80% glass in 2030.

In all these cases, it's a multiple in total addressable market and obtainable market for LPKF than our total combined markets right now together, in any case a very attractive case. It depends on the share that LPKF can achieve.

Our positioning is good. There is competition.

We are actively defending, a lawsuit is running, our IP, where we think people want to take a shortcut. We spent 10 years of R&D in that field.

There we see us positioned very well. The most important next step, and the market, and therefore the share price, already anticipated that in the past months is, can we now win a realistic amount, a dominating amount of the first ramp-up deals to basically also transition into a significant share of this total addressable market for LPKF?

That's where we stand right now. The negotiations with the frontrunner partners are running.

If you follow the press, you see that they form the entities, form joint ventures, capitalize them. My expectation is that we can get very clear information out to you this year about here is the first deals we won.

One deal we already won in Q1, but we want the broad market to basically deliver the proof point LPKF made it into the equipment stack, passed the operational hurdle. Of course Peter and me make sure we stay ahead of the curve also in our capacity, that whatever case materializes, bearish case, bullish case, we are always there and can serve our customer needs.

That's where we stand in advanced packaging. From my position, we found the right market, we are even a little bit lucky how much now the wafer starts go up, which boosts the total addressable market.

Positioning was done well. We are right now in the negotiations, and I think we have a very good chance of success to make it into the equipment stack.

With that, I hand back to Peter to give you more details about the first-half numbers.

Financials. Go to the next page overall in the financials.

When you see the first half-year, the numbers, the volume is low. A general comment from my side.

Basically, we knew and we planned and we expected an H1 what is on the low level due to we know that the Solar business market and we saw this coming. This is not as a surprise for us.

We would hope that we get closer to the 40 million, but what Klaus mentioned in the beginning, we have to the geopolitical uncertainty in certain areas. We still have this continuous cautiousness of investment in behavior.

This is not that we losing contracts, it's about that it's get shifted about making a decision to purchase more likely. The revenue, 36.5 million, it's reduced in H1 compared to last year, majorly driven from Solar that we don't get one of the big orders in there.

This we see, and you will see this later on the first half-year how Solar is doing. This consequently had an EBIT impact about that that's mean the adjusted EBIT is by -10.4 million.

This is significant due to the revenue reduction and impact. Here we see already a positive impact of North Star, 3 to 4 million, that we really can cover the fixed costs reduction, that otherwise when you just make a calculation by reduce the volume, it would be looking a little bit more in the negative area in the adjusted EBIT.

This shows how important North Star is to getting the flexibility in the fixed costs that we not getting always the big hits by a reduce of the profitability of the volume. Incoming orders, and basically good news is that we are above the book-to-bill rate in there.

Again, it's a missing contract of the big orders of Solar. It's a mixed information in the market about good news and disappointment about shifting.

There we're pretty good on track. The free cash flow of -11.5 million.

On the one side, we still have a very good asset management. On the other side, yes, we are reduced people, we're laying off people, there's a couple of cash-out elements right now what's financing the transformation.

The 11.5 million is in the range what we expecting, but overall we see that the trend will go towards and '27 in a much positive range. Orders on hands, it's on the same level as last year, 34.7 million.

We working on this. This is one of the key elements in the second half-year.

We are stable here. It's a good base for the next quarter, but we need to keep going to increase the orders on hands.

Employees, you see this development, 443 head counts versus 664. This is the Wave 1 of North Star, what I mentioned, majorly impact that we reduce the resources, fixed cost out.

This was a Wave 1 driven by this element, and this shows that we really doing our homework to reduce costs and improve profitability. Next slide.

Here we go to the working capital overview, what I mentioned. The inventory increased by 22% to 23.9.

This is majorly driven by preparing the additional volume selling for the second half of the year. Therefore, we need to increase certain elements of inventory to be capable to deliver.

This is a preparation, the main driven why we increase the inventory. Receivables, yeah, in the one side, less orders, less revenue, less receivables, but we keep on a very good level on collecting debtors.

The quality of our suppliers of payments behavior is still on a very good level. That's the reason we keep the receivables on a low level.

Contract liabilities shows majorly that we getting contracts in where we getting down payments from customers. We try to collect upfront payments that we getting our contracts in a positive cash flow situation.

This we keep going, and this is the improvement. Trade payables overall follows a little bit the inventory and the revenue.

That's the reason we have a slight increase of our trade payables. Overall, I'm very positive about our working capital development in the circumstances this company we are, and we are getting on a good way on this with the 22.3 million when you just imagine that we're increasing our inventory significant by 22%.

Next slide. Here you see a little bit what we are mentioned a couple of statements before.

This is our business segments here today. Electronics, we are on the level that we are slightly increasing towards here.

This is again, it's no big orders in there. This expectation about Electronics will go to end of the year or '27 stable, slightly grows.

You see that we're going on a slight improvement in the profitability, but Electronics is still in a negative way because we are investing in the LIDE story. We're investing here still to get the advanced packaging ramp-up going, to preparing for this.

Development, there we have this behavior of investment of delaying, the weak US business in the Development. That's the reason we're going slightly down in the volume.

This is government money funding, it's really a behavior about stalking investment, holding investments. Nevertheless, when you look at the profitability in the EBIT, we do our homework here.

We're reducing fixed costs here that we're not getting an impact. We're improving slightly the profitability.

We're doing a good job to define countermeasures. In Welding, it looks terrible, but this is in the expectation of our first half-year, because in the last year we had this significant contract, one-trick pony big contract in Q1 last year from consumer electronic.

We are on the way here. We are have here significant impacts in transformation costs.

Therefore, the profitability right now is driven by the reduction of the volume mainly. In the end, you see the drama in Solar what we mentioned.

We're losing roughly 18 million compared to last year because of this transformation, the market towards perovskites. No big investment done.

We're really going and you see this when you say 18 million on volume reduction, profitability impact roughly around 6 million. You show we're doing our homework to reduce costs as much as we can with short-term work, but this is somewhere expected.

We know that this is coming, and we have enough counter- measurements, but there you see one of our significant impacts we have. Overall, we would have wished a little bit slight higher volume, but again, I think this the range where we are in H1, it's not a surprise that we have these impacts here.

Klaus, over to you.

Thank you very much, Peter. To our overall guidance, mid-term aspiration, no change.

We were expecting a weak first half. We at least made a slight growth in order entry therefore.

It will not be a walk in the park, but we see our guidance for '26 as achievable, and we definitely say, yes, we know Solar for this year is a disappointment also to our investors. We clearly see that perovskites offer a very strong opportunity for the future, we are convinced it's the right decision to hang in there in a year where we are basically missing, in the first half alone, 20 million from the Solar sector.

Of course, in the semi-con market, we see that we now have the positioning to really achieve this year the transition into being part of the equipment stack. The addressable market looks very positive, and we see that AI is a driver that, despite global uncertainties, stays strong, goes strong, and gives us a great opportunity.

There we fully stay the course, and as Peter mentioned, play to win or don't play. We continue to invest in this sector because this is where we see the future strong growth drivers for LPKF.

With that, I hand back to Bettina to basically guide our Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Klaus. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready for your questions.

You can write your questions into the chat, or you can give me a hand signal in order to speak directly. If you are calling from a phone, please press *9 to raise your hand and *6 in order to unmute yourself.

The first question comes from Lukas Spang. I have unmuted you.

Please do it yourself. Thank you.

Yes, hi, good morning to both of you. I would like to start with a LIDE order you mentioned for Q2, which you received.

Maybe you can shed a little bit more light in terms of is this order from a customer or partner you have announced the partnership in the past? Can you share the amount of machines the customer has ordered, and maybe also in terms of the region this customer is coming from?

Can you share a little bit more detail? That would be my first question.

Thank you, Lukas. Of course I need to stay confidential, I have NDAs with all my customers.

Q2 orders, of course we have portfolio orders constantly in LIDE. What we had in Q2 were not orders for ramp-up purposes, for true operational hurdle purposes.

They were basically individual portfolio orders. What we considered worth reporting to our investors is that one large specialty glass company ordered LPKF equipment, in that specific case one machine, but potential even short-term for ordering more.

That we consider important because specialty glass is the raw material in the whole production chain that is currently in the course of ramping up for semi-con market. It confirms for us, if those guys who are developing the specialty glasses for this market also want to work in-house with LPKF equipment, confirms for me that those guys want to tune their materials to the glass structuring process that they expect to be the dominant structuring process in that market.

Other order we got was just from a university, which happens to be very much on the front of research and development in glass structuring. It's another confirmation if those guys order LPKF, it shows they work with what is now considered a little bit as, yeah, the go-to partner when you buy equipment.

I hope that answers your question, Lukas, and please forgive me, there aren't that many specialty glassmakers in the world, I cannot give you more details.

Okay. Then second question is regarding JVs.

You also mentioned this in your presentation. I try to avoid names, but I think due to this description you will know which players I mean.

We saw two announcements in July, one beginning of July between a Korean player and a Japanese player for glass core with targeted production in the second half of 2027, and another JV announcement in mid of July between a Japanese and a Korean player for commercialization of TGV glass substrate, also with planned mass production next year. Also this Japanese player has a production or partnership with a big US semiconductor player.

How do you see these developments, and can you share any insights from your perspective to this?

I see these developments as absolute par for the course in our expectation of the market. The first players have reached the right maturity to now announce ramp-ups, form the joint ventures, capitalize them, and begin to issue capex to the supply base.

Without of course mentioning any names, that's exactly where we are positioned, and are now working, negotiating, winning deals to show our investors we are the ones who also are there for operations. Again, Lukas, I clearly see this is only the start.

There are many more players out there who have a great business model, but are not yet at the stage to say, "I can push the ramp-up button."

Okay. Then last question on the guidance.

On the revenue side, you need at least 68.5 million of revenue in the second half of the year. Orders on hand were now at 34.7 at the end of June.

Can you share your assumptions how you want to reach the guidance, and where the revenue in the second half should come from?

Yes. Basically, as LPKF in every year has a much stronger second half than first half.

It's in the nature of our game and on capex cycles through the year in many of our markets. We are working, as always, with a weighted funnel method to weigh our opportunities, weigh the customer needs, and so on.

What we see is that the funnel has more than sufficient opportunities to make it in the guidance. We kept the guidance broad because every year there was some sort of crisis.

Oh, you have the Ukraine war, you had COVID before, you had the tariff situation, this year it's Iran. We were already anticipating in our guidance, hey, the next crisis will come.

There will also be the next crisis in '27. That's the world we live in.

It will not be a walk in the park in the second half, but looking at the funnel, looking at our usual seasonality of our business and revenue, Peter and me say we can stick to our guidance.

Oh, and

I should mention, yes, we still are anticipating one Solar deal out of Asia that goes into revenue for the second half. This is not a make-or-break from one deal, there are several smaller opportunities on the table, but this we need to achieve because that is something that moves the needle in a relevant way.

This would be single-digit or double-digit million?

Single-digit, but it moves the needle.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Lukas.

The next question comes from Bastian Brach.

Thank you. My question is on the additional LIDE processes.

How do you view the long-term potential of these? You mentioned bonding, singulation, but also CPO a little bit later.

How do you see that potential relative to the core glass structuring business, and the longer-term revenue mix within LIDE?

Maybe we can go back to our TAM slide, Bettina. Bastian, I see the potential of the additional process step, not counting CPO, but just bonding and RDL ablation, as significantly lower than the actual LIDE process step.

We also target in our internal model a lower market share than for LIDE in these process steps. This is still a highly attractive TAM.

For me, offering these process steps is not only about, hey, I need to have additional revenue opportunities. It's also very clearly about I need to go into the market with a strategic portfolio.

When I'm now working with largest OEMs in the world, companies that are several orders of magnitude larger than LPKF, and I'm in. I need to offer also their purchasing departments a whole portfolio they can fit their factories with on, and not, hey, I'm bothering having a supplier in my supplier list for one process step.

It's highly important that we show we are here to stay, we are here to do more for you, and if you have a new production line, several of the steps you can get from LPKF. To answer your question in short, you see it here, the TAM is a fraction of the LIDE TAM for RDL ablation.

We also target a lower market share here because it's not as, let's say, disruptively differentiating as our LIDE tools relative to competition, but it's highly strategically relevant. We cannot be in this market sustainably for long term as a one-trick pony.

That's what we firmly believe.

Perfect. Maybe one additional word on the CPO.

When will that be relevant? What timeline are we looking at there?

Again, when we say CPO, there are architectures out there right now. When we talk about CPO, we are really talking about using the glass core in the substrate as a light-transmitting medium for the individual dies to communicate optically.

These architectures are in the R&D phase. There are a ton of different architectures out there, and we all know 90% plus will die in the R&D lab.

We are really turning it around this time. First, fully understand the market.

We have the access now through our LIDE tools, people are talking to us. Then go into a positioning phase starting from '27.

We don't expect ramp-ups with this technology before '29, and no high volume before 2030, '31. This is more what's the next big thing after glass core, glass interposer, and basically expanding LPKF's footprint around glass in advanced packaging.

Great. Thank you very much.

You're welcome, Bastian.

Thank you, Mr. Brach.

The next question comes from Johannes Ries. Mr.

Ries, can you hear me and can you speak? Can you unmute yourself?

I have unmuted myself. Sorry.

Good

morning. Also maybe one or two questions definitely to advanced packaging.

First, if you said that maybe also if we look to these joint ventures or what TSMC said regarding their customers based on glass substrates, they will start the production next year, in the conference call in Q2 they mentioned this, your customers has to start to orders the ramp-up, and you said one or other customer is ready to start the ramp-up. Therefore, is it not unlikely that maybe in the second half we should see the first orders for the ramp-up of LIDE in the glass structuring?

I fully agree, Mr. Ries.

Okay. Short answer.

Okay.

The market very well, usually I can just confirm.

Thanks a lot. Maybe coming back to the question we discussed before on that total available market, the TAM, coming back to CPO.

Your stock has also maybe be pushed regarding this topic because co-packaged optics or the photonic market is maybe the hottest market in semiconductor at the moment. You have not included even the bonding in this 1.7 billion.

Isn't it too wrong that at least the co-packaged optics market could be maybe at the same size like the TGF market longer term, not maybe in 2030, but maybe 2033, 2034?

Yes. All this is true, but usually when we do a TAM estimate, we do it based on solid facts.

If you have so many uncertainties in a model that it can be anything from floor to ceiling, we usually say no. That's maybe a justification to get active in a market, but it's not a quantified TAM I would like to show my investor base.

These numbers are solid based on production flows we know, based on markets, wafer starts, HPCs that are public. For me, it's a solid analysis of a potential.

I agree with you, CPO could be even bigger than that one. We do not see yet that we can say, oh, the production flows, the architectures in that field are tangible and mature enough that we would share our modeling with a broader audience, but we will do so once these markets mature more.

I fully agree with you, photonics, it's logical that in the future, 5 years plus, the individual dies in a package will communicate optically. There's no way around it.

For me, which processes actually win, which architectures win, it's obvious there are so many architectures out there, only a fraction can make it into the market. That's what we are finding out right now.

It's clear. Most of the architectures 2.0 are based on glass substrates, and so therefore you have a good positioning given maybe that you're already in the TGV business now.

Absolutely. The glass core is for me the medium where the light will be used to transmit and guide between the dies.

That's our working assumption, and many players in the market agree. Then the big question is, when you go to the individual process steps that are needed to combine a TGV glass substrate with, let's say, light transmission capabilities, yes, we say that processes that very well fit to LPKF's capabilities, and how we are also perceived by our customers, that's the guys we should talk to, that this has a very good probability, and therefore we also say focus on this topic.

That's the next thing for LPKF.

Do you see that your competitors are also focusing on this? Therefore you face maybe more competition than in the TGV business?

Yes,

this is a topic where others are clearly also identifying here. We see the advantage that with glass core and the actual laser-based processing steps for the glass, we have now a very good foothold and access to our customers, are also a party they say, "Hey, we anyway work with these guys.

Let's also work with them on that field." That gives us an edge here.

We have a hopefully well-earned reputation about high-end technology, LPKF are the guys to talk to.

If all this maybe happens, you think you really can handle this with your capacity you have around? You mentioned you can easily scale, but even if maybe your TAM is realistic and you win a very high market share and even CPO comes on top, you are able to build the capacity, yes?

Peter and me are intensively working on that topic. For the next two years in our modeling, our current capacity, we were of course preparing for that, covers even the bull case.

Within the course of '27, we need to come to a decision: we will need to expand our capacity, how exactly do we do it, where do we do it, that's very much on our radar because we would never ever want to get into a situation where a customer says, "Hey, I want a lot more than expected," and we are not capable to deliver to their needs. Yes, this is on our radar, and within '27 we need to come to a conclusion.

One key element, Mr. Ries, is that the capacity increase we planning, this is not something where you need a year or two years to set it up.

The challenge is to get the people on board and train it. This is the red line what's drive the speed of creating an additional capacity for us, because we do not have an investment or a capex-intensive production.

It's an infrastructure production, just assembling, focus on assembling. It's more the resources to train them, but therefore we are highly confident to be fast enough to make calls like this.

Super, thanks. What's addition?

Maybe another question to the possibilities which are coming with perovskite. Any idea how big this market could be, and any idea maybe when the ramp-up could really start?

Is this order in the second half you mentioned in Solar perovskite order, or is it traditional one? Any update on the opportunity which is ahead of in Solar with perovskite?

Yes. A word on how we see the actual addressable market.

That tandem technology, combining it with a silicon solar cell or even a second perovskite or cadmium telluride cell, that's the architecture that everybody is targeting. The efficiency improvement is very significant.

We did a market model where we say, oh, if 20% of the solar capacity would add tandem, would add a perovskite layer to say we want that additional efficiency boost, we would look at a high nine-figure TAM just for scribing equipment. That is the reason why we say, okay, this is not a market to just say let's give up because we have a weak year, but it very much depends on the penetration rate here.

The model still has a significant error bar, but it's high nine-figure. Our best year in Solar was 40 million.

It's in any case an opportunity where we say good business rationale, we want to be present in that market. On the timing, we expect, but again, we don't have all the insights, but we know a bit about our customers and where they stand, we expect ramp-ups to happen in '28 for perovskites.

True ramp-ups. Prototyping lines, which are quite capable, are already in the field.

Our clear target is it's tough enough, 20 million are missing to basically get through '26 with this Solar situation. We need volume orders that we can get into revenue already in '27, and that's what we are working towards together with our customers.

Finally, for the whole company, if maybe the North Star Wave 2 will be finished, any idea where the break-even of the company—I know it depend a little bit on the mix and the mix is changing a lot going forward compared to the past—but where the break-even point could be, at 130, 140 million revenues?

No, the break-even point would be much below. Not 130, and it will be below 120 million the break-even, for sure.

Super. Thanks a lot, and all the best.

Looking forward for maybe the first ramp-up orders for LIDE in the second half. Send me open a bottle of champagne.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr.

Ries. Let's turn to the questions we have received in the chat.

The first one is also referring to the TAM: "Can you give any reference on what percentage of market share you think you could achieve of this new market TAM for 2030?"

Yes. Our ambition, and it's openly communicated internally, is to get 70%.

I know it's a high bar we set for ourselves, but given the positioning we have, it's definitely the goal we shoot for. It needs to be a multiple-source market.

It can't impossibly be that the whole industry depends on a small company from northern Germany. Even if we wouldn't achieve the 70% and we would achieve 50%, it would still be a massive new opportunity, but 70% is the target we go for.

What was—

Sorry, there's another question in the chat.

Yeah.

I'll just read it out: "Most likely your free cash flow will be negative this year. If you have to ramp next year, it will also be negative.

Do you need new capital to finance the growth?"

Basically, the cash flow will be improved next year due to the one-time costs we have in this year. It will be negative right now in our elements when you see this.

We have a financing till '28, what has the growth what we planning considered. Therefore, we are today, I must say, we are financed.

Nevertheless, if the ramp-up will be much steeper and going up, yeah, there's a challenge that we may need additional cash flow financing. This is a case.

For this one, we will use all opportunities, and review and look at scenarios how can we finance this. You mentioned this, the capital increase, is this an option?

We're doing this permanently looking at elements in the market for this case. Basically what we have today is be financed by our agreement with the banks, and all debt we have on board today.

Thank you, Peter. We have reached the end of this call, and I can't see any open questions or raised hands at the moment.

If there are any further questions, please raise your hand now. That doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

I would like to thank you very much for joining this call, and our next regular earnings call will take place on the 29th of October at the release of our Q3 report. Thank you very much, and goodbye.

Thanks a lot.

Bye.

Bye-bye.