view_file $ARGUMENTS: {"AbsolutePath":"/tmp/agy-runs/e40fdcf8e593/audio.mp3","toolAction":"Listening to audio","toolSummary":"Audio file analysis"} $RAW_OUTPUT: Created At: 2026-09-08T10:44:15Z Completed At: 2026-09-08T10:44:17Z The following is the entire, complete content of the requested file. Sebastian Gonsior (Moderator): Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the earnings call of PVA TePla AG for Q2 and the first half of 2026.

My name is Sebastian Gonsior, and I'll be moderating today's call. As usual, CEO Jalin Ketter and CFO Markus Groß will first walk you through the results for Q2 and the first half of 2026, and then share their outlook on the rest of the year.

After the presentation, we'll open the floor for your questions. A quick housekeeping note before we start: this call is being recorded, and a replay will be made available on our website within the day.

With that, let's get started. Jalin, over to you.

Thank you, Sebastian, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our earnings call.

We will take you today through the first six months of the year of the development of PVA TePla. I'm afraid that anyone who joined the call today expecting a lot of news will be disappointed, because we are on track, and this is good news because we're executing what we said to do.

Let us look back one year, and let's, yeah, recapitulate where we have stand. We were in the middle of our transformation, and we had clear targets, high expectations, but we were still rolling out the measures needed to get there.

Today, we are one year later, and we can see that we have come a good way. Our technologies are widely accepted in our target markets, and we have made significant improvements across all of our business segments.

In the areas we identified as important, we have started the necessary changes. This applies, for example, to an efficiency improvement program in the Material Solutions segment, beyond others.

Of course, not everything is in place yet, because transforming our organization is something which is a long-term process, and not every measure we have implemented also shows results immediately. All in all, also the last quarter assured we are moving in the right direction, and we will follow the path we have chosen.

The coming quarters will show that our strategy is gradually taking effect, and, yeah, that will also be reflected in our figures. Before our CFO, Markus Groß, takes you through the H1 results in detail, I would like to give you an overview on a few key aspects.

I'm pleased to report a solid demand and improving performance across our business. Our order intake increased by more than 80% year on year, and both segments, Material Solutions and Metrology, supported this outcome.

Metrology is contributing a growing share of our group revenue, and in Material Solutions, we expect a recovery in the second half of this year and also beyond. To support our margin targets in that area, we rolled out an efficiency program to improve our profitability.

Compared with the first quarter of 2026, our revenue and earnings have improved. Our strong order book gives us visibility for the coming quarters, and we expect revenue and earnings to improve gradually.

Considering these points, we confirm our full-year guidance 2026 with an EBITDA expected in the lower half of the guidance range. You can see we are progressing.

Quarter by quarter, our performance is improving, and we expect this trend to continue. We are doing that step by step, and we are very confident that this will bring us back onto our growth path exactly as we have planned.

With saying that, I now hand over to Markus before we are coming to the strategic part again.

Thank you, Jalin, and a warm welcome from my side, and good morning. Let's directly start with our group revenue.

After a rather soft start into Q1 of '26, we're seeing a quarter-over-quarter increase of 20% up to almost €66 million, which means we're seeing an 8% increase year-over-year in Q2. Both segments contributed to this development, we're seeing a 7% increase in Material Solutions and 9% in Metrology.

Looking at H1, the revenue is more or less at the same level as in the first half of '25, but in detail, Material Solutions is with €67.6 million in revenue, 10% below the first half of '25. Based on our order book, we expect this development to turn around in the second half of 2026.

On the other hand, Metrology is, with €53 million, 20% above the first half of '25. This shows the success of the group's strategic transformation.

Looking at the order intake, we're seeing an increase of 13% in the second quarter of '26. With €30 million in Material Solutions, we are having follow-up orders for compound materials like indium phosphide.

In Metrology, €35 million means we are a bit above the expected run rate of €30 million. The first half is a great success from our view, and the sustained customer demand for advanced semiconductor materials is shown with an increase of 80% year-over-year in the first half of '26, with €89 million in Material Solutions and almost €100 million in Metrology.

Looking at the development over the single quarters, we can see that Q1 was exceptionally strong, and with Q2, we're returning to a more normalized level. As I said, Metrology, with €35 million, is above the expected run rate of €30 million.

Material Solutions, with the project nature of the business, is more lumpy, but the underlying demand environment is intact. Looking in the direction of H2, we're seeing a continued demand in our target markets coming from our structural growth drivers.

For the second half of '26, we expect the order intake to remain at a solid level, but again showing some volatility due to the project business in Material Solutions. For Metrology, we are very happy to report to you that our existing product lines in H1 of '27 are already at full capacity, and the production lines currently under construction also quickly filling up.

With the first orders we received for '28, our visibility is also increasing. The group's profitability is improving in the second quarter, but H1 results remained impacted by lower utilization and one-off effects.

Generally speaking, Metrology and its gross profit margin is on the expected high level, but in Material Solutions, we're a bit below, especially if you compare it with the first half of '25, where we had a very strong product mix. With the large orders we received in the last quarter of '25 and the first quarter of '26, we're still in an engineering and sourcing phase.

This means the revenue contributions are still low, and in some areas of our group, we're suffering from underutilization because the production hasn't started there yet for these projects. This will turn around in the second half of 2026.

Based on the order book, we can see that the gross profit margins in Material Solutions will improve, and also the underutilization will end. As I said, we're seeing an improvement in the quarterly profitability.

If you look at the gross profit margin, which was 30% in the second quarter, we were coming from 28.5%, and for the upcoming quarters, we expect the gross profit margin to increase gradually. Both segments combined had then 29.3% due to the weak first quarter.

The EBITDA and the EBITDA margin were impacted by one-offs, the EBITDA in the second quarter reduced from 6.7 down to €3 million. Here, we are having non-period expenses which impacted the second quarter of a little less than €4 million.

The most relevant here is the recognition of a provision for a potential compensation with a customer in Material Solutions. Looking at Material Solutions, we can see a continued order momentum, but the profitability is currently not where we want it to be.

As I said, gross profit margin is impacted by the product mix and underutilization, and also the EBITDA by non-period expenses. For the moment, or as of now, we don't see any effects like we had in the second quarter for the rest of the year.

We expect the gross profit margin to improve, and a recovery in the margins in the third and fourth quarter. In Metrology, we're seeing a continued growth in revenue and the order intake, but the EBITDA is currently impacted by strategic investments, which are temporarily weighting on our profitability.

These investments are in our infrastructure for sales and services, and also increased R&D activities. The second quarter also was impacted by expenses for three demo systems, which decreased our EBITDA in the second quarter as well.

Wrapping it up, in the first half of '26, we achieved revenue of €120 million. For the third quarter, we expect a revenue in the direction of the second quarter of '26, and an acceleration in the fourth quarter, which is coming from our order book, we're very confident here.

The EBITDA in the first half has been heavily impacted by one-offs, and due to the stabilization and increase in the gross profit margins, and especially in the fourth quarter with the product mix in Material Solutions, we're expecting to be in the third quarter approaching double-digit levels again, and confirming our guidance in terms of the revenue and also in terms of the EBITDA, but we see ourselves here at the lower half of the guidance range. That's it from my side, and I'm handing back over to Jalin.

Thanks, Markus. Let me give you an update on our strategic initiatives.

We are increasing also synergies and efficiency across our group, bringing things together that belong together, focusing on the things that are having most growth potential for us within our strategic markets. That also means that we step by step drive the organization to new requirements, which are coming, on the one hand side, out of our target markets, but also from the new clients where we are qualifying ourselves as a vendor.

I would like to briefly go and explain two key aspects in this context. You will remember that next to our acoustic metrology, also the optic metrology is an important field of technology within PVA.

With this technology, we have been addressing very front-end related markets in the past with more, yeah, manual systems, half-automated systems, a little bit similar to what we have seen as a development on the acoustic side, yeah, where we started there. Our roadmap that we are having in front of us and where we agreed internally to execute that will clearly bring us to more back-end related or packaging-related applications, which we will address then also with more automated systems, so, yeah, bringing more volume into that business.

To focus our team on that path, we are further consolidating all of our optical metrology activities in one organization into PVA Vision. This also means that we finally build a center of excellence for our optical metrology in our facility in Dresden.

This move further enhances our organization and is also consolidating resources, bringing people together to focus them really on activities with the most important growth potential. In order to support the efficiency on our Material Solutions business, we have placed a strong focus on our profitability.

We are redesigning our operational processes, and we started with that at one of our sites as a pilot. This includes initiatives such as, yeah, introducing new processes, but also new leadership structures.

We will have a rollout phase for other facilities as soon as we have validated the processes that we implemented and the success that we see from that. This activity is part of our long-term margin grid strategy on the Material Solutions side, and the impacts of that activities will get visible over time, there is not a one-off effect that we will see directly, but a gradual development.

I also want to focus on some important technology developments in Material Solutions today. As indium phosphide is an enabling material for the communication between data center, yeah, we drive our R&D efforts in this field and focus within our medium-term targets on that.

We also know that there is a huge interest on your side to learn a little bit more how these activities are contributing to our targets. Artificial intelligence is fueling this demand in indium phosphide substrates, but also then, of course, in our furnaces.

There's a shift from smaller wafer sizes to larger 6-inch wafers at the moment, which is combined with a structurally tight supply, and this creates a real opportunity for us to move into that market. Our proven technology and also our delivery capacity are, yeah, bringing us to a very good position to win qualifications and to also support that very fast ramp-up phase that our customers need now.

Our internal estimates point to a very high demand of furnaces in this market, and, yeah, our current expectations are leading to a rough volume between 500 and 600 furnaces in a base case scenario. As competition in this area comes more from internal design, we expect the addressable market down to 20% to 30% of the total market.

With the position that we're having in that field with, yeah, the equipment available at that right time, we are very confident to win a significant share of this addressable market. Let me finally give you an update also on our mid-term R&D pipeline.

We already have mentioned our activities in a very promising material, aluminum nitride, in prior calls. We are primary partner in all major European aluminum nitride activities already today, and supporting the scale-up in this next-generation semiconductor material.

It's a material which is very important for high-power applications. Our role in this field developed now from, yeah, providing the R&D equipment into also owning the process by ourselves, so that means that we're preparing ourselves to have the full solution available at the time when the market is bringing that material in an industrial use, yeah, and bringing us in a very good position for that as well.

Both research and industrial ramp-up keeps us in the forefront of innovation in power electronics and UV photonics. Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, we are following a clear roadmap to deliver our strategy.

That does not happen overnight, but the progress is visible, and we will keep moving forward in that regard. Thanks for your attention now, and we are happy to take your questions now.

All right. Thank you very much, Jalin and Markus, and we will now open the floor for your questions.

As usual, we kindly ask you to limit yourself to about two to three questions per person at a time, so that we can give everyone a chance to also participate. If you, of course, have further questions, you're welcome to re-enter the queue or contact us afterwards, of course, for a one-on-one.

I see the first one is Maisa Keskes.

Hi, Maisa. Can you hear us?

Good morning.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question.

I will start with the first one. Siltronic mentioned last week that they are in close discussion with their key equipment suppliers regarding additional equipment for their Singapore fab to prepare for the expected recovery in the wafer demand.

Could you share whether you are seeing similar momentum in customer discussion, and how should we think about the timing of potential orders? Is this something that could materialize over the coming quarters, or is it more likely for '27, with deliveries taking place maybe before 2028?

Yeah.

We are not commenting on single customers at all, but let me give you an overview on the silicon market and how we see contribution to our activities. I already said that in that timeframe until 2027, we see a higher demand on wafer capacity coming up, and this will be something which is, yeah, combined or coming with further investments and also pursuing equipment on that side.

We also expect a good contribution to our mid-term volume targets coming from that investment phase.

Thank you. You highlight that you are already seeing some initial reservation for new Metrology capacity for '28.

Could you provide more colors on this demand? I know that you don't disclose the name of the customer, but maybe an indication on the geographical mix and an indication of the level of the backlog expected for 2027 and 2028?

Yeah. It's coming from two areas.

It's the North American market and the Asian market, which is already contributing to that. What we see is that we are now through that qualification phases, which means that we are getting more and more transparency on the volumes that are expected to invest over the next years.

That brings us to a point where we have already visibility over the next years partly, also into 2029. The order intake is developing more regularly, step-by-step increasing, which is coming from two two areas.

On the one hand side, we are working with forecast-related plans with our customers, orders are getting in the book step by step, and not as expected is more one-off effects in certain quarters. It's more regularly on that side.

The other thing that you are not seeing from the outside, probably, is that with that focusing on the areas with the most important growth potential, also on the Metrology side, you remember that we announced in the first quarter that we closed our site in Coburg and consolidated the optical or the people which were working in the optical business to our team in PVA Vision. We are focusing with our capacity on the most important things, and this also brings the order volume from activities which are not having too much scale potential a little bit down, and they are already compensated by the volumes coming from that new qualification processes.

Additionally, that old markets where we have been in from that, yeah, ultrasound metrology are not as active today as they have been before, there is a change in our order book from that more manual and, yeah, semi-automated system technology to that high-volume activities. We already had a recap to that in the year-end in a year-end call where I explained how it was in 2025.

We had already a, yeah, 50-50 level nearly of that, and this year we can say that that volume area significantly overachieved that more manual system area. That change has to also you have to take that also in consideration when you're having a look on how that volume or order volume is developing on the Metrology side.

Thank you. Very helpful.

All right, thank you. Michael Kuhn is next.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Michael.

Hi. Kind of follow-up on let's say backlog and Metrology equipment.

At some point in the presentation, I think you mentioned that your production is kind of running at capacity and that you're adding production lines. Maybe you could give some context in terms of how much of a sales volume you are currently able to handle, maybe on an annualized basis, and what your let's say production growth plans would imply in terms of annual capacity into '27 and '28?

Yeah.

The actual capacity that we are having, when we foresee how that orders that we are now getting and that our forecast that are contributing into 2027, then for the first half year, everything that we are already having for that volume business today is already used in capacity. We are working on a ramp-up of that capacity, which will, yeah, go live until year-end, and that brings us to a higher capacity starting from 2027, which is already also starting to fill, yeah.

That would be current capacity closer to maybe €100 million annual sales, and then a significant step up towards year-end. Is that a realistic way to think about it?

Roughly. Okay.

Then

secondly, on qualifications with customers, obviously, you are making progress here. You mentioned during the call that you also delivered more free demo systems.

Can you share with us how many qualification processes you're currently in, and maybe what timelines you would roughly expect until those can be finalized? Yeah.

The majority of qualification processes that we already talked about that we are in has been finalized, we are in the volume business now with these customers. There are some additional accounts where we're working on where we are not in volume yet.

Half of the big players, we are already in close contact and final agreements with, and the other half is something where we are working in. When we're taking this split, I think then we are in line with what we're doing.

Excellent. Then a last question on indium phosphide.

Very helpful quantification of the market here. Maybe if we look at those let's say market opportunity that you see there and your addressable market, can you share with us, let's say, on which timeframe you expect this market opportunity to materialize?

Is that something for the next 3 years, 5 years? Maybe to get a little more of an understanding here.

Maybe also a rough indication what the price tag for such a furnace would be? Yeah.

As, yeah, framed on the slides, yeah, we see that market development from 2027 to 2030, yeah. We already have the first orders in our books that we are executing in 2026.

It's more a very low volume, that's why we excluded that already in that forecast. Starting from 2027, we see an increase of the volumes.

We see the market very strong growing until 2030, and then we have to, yeah, re-evaluate over that timeframe how the general market is developing and if there is a higher demand again for photonic activities, yeah. This is something that is hard to already disclose today on.

We are on a very well position to qualify ourselves at this activities. We already, yeah, working with customers in that field, and, yeah, with the addressable market of 20 20% to 30% of that total volume, we think that we really win a high share of that open market.

Understood. Thank you.

Hartmut Mörs, please.

Good morning. Can you hear us?

Hartmut? Apparently there's some technical difficulties.

Then Constantin Hesse, please.

Good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes. Good morning, Constantin.

Perfect. Morning.

Morning, guys. All right, three questions from me and then I'll jump back to the queue.

Look, I want to start a little bit with setting expectations here. We are now in a situation where your guidance is towards the lower end of the EBITDA margin guidance because of profitability being weaker in the first half.

If I look at the second half, the jump is substantial, right? We're going from €4.4 million in EBITDA in the first half, you guided us for Q3, Q3 looks like it's going to be in the range of something around €6 million to €7 million, which means we need at least €16 million, €17 million, €18 million in Q4, which are margins north of 20% in order to even deliver the lower end of the guidance.

I want to understand a little bit what the visibility is here and how confident you are that you can actually deliver this, and what the risks are that we could potentially see another guidance downgrade on the back of that. Let's start with that question, please.

Sure, Constantin. I think these are valid questions.

Our guidance for the second half is based on here an updated forecast we're having here, and most of the revenue we're having in the second half is coming from our order book, we have a quite good visibility there, and this means we can also quite good assess the gross profit margins we're expecting from these orders. Giving all this in combination brings us to that we see ourselves in the EBITDA in the lower half of the guidance.

We have quite a good visibility there. You asked for risks.

Obviously, there are things we can't control, but looking at it currently, we're quite confident there. Got it, Markus.

Can I just understand, are there risks that are execution-related or anything that could potentially lead to lower numbers?

It's execution-related, and there are things we can't control if a customer says, "Yeah, don't deliver the system," and it's revenue recognition at the point in time, then that doesn't work. Currently, we're looking at this, we are quite confident there.

Understood. Thanks.

Second question, just on order intake momentum, right? Metrology obviously picked up sequentially, and we saw a bit of a decline in Material Solutions.

Just thinking about Q3, Q4 cadence here. What you've been communicating is that we're going to see an acceleration in the second half, I think mostly in Q4, but we will probably already see an acceleration in Q3 from what I understand.

Can you just give us a little bit of an idea of so that's on the Metrology side, right? I want to understand a little bit the Material Solutions side as well, because obviously that is quite lumpy.

Just trying to understand from this Q2 level, right, that we saw in order intake, how should we think about the development of Material Solutions in Q3 and Q4? Do you expect a gradual improvement there as well, or rather flattish?

Just to give us a bit of a dynamic, just an understanding of the cadence for both Metrology and Material Solutions, please.

Here in Material Solutions, based on the projects we're currently discussing, we're looking confident that we will be on a very good level comparable to H1. If it's then in Q3 or in Q4 is currently hard to tell because it's depending on when we will close the contracts there.

For the ongoing discussions, we're looking confident in terms of there. Metrology, based on the forecast, we're expecting that it will gradually increase over the second half of '26, and then be at a substantial level for going forward.

Sorry, you mean Material Solutions, right? Not Metrology.

No, no, Metrology.

Oh, sorry. I understood.

Which one was it? Material Solutions, you expect similar level to H1,

and then

a gradual improvement in Metrology. Is that correct?

I wouldn't say improvement. I would say development.

Okay. Sounds good.

Just to understand, this provision that you took in Material Solutions, what is that related to?

It's related to an older project with a customer where this is the best feasible solution for us there, but it's an ongoing discussion. We are talking here about the provision, I can't go into much more detail here for the moment.

Was that a quality problem with an equipment and that could potentially lead to any revisions in whatever you have in your portfolio?

No, it's not a structural issue. It's a one-off.

It's individual system for one customer we're talking about here.

Understood. Okay.

I'll go back into the queue. Thank you.

Thank you. Martin Jungfleisch is next.

Hey, good morning all. Just on the ultrasound metrology for HBM, right?

Does a high-volume order for HBM depend on a certain tech insertion, like hybrid bonding, or is this particular design, for example, for 16-high stacks and not really if designed for 12-high stacks? Just, yeah, is this high-volume orders, are they tied to certain, yeah, tech inflection?

Then maybe also on that, when do you know what kind of share you will get? Are these customers telling you they are dual-sourcing, triple-sourcing, maybe even single-sourcing?

Any color on that. Thank you.

Yeah. The, yeah, production processes of the HBM or the, yeah, development steps are not important for the qualification.

It's important for 16 stacks and also for other,

yeah,

more future-related production activities. It's just about the 3D structure and the quality control of that single levels, and there is not a restriction that we're seeing from the technology side that we cannot see something because there are changes in the process.

It's not important for us. The orders are coming step by step.

What we see or maybe what changed also in our expectation from last year is that they are not placed in one-off orders in volume. It's a forecast that is closely discussed with the customer and where we are step by step getting the orders into our book, it's more a continuous process.

With our expectation on, yeah, our targets that we set it to win market share, we expected that normally this kind of customers are working with a dual-source or sometimes also triple-source concept, yeah. We are seeing not much competition in that field today, yeah, but we are also with the targets that we set ourselves are not expecting to be everywhere as a single-source supplier, and not to win all the customers.

We're making good progress to further move into that market and not seeing much, yeah, traffic on that side.

Okay. Edwin de Jong, please.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. Good morning.

Yes.

Great. Good morning.

Good to hear from you again. Maybe a little bit with a broader view, hey.

We've seen investments in the semi industry taking off quite a bit, hey. The expectations were for a $1 trillion industry at 2030 a couple of years ago, and now it's already approaching $2 trillion.

Let's say you see everybody is investing more and more. Hey, for PVA, we had, I think, addressable markets of €550 million for acoustic metrology, for instance, by 2028.

Given the higher investment levels, do you also have a changed view or has there been any change in view of how your addressable market is developing?

Yeah. We also see that activities, and we also see that there are some further investment plans underway, but they are not finally in place yet, so that we can take them into our calculation already today, yeah.

From what we're seeing from the outside, there is potential that that market that we're seeing at the moment has potential to increase, but we would, from our point of view, see it too early to adjust our targets in that field.

It's still a little bit too early. Then on silicon carbide, I get the feeling that they are changing a little bit there, so that there's a lot of demand coming from data centers now, and also on the automotive side, it seems to be on the brink of recovery.

How is it with your position there, and how's the 12-inch systems? Are you already having orders for them, for instance?

Yeah.

Silicon carbide is something that is continuously happening in our activities, it's more a steady-going business rather than, yeah, coming in volumes. We also have, yeah, first discussions on the 300 side, which is something that we expect that it will be adapted in the market over the next few months,

yeah. Next few months already.

On the market side, you're right. The data center part is something which is driving the activities, but also automotive-wise, there is some activity starting to come up again.

Yeah.

As you said, hey, I'm reading a lot about indium phosphide nowadays. Maybe getting back to a question of a colleague earlier.

If you look at system prices for these furnaces for indium phosphide, should we think more about in the range of a silicon crystal puller, or more of a let's say silicon carbide furnace? What kind of direction should we think of?

It's between, but it's a, let's say, low one-digit million amount that we're talking about per system. Depending on the setup, always depends on how improved the system is, what add-ons that has, and so on.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Then, let's say, maybe finally on the optical side, the optical metrology. Do you have there applications for, let's say, singling, warpage, or maybe it is more for glass bonding, or what's exactly the high-potential metrology part there?

Yeah.

It's coming, yeah, with the challenges on tension that is coming up with that new bonding processes and the developments that we are at the moment seeing, which are also beneficial for our ultrasound technology. Everything where the changing processes and where it's challenging to create new material combinations, to, yeah, combine materials together, there is a lot of tension in that processes, and this is a part of the activity where we are targeting for.

Cuz

you are reading that that part of the market is growing, hey, is starting to increase.

It's something which was very important for the front-end area in the past, and where we are also having a lot of activities on the front-end side. The importance of that activities are starting to move more into more back-end related applications, and this is something where we are working together with institutes to further qualify technology in that areas and, yeah, moving it to our customers.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Bastian Brach, please.

Good morning. My questions are centered on the organizational changes you outlined on slide 12.

Can you roughly quantify the expected cost synergies in Metrology and Material Solutions, and when we should expect them to become visible? The second one is, can you give a bit more color on which operational processes are being redesigned as part of the Material Solutions program?

Thank you. Yeah.

Let's split that question. The financial impacts are coming more on the areas which we already announced in the first quarter.

There is that closing of the facility in Coburg where we are now, yeah, consolidating our team activities and team capacity to that more growing areas. That second step is a focus on the right things and the roadmaps that we designed internally, and where the team is now coming together to, yeah, really work on the execution of that roadmaps.

It's bringing a higher focus in the organization, also bringing a, yeah, better and easier work together, having a facility on one side in our new site in Dresden with an application lab where they can work on that technology. It's more a focus rather than a restructuring part that we stepped into with that announcement that we have done now.

On the Material Solutions side, we, yeah, have some after-growth targets that we also, yeah, provided to you within our Capital Markets Day last year. When you see the margin grids that we want to achieve, there is still some way to go on the material side, and this is why we, yeah, reviewed our cost structure and the efficiency on the production processes and, yeah, redesigned things.

The processes are changing. It's coming with a reduction of our lead times.

It's the availability of materials to cost structure itself, more strategic purchasing that is coming in, the leadership structure has changed. It's really a kind of reorganization of our operational part in that field, where we already started in one of our sites, and are still having some things to final design.

That rollout will already start in 2026, and we will see then step by step a positive contribution coming from that changes to our margin grid.

Okay. Thank you.

Do you have a timeline in mind where you want to complete the rollout?

It's a continuous process that we are running there, yeah, but on that side, the majority of that restructuring is within 2027 done, yeah. There is not much to do afterwards, but we always will have a look on that efficiency topic, it's not stopping, yeah.

It's more a mindset change as well that we are doing in that area to always review the processes and go for improvement in that areas coming with that new markets, yeah, because always when we are stepping into that more advanced market areas, we also have a need to change our activities in the production lines and in our service structure, because it's different to what we have done before.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

All right, thank you. Adam Jakubowski is next.

Good morning.

Good morning. Can you hear me?

Good morning. Yes.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions.

I have two questions. One is regarding the indium phosphide business.

It regards the capacities. Would the existing capacities be sufficient if the business develops as you expect it, or is there another larger investment program necessary?

No.

No, that's as we expected. We already stepped into the R&D steps in that, and we further continue with the projects that we started, and we're just catching the market now.

Okay.

Okay. The second question, your investment plans for 2026, as I understood it, the CapEx was expected to remain at the previous year's level, but in the first half of the year, it was only €7 million.

Have you scaled the plans back, or is there more to come in the second half of the year?

We are expecting more to come in the second half of the year. It seems like we are lagging a little bit behind, but this is due to the planning.

The majority of the CapEx will be in the second half

then. Great.

Thank you very much.

Ayaan Nohradnya is next.

Good morning.

Good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes. I just had a question for the second half for OpEx.

OpEx would be flat in the second half. Is it something realistically that you can achieve, and how so?

The OpEx is expected at a lower level than in the first half, because there were some non-period expenses and some one-offs we are not expecting for the second half.

Okay. My second question would be about optic metrology.

How do you think you can differentiate from established players like KLA or other competitors?

We are not in competition with this kind of players. This is area of the market where no one of the big players is sitting, same as in our ultrasound metrology.

Okay. That's helpful.

My last question would be about yeah, you talked briefly about customer qualification. I think last time you said there's still the second Korean memory player that was in qualification.

Is it already closed?

As I said, when we take the market with that big players, we are having half of that big players already qualified, and the other half is something where we are working on.

Okay. Yes.

Those were my questions. Thank you very much.

All right, thank you. Apos Capital, please.

Good morning. Good

morning.

Good morning.

Sirbu Lucian is from Apos Capital. Maybe some follow-on questions to the Metrology area.

There is a space which is getting hot and hotter, and maybe was not as well-discussed as you build your mid-term plan. It's co-package optics.

How much is co-package optics also something your technology is used, and is this maybe widen up mid- to longer-term the available market for your solutions?

It's also relevant in certain aspects, and it's beneficial for that development. When we are talking about increasing market activities on this area, also means that we're further focusing our activities on this areas,

which means that

I think it's very important to repeat that on that stage. When you see the development on that acoustic market, please take in mind that there are activities which are not taking place anymore in that field, and which are already covered with that high-volume part of the business.

There is a diverse field of activities. It's also not only running into that just logic and memory part.

We are also active at other players which are, yeah, next to this kind of customers, like the OSATs and so on.

That leads me to the next question. How important are OSATs, and will they get more important because they are followers with new technologies, maybe as customers?

They are more important maybe for the years 2029 and 2030, is that right?

It's the same. It's in same importance.

Just the volumes are different to the areas where we are at the moment talking about and where we are qualifying ourselves to. Compared to that very big logic and memory players, there is also an very important activity for us with also a higher volume of players in that other markets.

We are in that, but by customer, the volume is less than at that big logic and memory players.

Clear answer. Thanks a lot.

On this optical space, will optical be larger than you originally thought, or is it everything like you have maybe originally planned?

We are in our plans.

Okay. Finally, you mentioned that you see not so much competition where you have maybe already decided in.

If you're maybe with the other half of large customers you are now still in negotiations, also come to a comparable result, that you are partly get maybe sole suppliers, is therefore the available market larger than originally thought, because there's less competition?

Yeah. This is a development that we have to take a close eye on.

We're not expecting in our targets that we're single-source everywhere. Normally, customers like that are working with a dual-source concept, and we did not expect to win every customer in our target that we set it.

As more we are winning, as more positive this is contributing to our guidance.

Great. Really finally, if I heard it right, and you confirmed that Markus confirmed that in 2027 there should be a meaningful growth in Metrology?

In 2027, we are having a higher contribution on Metrology side already, because what we see as forecasts that are running into 2027, and also orders that are already placed in 2027, is showing us that the production lines that we are foreseeing, and that we discussed with customers, will be filled well in 2027.

Thanks a lot.

All right, then we have a caller from the UK. Could you please state your name and then just briefly ask your question?

Good morning, everyone. It's Gustav from Berenberg.

Thank you for taking my questions as well. I'll start with one on the one-offs and the lower EBITDA guidance for the year.

What in particular was the cost surprise in Q2 relative to what you had previously? Could you, in that context, maybe also quantify all of the one-off effects that were booked in your profits in H1, which will not reoccur in H2?

I had some acoustic problems understanding your question, but if I got it right, you were asking for some more details on the one-offs. These are all non-period related, the ones I mentioned in Q2 with being a little less than €4 million.

The largest one is the provision, and then there are several smaller. One example here is that the LTI program running from '23 to '26 was, at the end-year '25, calculated with the Black-Scholes model.

The development of the share during the first half, where the market valuation increase is relevant, was not matching the expectation coming from the volatility in the model, and this added on some additional costs here. There are several smaller.

I think it's not helpful here to go into much more detail with those, but happy to have a follow-up call with you.

No problem, thank you. That was the surprise, I guess.

Were there any other one-offs related to other things that we may have discussed in Q1 or so already that might have slipped our mind, that will not recur in H2, such that you kind of get to guidance?

We factored everything we know as of today in our guidance, we don't expect any surprises here then.

Great. Then a question on Metrology.

Obviously, down on the order intake side quarter-over-quarter, which was expected, which is fine, but could you give us a steer on how you see the ramp-up in Metrology orders for Q3 and Q4, and maybe give us an indication as to whether or not you are feeling better or worse about the ramp-up in Metrology orders expected for Q3 and H2 versus what you felt last quarter?

Yeah. As said, this is a gradual increase that we are seeing step by step over the quarters, which is coming, on the one side, that we are making more activities out of that high-volume areas, but also having an increasing situation on the order in total.

We are having a better situation today as we had before, because we are having a lot more transparency on what is coming next, and what are the final investment plans of our customers. We will see that step by step in our orders, it's not a one-off impact that we will see in one quarter where order intake is jumping up.

It's more a steady development that we are now in, and where we are seeing with that 4 to 6 months, depending on the customer lead times ahead, that orders are coming in.

Great. Just to follow up on that, shall we base that on the order intake that you showed in Metrology for Q2, or should we base that on the H1 order intake?

Q2. H2 Q2, sorry.

Great. Thank you.

Last question for me on indium phosphide. Obviously, large market opportunity, and thank you for quantifying.

May I ask, which customers do you have in indium phosphide today? Of course, I'm not expecting you to name any names, but it would be great to understand a little bit better where they are located geographically.

Maybe you have a big spread, but it would be good to know which geography is the most important.

Sorry, but that market is so tight, we are not commenting on anything on that customer side. We are already in agreements with customers, and we are extending our activities in the market, but it's too tight to disclose on anything.

No problem. Thank you very much.

All right, thank you. We're a little over time, but maybe let's try one more time with Hartmut Mörs.

Maybe this time it works. Good

morning.

Good morning. Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Yes. Good morning.

Great. Most of my questions have been answered already.

Still, just would like to follow up on the one-offs. Could you give a bit more color on the provision you booked?

As I understood you, it was in Material Solutions, but what area of Material Solutions, and what is or was the problem, without going into specific details and naming any customers?

As I said, I'm sorry, but we're currently still in negotiations here, I can't go into much more detail. I can give you, it's not a structural problem.

It's an old model, and it's a thing from the past. We don't expect these things to happen in the future here.

It's also a market we're not addressing in that fashion anymore.

Okay. Did you have any extraordinaries, could you remind us, in the first quarter, similar to that, that do not reoccur in the second half of the year?

Or

It's only the restructuring in Coburg, but this has been also factored into our guidance, it's not something we would count into there, yeah.

Okay. Then we had already the topic that there must be a significant move in the fourth quarter.

What you're saying is, if we strip out the €4 million of the second quarter, then you would arrive, as you have guided, in the third quarter with roughly similar sales at a approximating double-digit margin. Basically, you are saying, if we strip out the extraordinaries, Q3 will be very similar to Q4 to to Q Q2, but then there must be a major jump, and you were saying that it's coming Sorry?

I think there are two effects you need to counter in to your equation. The first one is we'll see a continuous improvement in the product mix and in the gross profit margin.

It's not only the one-offs you're seeing in the overheads. It's also that the gross profit margin is expected to improve in Q3, but also especially then in Q4, with the large orders coming into play.

Also, we're expecting here that the revenue in Q4 will accelerate in comparison to Q3, and this will then give it an additional jump here.

Yeah. With regard to the product mix, what is this shift coming from?

You're saying the large orders. You're basically talking about crystal silicon, right?

It's a mixed thing from Material Solutions, it's not only one technology.

All right.

Sorry, Hartmut, that's all the time, unfortunately, we have for today. If you have any further questions, we're happy to take it offline and set up another call.

Thank you, everyone, very much for joining in, and we wish you a great day.

Thank you all.

Thank you. Goodbye.