Good morning, welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweize r, Investor Relations Contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure to host the online Microsoft Teams webcast of our live results presentation today in Zurich. Thank you for joining INFICON Conference on its fourth quarter 2022 and full year results. With us today are Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of INFICON since January 1st, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO of INFICON. The management team will first present the results then take questions. During the management's prepared remarks, online participants are kindly asked to turn their microphones and cameras off. You should have received by now a press release on the Q4 and full year results, together with the links to the accompanying visuals for this web conference. All these documents are available for download in the Investor Relations section of the INFICON website. We also would like to ask online participants not to navigate independently through the presentations as this will show on all screens to everyone. We promise you will see all the slides. Please neither activate the transcript function for this webcast either. Thank you. We are broadcasting a live conference via MS Teams. We thus ask online participants to post their questions in writing using the chat function in MS Teams. This should be the second icon on the top right menu. Management will read out your questions and answer them after their prepared remarks. The live audience, of course, will be able to ask questions orally. I would also like to inform you that we record this web conference to archive the audio file later on the INFICON website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this MS Teams session may contain forward-looking statements that do not solely relate to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would like to hand over now to Oliver Wyrsch. Oliver, please. Thank you very much. I'm super excited to be here today with everybody here in the room and everybody online. My first time, obviously. It has been a couple months already that I'm now in the job. It has been an exciting time, lots going on, intensive time, but also very positive time. I'm also happy to go through the results of last year. I think it's a good result. I will give you some more details now, and we'll then, as Bernard said, also have time for some questions. We have two parts. First, it will be me about the general results, the key messages, the markets, and the expectations for 2023. Afterwards, we will hand over to Matthias Tröndle. He will talk in more detail about the financials, the dividend, and the corporate calendar. Then we will have some time for questions. With that, I will start. Very good. The highlights of the results, 2022, certainly a strong year. Growth in all segments, growth in all regions. That's something that is very special, of course. Also the orders quite high, higher than the sales. Even though we did a lot of capacity build-up last year, you know about our CapEx numbers, the bottleneck was now not capacity, it was mainly sales. It was mainly the supply chain. There could have been more sales if we had less troubles there. It did lighten up a little bit towards the end, but it's something that we'll talk about some more in the expectations also for this year. We could also, with the cost inflation, particularly in our supply chain, defend our profitability. As you know, we spent about $15 million-$17 million just on extra costs to get chips for our sensors. That's something we communicated last year already. This is one of the headwinds we had. Transportation was another one, some energy factors, labor, and so on. Nonetheless, I'm proud that we have achieved this result of this 19%. Overall, the growth in all different markets, 13% increase, $581 million. In there actually were significant FX effect. One, for instance, was the euro, but we also had effects in Korea and Japan. That was negatively impacting in particular when we then look at European numbers or large European accounts. What we can say in terms of profitability, I think in particular Q4, and Matthias will talk some more about this, was a strong year not only on sales, but also in profitability that really pushed us forward and makes us also mostly optimistic for this year. Last year we invested in CapEx $34 million. That was the second year with high investments. This was our two-year program to increase CapEx by about 50%. We will continue this year also with investments as we see the need also now and for future. The same also in R&D, we continue to invest in R&D. I think leading-edge technology for our sensors is a key capability and an important factor for our strength in the market. You can also see on the right side in the donut our split in the market. Still Semi is, of course, large. There was a large growth there, over 50%. We have General Vacuum, which is the general industrial sector, in orange. In green, you see RAC and Auto. In yellow, the Security and Energy market. In a minute, I will tell you a little bit more about all these markets. First, the global overview. Interesting was that we had a lot of growth also in the West. I think the prior quarters, there was often a lot of growth in Asia, and particularly also in China. Last year, we had seen also a lot of growth in North America with an increase of 21%. Also in Europe, specifically, if you look at the local currency, actually, EMEA was the second fastest-growing region, which is certainly something a little bit exceptional for us. This year, probably this will change again, and we'll talk about that a bit more. A look through the markets. Our biggest market, Semi and Vacuum Coating, great growth last year. Orders, even more growth, and we have certainly built up a backlog here as well. Capacity is increased. Capacity will further increase also this year, and we will go and be able, hopefully, to reduce our delivery times. We had always the leading-edge delivery times. We believe we still have them, but in a difficult comparison, we wanna get back to that, and we wanna also, of course, reduce our backlog. We see the market mixed, we certainly look at this market very closely, have a lot of discussions. I myself travel a lot to customers. I was just recently with TSMC, ASML, and larger Semi customers. We see a mixed picture because, yes, memory is weakening. We see that too. INFICON is a bit less affected. Why? The memory market is one that doesn't use as many sensors yet. It's just about to start, actually, the last couple of years. The decrease of the CapEx doesn't affect us as much. The leading edge at the same time, yes, it's softening this year, but it's not as dramatic. When I talked to TSMC a couple of weeks ago, they told me, "Yes, it will be a softer year, but we'll also have to make the strategic investments." At the same time, as soon as they have the fabs equipped with the tools and they start them up, start the processes, they see the need for optimization. They have excursions. They need sensors. Often the sophisticated sensors from our part are actually only really coming on board later in the process, versus maybe some of our other sensors that are sold through the OEM channel, like the pressure gauges. For us, it's a bit more of a mix there. We also see the trailing edge, where we sell, in particular, also software, scheduling software, FPS, hasn't really slowed down so much. These are companies like NXP, TI, STMicro. When I then take on top ASML, that, as you all know, totally doesn't slow down, but basically has a backlog of more than one year, which we are part of, we see a bit of a mixed picture. With a lot of uncertainties of what exactly will happen this year. What we also see in China is that the leading-edge strategy maybe will slow down next year after this investment round of this year. Potentially, the trade war has finally taken some effect. I don't believe that China will give up semiconductor. I just believe that maybe they will focus more on lower-end technology, there is, of course, a lot of other leading-edge technologies that are related and relevant for us, like battery or solar. So the mix might change there as well. All in all, I would like to say we are very happy to present such a result in this segment and also are very positive for the long-term future with maybe a bit of a mixed feeling for this year. What we do know is we have a strong pipeline of new products that are coming in the markets. Of course, you know, even though the semiconductor market moves quickly, the actual product development moves very slow. It's not like pharma, where I was before, where it's maybe that long, but it is a long pipeline. We can also therefore say with a certain confidence that there is a lot more in the works. If I move on to the next market, Automotive, Refrigeration, Air Conditioning. Here, overall, we see a slight growth. Actually, last year, we've seen a growth as well, but you have this effect of the currency. A lot of this business is in euro. Therefore, you don't see a big step forward if you look at the US dollar numbers in which we report. The traditional Automa-market, so combustion engine, is slowing down. That's just a transition, the energy transition to EV that we see as well. There's a bit less dynamic there, but there's a lot of dynamic on the battery side for EVs. The general market, where it's about air conditioning, refrigeration. It's a positive market, but of course not as dynamic and as fast-growing. There's a trend there towards automatization and more precision inspection, which we're part of with automation solutions that we have and new software. Also here, we believe we have a good pipeline of products for the future. The next market, General Vacuum, we call it. This is the general industrial market. This is often driven through the general economic development. Good growth also here, 14%. Also here, we believe we have mostly a number one position in this segments where we are in. We believe this year this is softening to flat. I believe all of you when I talk with you have also certain doubts of what is exactly gonna happen in the general economy. I wouldn't say we are smarter than you. I think we collectively all try to find out what is exactly happening. What we think right now is that Europe and U.S. will probably not slow down too much. That's why the softening flat mix is there. We see in China, though, that was a bit slower last year compared to the usual growth. We see there an acceleration this year. Our China team is actually quite optimistic. What exactly happens, we don't know yet. We had Lunar New Year, and it's just starting up, and we just came out of the pandemic end of last year. We are also here cautiously optimistic for China, and you could maybe say even globally. It's still a very mixed picture, as I just outlined. It's also many different segments that have really very different dynamics. The last segment, Security and Energy. As you all know, we have launched a new product line, the flagship product. You see it here in green, the HAPSITE CDT. This developed together with the DoD in the U.S. and has certainly reached a lot of interest across NATO. Unfortunately, we are in difficult times security-wise. On the other hand, that is providing some additional dynamic also for a business like that. The largest part in Security and Energy as product line is certainly the HAPSITE. As you've seen, we have had a very positive reaction from the U.S. government with this large order last year. There was some more coming in the meantime, and we will expect more this year. The problem there is rather like with most segments as well, but in particular with such a complex product with so many parts, the supply chain. You miss one part, you're not shipping. That's a bit what constrains us for now. Small segment, but we see growth in this segment. There is other parts of this energy, so there's a part of new energy as well, biomethane, even some hydrogen. I wouldn't say, though, that these are massive markets yet. In particular hydrogen, it will take years to really develop that, but we are part of this transition. There's a little piece of environment in here as well, water, air. There's also dynamic there, but also this is, of course, as you see, much smaller than other markets. With this, I come to the topic of sustainability. I'm actually quite proud of what the team achieved here. We worked on different fronts, but we certainly worked hard on the CO2 emission reduction. As you've seen, we have, again, if you look at the lower left corner here, reduced massively with 59%. This is the second year, so we're almost a 1/3 from two years ago at 502 tons. We have most of our factories now running with green energy. Some have their own, as you can see here, where we have added photovoltaic or we reuse heating, like in Balzers, from the production machines' air and use that instead of an actual heating to heat the building. There's a couple of innovative ideas also here. I think innovation and creativity of our team helps us. We will of course continue with this. My last point for today before I hand over to Matthias, expectations 2023. I said it already a bit in the segments. We are mostly optimistic for this year. We see risks. We see a slower general economical environment. We have a backlog. For many quarters, we had a book-to-bill higher than one. We're building up capacity still that will come online. We also believe that there's a number of segments where there will be growth or there will be, let's say, a flat tendency. Even though there is some declines also in the mix, that comes to this conclusion that, translated into numbers, we see a range of $570 million-$610 million possible and an operating income of approximately 19%. This is also dependent a lot on general dynamics and the supply chain, the geopolitics, the inflation, eco-economy, depending on each region. This is something that today we see possible. With that, I would like to go and hand over to Matthias. Thank you, Oliver. Good morning, everyone. I will cover as usual our Q4 and fiscal year result for the current year or for the past year. I will comment the dividend proposal and our expectation. First, let me start with some highlights for Q4. Orders have been really good. Sales and operating income have been at record level. The gross margin improved slightly versus Q3, what is really not happening so often, sales in all regions and also in all end markets did grow in Q4. From a balance sheet point of view, we can say that CapEx was somewhat lower in Q4 than in the previous quarters. Net cash and cash flow have been impacted by high working capital, while the cash flow improved slightly versus Q3. For the full year, we can say this was a record year in terms of orders and sales, operating income and capital expenditures. We invested a lot. But due to high working capital, also with a lower cash flow. With regards to environmental and social, the green ones here, I think Oliver mentioned it already, the CO2 emissions could be reduced again the second year in a row. We have more green energy and less waste. And very important, we could attract and employ more than 200 people as our employees. Now let me go into a little bit to the details. As I've seen from the press release, we achieved revenue of $159.4 million in Q4, which compares to $144.5 million in Q4 last year. This is an increase of 10.3% taking into account the negative currency impacts, which is mainly driven by the euro, but also we had strong changes in the Korean won and the JPY during the year of -6.5% or $9.4 million. We achieved an organic growth of 16.8%. Compared to previous quarter, we achieved also an increase which was 10.8%. Oliver did already comment the development of the individual markets. We can highlight that sales in all markets did grow, and this both in comparison with previous year and also previous quarter. In both comparison, the growth was driven by Semi and Vacuum Coating, as well as Security and Energy markets stood out. With that, the first quarter was our record quarter. The regional distribution of sales, which you can see here on the right side, shows growth in all regions and with the highest growth in North America with 27%, while Asia and Europe did grow by approximately 5%. The strong growth in North America was mainly coming from sales to Semi, but also Security and Energy. Let's go to the next slide. The gross profit reached 46.1% in Q4, slightly down by 57 basis points compared to last year Q4. The positive impact of the higher volume was partially compensated by still high material prices and high broker fees, freight and duties. Positive is that now after the last two quarters with a gross margin range of about 45%, the margin could be improved by 114 basis points compared to previous quarter. What happened on the cost side, we spent $11.7 million on R&D in Q4, an increase of 1.7%. Additional headcounts to support our efforts in development, partially compensated by favorable foreign currency impacts did drive this slight increase. In SG&A, the expense level increased to $27.9 million or 12%. Personnel expense have been the main reasons for that one, but also general cost increases. Reviving, I always say reviving trade shows and travel costs are the main driving elements which have been there. The operating profit, as a consequence, we achieved record high operating profit of $33.9 million or 21.3% of sales after $31.1 million or 21.5% last year. This is an increase of 9%. Compared to our previous quarter, the result did improve by strong 34%. Income tax expense for the fourth quarter was $2.6 million, which represents a tax rate of 8%. Due to the profit mix of our international entities and some favorable year-end deferred tax entries, the rate was lower than last year's Q4 rate. The net profit therefore reached $29.6 million or 18.6% in Q4. This compares to $26.3 million or 18.2% in the prior year, a 12.5% increase in absolute numbers. Let's move to the balance sheet highlights. Our net cash reached $2.5 million, which is about $52 million lower than last year. There were basically two main factors for that decrease. One is our working capital, and as a consequence, lower operating cash flow. Two, our CapEx investment programs. The working capital, which consists out of accounts receivables, inventories minus accounts payables, closed at $208.5 million or 33% of sales, with that about $56 million higher than end of last year. The increase was partially due to the accounts receivables because we had higher sales, the majority was coming from a $46 million increase in inventory resulting from the high business and order volumes, as well as the various supply chain issues with corresponding availability and bottleneck situations. As a consequence of the increased working capital, the cash flow was impacted, and we reached $14.9 million. Improved further Q3, lower by about $5 million than last year, Q4. The balance for inventory decreased to $2.8. The DSO ratio was more or less stable. As shared even in 2021 of last year, we continued to invest in our capacity, meaning mainly building and machinery and equipment. After the high levels in Q2 and Q3, with close to $10 million per quarter spent, we had as mentioned in the October call, a somewhat lower spend in the last quarter of about $6 million. The balance sheet shows a solid structure with 65% equity ratio and no long-term debt. Yeah, well, this has been my comments on the balance sheet and Q4. Now I wanna say a few words to the full fiscal year results. For the full year, we reached revenue of $581.3 million after $515.8 million in the previous year, which corresponds to an increase of close to 13% or around $65 million. Excluding currency effects of 5.2% and a small impact from acquisitions of 0.2%, this represents an organic increase of 17.7% for the year. As you can see in the chart, we are able to grow in all end markets, and the Semi and Vacuum Coating end market had, with a plus of 17%, the strongest growth. From a regional point of view, Asia is our largest region. They did grow by 11% and reached $276 million, $76 million last year, about 48% of global sales. North America had a 26% share and did increase by 21%. Europe has now a share of also 25% of global sales and did grow by 9%. The gross profit margin reached, for the full year, 45.9%, showing a decrease of 201 basis points compared to previous year. The higher volume partially compensated for higher material prices, very high broker fees and logistic costs did impact this decrease. Turning to the costs, we spent $45.5 million on R&D for the full year, a slight decrease of 3%. The decrease was influenced by favorable foreign currency impacts, while our development efforts continued to be high. The SG&A costs increased by 10%, higher variable compensation, additional headcounts, and general cost increases. Here, some favorable FX impacts did compensate certain increases, but these have been the main drivers for that. Operating profit, therefore, reached a record high at $111.6 million or 19.2% of sales after $100.4 million in the previous year, a plus of 11.2%. Year-on-year, the tax expense decreased by approximately 5% to $18.4 million, which gave us an average tax rate of 17.2% compared to the 19.4% in the previous year. The net profit reached $88.5 million or 15.2%. This compares to $80.3 million or 15.6% in the previous year, an increase of 10.2%. Now also here, let us turn to some balance sheet data. Cash flow for the full year increased to $46.2 million or 7.9% of sales from $85.1 million in the previous year. As mentioned earlier, higher accounts receivables, lower provisions, and especially higher inventory balances have been the main drivers. The capital expenditures were close to $34 million, giving a plus of 17%. 2022 was the second year in a row where we had really heavy investments in capacity, especially buildings and machinery and equipment. I already commented the working capital development. Working capital closed at $208.5 million, mainly due to AR and inventory. Equity ratio for the full year, 65%, compared to 69% in the last year. Now, let me continue with the outlook. You see here some history data and the new figures we just published. Based on our assessment, the order book, the order intake, and the overall business situation in the end markets, we are mostly optimistic for the started year. We expect sales between $570 million and $610 million and operating income margin of about 19%. Finally, last slide, I come to the dividend. We have released this morning the information that we wanna distribute 18 CHF per share. We have invested significant amounts in additional capacity for our growth in 2021 and also last year. This was more than $60 million. Due to the expected future and mid-medium and long-term development, we also continue to expect further investments in the future. Due to that, and to support our growth plans, the board of director has decided to propose to the shareholder at the AGM on March 30 a distribution of 18% per share. This is CHF 3 lower than last year, 14% lower, and represents a still high 54% payout. This also means that we will return approximately $47 million to our shareholders. The payout is expected to take place on April 6. I would like to close the presentation, we are now ready for your questions. Thank you. Bernhard, good question. How do we do this with the microphone so people can hear us online? I know that there are about 40 people joining us online, and I saw that Marta in London, she has questions. May I ask you, Marta, to switch on your microphone and maybe ask the questions just orally? Then we can see whether we can hear you and if you can hear us. Are you with us, Marta? Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Can you hear me, please? I hear you. The audience probably has difficulty. Sorry for that. I would like to ask about the guidance and the assumed margin development in 2023, whether this flat year-on-year margin development assumes any normalization in the supply chains, and in particular for the prices for the electronic components, please. Then I have two more, if I may. Thank you. Yeah. I hope I captured that fully. Should I repeat? Yeah, please do. While Marta was speaking. Could you please explain whether your guidance for flat year-over-year EBIT margin development assumes any normalization in the supply chains, and in particular the prices for electronic components? If so, could you please quantify? Regarding Semistand, what do you expect for the market in semi? Is it not fair to say that you are guiding for 20% outperformance over where you stand in revenue 2022? Okay. Thank you, Marta, and hopefully we meet again soon in person. Latest in May, I think. First part of the question. Yes, we believe with this profitability, I have to say it was not as easy as maybe it could have been because there's a lot of moving parts around that. We assume that the supply chain will further improve. That means in terms of availability, but also in terms of pricing. We have seen a first trend of this end of last year. It has though a little bit stopped at that level with only slight improvements. It's a bit hard to say how quickly it will improve, but we expect that it will improve throughout this year. On the other side regarding semi, again we see a mixed picture. I can go from different extremes. One extreme for us being the leaf of business with ASML that has nearly no impact to the other extreme of where you maybe see in memory, have massive reductions in CapEx, though not so impactful for INFICON. In the middle is automotive, IoT, HPC. For us, it's really a year where we would say in the average, maybe flat, maybe a little bit of reduction. Of course we come in with our backlog and take that also into account, we can only ship backlog of course when the supply chain also improves. This is a little bit connected with the answer to the first question, right? This assumption. We see with all possibilities that it will change over year regarding our expectations, but that's what we see from what we know currently and the latest trends. I hope I could answer this questions. Now you, Marta, mentioned you had one more. Yes. Basically, yes, but I didn't understand the answer to be honest. Is that, I understood that you expect the supply chains to improve, but is that reflected in your guidance, and to what degree? Basically, do you expect that the prices for the electronic components will go back to the pre-COVID level or would they stay at the level of the Q4 improvement going forward, please? Yeah. Thank you for clarifying. Yes, we believe that over the course of the year this will largely improve. That's what we factored in with our assumption, but it hasn't fully yet. It has just reduced a little bit, right? I mentioned earlier, I don't know if you have heard that last year we talked about CHF 15 million-CHF 17 million extra costs just to get our chips for our sensors. It hasn't gone away. It's still there to a quite a large degree, but we have seen some positive tendencies. We hope If it doesn't. Towards mid-year and end year this will reduce and that's what we put into our model. Basically if it doesn't happen then I have to shave off $15 million, $17 million from my EBIT. You would have to do that, yes. All right. Thank you. Yeah With regard to your comments at the beginning of the call, which then, I find really a little bit hard to reconcile. With all the, what you said about the weaker and stronger areas in the semis, shouldn't we expect a positive product mix development into 2023, you know, stronger end users which typically you have also much stronger margins? Yeah. I have to think about this a little bit because there's probably six, seven different product lines moving in a different direction. There's maybe some effect in there. However, also the high margin product lines have been more affected by this chip effect, right? More complex products have more complex chips, and we had to pay a higher premium, so it's a bit hard to say. I would say there's not a too strong tendency that you could factor in for your model. All right. Thank you very much. I leave some space for others. Thank you. Thank you very much, Marta. Okay, more questions from the room. Yes, please. Yeah. You were first. Yeah. Okay. My first question is regarding your CapEx plans for 2023. What's the magnitude and what are you exactly investing in, and how should we think about CapEx beyond 2023? Th e other question, the second question would be regarding of your priorities as a CEO moving into 2023. Is there anything that needs particular focus from your side? In terest or issue if you want, where you have to really. Thank you, yeah, for this question. First, on the first question on CapEx, we invested $60 million the last two years, right, in this 50% CapEx expansion, which were really needed. We still couldn't ship as much as we would have wanted. It was though quite a lot impacted by supply chain, parts availability. What we believe for this year, and it has changed in the last six months a bit because we thought we would conclude this program this year. We had actually seen now the need that we need to add another phase to it. We currently in preparation of another program that might be smaller, and it might go into next year, but certainly this year this will lead to not much smaller CapEx number than last year. More precise maybe would be something that Matthias could outline. I would say it's good It's well possible that we are around three again, we will have to work through this now, how we work with the CapEx planning. Just looking at your range of, you know, currently thinking of a range between, say, $28 million and $33 million. It could be up to a similar level like we had in the last few years, you know, depending on a few projects and a few ideas we have. It will not go down below $20 million, for example. It should not happen. It will be, let's say, within that range and just between $18 million and $30 million. If I remember correctly, you also asked a bit in what area. Certainly still in the semi area, so you will see some also here in Balzers, but also in other locations globally. You'll see it also in other segments. In particular, if you think about security, HAPSITE, that has a total different dynamic. We basically started there the investment program last year, and it will probably go into this year. The second question was around priorities for this year. It hasn't dramatically changed, let's say, since we last communicated, for instance, at the other Elba event or at the Credit Suisse event. It was always a year that was a bit in the middle. We have a mixed picture that needs a lot of feeling for how much of what is required. Small adjustments, such as we just talked with the CapEx. Look at the general market. We had this discussion. What is the economy doing in Europe, in U.S., or in Asia? We'll stay close to this. For me, the focus is though mainly on the, on the future. I think, like I mentioned here in the segments, there is a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of products in the works. They have long development cycles. I wanna focus on that. I wanna focus on the partnerships we have with large customers, be it chip makers or tool makers. There's actually a lot going on in that area. That's certainly something that keeps me busy. There's a few things that I wanna do in the company itself. We have some opportunities with the size that we now are and the size for where we going, that we would like to work more on our scalability and productivity topic. That is maybe operation excellence. That's in particular also what we mentioned earlier, but also more digitalization. There are a few topics around that. Good. Very good. I think, Jeroen, you were next. Thank you. Maybe to start with two questions. If you must focus on the absolutely key innovations that you have in Siemens recently, what are really the product areas you would point out? Is it software? Is it the coding applications you have? Maybe also if you can frame me the kind of revenue prospect incrementally for 2023, 2024. This will be the first question. The second question is, on the gross profit margin, as you mentioned, I mean, it was again a quite, yeah, muted gross profit margin in 2022. I mean, don't you have more pricing power? What is hinting you or what is preventing you of increasing price points higher to pass on rising costs like we see with other companies? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Maybe for pricing. Yes, we have long-term partnerships. This is also an advantage when you develop new products. That is true. At the same time, it's a give- and- take to find solutions when you do price increases. Last year, we had a lot of tough discussions. Many of our customers had pressures, many of our suppliers had pressures. We do believe we have pricing power, but we also needed to find good solutions, and some of these contracts or agreements have been longer term. There was back loading there. In that mix, yes, I believe we have made good progress in these discussions, and some of this will come into this year. I believe we can work into the future as well in certain areas where we have new products, which is your first question. But it is a mix, certainly, right? In some markets where we penetrate new, and where you had struggles to deliver, the discussion is harder, right? Understandably. When I come to the products, the pipeline, I mentioned in particular Semi. I would say for most product lines, there are new generations somewhere in the works, maybe early days, maybe late days, some things we have launched. I could, for instance, mention the mass spec, the APX, or the new leak detector, UL 6000 Ultra that we just launched. There's more in there. I believe new generations for the more sophisticated processes across the portfolio, more automation, certainly also more data analytics. We see that more and more. We could collect more data, and we wanna provide the customer more meaningful information and conclusions for what they get out of the data, but also what they can potentially do with it. Predictive maintenance, potentially proactively steering the whip in the farm when you think about our scheduler application. It goes really quite a bit across the product lines in particular in Semi. Yeah, if we go through the other segments, battery is a fast-moving market, whereas the traditional combustion engine not so fast. I think there the focus is certainly on anything, this EV transition and battery. There is more automation there. There's more automation in RAC coming. Some of this you have already seen. All of these products make me excited. Not all of them will be immediately visible this year, next year. Will maybe even take a bit long. Regarding the Security and Energy, I think the biggest one I did mention was the launch of the HAPSITE CDT. There's a few more other products in there, but that was certainly a massive investment and a longer project than usual. I hope with this I could help you a little bit, give you a feeling for next year. I will probably not be able to give you numbers for next year. I will not be able to give you a guidance for next year. We are also look for into next year mostly optimistic, I would say, right? We see this pipeline. If the market has the dynamic and we expect a bit of a bottom, a rock bottom in memory and maybe others in the second half, I'm optimistic for next year what could have happened with the general dynamic, and we see a rather higher sensorization, if I can say it like this, in the semiconductor environment and other segments we play. We see more opportunities in any case. Maybe to add on the pricing question. It's on the one hand side difficult doing these prices. On the other hand side, yes, there are certain levels which we have and possibilities, of course, and they did not last year, right? The point is that even if you do it in September, you discuss with your customers, they mostly kick in this year only. In March, February, and April, at this time frame, many of these price changes will get really effective, right? Because typically, if you agree on your prices, it's hard to convince the customer, let me say it like this, to say, "Okay, this is also for existing orders." Right? They don't want to go back. Normally, you do a pricing raise, and then you go forward. All the old orders will still be shipped in the low, lower old prices. We expect here in Q2, Q1 and Q2 will be the first obvious impact of that. Across margins also. As a fact, the gross margin. That's it. Thanks. Good. Very good. Yes, please. Yes. Thank you. I have three questions maybe. One first on the Department of Defense contract. I think it's the size is limited on that, but you said in the presentation that there was more to take. Can you maybe quantify that a little bit more and how it would split over the next years revenue-wise? It comes this year, you know, $50 million through 5 years, or maybe just that we understand how much is it in this year's guidance maybe. Then I have one question on the competition. We were emailing on that already, but I was wondering if you could explain a little bit what you think about VAT moving into the pressure control market with MEMS-based sensors, which is a different technology that I think you decided not to go for at the moment. The third one also on the margins in general r eaches 19% and 20% EBIT margin. There's a lot of stability there. What actually needs to change in your revenue mix, in your post side, that you are able to go more into the, let's say, 20%-25% mark and not get stuck at this 20% level on a yearly basis? I know in 2024 it was over 21%. Just to understand what could really push you over that line. Okay, good. I'll go through the questions in the order of how you asked. Thank you very much. First about the DoD. These programs are normally long-term, right? We explained before that this one program that we're part of here, needed five, six years for qualification and all the testing and so on. Then the first order came. That was this first phase. We expect several phases. The size of it, I don't know exactly. There were some more orders for accessories and service stations that came afterwards. There's always a training program. There was a part already coming in last year. These initial orders that came then we deliver over the course of 18 months. Problem there is, again, rather the supply chain. I think we could deliver faster. The customer would accept it. At the same time, it is a renewal program, it's not something that has a hard timeline on it, right? It's step by step, they also need to digest it. You can imagine different parts of the U.S. military that get an upgrade, a training, the new service tool, the next one, and so on. It's a joint effort doing that in a coordination. In any case, we should expect several times something like that over the course of the years. That's what they tell me today. Things change, though, right? In military budgets. We'll see that. That around that. About VAT and MEMS, I mean, generally, we see VAT as a partner. They do something that we use and use together, and we have similar customers, where we both provide parts for tools and also for chip makers, the replacement, the services. To the largest degree, we are not competing. This investment that they made in this small acquisition, something we also looked at, we tested it thoroughly, we decided against it. We didn't decide against technology in general. We believe there's something there. We're working with it too. At this point, it's not a technology that works very well in a harsh environment. It's all about the coatings that you put on top and still have the sensitivity. We currently have a technology that in most applications is superior, but it's a new development, so it's something we're watching closely and working on it as well. Yeah. The competition currently, we don't see it, right? It's very small. Yeah. The first question was the third question was around the margin. We mentioned before on the gross margin, we see a path towards 50%. We have too much uncertainty right now, right? We couldn't expect last year what happened with the supply chain and the cost inflation. We're a bit cautious there of what we're gonna go and state this year. There is still a lot of things that can negatively impact it. There's also positive factors in there, for instance, the price negotiation that we have. I believe in future, yes, there is upward potential for the margin. I think right now part of this is also the growth. The growth costs some money. We still believe this year we make further investments. Maybe it's a bit of a different year than for other companies in that sense, if that makes sense. I would be optimistic for the future. For this year, I see a bit of a mixed picture. That helps. Maybe Matthias you wanna add? I think, that is for sure, our ambition is to break the 20% and to be above. Like we had it in Q4. In Q4, it really determined the volume on the one hand side, and also some improvement on global cost on trade and duty. Again, we, the feeling of a full year last year was basically impacted by 300 percentage points or 300 basis points just these special impacts by global cost, trade and duty, material price and so on. We see in Q4 some improvement. It's not gone away so far, but we see some improvement, and we also see a chance that the including the price we just discussed price increase that maybe a slight increase in gross margin. Midterm, I think we should be able and our ambition is really to break the 20%. Very good. Any more questions? Yes, please. Yes. Let's play again the margin, Jakob. For me important, can you remind us what's the margin of each business segment in relation to the group? Is it above Is it above group margin, below group margin? We talk about Semi's, SMIC, Jamaican and so on, and RSC. Yeah. Is that okay if I turn that over to you? Yeah. Typically, I must even point you somehow, typically, we don't comment gross margin on these end markets. These end markets are, let's say, we don't report segments. We don't have segments. We see our result as a company overall, we don't report this and we don't have it actually. You can ask a feeling. I can tell you, of course, maybe the Semi market is a higher, a little bit higher margin than the General Vacuum market. There are so many influence factors which have to be considered. It's not so easy to make then a general judgment on that. To give you one example, we have businesses where the gross margin is maybe only 30%, but the already income margin is still 20%. Why? Why is it that? Because we don't have any major SG&A in that business. Then we have others where we have 70% gross margin, but we have huge, huge application engineers, efforts, people, headcounts, machines and tools, and at the end we also end up 20%. The gross margin is an indicator, yes. Maybe semi is a little bit higher than the General Vacuum, overall, we don't really calculate and get the whole experience. Sales mix has no impact on the margin guidance for next year? Certainly impact, yes. It's implemented during the product run. How important will be OpE x? OpEx OpEx was a positive impact last year. It probably will change in the current year. Not so important. No. OpEx we mostly OpEx or currency. Currency. Currency, yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The currency is not so important because there are many, many compensating impacts. Sometimes you have a, let's say a negative impact on the top line, like we had in Q4 for example, and you have positive impacts in SG&A. Most of them are really compensating. It's for us not so important. Yeah. Sales mix is neutral. O pEx is neutral. Depreciation will probably a slight increase given the higher CapEx you have. Yeah. On the positive side, you'll have lower material costs, probably lower brokerage fees, lower logistic costs, and you will have also scale because the guidance is on the same top line level. I'm wondering where this question is coming from. I don't know. I don't see your point exactly. I can follow your argument that there are different positive and negatives. Most are positive for the margin [audio distortion]. Yeah. Take a look to our guidance, right? There is a lower point which is 570 and a higher point, right, which is above 600, and that's maybe answers your question. Okay. Let's go here. The last one probably on dividend. Basically report the record year and you are guiding for a second record year basically with implied growth of 1% in the midpoint, equal margin. Are you not trusting your guidance then or what you want to tell us? Of course we trust our guidance. It's coming, but we argue and we think about it. That's for sure the problem. As you know y eah and, there are uncertainties in there. As we said, we are mostly optimistic. We are not pessimistic. With regards to the dividend, when you talk about the dividend, I--w e try to give some reason, but we have big investments in the past three years and we continue with the investment for this year and maybe the next year. This was one of the drivers why we have decided to do that. Maybe to add some color to it was a discussion, right? To go and stay in a logical next step to what we had in the past. Nonetheless, in the past also we had varying on the business development changes. This is not a dramatical step, but it is a certain signal. It's also growth-driven that we actually have a lot of cash that goes into the growth. I mentioned the inventory briefly, that's a little bit blowing up because increasing because of the supply chain, not availability of parts. We believe that will be better. And also into new investments. Again, our investment program, this two-year investment program would run into this year, now we're already looking at the next one. We believe at a balanced solution there. That the investors understand that, we wanna explain it and we'll also take a little bit of a middle solution there. It's not a dramatic reduction, but it gives something in the middle, right? The program for us is relatively big. If you look at the past, the four to three years now, it was quite a bit lower, 15%-20%. $15 million-$20 million was normal. Now we had over $60 million for this program, and there will be more coming this year, probably even next year. That's a bit in light of that. The profitability is not our concern. Our concern is to have this a bit in a balance, if that makes sense. Thank you. Yes. Please. Yeah. First question, could you please elaborate what's behind this assumed H2 recovery in sales? Yeah I believe we have, I would say broad range of statements which, probably more the data point more towards the 2024 recovery. If you assume this, I need to also assume that your guidance might be more geared towards the second half of 2023, given your higher Semi exposure. Could we expect more, I would say, but I don't know how order intakes and backlog play out? Could we then assume a more muted first half and then a step up in H2 later on? Yes. Good question. Yeah. I mean, maybe on the general semi market, I'm just one of the people that stay close to it, talks to a lot of people, the customers, and all of you, so it's a bit of a crystal ball question as well. First of all, I would, though, stress that the semi market today breaks down into many sub-markets. Each one has its own CapEx dynamic. Again, one extreme is memory. We're less affected by it. IoT, automotive, I don't see a slowdown, frankly. Yeah, not really something I can tangibly see from our perspective. Leading edge, yes, a bit, but not dramatic. Litho, no, frankly. EUV, yes. In that I see the mix. Now, the statement about the second half of the year was the expectation that memory will hit the bottom and then rebound from there on. That doesn't mean it's going to the same level as before, but the demand supply could flip somewhere there, and then the investment program should come back. There's an assumption a little bit around memory, but I believe there's many people in the room or online that can also give very eloquent statements about their analysis of what where the market is. That's just personally my perspective. Now, regarding the guidance, I would almost say that it could be not too far away from the usual seasonality. Why? Yes, we might have a slowdown of orders. While we don't really see it too much yet, we see some, but we have also a lot of special effects, pandemic, Lunar New Year, couple of special orders from segments that have nothing to do with semi. We don't really see it yet, but we have a backlog that will bridge some of the gap as well. In the mix of that, what actually comes out of the factory might not have such a close connection to the immediate market demanding of one of the semi segments. That makes sense. We will probably, again, will have a slower Q3, I could imagine, just because that's our seasonality, and we might have a large Q4. The first half is often not that bad. It is still hard to say, right? Month-to-month moves. If you imagine particular the chip maker projects, TSMC, for instance, would say, "We built this next fab or part of the fab," and that's a big chunk of an order for us, and then they move it by 2 months because, let's say, the applied tool isn't there. Hypothetical scenario. That is something that is a bit random for us. The, the order isn't gone, the project isn't stopped, but something moved around. Right? Month- to- month, we have a difficulty to really see that. We have a diversification, we have a broader product, line mix, so that gets balanced out. There's actually, in itself, quite a bit of randomness, if that helps. Right? I would see that it is not much different than other years, taking all what I just said into account. One quick follow-up. To manage these month-over-month swings, how comfortable do you feel to get cost control as month-over-month swings? I think INFICON has a certain DNA, I would almost say, or a certain structure approach how to deal with this. I mean, INFICON, before my time, was successful navigating these cycles down to the vacation model, to the compensation model. There's a lot of models in place where this can live and breathe. Our capacities also need to be a bit bigger than the average because of this volatility, quite a bit more maybe than in other markets, but that's a semi characteristic a bit. Right? I believe we can work with that. You are right, and that's also where we are a little bit cautious with our statements. Is there a slowdown, and we ramped up, and this is not in sync? We had plenty of that last year, all of us in semi, where we all had great record years. There was a lot of this timing issues, right? The part is here, but the people are not here, and the other way around. We had a lot of that, right? One follow-up is the investments plan going forward. Rough assumption, would you need to utilize these investments with $100 billion WFE CapEx? Is the basic assumption behind it? Maybe I don't understand fully the question. You are investing now. Yeah. Let's say a certain amount. What is the base case for WFE CapEx behind that, plus, minus? Does it assume a 20% recovery from a potential trough in 2023 or? Yeah. We work with at least three scenarios typically. I can tell you right now, if we wanna reduce the backlog, we're gonna reduce delivery times to where we wanna be. That's our aspiration, to have leading delivery times. We just know that we need to push investments anyway. Actually, the back end of it, we might have to go and size a little bit smaller or, let's say, do it a little bit later. Yes. Right now, when you buy tools, production tools, there's almost a year still till you get it. Maybe it's 10 months. Why? We use a lot of these products, pumps, chips. Yeah, same thing. We still have not really a relaxation there. We plan quite a bit ahead, right? We have already started to think 12 months ahead for this to roughly hit this corridor. That helps. Okay. Very good. More question. Jörn? Two add-ons, please. First, on the capacity. I think in the last three years it became a big lane adding capacity. You said there's another investment program happening. I think your current total capacity is maybe around $700 million sales, if I remember correctly, also from Lukas statements. When you add another cycle of investments, you go to total capacity of $800 million-$900 million. How do we think about this? That you're prepared for the next after and maybe a little better versus the last two and a half years. We call this the first question. Yeah. I mean, to put it very simply, last year our capacity was $581 million, right? Bit of a ramp. Of course, with slowdowns and some of the capacity was not fully utilized. It's not entirely true, right? We could probably have shipped a bit more, as I mentioned, because we were ahead with our capacity versus what the supply chain gave us in parts. Yeah, it's not such a big step like in the last two years, right? That we will now plan for. It will be a significant step nonetheless that we have for the next two years ahead of us. Cannot give you the full details. Same reasons, right now, we don't know exactly what the dynamics are gonna be second half of this year or next year. Of course, we see a, another bigger step forward in growth. Then for that, we plan in our capacity. So I'm uncomfortable to give you numbers for that, to be frank. Yeah. Second question on the memory potential because as you mentioned, I mean, memory is not usually your insurance product. Monitor the process as logic is doing. Let's assume the memory market was, I mean, your memory exposure maybe like just say another $20 million sales. With all the technology migration, the memory is also using EUV, going to 10 nanometers. What was the rising volume shape in F2 to the technology migration? It's going on $20 million-$40 million sales over the next few years, or can you use also the same products you sell in, to logic also in memory? Yeah. Make special line investment. It is. Maybe, start with the products first. The products are largely the same, but there are specialty products that are just much more relevant in memory, what we see on the horizon now, and where we already work on together with customers and partners. Think, for instance, NAND. You have these extreme sandwiches where you build these towers of memory layers, and then you go do these high aspect ratio edges. This is something that is very particular to this. When you have a sensor that can understand how far are you going and what angle exactly you have, then that's something that is more particular for memory. That's an example for an application that is specific. As you said, right, they go towards EUV, that's certainly the same from us, the sensorization there. If it goes into the standard process, specifically PVD, it's very much the same products. Because of the smaller nodes, the higher sensitivity to influential process aberrations and impacts of small changes in the mix and in the recipe, yes, they need more process control. Yes, they need more data analytics, they need more sensors. We just recently, really, the last two years broke into the chip maker for memory. We had always business with them. There was always, of course, also through the OEMs, through the tool maker products there, but that we have things like there is a big excursion, and now we need to clamp down and build, as they call it, defense system. That we just seen the last two years, right, where the similar kind of orders come like from the logic customers. That is a starting thing. I have to say it is small. Right now it's very unclear. We had the first session as a phase of these investments the last two years, but now, right now it's stopped. Right now it's a bit smaller. Now it's more leading edge for them, or service or application optimization where the revenue comes from. These projects are a little bit moved out, so it's a bit an unclear picture how quickly it will come. I mean, I'm a strong believer in this segment also becoming very relevant for us over time. It probably be years, I think, right? Even though semi is fast-moving, but at the same, adopting new products, new processes, it does take time, right? To just prove it out. That helpful? Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Very good. Good. Any more questions? Anybody? Everybody tapped out. Ready, good to go to the next event. You got a busy day today, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, if there's no more question. Is there online any questions I'm asking Bernard or Matthias, just to make sure? No? No. I know online maybe, it was a little hard to hear at times the room, so apologies for that. I would like to thank everybody for coming today. It was a pleasure for me, and, I hope to see you again soon. Some of you I see through the course of the day. Thanks for coming, and have a beautiful day. See you again soon. Thank you