Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Comet Full Year 2023 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing by the relevant field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Ulrich Steiner, VP, Investor Relations, Comet Group. You will now be joined into the conference room. So it looks like we have a full house today, so the 1-minute delay is due to that. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Comet Group Conference on the publication of our annual results for 2023. Whether you are joining us in person or via webcast, we are pleased to have you all here. The press release, annual report, as well as the presentation, have been available for download on our website since 6:30 A.M. this morning. With me are our CEO, Stephan Haferl, and our interim CFO, Nicola Rotondo. They will guide you through the presentation first, followed by a Q&A session. Before we start, as always, I would like to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements during the speeches, as stated in the disclaimer on page 2 of the presentation. Please read this disclaimer carefully. With that, let me hand over the mic to our CEO, Stephan Haferl. Stephan, please. Well, thank you, Uli. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, a warm welcome to the presentation of Comet's annual results for 2023. Thank you for taking, first of all, the time to attend our conference, either in person or if you're out there in the ether, in the webcast. As mentioned, our ad interim CFO, Nicola Rotondo, will be joining me for the middle part of the presentation to do a deep dive into the financial results for the year. So before we dive into the numbers, allow me to provide an overview of the macroeconomic and industry events of 2023. Now, like most companies in the semiconductor value chain, Comet was definitely not immune to the weak market conditions. After several years of rapid growth, mostly fueled also by the pandemic, the entire semiconductor industry experienced a significant cyclical correction. This correction had a clear impact on all levels, from revenue to profitability, with key metrics contracting significantly below the record results of the previous years. Despite a strong finish to the year in Q4, and despite this setback in 2023, we made important progress. First of all, design wins for Synertia, including one with a Tier 1 wafer fabrication equipment manufacturer, underscored the progress we have made in commercializing our Synertia RF power platform. We completed important projects with the consolidation of sites, both on the West Coast of the U.S. and the launch of another expansion phase in Malaysia, to optimize and expand our geographic presence and customer proximity, which is very important in our industry. In our X-ray divisions, we launched new X-ray modules and systems for nondestructive testing in the growth markets for semiconductors as well as batteries. Nevertheless, needless to say, we had our hands full mitigating the impact of the very sharp correction. Our portfolio, based on two technology pillars, helped, as you will later see, in the strong performance of IXM, as well as the improvement in profitability at IXS, softened this impact. In addition, we took measures to adapt our organization to the new level of demand with the necessary prudence to take advantage of the secular growth trend and the upturn that lies ahead. We want to be ready, we have to be ready when things pick up again, presumably in the second half of this year. However, we reduced our workforce during the year by nearly 200 employees or 12% of our total workforce, mainly temporary workers, to the level that we actually had back in 2021. At the same time, we made every effort to retain our key employees, fully compensating for wage losses caused by short- time work in Switzerland. Now, let's take a look at the developments in our most important end markets on the next slide. Overall, we can say that it was a solid year in our traditional industrial markets, while we experienced, as mentioned before, a very strong correction in semiconductors, with weaknesses in the memory sector in particular. The cycle bottomed out in the second half of last year, and we began already to see signs of stability, if not recovery, towards the end of the year. Overall, investments in equipment for the semiconductor industry decreased by over 7%, which naturally had an impact on our results. On the other hand, we saw actually good growth in the automotive sector, with the proportion of electric vehicles sold and demand for batteries and electronics increasing. The aviation industry saw actually strong growth and almost reached pre-pandemic levels. Increased traffic led to more aircraft built, and demand for services continued to rise. Last but not least, the global security market remained at a high level and was closely linked to the recovery of the aviation industry and the increased need for security in the face of geopolitical uncertainties. Now, in light of this challenging environment, how did our divisions position themselves, and how did they fare? Now, despite the difficult market conditions, all three divisions made significant progress. At PCT, we accelerated the commercialization of our Synertia platform and secured several design wins, including one with a Tier 1 customer. The good news is that we have, since we communicated that first design win with a Tier One, secured four more design wins with a Tier One customer across multiple applications and chambers. In addition to commercializing Synertia, we have begun planning for expansion in Penang. As you know, we will be setting up our own manufacturing facility in Penang, and we recently secured a plot of land for this purpose. Now, this expansion is not just about increasing our assembly capacity that we have today already in Penang, but also about establishing a second site for the production of vacuum capacitors, what we actually do today, only in Flamatt, as part of actually our business continuity plan. Looking ahead to 2030, we are also considering Penang as a location for other divisional activities. So the other two divisions, IXM and IXS, will be settling in Penang with actually manufacturing activities, and potentially establishing thereby a hub in Asia, in addition to our established Flamatt and Hamburg sites in Switzerland and Germany, respectively. At IXS, we have taken yet another step towards establishing a leading position in the higher margin business of semiconductor inspection. Our new X-ray system, the CA-20, is tailored for use in the semiconductor industry, and we are moving quickly to commercialize it. We signed new contracts with customers in the semiconductor and battery industries, and to accommodate expected growth, we have strengthened our sales teams, particularly in the growth markets of Asia. We feel that we have repositioned IXS well by now and will continue to invest to secure the ongoing journey. At IXM, we are now finally reaping the rewards of investments made in recent years. New products are driving growth and contributed to 50% of net sales growth in 2023, and we will continue to invest in the development of technologically leading X-ray modules to meet the growing demand from new applications, such as inspection of batteries or in the semiconductor industry for 3D Advanced Packaging inspection, additively manufactured components, and metrology in general. To summarize, I can say that we have emerged strengthened from a transitional year in 2023. We certainly felt the strong impact of the semiconductor cycle correction, but it reached a turning point in the fourth quarter of 2023 and should now show an increasingly upward trend. Thanks to the work we did in 2023 and the careful implementation of adjustment measures, we are- we feel that we are very well prepared for the up, the awaited upswing. At PCT, we have strengthened our resilience against the semiconductor cycle, while also making good progress in commercializing our products and are on track to achieve our goals. At IXS, we have improved profitability, although at a low level still, and we'll use everything at our disposal to further improve profitability through increasing our share of wallet in the semiconductor industry. The introduction of our new system to the semiconductor industry, called CA-20, will certainly contribute to this.... Lastly, at IXM, we had a record year in 2023, demonstrating that our investment in leading-edge technology and products was the right decision. Now, after this brief overview of the past fiscal year, I will now hand over to our CFO, our interim CFO, Nicola Rotondo, who can provide you with more color and detailed explanation of the numbers at the divisional level. Thank you. Nicola? One question. So good afternoon also from my side. I'm happy to be here and to guide you through our numbers. So before I start with that, let me share my thoughts on how I look at the year 2023. On one hand, of course, it was dominated by the semi-correction, with the related impact on our profits, which did trigger, among others, workforce adaptation. On the other hand, our strong cash position did allow to further invest into the future. Namely, we kept an elevated CapEx level, and in R&D, we did even increase our staffing level. This shows not only our commitment, but also our ability to execute on our strategy in any given market situation. And with that, let's now go into the details of our financial performance. After three quarters of sales contraction, Q4 came in at the higher end of our expectations. This was mainly driven by PCT, which realized quite strong sales in Q4. Next to that, also, capacity utilization in PCT was high compared to the previous quarters. And so these two elements did lead to a rather high gross profit margin in Q4. Now, when looking at H2, the second half of the year, despite having lower sales, we were able to deliver a higher EBITDA margin. How that? So besides the strong Q4 performance, also in H2, we had an overall lower cost base compared to H1, and this did lead to increased profits in all three divisions. Now, let's have a look how the divisional performance was on a year-over-year basis. So, as Stephan said, what stands out here is the record result of the division IXM, by achieving, for the first time, CHF 100 million in sales. In addition, this sales increase was generated coming from our focus markets, electronics, semi, and battery. In fact, 70% of the sales increase of the division IXM came from those growing industries. And so the combination of higher sales and a lower cost base did lead to the improved profitability at EBITDA level. What also stands out here is the improved profitability of the division IXS, despite having lower sales. So when we look at the markets, our focus market, electronics, the share of electronics year-over-year remains stable. When we look at product, we can see that the service business, year-over-year, did even increase. And so service, being a very profitable part of the IXS division, in combination with the lower cost base, did more than offset the profit impact of the lower system sales. And this also did lead to improved profitability. So the increased profits of the X-ray divisions, of both X-ray divisions, did help to partially offset the sharp decline in sales of the division PCT. And so to mitigate the negative profit impact, PCT did implement measures, among others, short-time work, shorter working weeks, temporary shutdowns, and workforce adaptation beyond reducing temporary labor. Should also be noted that compared to the last downturn, being now in Penang also helps to have an overall lower cost base compared to the last downturn. How the division now did consolidate into the group, we are going to see on the next slides. So let's start with sales. Besides the volume impact, we also had currency headwinds, meaning that we lost CHF 25 million in sales due to lower currencies compared to the Swiss franc. That caused a drop of 4% alone. What also should be noted is that we were able to grow our sales in China on a year-over-year basis, this driven by PCT and IXM. Gross margin also came down, mainly driven by lower volumes, but also here, of course, having the negative effect of the strong Swiss franc. Should be noted also here that gross profit margin is still higher compared to the last downturn, thanks to the ongoing lean activities in the divisions. Then at bottom line level, the overall lower cost base compared to prior years, it's only partially offset the lower gross profit that we generated in the year. And so EBITDA, of course, contracted, leading to a significantly lower net income compared to prior year. Free cash flow had also here two phases. In H1, we were negative by CHF 50 million, and in H2, we were positive by CHF 40 million. That's mainly due to lower CapEx and lower working capital requirements that we had in H2 compared to H1. Then ROCE, finally, being a good proxy for value creation, did drop below our WACC, and so not covering the cost of capital anymore. This, of course, is not meeting our ambition to create value in all the phases of a semi cycle. The drop year-over-year is only driven by the lower profit, as the average capital employed remained flat year-over-year. How the other balance sheet KPIs developed, we are going to see on the next slide. The high cash balance in the beginning of the year did allow for dividend payments, despite having a negative free cash flow, and was the main cause of having a lower ending balance of the cash position. CapEx was mainly driven by the site consolidation in San Jose, that we finished successfully in H1. Next to that, we also expanded our presence in Penang, and we continued to invest into replacement and enhancement for the divisions. Net working capital came down almost in line with the sales drop, and what should be highlighted is that despite the lower sales level in the division of IXS, we were able to maintain the same level of customer prepayments. Net debt did increase. This only due because we had a lower cash position, as debt overall remained flat year-over-year. With the debt factor close to zero, we still have a very good value. In short, our balance sheet KPIs remained at healthy level, which we are going to see also on this slide here. Equity and equity ratio are signaling strength and solidity. With the dividend per share of CHF 1, we are even a bit above our guided payout ratio. This implies that we are anticipating a positive development of the business in the year 2024. Before talking about 2024, let me briefly summarize the year 2023. So to tie back to what I said in the beginning, yes, it was a very challenging year, and at the same time, we continued to execute on our strategy without trading off our midterm goals. With that, we are ending our backward-looking assessment and are now moving into the outlook section. Stephan, please. Thank you, Nicola, and let's take a look into the crystal ball of the outlook. Now, we expect different developments for our four main markets going forward. The shape and exact timing of the awaited upswing in the semiconductor industry obviously still remains a bit uncertain. While the stabilization observed in the second half of last year, especially in Q4 2023, has continued in the current year, we still do not see significant demand dynamics. Accordingly, we expect a moderate upswing in the first half of the year, followed by an acceleration in demand in the second half. The uncertainty about the course of the recovery is reflected in the widely differing estimates that you see on the left side for expenditure in semiconductor equipment in the financial year of 2024. Market research expects semiconductor equipment revenue growth to range from -2% to +7%, or in absolute terms, wafer fab equipment spend is estimated to be between $87 billion and $107 billion. For the group, we anticipate soft sales in the first quarter of 2024, both compared to the same period of the previous year and to Q4 2023. This is because the correction was still beginning to unfold for us in Q1 2023, and we realized additional sales in Q4 2023 that benefited us.... From the second quarter of 2024 onwards, we expect a positive development compared to the previous year, with an acceleration in the second half of the year. Turning to the automotive industry. In the automotive industry, car production in 2024 is expected to stagnate after a strong year of inventory buildup. However, the increasing sales of electric vehicles will have a positive impact on Comet, on us, as more sensors, more electronics, power electronics, but also logic components are used in EVs, benefiting all our businesses actually. In civil aviation, passenger miles are expected to reach pre-pandemic levels, actually early already this year in 2024, followed by a more moderate growth thereafter. In the military aviation sector, expenditures are expected to remain robust. The growth trend in aviation and the increased demand for security solution will also lead to solid development of the security industry. So overall, we expect the recovery in the semiconductor industry to increasingly drive our business in 2024 as the year progresses, while the other important end markets will stabilize or slightly improve in function of the overall macroeconomic development and obviously also consumer sentiments. Now, what does this mean for our divisional priorities? Now, at PCT, we will continue. We will further focus on commercializing the Synertia platform, while intensifying our key account management. We will also drive expansion in Penang as the best manufacturing location, and continue to develop our operations and business approach in all areas. At IXS, we will strategically expand our portfolio, building on top of the newly launched CA-20 semiconductor inspection system. We will continue also with our successful co-creation approach with our customers in the semi sector. Additionally, we will continue to further expand our local presence in growth regions, particularly in Asia. At IXM, we aim to further strengthen our market position in the semiconductor electronics inspection market. We will continue to develop markets for testing of batteries and its additively manufactured components, as well as expand our sales organization, like in the other two divisions, mostly in Asia, including also our service business at IXM. Now, these strategic priorities reflect clearly our commitment to leveraging our strength in our key markets and key technologies, and we are confident that these efforts will continue to position us for long-term success and create value for our shareholders. Now, let me turn to the outlook for the fiscal year 2024. Comet is ready for the upswing. That's kind of the key message for today. The slight upward trend we have seen in the semiconductor industry will gain momentum as the year progresses, and we are forecasting an acceleration in orders in H2 on the back of a rising demand in the sector of wafer fab equipment. As previously mentioned, the first quarter may be below last year's and also Q4's performance, but we expect to exceed previous years' quarters thereafter. For the traditional industrial sectors, we foresee a moderate, a stagnant outlook going forward on the back of the macroeconomic development as well as consumer sentiments. Besides growing, however, with the semiconductor recovery, we want to continue to improve operationally by furthering lean approaches across our entire organization, not only in production. This includes, obviously, a lot of work within the area of digitization and automation, which will contribute to efficiency gains and are an integral part of our Boost strategy execution program. All of these measures obviously come at a cost, as reflected in our guidance for 2024. At the top line level, we expect revenues of CHF 440 million-CHF 480 million, with an EBITDA margin of 15%-17%. The margin will be reduced by an enhanced level of spend compared to previous years, as already explained by our CFO. We plan to spend around 8% of sales for projects to support growth in the coming years, among other things, for the build-out of the Penang factory. This obviously also includes investments in cybersecurity, and we will also start this year with upgrading our ERP system to S/4HANA. Additional investments in the commercialization of our new product in IXS, CA-20, as well as further, expansionary moves that we are foreseeing in Penang. Now, with these final remarks, I conclude my presentation. I would like to thank you for your attention and, we'll open now the floor for questions that we are very much looking forward to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Stephan. We start with the Q&A now. ... two remarks. As always, please wait until the microphone is with you, and secondly, limit your questions to two. So the first question I saw came from, Michael Foeth. Michael, please. Yes, hello, Michael Foeth from Stifel. So, two questions. Basically, in terms of the guidance, you showed that the industry last year was down 7%, WFE. Your revenues were down about 50% in PCT. How should we think about the sort of the rebound, the overproportional rebound? If the market was to grow 7%, what can we expect from PCT in terms of percentage bounce back? Mm-hmm. The second question is, do you have sort of an idea, ballpark, how much revenues to expect from the Synertia platform in 2024? Thank you. Thank you for that question. Let me elaborate a little bit on the semiconductor market decline. As you mentioned, and as I alluded to in my presentation, for the entire wafer fab equipment sector, the correction downwards last year was slightly above 7%, while at PCT, the correction was just a little shy of 50%. So how does that happen? Let me put a little color to that. When you look at the wafer fab equipment spend, specifically in memory, you see that that part plunged by well above 30%. That's still not the almost 50% of PCT. But when you look into the wafer fab equipment spend of, in particular, NAND memory, you see that this was in excess of 70%, which shows that we are still strongly exposed or dependent on memory, first thing, and then second thing, quite strongly exposed to NAND memory. Now, how is this going to play out this year? Certainly, at one point, NAND is gonna come back, and it will come back probably with a vengeance. Now, when is this going to be? That's the good question, because what we already see is that, the DRAM, so the other variety of memory bricks or memory, ICs, have already started to move, especially a specific type of DRAM, which is called, HBMs or high bandwidth memory, which are being used by, most of all, artificial intelligence microprocessors. From our vantage point, we expect that the business in NAND, given the inventory levels, will start to pick up in the second half, and towards the end of this year, we will, and that's what we anticipate, see quite high investments in NAND as they come back. And with that elaborate answer, I forgot your second question. Synertia- Oh, yeah. More or less. Right. So as mentioned, by now, on the tier ones, we have five design wins. And if the deployment is happening as fast as we anticipate, alongside the design wins that we have with Tier 2s as well as tier threes, we expect to be in double-digit revenue. Low double-digit revenue, but this is sort of a plausible, given the kind of the breadth and the opportunities that lie ahead. All with the caveat that the markets are really coming back, starting H2. Michael? Yes, thanks very much. It's Michael from Stifel. So only two questions. You mentioned already HBM or high bandwidth memory, Stefan. Can you elaborate a little bit, what can we maybe expect from Comet in terms of high bandwidth memory? Because as far as I know, Lam Research is pretty strong in that field. Mm-hmm. On the machine side, we know it's your largest client, so maybe you can tell us a little bit how, what do you think about this discussion? Yeah. Maybe on CA-20- Mm-hmm ... what can we expect from CA-20 going forward? You have just launched it actually, let's say, towards the end of last year. There are a couple of machines probably in laboratories where they are tested or in lab environments, let's put it that way. So when can we see their real orders coming? Okay. So on HBM, where we also participate, not as strongly as on NAND, indeed, we see that there is business around, but it is still on a lower level, let's call it like that. There's a lot of dynamics in AI in general, and it is probably going to be the prevailing kind of trend or business generator towards 2030, but it is still on a rather low level compared to everything else. 2-3 years, I think that will be one of the big parts of growth. When it comes to the CA-20, which was launched back in November, we anticipate that we will see first orders very shortly. Given the fact that this system was developed, co-created with customers, and therefore, the lengthy market introduction that usually typically goes hand in hand with such complicated systems, will be shortened quite drastically. So expect sales to happen this year, and that is only for the CA-20 that is actually meant to go into labs. What we are currently working on with our co-creation partners is systems that will go into the fab, and that is where the volume is. But typically, the way a system actually comes into fab or inline, outline inspection, is through a lab, where basically you know the quality inspection processes are first developed. So the former or the latter is what is going to happen this year, so expect sales this year. Yeah, Doron? Hi, Doron Lande, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question on IXS. Especially like, even though we are quite progressive in this realignment story, the profitability is still a bit on the lower end. Can you tell us what's actually possible when we're talking about turning IXS into a profitable division? And, second question would be regarding FX impact. You, if I understood correctly, the FX impact in 2023 was negative 4%. How would this develop or do we have an outlook, how this develops into 2024? Thank you. So I'll give a little color on the first one, and then I'll pass over to Nicola for the FX question. So what is possible? We have high expectations on the market of 3D Advanced Packaging, as X-ray is crystallizing more and more into the tool of choice going forward. And we are very well positioned with the CA-20 or the technology package that we have at IXS, starting with the AI software that comes from the acquisition we made back in 2020 with ORS in Montreal, to actually the light source, the X-ray module coming from IXM. We expect, given the fact that 3D Advanced Packaging is sort of the extension of Moore's Law, that this business is becoming rather large, so a large served available market. At the same time, we know that there is tremendous value in those 3D Advanced Packaging, and the indications that we have is that the gross margins achievable for us with systems such as the CA-20, are on an entirely different level as compared to what we have today in our legacy markets of automotive as well as aerospace. So we expect that, the long-term plans that we have communicated in the past with, you know, higher EBITDA, numbers, at least two-digit, is totally reachable. It's plausible. And on FX, have at it, Nicola. Yeah, FX, if we would know, that would be very good. And look, if the currencies would develop from 2023 to 2024 in a similar range like that they develop from 2022 to 2023, you may expect a similar impact. So again, CHF 20 million-CHF 25 million, if the drop is mainly for euros and for dollars. I mean, we had a drop, average currency dropped by roughly 5% when it comes to dollar and euro. And so basically, if that drop continues, expect the same impact. If the drop is only half of it, expect to half the impact. That's basically what our outlook is, which is reflected in the guidance. Did I answer your questions, Doron? Yes. Okay, who's next? I saw Felix, and after that, Sebastian. Yes. Hi, one clarification question: Did I understand that correct, that you are speaking now of five design wins for the Synertia platform with tier one? Correct. So that's 4 increase versus the Capital Markets Day in November? Correct. Okay. Good. So you remember at the Capital Market Day, we showed quite a pipeline, a lot of activities, and some of them have now materialized. And we have, as a matter of fact, also three systems out with customers, which is kind of... That, that is big. It's not only you won a design win, it is in the field. ... feedback is so far positive? Very positive. Okay. The second question is on inventory with your largest customers. I mean, I guess one of the reasons for the first question, that the delta between CapEx industry spend and your sales development in PCT, I understand it was also largely driven by inventory. Can you share a bit of light? What do you see in terms of inventory, and are they now depleted, and order behavior is returning to normal patterns or just to have a bit of a sense here? Yeah. So in general, what you can say is that the excess inventories, which were present at the onset of the cyclical correction, have come down tremendously. And also at our largest customer, that was one of the things that plagued us last year. We see that their inventory of our products have come dramatically down, so that we expect, as of, I'd say, Q2 of this year, normal order patterns to come back so that we sort of get back to the baseline business that you have in a correction market. I hope that gives a little color to your question. Sebastian? Yep, hear me. First one is a follow-up to that one, with regard to the guided- Which one? The first one, actually. Okay. Very well. With regard to the guided double-digit sales you mentioned, is that mainly related to the sales by the first tier one you got, you alluded to on the Capital Markets Day? And, those that are coming in now, that is something then for 2025, or how do you see the sort of sequence there? So we expect that we will see the first bulk orders actually from that first tier one. They were the sort of the first to qualify for actually a new system, so a leading-edge system, and we expect that system to go into mass production this year. Having said that, first orders, actual orders, we received from tier twos, but those are typically of lower volume. These new ones are most likely then for 2025? I would be careful saying that, just like that, at the- Mm-hmm ... beginning of the year. Um, okay. Could be... It's always a big question, once you win the design, how fast will it go out there? Some of those design wins we know are for chambers, where actually an incumbent is being replaced. So there is no market introduction, or proof phase for a new tool. The tool is already there, and there is already a rather large installed base. So the question is, how fast will we come into replacement? Got it. Second question is, if I recall correctly, on the Capital Markets Day, you sort of guided rather into the direction of 5% CapEx. Now you said, like, 8%. That's 3 percentage gone within, like, 4 or 5 months, and as well for the margin in that regard. I was wondering what else is sort of the change in thought behind that? Yeah, so basically, I think we indicated even levels of 7% at the Capital Markets Days, and also indicated that 2024 would be rather on the higher end of that. And now, of course, depending, looking at the guidance, of course, now that may be rather on the high side, as a percentage of sales. And to your question, did something change compared to that outlook? Basically, not. So the absolute numbers in terms of CapEx, we are still basically continuing to have at the level that we anticipated, and the percentages is basically a result of the sales. That plus we are presumably going to move faster to now. Thank you, Sebastian. We have Michael with another question. Yeah, it's just a follow-up, sorry, on the Synertia. You said five tier ones, but you didn't say five different tier ones. So the question is, are we talking about five different tier one clients or just five tier one orders? Could be five times the same client, no? There are three tier ones. Yeah. We're on five different chambers, different applications, with a tier one. Perfect. Thank you. More questions in the audience? If no immediate questions, then we go to Sebastian. But we have two questions from journalists from the webcast. I'll start with first one from La Liberté, Thibaut Guizon. And he's asking: Number of employees at the end of 2023 is lower than at the end of 2022. How do you explain the reduction from 1,763 to 1,577 employees, and especially the reduction in Flamatt? Did you have to lay off people? And a second question, you introduced short-time working in Flamatt, is it still in force? First and foremost, what we can say is we had practically no termination of fixed contracts. And one part. What we can say in Switzerland that we did, in order to you know mitigate the effects, was that we partially did not replace people who left on fixed contracts. However, what we did was that we terminated a lot of the temporary contracts, and in addition, and given the severity of the correction, we introduced late last summer short time work, which we extended up until November, if I'm not mistaken. And then sort of for the Christmas period, and in order to boost Q4, we stopped it. To the best of my knowledge right now, maybe Nicola knows that better, we have not reintroduced short-term work in 2024. As it looks right now, it is probably not going to be necessary, but maybe you know better. Yeah, indeed, on that one I have to correct you. Oh, okay. Actually, we did reintroduce it by mid of January, but on your other point, basically, that is also somehow right. We are not likely going to use basically the three months that you typically have when you are introducing it, as we really see signs that we don't need to extend it for the three months entirely. So we are going to likely end it somewhere in March. Thank you, Nicola. Good to have you here. The second question from the webcast is from Christian Braun, from Finanz und Wirtschaft. I would have been surprised if we had no question on artificial intelligence. So everybody's talking about it. It's been coming for some time, but now it seems to be coming stronger than expected. Could you therefore please give an indication on how much AI will supposedly add to total semi demand in the coming years? So I, I think it is fair to say that the projections of the semi industry, and maybe it's also, to a certain extent, visual thinking, of becoming a trillion-dollar business by 2030, is on the back of artificial intelligence. The amount of hardware required is mind-boggling, especially as the large language models and the parameters that go in there are still in, in a phase of very, very rapid expansion. And that can only be actually achieved and covered by a humongous amount of hardware, specialized hardware, leading-edge hardware. So I would say it is going to be one of the most important trends, and it will kinda transpire through all or most elements of semi. So, when you look at smartphones going forward, smartphones have stagnated over the past couple of years. 5G wasn't the big thing that everyone thought that everyone is gonna change the phone to get 5G. Didn't happen. Bigger foldable screens wasn't a big thing either. But once you will see that AI is becoming a built-in feature of smartphones, that will therefore boost the smartphone market as well. So AI is going to be the trend going forward in our industry. So thank you, Stephan. Thank you, Thibaut, Christian, for those questions. I hope everything's answered, and we continue in the audience with Sebastian. Yeah, just a quick follow-up with regard to the book- to- bill. You have shown that in the past quite consistently. This time I didn't see it. Was just wondering, was it left out on purpose, or what's the thinking there behind? Actually, it was not on purpose as such. I mean, book- to- bill at the moment, for the year, still was below one. That is true. And what we have seen, as I said in Q4, really is an acceleration of, the orders that we did convert immediately into sales, so it did not have, an effect on the year-end backlog. Going forward, Q1, we expect, not yet the rebounds that, we are then going to see from Q2 going onwards. So to give you a bit an indication of the book- to- bill and how it is translating into Q1, basically, that is what you're going to expect, that rebound we are going to see in Q2. Got it. Many thanks. Any further questions in here? Serge? Yes, I take two questions in that case. First question is, in IXM, I remember in the old days, you had had margins north of 25%, if I'm not wrong. And now you achieved a record year of CHF 100 million, and you are at 23% and whatever. Thus, does IXM cover more corporate costs, or is this a new normal to achieve a 23%-24% margin, or what should I read into these numbers? ... Thank you for that question, Serge. Actually, you're right. Back in 2018 and 2019, we achieved EBITDA margins in excess of 25%. Why with the record year aren't we there yet? Well, that goes hand in hand with investments that we continue to do. I mentioned before that IXM is of pivotal importance in order to make the CA-20 and this entire advanced packaging inspection play that we are pushing at IXS possible. So, the level of EBITDA right now is not on the level because we continue to make investments. Will it get above 25%? For sure. Probably, I think we alluded to that back at the capital market day at least two years ago. We expect to be above 25% in about 2025. Kinda fits nicely. Okay, fair point. Thank you. When I do the same or similar calculation, you, Nicola has told us, you know, it's important, leverage is important, whatever it is, and now you are guiding for sales growth by +20%, probably over the H1 double digit, probably not, I don't know. But you are guiding, your midpoint guide, your EB margin guidance midpoint is the same we have seen H2, you know? With CHF 190 million. And now we are going, let's make it equal, CHF 220 million sales, so CHF 240 million sales per six months, you know? So I understood that you invest into growth, but this is more or less capitalized. It's not expense, I understand, you know, from the CapEx. So I can't make the calculation because, I have a former strain. So basically, we are investing in CapEx, yes, but not only, we are also investing basically in activities that are going directly through the, into the P&L. And Stephan basically then can elaborate a bit more on what that is. So that is basically an additional burden into the P&L compared to the prior year. Second, what we also should have in mind is that the second half of the year is... everything being equal, always better than the first half of the year. And in this year, it was particularly the case. Why? Because in these type of situations, we have introduced a zero vacation balance policy for the year end. And so what happened is that we did reverse all the vacation balances that we did accumulate in the first half year, in the second half year. And so that had quite a significant impact, just looking at the second half of the year. And that's why the second half of the year, taking this as the new normal, would not be appropriate. Third, we also reduced third-party spend in light of the semi correction that we have, also in a quite significant way, but that we did really just for a short time of this semi correction. It would not be sustainable then to basically keep it at the level that we are, just from operational point of view. And maybe now on the additional initiatives, Stephan, you may shine some light in it. Yeah. So versus consensus, you would probably expect an EBITDA that is two percentage points higher. And I mentioned in my outlook that we are accelerating on the commercialization of all platforms, but at the same time, we continue to make quite some investments in R&D to push that commercialization and acceleration right out of R&D, out of the lab into the fab. And this is excess operational spend that obviously then lowers the EBITDA. That is one side, and the other thing that I alluded to in my presentation is that we will be starting to do the transition from our current ERP to a new ERP, which is cloud-based, and therefore we cannot capitalize it. It is pure OpEx. So, the third one is that we are taking quite some precautions and investing more than we have in the past in cybersecurity measures. But now you speak only about the headwinds, but not the tailwinds, such as Penang, leverage, operating leverage, all this stuff, you know? But, that's already- We'll take a coffee afterwards. Yeah, sure. Sure. But that is already in the model. That is already in the consensus model. Otherwise, you would have forgotten something in your model. Thank you, Serge, for the question. Rachel? Hello, Rachel Blunschi from NZZ. What's your estimate for destocking impact at your clients for the last fiscal year? What is our estimate for the destocking? Oh, okay. In terms of how much revenue did we forego because they had so much on stock? Is that- Yes. Okay. Personally, I think it is about CHF 30 million, that we probably did more in 2022 and hurt us in 2023. But that is just a rough estimate, as we did not initially get the exact numbers from our customers on what they actually have on stock. What we saw throughout the year, that sort of the baseline revenue, the revenue that you would also expect in a correction, was lower than in years before, which made this whole correction obviously quite painful for us. I hope that gives some color to your question. While you're thinking about the next question, I heard that we have a question coming in over the phone. Can you open the channel, please? We have a question from Marie Ganneval from Bank of America. Please, go ahead. Hi, thank you very much for taking my question. Just to follow up, on Synertia. So I understand you have secured more for design win at tier one customers. I was wondering if you could give any color on the type of application this could be? And also, just wondering if it would be possible to see Synertia being used into HBM, for example. And my follow-up is, did you see any more design wins at Tier 2 customers? Thank you. So I'm not sure whether I got the entire bundle of questions, but to give you some color on the applications, it is in deposition. More specifically, it is the majority of the design wins are in metal deposition. The second part of the question or one part on further design wins with Tier 2, I can answer, we've had more design wins there, too. Was there a third part? Yeah, I was just wondering if it was more oriented towards logic or memory in terms of the design wins you had? Oh. That we don't know. Okay. And just to follow up as well, in terms of PCT, obviously you had to lower utilization levels back in 2023. When do you actually expect to be back to full utilization levels for PCT in 2024, if that's the case? Oh, okay. So in terms of capacity levels, we have, in terms of equipment capacity, that is probably not going to be fully exploited this year. Rather if we see then a strong uptick in demand in 2025, presumably towards the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026, where we then presumably will have to go to four shifts. And then until we have the factory in Penang up and running, also in the course of 2026, it will then gradually drop down to three shifts again. Thank you very much. Thank you, Marie. We had a question over there, I think. It was on capacity utilization. Any other questions in here? Other question over the phone? No, Dan, no further questions on the phone. Okay, great. Thank you. No webcast questions, so that means- Coffee ... we end the conference here. Thank you for your active participation. For those who are here in the room, we invite you for aperitifs on the other side of the floor of the building. Thank you again for joining us. Happy to stay in contact with you. This concludes the conference. Have a good day. Thanks for participating, and goodbye.