It's 9:30 A.M. by my watch. Good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, investor relations contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure to host this Microsoft Teams webcast of our Q1 2023 results conference. With us today, you can already see him, is Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of INFICON, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO of INFICON. The management team will first present the results and then take questions. During the management's prepared remarks, online participants are requested to turn off their microphones and cameras, please. During the Q&A session, participants are invited to turn their microphones and cameras on when asking questions. Online participants can add themselves to the queue of people wanting to ask questions by clicking on the I Raise My Hand icon. Alternatively, you can also use the chat function in MS Teams. You should have received by now a press release on the Q1 results, together with a link to the accompanying visuals for this web conference. All documents are available for download in the investor section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com. 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 now like to hand over to Oliver Wyrsch. Oliver, please. Thank you very much, Bernhard. Welcome everybody to our call on the Q1 2023. I would like to first introduce myself and the agenda. It's first me, Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of INFICON, talk about the key messages and the target markets and the expectations 2023, then I will hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more in-depth financial information. First of all, the highlights of our 2023 Q1 results. We can show continuous growth in the first quarter 2023. Year-on-year growth in all end markets and all regions. Order intake higher than sales. Despite improvements, supply chain still remains a bottleneck and still impacts our margins. The sales grow 14% year-on-year to $158 million across all regions and markets and are on a similar level as on the fourth quarter 2022. Organic growth, excluding the negative effects, is 19% year-on-year. We have a continued robust order intake with a book-to-bill above 1 also in Q1, and I believe this is around the ninth or tenth quarter now that we have this book-to-bill above 1 in sequence. Operating result. We have an improved operating income in first quarter year-on-year by 10%, reaching $30 million. Gross profit margin is still impacted by cost inflation, particularly by the chip broker cost. Despite some improvement, the supply chain is still a bottleneck for us. We defended the profitability against headwinds in Q1 with 19%. In terms of organization, we continued our investments as before in R&D, 8% of sales, and also in production capacity. This is a timing topic that we currently have only shown $3.6 million CapEx in Q1. We expect, as previously noted, around $30 million for the full year. As you can see, the split in different markets almost the same with some slight changes. Certainly, refrigeration, air conditioning, and automotive had some good dynamics. Let me go into more details in a minute on the markets. First, worldwide markets overview. You can see we have good growth in all regions year-on-year, in particularly in Asia, good growth, 20%, and also in North America. Then in particularly, sequentially in Q1, a good growth in Europe. Looking into the different end markets, semi-vacuum coating, the market is softening short term. We see good growth opportunities mid-term, very strong possibility long term, also given through our product pipeline. Q1 sales increase is 7% versus Q1. We maintain our number one position in most of the markets and in pressure measurement further closing up to number one. We see a mixed picture for 2023. Different submarkets have different dynamics, as previously noted. The one weakening the most that we also see is the one for memory chips. INFICON is participating there, but it's less relevant in the mix of all the other submarkets in this space. We see recover towards end of H2. Generally we see some delay in logic projects, but it's a small amount. For the trailing edge, so far we have seen no slowdown. On leading edge projects, in particular also on EUV products markets, we have seen no slowdown. In general, all the semi initiatives globally, the government-sponsored ones we see as ongoing, which also supports our optimistic outlook into the mid-term and long term. What we've seen is that China seems to be shifting the investment plans away from the leading edge, more into the trailing edge. Certainly still a lot of dynamic though, also more as last year. I'll get to this in a minute. Looking at automotive refrigeration air conditioning market, we maintain our number one position. Strong growth, 32% versus Q1, 2022. We expect growth also for this year. The traditional auto still slowing, in particular battery, EV transition, battery storage is growing nicely, much as we expected. There's some other positive dynamic with automated Industry 4.0 solutions also in RAC that support this growth. We also see here good opportunities for the future. The market is growing, and we will have a interesting new set of products in the works. Looking at general vacuum, the broad industrial market has many, many submarkets. Sub-applications generally is not so disconnected from the general economic growth. However, since we adding more applications and addressing more submarkets, we have good growth there too. In Q1, year-on-year, 15% growth. Some of this growth is driven by China, increasing their growth again in 2023, and also some reduction of our backlog, in particular in our vacuum pressure gauge market. To the security and energy markets. As you know, this is a market driven by government initiatives and has its own dynamic, a bit disconnected from the general economic development. We have a very strong growth here of +37% year-over-year. There is fluctuations over time. There was fluctuation from Q4 to Q1. A lot has to do with this rollout program, but currently also we are still limited by the supply chain as these relatively complex products have a more complex supply chain. We are optimistic here for this year. We see growth. We have a strong opportunity pipeline. We saw good order intake also in Q1 in this and will remain also positive for the mid-term on this product. The expectations 2023 remain unchanged. We have a good backlog since we had a book-to-bill over 1 in Q1. Backlog increased while we shipped more, year-on-year. We see growth in the selected markets as just discussed, so we remain mostly optimistic for 2023, even though there's a slower economic environment and we see still some risks from different areas, geopolitical, economical and so on. We also stay with our guidance for 2023. At this point, sales between $570 million-$610 million with an operating income around 19%. With this, I end my remarks and would like to hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more details on the financials. Thank you. Thank you very much, Oliver. Good morning. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter conference call. I will cover the Q1 financials and will briefly comment also on our 2023 guidance. My commentary starts with slide 11. Let me first start with our highlights for Q1. Orders continued to be high with the book-to-bill above 1. Sales did grow by 14.4% and our gross margin is still somewhat under pressure. We achieved a 9.9% operating income increase and achieved $30 million. CapEx started relatively low in Q1 and as a quick comment on that number, our investment plans, as Oliver said, are unchanged and we will see higher numbers in the course of the year. Cash flow and net cash improved and our equity ratio reached 65%. Now let me go a little bit more into the details. As you have seen in our press release, we achieved revenue of $158.2 million in Q1 which is an increase of 14.4%. This is an increase of 14.4% without the currency impacts which have been $5.7 million. It was even more, it was around 18%. Oliver did already comment the development of the different markets. We can point out that sales in all markets did grow and the biggest changes have been in security and energy with a plus of 37%, and in refrigeration, air conditioning and automotive with 32%. General vacuum expanded by 15%, and the semi and vacuum coating market did grow by 7% compared to Q1 last year. With that, the first quarter sales did nearly reach the record Q4 level and was our second-best sales quarter in history. The regional distribution of sales shows growth in all regions and we had the highest growth in Asia and North America. Europe did more or less develop stable with a slight increase. As already mentioned, gross profit margin increased by 11% in absolute numbers. Reached 45.8% in Q1, but was down 127 basis points compared to last year Q1. Positive impact of higher volume and somewhat lower broker cost was partially compensated for by higher material prices, freight and duties. What happened with the operational costs? Sorry. It was too fast. What happened with the operational costs? We spent $12.1 million on R&D in Q1, an increase of 5.2%. As a percent of sales, expenses decreased from 8.3% to 7.7% of sales. Additional ad counts to support our development efforts, partially compensated by slightly favorable foreign currency impacts did drive this increase. In SG&A, the cost level did increase quite clearly to $30.4 million or 15.6%. Personnel expense due to increased headcounts are the main drivers, but also general cost increases and factors like relaunching of trade shows, meetings and travel are of some impact. The operating impact for the first quarter was $30 million, as already mentioned, or 19% of sales, after $27.3 million or 19.8% of sales in Q1 last year. This corresponds to an increase of 9.9%. The tax expense for the first quarter was at $6.5 million, which represents a tax rate of 22.7% due to the profit mix of our international entities slightly higher than last year's Q1 rate, which was at 19.8%. The net profit therefore reached $22.1 million or 14% in Q1. This compares to $21.2 million or 15.3% in prior year, a 4.2% increase in absolute numbers. Let's move to the balance sheet highlights. Our net cash reached $11.5 million, which is $9 million higher than end of last year. The turns for inventory decreased to 2.5, and the DSO ratio had with 52.9 days, respectively a slightly better level than compared to Q4. Our working capital, which consists of inventory, accounts receivables minus accounts payables, closed at $217.9 million or 34.5% of sales, and with that ended about $9 million higher than end of last year. The increase was coming from a $21 million increase in inventory, $11 million increase in accounts payables, and a slight reduction of accounts receivables. The inventory change is a result, and still a result of the high business levels and order volumes, as well as various supply chain issues with corresponding bottlenecks and availability problems. Our operating cash flow improved and reached a level of $15.3 million. This is relatively positive as our cash flow level typically in the first quarter is relatively low due to various performance-based payouts in the first quarter of the year. At the end, the balance sheet shows a solid structure with a 65% equity ratio. Those were my comments on the balance sheet and the Q1 results. Now finally, the outlook already commented by Oliver. Based on our order book and order intake and the overall business situation, we are mostly optimistic for the started year. We confirm our guidance and expect sales between $570 million and $610 million and operating income margin of approximately 19%. With that, I would like to close the presentation. We are now ready to take your questions. Thank you both. We already have a queue of people wanting to ask questions. May I ask Jörn to turn his microphone and camera on and start? Yes, thank you. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my questions. I would have three questions, and if it's okay, I would take them one by one. The first question would be please about your semi end markets. Can you tell us what your customers, what you hear from your customers more concrete already for 2024 in terms of productivity optimization programs or also CapEx plans? Really what you hear from your customers. Also, as you mentioned, I mean, shall we expect that there's a kind of summer hole in semi that your sales are sequentially declining from the strong Q1? It will be the first question, please. Yeah. Thank you very much, Jörn, for your question. First about next year, we hear positive outlook. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you. About next year, 2024 The general expectation, many of you are watching the space as we are, you might have similar information or similar level of insights. There's optimism for next year. There's expectation that in H2 the trend will turn around, in particular also in memory, which is the most affected by this cyclical downturn. We hear about new projects for next year, what we also have is quite substantial amount of R&D projects that you normally can do in the slower years with customers. This R&D project is new products, new applications which are not too long-term in these specific ones, they could already affect also the revenue of 2024. Generally, across all the different sectors in in semi, we see on here optimism for next year. On your second part of the question regarding summer, yes, we have seen the expected slowdown in orders, particularly, as I mentioned, in memory, and we see it in Q1. We will expect that this trend will continue, in summer probably be most pronounced. Again, we believe in the second half of the year that there will be again an improvement. The timing of this is difficult to say at this point. There's various statements. There's mixed signals. Is it gonna be end of Q3? That would probably be very optimistic. Is it end of Q1 next year? That would probably be rather pessimistic. We do not know exactly how this develops. I hope this answers your question. Thank you. Jörn. Thank you. Thank you for this. The second question, if I may, I go back to the queue. On your gross profit margin, a bit surprised that you still highlight rising raw material costs, higher freight costs, brokerage fees, it seems to ease. Is this a more company specific, where you have some issues? I mean, how do you want to tackle this? When do you really think the gross profit margin will start to accelerate quite significantly? Let me make some general statements and then Matthias can flesh it out in more detail. What unfortunately didn't happen is a real strong improvement of the supply chain for us in terms of part availability and also in terms of cost. Our biggest cost impact has been last year, this chips for the sensor products, and this remains the same. I would say this is still about two thirds on the level of the last year's average. Well, you need to know last year there was different fluctuations depending on the products and depending on the chip. This hasn't fully succeeded, and that's impacting us still today. The other thing is, of course, that we tried to stock up on chips last year. This is still in the inventory at somewhat higher price, depending on the respective chip. We're still now eating through this inventory because, as you know, we tried to have a constant supply to not stop our lines because of chip supply and hence also have, of course, a significant amount of inventory still on this chip. Maybe Matthias, if you have a few more things to flesh this out. Actually, there's not a lot to add. Good coverage of the question, I think. Maybe let me add, you asked is it company specific or general trend. I would say the freight side is, might be a little bit more company specific because we see in the market lowering freight rates. That's maybe more INFICON and what Oliver said, yeah. We see lower growth costs and also commended. We see lower growth costs, but it didn't disappear, right? It's lower, but it's not away, and it's still a substantial amount and hitting our margins still in the range between, let me say around 1.5% to 2%, right? That's still the impact. It's not gone. we assume that it will be a continued relief, right, on the margin due to the availability and also the broker costs. To follow up here, I mean, do you expect that the gross profit margin is really gradually recovering from here and reaching maybe then 48 point something% by end of the year? How should we think about this important metric? I would say yes, we assume a certain recovery, whether it's at the end of 48%, we will see, because we also have so many different businesses with different margins, so we cannot completely predict. We see a certain relief, I would agree. We can say, Jörn, that we would have expected this to ease off. The reason is for our sensors is still going really well. It's growing strong. You see that in our respective end market. This has slowed down this trend to improve the margins for us. It's a bit hard to predict. We are optimistic for the future for sure, because this has to succeed eventually. The timing of it is the next question. It's a little bit related also with what the semi dynamic is and the sub-market for semi automotive chips. We'll stay optimistic. We'll continue to work on our cost optimization, but can't exactly give you an estimate on the timing. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Jörn. Michael, may I invite you to ask your questions? Hoping we have a better acoustic line to your computer. Yeah, thank you. Good morning, everyone. My first question is, just adding on to Jörn's, basically, your EBIT margin was 19%. Your guidance is 19% for the year, but you expect gross margins to improve throughout the year. I'm a bit confused. How should we read it? Shouldn't the EBIT margin also increase during the year if your gross margin increases? That's the first question. It's good. It's a fair question. We asked us that ourselves. The volatility of this profitability depending on product line, even in Q1 that we've seen and also in Q4 is quite significant. At this point, it's a bit a little bit hard to determine how this year will go. Also, with this order trend that I described earlier, and eventually there will also be some sales impact when we ate through our backlog. That's where we have still the feeling some cautiousness is required, specifically in the second half of the year. It will very much depend on this recovery and how fast these CapEx projects pick up in the different submarkets. There could be a slowdown first that is larger before it picks back up, or smaller. we had a couple of unexpected items that hit the margin, and we had them also in Q1. this is a little bit where we get cautious. Maybe Matthias, if you have. I only can add, there are a couple of uncertainties, of course, globally and in our business as we discussed. Some positive things, where we assume there will be some relief, like also the pricing topic we discussed a couple of times. We changed some prices and they will kick in during the course of the year. On the other hand, we also see inflation impacts. We see also cost impacts, as I commented, right? We added a quite substantial number of people in various areas, mostly in sales-oriented areas, I would say, you know, like sales, customer service, customer support and marketing areas where we invested, and we'll continue to invest in R&D. It's a lot of different factors which are driving this. As Oliver said, yeah, we are still, somehow cautious, and there was some uncertainty in the market. We will see how things develop or from the order side, pricing side, business side. If you zoom out and look at the big picture, you also see that we try to continuously invest in our future. One is R&D, and one is this sales footprint. Then it's also about the CapEx. As you see, we don't have a real slowdown there after our two-year investment program. We will continue this, but the exact dynamic of the market, this timing, is where our uncertainty mostly lies. Okay, thank you. My second question would be around the general vacuum business. You saw very good growth there. Could you elaborate a bit more on the effects of your geographic and application expansion there? What is driving the growth, and what should we expect going forward there? Yeah. We actually, as you might have seen, changed the outlook for this year slightly. We went from flat softening to flat. First of all, the general economic outlook changed in Europe and in U.S. When we still talked a quarter ago about recessions, now there is a bit more optimism there. That's certainly one factor. What we have seen is that there's good dynamic in China. This is an important market for our general vacuum. General industrial applications are very broad in China for us, and there's a good dynamic there. What comes on top of this is that finally now our capacity coming online, the parts are available. We were able to ship a lot from the backlog above the market, right, in some areas, and it can catch up there as well. There's a couple of large accounts in there also, our private label accounts, that we really got a good momentum. I believe we have also added a few more applications there, be it in R&D, some other places. It's a very fragmented market, so it's piece by piece that we try to address new segments, which we could grow above the market. The outlook for the year is a bit uncertain because the dynamic in the economy did change a bit and is now optimistic. How it exactly will continue together with the inflation is not entirely clear to us. I would still stay optimistic, but not as optimistic as maybe Q1 showed now. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Michael. The next question comes then from Marta Brusca. Marta, please. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations on the great results. I have couple, if I may, I will take them one by one, please. First, on the demand in the automotive and EV batteries, is that the level to continue throughout the year or were there any one-offs in Q1? All right. The EV market is still forming. There's a lot of dynamic there on what type of battery, what type of manufacturing process, what kind of quality check regulations. We push for the standards, higher standards than today, that we believe are needed for the safety of the drivers. This is not fully established, though. Why am I explaining this? There's a lot of fluctuation between the different accounts. We did win new accounts. We did also win in Europe, new accounts. It is not necessarily the reason for this jump. It is generally the market that grows fast in this space. Each of the regions has a bit of a different dynamic. Certainly, Europe has shown a good dynamic, China as well. There is also a bit of a currency effect in there if you compare it year-on-year. Maybe if you have any additions, Matthias. Not so much. No, I just would support. I think, the automotive is going well. Yeah, the classic ISE is more stable and, according the normal business, GDP development and more or less saturated, what we also mentioned in the release and in the PowerPoint, right? Yeah, nothing to add from my side. Maybe to be specific, Marta, I believe on your question is we estimate the growth in the twenties in this space, so it is a bit above market, right? That is probably a little bit outside of the typical corridor that would you expect this market to grow. For these effects described earlier, we believe this was a very good year-over-year quarter result. Thank you. Following up on that, you mentioned that the refrigeration was kind of stable. So a bit, you know, so to say a bit behind this fantastic growth, the automotive part. To my understanding, a big part of your refrigeration, please correct me if I'm wrong, but is still in China. Perhaps could that be linked to the fact that the Chinese recovery from the zero-COVID policies was a little bit slower in Q1, so therefore would be a catch-up effect still in following quarters sequentially on the refrigeration part of it? Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I mean, generally, this market, as you know, splits down also in different segments. Some of them have shown good growth and weren't actually really slowed down even by the general economic slowdown. That's for one. The other thing is, in China, we actually had a good start into the year right away with orders and with sales. I know that there is a general discussion around how slow the start was and how fast will China grow the rest of the year. We didn't necessarily see that. We had a good start in China, much like expected and also noted in the prior calls. Thank you. That's very helpful. If I may, another one. On the food applications, in general vacuum, could you update us, how much of the total sales in general vacuum now account for or come from the food applications, please, so from Contura? There is, of course, different products going into food. It's also just the general pressure gauge going into food. What you probably talk about is our Contura product that inspects packaging. This is a single-digit million USD. It's growing, but it is not necessarily material now in our growth. It's one of these smaller, good segments, if you want to call it like that. We'll take it. Understood. The big steps we make in the markets that we described earlier. Thank you. The very last one, if I may please. Mm-hmm. Excuse me for picking up on the exact wording, but it would be helpful if you could please clarify two statements. You mentioned in the very last part on when you spoke about the outlook that the backlog still increased. Is that so? How long is your order book today in terms of months of sales at the current run rate? If the new orders stopped today, how long could you still deliver? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, our backlog increased in Q1. We had good orders, while though the mix of orders shifted a little bit, right? Certainly, as mentioned, memory slowed down, then some delay in logic and so on, like I described it earlier. That's what you then see in the mix of the backlog or the mix of the order entry. We do not, as you know, show the backlog itself, but it has for some product lines, gives us the ability to go through a large part of the year. But not for all. The dynamic is a little bit changing. You need to know also that we really, have a number of our upgraded production lines coming online now, and the capacity increases, and our delivery time really drops, much like what we aspire towards this year. We want to go back to our industry-leading delivery times. It's a mix there, right? We'll have some areas there, suddenly, if the order entry comes late in semiconductor space, let's say it comes only next year, there will be a gap. Not a substantial gap, but there is gonna be a little bit of a transition period. In other places, we'll be able to power through. Maybe, I don't know if you have anything to add? Maybe just to add, Marta, you're right. Our book-to-bill, and what Oliver also mentioned, our book-to-bill is now, I mean, on the 11th quarter above one. Of course, this is a substantial amount. What we also see, and what Oliver said, and as you know, we are broad-based in terms of our end markets and our products. Some markets have gained a lot of backlog and momentum in the last six months, I would say. This is not semi is a little hint, right? There are other markets where we made good progress and where we will have some benefits in the next six to nine months or until the end of the year and being able to ship, right? Yeah, that's the other part of the 50% semi, right, where we have different cycles and sometimes also different impacts, right, on that one. All right. Thank you very much. Very helpful. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Marta, for your questions. Is anyone else? Yes, I see Emra Basic. You have the next question for us, Emra, please. Yes. Hi, good morning. Just a quick one on memory. Apologies if this question has come up a couple of times in the past. When you talk about memory, chips being less relevant for you, are you able to somewhat quantify that in terms of proportion of your semi segment? Thanks for the question, Emra. Not an easy question to answer because we don't actually break our businesses down in the sub-segments of semi. I mean, we mainly stress that because we get compared to our peer group, the big question comes, why is the impact not as big with you as with the others? I just believe INFICON has a strength to be diversified and also being diversified in the semiconductor industry. We are at the OEM, we are at the chip maker. We also add other parties in the mix. We have products for the sub-fab, we have products for the air conditioning, and of course, there's also software. For us, it's just, I'd say five to 10 different dynamics that mix together. Hence, we try to stress for us memory, yes, we saw the reduction 20%, 30%, but we in the mix of this, it doesn't change as much our overall dynamic as in other places. To make an estimate, I would say it's 1 of 8 markets, if you will, chop it into similar bits, but this is now a very rough assumption. Again, we do not have this number. We cannot exactly look at it. We don't exactly know where it goes. When you don't work with the OEM and know exactly what tool you're going on, it's a bit hard to know, as you might imagine. I hope this gives you a little bit of a corridor and a feeling of the impact. Thank you. Thank you very much. The second one also regarding your semi business. It's a bit of an open question, but how are you positioned today in this segment versus 3, 4 years ago in 2019 when we had the last kind of like downturn? In the how we are positioned in the semiconductor market today versus 2019. Right. I mean, first of all, I believe the cycle was a slightly different one in terms of what markets got affected how and the timing. Of course, it's not a radical different cycle. There is some of that, but the other part is, I believe we are further diversified. I mean, one of the examples could be the software. Revenue really increased in these three, four years. You remember 2018, we made this acquisition of Final Phase Systems. This has grown since. This has grown together with our current or existing FDC software portfolio and really gave us a leap forward. That's one factor. Thinking about our business in lithography, that piece grew. That was at the time different. At the time, we also ramped up a lot of our capacity. Our partnership grew a lot more together with that specific OEM customer. As you know, in this space, there is no slowdown. Sorry. There's a couple of these changes that I believe gives us a sounder footing in general in the market. Do I know exactly how we go through the next cycle and do I know how the second half of this cycle is gonna go? It's still hard to say, right? We see a couple of these positive signs where INFICON has built out a better foundation over the time with more diversification around, let's say, around the wafer, around the chamber, around the semiconductor manufacturer. Hope this is helpful, Emra. No, that's great. Thank you very much, and have a good day. You too. Thank you, Emra. Any further questions from the audience? I see no one raising his or her hand. Oliver, Matthias, up for you for closing remarks then. Thank you. I wanna thank everybody for joining today. We were happy to present strong results for Q1. We are mostly optimistic for the year, as you know. We're looking forward to see you again July 27th for Q2, second half year remarks in our next earnings conference call. Thank you very much. Thank you.