Prisca Havranek-Kosicek
Analyst · the Deutsche Bank
Thank you, Dominic. Now let me start with an overview on Page 4 of our slide deck. First of all, we saw exceptionally strong order intake dynamics, particularly in our OEM businesses to continue also in the second quarter, overall, exceeding our expectations. The ramp-up in the semi industry continues to be in full swing as far as we see it, but also order intake in our biophotonics business unit was substantially up compared to last year for reasons I will address a little later in this call. I am pleased to report that revenues for the first half year was slightly up year-on-year for the first time in a while driven by our semi business and SMS. We are also pleased to report a strong improvement in our profitability in terms of EBITDA margin, noting, however, that profitability in the first half of 2025 represented a modest comp. Free cash flow improved slightly year-on-year, reflecting besides higher profits, greater working capital needs in conjunction with our strong order intake. Now looking forward, our near-term focus is clearly on our capacity expansion projects in our OEM businesses, as well as maximizing output in the light of the significantly increased order backlog. Furthermore, as Dominic has already mentioned, we are currently reviewing our businesses, including strategy, with outcomes expected towards the end of this year at the earlier. And finally, we continue to focus on, and address our commercial opportunities besides semi, for example, in optical data communications, defense applications as well as our SMS business in the U.S. Regarding guidance, given what I've just been stating before, we now expect to reach the upper half of the initial guided revenue range and EBITDA margin range. Now moving on to Page 5. As I've just mentioned, we saw particularly strong demand in semi and advanced manufacturing as well as in biophotonics continue in the second quarter, driving order intake group level up by more than 50% year-on-year. Overall, exceeding our expectations. Now starting with semiconductor and advanced manufacturing, as you know, by far, our biggest business unit. Order intake was driven by both our lithography business as well as continued strong customer activity in our semi inspection business. And given that we mentioned in our last call that Q1 benefited from a large annual order, I think it's not a surprise that Q2 was a little below the order intake levels recorded in Q1. Turning to our biophotonics business. Order intake was again very strong also in the second quarter, therefore, H1 '26, where we report a 45% increase year-over-year. This performance was, to a certain extent, driven by very high demand for our portfolio related to the defense end market in the first half year. In addition, we also saw an overall positive order intake dynamics in the med tech and life science fields. Here, a lower momentum in the field of dentistry was more than compensated by a multiyear order in the low double-digit million range that we received in the med tech space. Similarly, also, as we discussed in the first quarter, we believe that there also may have been certain early order effects in conjunction with growing geopolitical uncertainties since the start of this year. Also, let me remind you that we continue to believe that quarterly volatility of order intake in this business unit will remain high going forward, partly because of a special pattern in the defense industry as well as a certain volatility that you usually see while running a concentrated key account business model. Now moving on to our solutions businesses. For both metrology and production solutions as well as smart mobility solutions, order intake develops broadly as we were expecting, with both business units reporting low double-digit order intake growth. So overall, as a consequence of these developments in demand, our H1 book-to-bill ratio for the group went up sharply to 1.4, and our order backlog grew substantially to around EUR 825 million. Please follow me now to Page 6 to cover our revenue development. So whereas Q1 revenues were still slightly down year-on-year, as you can see on the left side of this slide, we returned to growth in the second quarter. This leads to an overall modest 1% growth at the half year point. Excluding effects from currencies, especially relating to the euro-dollar exchange rate fluctuations, revenue growth would have been up by close to 3%. At a segment level, semi advanced manufacturing revenue was up by around 10% year-on-year, driven both by our lithography as well as our semi inspection business. Digital datacom was supportive, albeit on a lower level, given the relative size of this business compared to the other 2 businesses. Now let's look at biophotonics. Here in the last year, as you know, we benefited from a strong dental business. Given this base effect, the medtech business did not quite reach the prior year's levels as we were expecting. On the contrary, a strong development in defense, partially compensated for this. However, overall revenues were still down by almost 5% year-on-year. For Metrology and Production Solutions, revenue development primarily reflects the continued difficult market environment in the European automotive sector. Nonetheless, given the typical seasonality in the U.S., in the MPS business overall and considering the overall robust order intake in this business, we expect the second half of '26 to be better than the first half. Finally, revenue of our Smart Mobility Solutions business was up by almost 11%, driven by almost all regions. On the next page, Page 7, that is, we look at our profit performance. As you can see on the left side of this slide, the group's EBITDA reached around EUR 99 million, up by a little more than 25% compared to last year. This implies an improvement of our EBITDA margin by almost 400 bps, which is primarily driven by the following elements. Firstly, of course, we see the benefits of the overall lower cost base resulting from our cost reduction program executed last year. Secondly, we see our product mix improving, especially relating to the semi business. And finally, please remember, the first quarter of 2025 was influenced by onetime relocation costs relating to the move to our Dresden fab, which we didn't have in the first half of '26. On business unit level, based on the aspects mentioned before, our semi business recorded a very strong EBITDA margin of close to 32%. Despite a certain decline in revenues, as I've explained earlier, our biophotonics business continued to operate at a strong margin level of almost 22% in the first half. In the SMS business, we also saw a good move forward in terms of margins as top line growth was driving operational leverage, while in addition, R&D expenses were lower year-on-year. MPS remains slightly loss-making given its modest revenue development in the first half. And as I mentioned before, we believe the second half of the year performance may be better than what we have seen in the first 6 months. The other line, which includes our corporate center as well as Prodomax, we saw in about EUR 8 million negative swing in the EBITDA year-on-year. largely relating to certain corporate project costs as well as provisions related to share-based compensation, while Prodomax is no relevant factor here. Now looking at key aspects of our P&L on Page 8. Gross margin was considerably up year-on-year, which was primarily influenced by a general lower cost base as well as a higher contribution by our semi business, as I have already alluded before. On the functional expense side, we remain very disciplined. However, those expenses grew by 3.7% year-on-year as we had to recognize higher expenses for share-based long-term incentives, amongst other things. EBIT for the period under review, grew faster than EBITDA, given slightly lower depreciation and amortization. Therefore, EBIT was up by 56% year-on-year, while the respective margin jumped to 12.3% in the first half. Bottom line, our earnings per share reached EUR 0.69 versus EUR 0.42 in the prior year. Now turning to Page 9 and looking at cash flow and balance sheet data. Let me start with operating cash flow. The trend in the first half year is very much mirroring what we reported in the first quarter already, meaning that the strong order intake has led us to shift our priorities towards optimizing our ability to serve our customers. Hence, we've been taking on more working capital comfort to the end of last year, reducing -- resulting in a reduced operating cash flow. Adding on to what I just said, you see that our working capital ratio was up at the end of the first half. And I would like to note that given the ongoing semi ramp, we expect this ratio to trend to slightly above 2025 levels in the second half. Free cash flow, however, was slightly up year-on-year due to lower investing cash outflow. Please note that the first half of 2025 was still including considerable cash outflows relating to our new fab in Dresden. On the remaining financial parameters, we have not seen any major changes compared to the end of last year, meaning that overall financial situation has remained very, very robust. And finally, please follow me to Page 11 to cover our specific guidance for 2026. So eventhough order intake is not a guidance KPI for us, as you know, I would like to make a comment here. It is clear that we are very pleased with the dynamics that we have seen in the first 6 months of this year. However, I think it is fair to note that we received some orders supplies in the early that as they were originally expected to come later in this year. Therefore, we believe that the very strong order intake dynamics in the first 6 months may not necessarily continue in the upcoming 2 quarters. Now on basis of our performance year-to-date, we now expect our full year revenues to reach the upper half of our initial guidance range of single-digit revenue growth. That means we are now expecting revenue growth of between 5% and 9% for this year. The prime driver is our semi and advanced manufacturing business, where we now expect to develop better than we expected earlier this year. Also reflected in this updated guidance is the continuing weakness in our automotive-related businesses, which is very relevant for our MPS business unit. In line with our updated revenue guidance, we also expect our EBITDA margin to be in the upper half of the original guidance range of 19% to 21% on a full year basis. That is, we expect our EBITDA margin to come in at between 20% and 21% this year. We left our guidance on CapEx unchanged, meaning CapEx remains expected to be slightly below last year's level. Please be reminded, however, that, amongst other things, the main capacity expansion project at the moment relates to our classical optic sites in Jena, where we are working on expanding our high-precision premium production, which mainly relates to our semi-inspection business. And with that, I would like to thank you and hand back to our moderator to start the Q&A session.