Please ensure you dial in by phone. In this case, we recommend muting the webcast during the Q&A session. Please check your registration confirmation for dial-in data. Let me now hand you over to Mr. Christian Ludwig, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at AIXTRON SE, for opening remarks and introductions. Thank you very much, Thilo Brunner. A warm welcome, also from my side, to AIXTRON's Q3 2025 results call. My name is Christian Ludwig. I'm the Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at AIXTRON. With me in the room today are our CEO, Dr. Felix Grawert, and our CFO, Dr. Christian Danninger, who will guide you through today's presentation and then take your questions. This call is being recorded by AIXTRON SE and is considered copyright material. As such, it cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without permission. Your participation in this call implies your consent to this recording. Please take note of the disclaimer that you find on page one of the presentation document as it applies throughout the conference call. This call is not being immediately presented by a webcast or any other medium. However, we will place a transcript on our website at some point after the call. I would now like to hand you over to our CEO for his opening remarks. Felix, the floor is yours. Thank you, Christian. Let me also welcome you to our Q3 2025 results call. I will start with an overview of the highlights of the quarter and then hand over to our CFO Christian for more details on our financial figures. Finally, I will give you an update on the development of our business and our guidance. Let me start by giving you an update on the key business developments of the second quarter. On Slide 2, the important messages for Q3 2025. Our free cash flow in the quarter was EUR 39 million, totaling EUR 110 million in the first nine months of 2025, while inventories are down to EUR 316 million, coming from EUR 369 million at the year end 2024. This shows we are well on track with our strategy to rebuild our cash position after we had depleted that with the construction of our 300-M illimeter Clean Room, the Innovation Center in the years 2023 and 2024. In Q3 we recognized new orders of EUR 124 million, which lead to an equipment order backlog of EUR 287 million where we have achieved a book-to-bill of 1.04. We concluded the quarter with revenues of EUR 120 million. With that we were in our guided range of EUR 110 million to EUR 140 million. The gross margin reached 39% in Q3 and averaged 37% in the first nine months. This figure includes a one-off expense related to our implemented personnel reduction earlier in the year. Adjusted for this effect, the gross margin after nine months came out at 38%, slightly below previous year's 39%, mainly due to volume shifts and FX headwinds as the market remained soft. We had to adjust our fiscal 2025 guidance two weeks ago. We are now expecting revenues in the range between EUR 530 million and EUR 565 million, which corresponds to the lower half of the initial guidance EUR 530 million to EUR 600 million, and a gross margin of now 40% to 41%, down from previously 41% to 42%, and an EBIT margin of now around 17% to 19% from previously 18% to 22%. AI continues to be the main end market driver, especially for our Optoelectronics segments. Automotive-driven Power Electronics demand, on the other hand, remains soft. Christian will now provide a detailed look into our financials on the following pages before I take over with an update. Christian. Thanks Felix, and hello to everyone. Let me start with the key points of our revenue development on Slide 3. In a soft market environment, we achieved revenues of EUR 120 million, down versus the EUR 156 million last year, but well in the guided range of EUR 110 million to EUR 140 million. For the first nine months, revenues came in at EUR 370 million, down about 9% year-over-year. A breakdown per application shows that 66% of equipment revenues after nine months come from GaN and SiC Power, 14% from LED, 16% from Optoelectronics, and a 5% contribution from R&D tools. The after-sales business contributed to total revenues with EUR 80 million. The after-sales share of revenues after nine months was up by 2% points year-over-year to about 22%. Now let's take a closer look at the financial KPIs of the income statement on slide 4. I already talked about the revenue line. Gross profit decreased year-over-year in Q3 2025 to EUR 46 million. Gross profit in the quarter was negatively affected by approximately EUR 8 million due to volume shifts from Q3 into Q4 and around EUR 2 million due to FX effects. Subsequently, the gross margin in the current quarter came in at 39%, down 4% points versus the prior year. After nine months, gross profit was at EUR 136 million, 15% below last year's figure at 37%. Our gross margin after nine months was 2% points lower than after the same period last year. Please recall as stated in our Q1 release, this includes a one-off expense of a mid-single-digit million- euro amount in connection with the implemented personnel reduction in the operations area. Adjusted for these effects, the gross margin after nine months would be at around 38% for the remainder of the year. We calculate with an average U.S. dollar euro exchange rate of 1.15 and the continued weakness of the Japanese euro rate due to high expected revenues in foreign currency. In Q4 we expect an additional around EUR 3 million negative impact in revenues and gross margin, with the larger part resulting from the U.S. dollar and the smaller part from the Japanese yen. Together with the above-mentioned EUR 2 million effect realized in Q3, this totals to approximately EUR 5 million negative FX impacts, which corresponds with the 1 percentage point gross margin adjustment of our guidance. OpEx in the quarter was slightly up by 4% year-over-year to EUR 31 million, primarily driven by higher R&D spending compared to the previous year. For the first nine months, OpEx came in at EUR 94 million, a reduction of minus 6% driven primarily by around 13% lower R&D expenses. R&D expenses were down mainly due to reduced external contract work and consumables costs. As stated before, visible in Q3 numbers, R&D cost in H2 will be higher than the H1 number. For the full year, we expect R&D costs to be slightly lower than in 2024. EBIT for the quarter is EUR 15 million, a significant drop versus Q3 2024. The main drivers, besides the already mentioned negative factors impacting gross profit, is a negative operating leverage effect resulting from lower revenues. The weaker performance in Q3 led to an EBIT of EUR 42 million for the first nine months, a decrease of 30% year-over-year. This translates into an EBIT margin of 11%. Again, please recall the one-off expense in connection with the personnel reduction mentioned before. Adjusted for this effect, the nine-month EBIT margin would be at around 20%. Now to our key balance sheet indicators on Slide 5. On a more positive note, working capital has continued to come down by around EUR 100 million since end of fiscal year 2024. Several balance sheet items contributed here. We continued to decrease inventories to EUR 316 million compared to EUR 369 million at the end of 2024. Year over year, inventories have been reduced by EUR 111 million. As we continue to work through the surplus accumulated last year and as stated before, we expect further inventory reductions to materialize throughout 2025 and into 2026. Trade receivables at the end of September were at EUR 129 million compared to EUR 193 million at the end of 2024. The reduction versus year end is mainly the result of the collection of the payments related to the large shipments. End of 2024 advance payments received from customers at quarter end were at EUR 73 million, a nice recovery of about EUR 20 million versus end of last quarter, but still down about EUR 9 million from end of 2024. This is primarily driven by some cutoff date effects and some regional shifts in the order book. Advance payments now represent about 25% of order backlog. The fourth key element of working capital, Trade Payables, has now come down to EUR 24 million from EUR 34 million at the end of 2024. This reflects a now fully adjusted supply chain situation with significantly reduced purchasing levels. Adding it all up, our operating cash flow after nine months improved to EUR 128 million, a strong improvement of EUR 100 million versus last year's EUR 28 million. On the back of the improvement in operating cash flow, free cash flow improved even more. It came in at EUR 110 million after three quarters compared to negative EUR 58 million last year. This was supported by a strong reduction in our CapEx with EUR 18 million. After nine months, our CapEx was significantly lower than last year's number of EUR 86 million. This is primarily due to the now completed investment in the Innovation Center. As of September 2025, our cash balance, including other current financial assets, improved to EUR 153 million. This equals an increase of EUR 88 million compared to EUR 65 million at the end of fiscal year 2024, despite the dividend payment of about EUR 17 million in Q2. As stated before, a key priority remains the rebuilding of a strong cash position. Our financial decisions continue to be guided by this objective to ensure a robust liquidity foundation for the future. This has served us well in the past and we see ourselves well on track towards this target. With that, let me hand you back over to Felix. Thank you, Christian. Let me continue with an update on key trends in our different markets, starting with Optoelectronics and lasers. In Optoelectronics, AIXTRON has seen a continued recovery in demand for datacom applications which began earlier this year and has been reaffirmed in Q3. This trend is expected to continue into 2026 and beyond. Our customers are increasingly transitioning to 150- millimeter Indium Phosphide substrates and photonic integrated circuit devices requiring advanced epitaxial performance. The segment is technology-wise very demanding. It requires excellence in uniformity, doping control, and defect management, areas where our G10-AsP platform excels. Historically, AIXTRON has held a market share of over 90% in this domain served by our G3 and G4 planetary reactors. The G10-AsP is now establishing itself as the tool of record in the laser market, replacing legacy systems at leading customers. Q3 shipments and scheduled Q4 deliveries underscore our strong market position with repeat orders from key customers such as Nokia. Additionally, VCSEL demand is recovering, driven by LIDAR modules and automotive applications. We therefore expect that tools for the various laser applications will contribute significantly to our full year order intake and also into next year, 2026. Now let me move on to our LED business. We are seeing first encouraging signs of reinvestment in Red, Orange, Yellow (ROY) LED applications. Utilization rates for Red, Orange, Yellow LEDs have been high throughout the year with double-digit system shipments for mini LED applications driven by demand for RGB Fine Pitch displays. Notably, some TV manufacturers such as Samsung are shifting to full RGB backlighting, boosting Micro LED demand. While overall Micro LED demand remains moderate, medium-term drivers are positive. We've received multiple orders for our G10-AsP platform, primarily for red pixel production in next generation AR devices. The recent announcement of Meta's AR glasses based on Micro LED technology signals a broader trend with more OEM products expected in 2027 and 2028. Our G5 Plus and G10-AsP platforms are ideally suited for these applications which require ultra-small pixels and defect-free epitaxial dies. The launch of Garmin's first Micro LED watch is likely to further stimulate demand across blue, green, Micro LED segments. In solar, after years of moderate investment, we are now seeing renewed interest, including multiple orders for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite applications in constellation projects. LEO satellites are those that orbit the Earth at altitudes of about 2,000 km. They enable both fast communication as well as high-resolution Earth observation by operating in a zone just above the Earth's atmosphere, where they can maintain strong signal connections with ground stations. These satellites work in interconnected constellations of hundreds or thousands of satellites to provide global coverage. Examples are Starlink or OneWeb. We anticipate this trend to continue in the years 2026, 2027, and 2028. Let me now come to Gallium Nitride Power. AIXTRON SE continues to lead the GaN Power segment with over 85% market share across all wafer sizes and power ranges. Although demand is softer compared to last year, we are seeing solid volume orders for both 150 and 200-millimeter solutions, particularly from Asian customers, with ramp-up plans extending into 2026 and 2027. We've also strengthened our partnership with IMEC. Together, we are accelerating innovation at both the architectural and device levels. IMEC has been using both our G5 Plus as well as the G10-GaN platform for its 150 and 200-millimeter partner programs for quite a while, and we have now shipped a 300-millimeter Gallium Nitride platform to enable broader access to IMEC's recipes. We see first power semiconductor manufacturers adopting 300-millimeter GaN technology, such as Infineon Technologies. Regarding the overall GaN market, we are still dealing with a moderately oversaturated install base requiring some more time to absorb existing capacities. This digestion phase is expected to continue for some quarters before a broader recovery sets in. With that, let me come to Silicon Carbide. While end-user demand remains soft, we observe moderately increased utilization rates at some of our customers. On the one hand, this is due to new EV models being launched, which drive demand. On the other hand, SiC is starting to enter the AI data center value chain, especially in voltage classes of 1,200 volts and above. You have seen the new NVIDIA power architecture, which relies exclusively on wide- bandgap power devices at the International Conference for Silicon Carbide and Related Materials, in short, ICSCRM, in Busan, Korea. Early in Q3, various industry players confirmed mid-term adoption of super junction Silicon Carbide technology. This technology basically means that instead of one thick Silicon Carbide EPI layer deposited today, we will see in the future multiple thinner Silicon Carbide EPI deposition steps. These thinner epitaxial layers require enhanced uniformity and shortened process time. Our G10-SiC platform is well positioned to meet these needs, offering superior productivity due to the benefit of the batch concept, especially for thinner layers. We are proud to have shipped our 100th G10.6 CBD system, marking a major milestone and reinforcing our leadership in the Silicon Carbide power segment in this quarter. The Silicon Carbide market is still undergoing a longer digestion period, particularly in western-oriented regions. As a result, there are no major decisions for new fab investments on the agenda these days. In summary, we can say that the soft market period still continues in almost all markets apart from the laser market. Driven by the hunger for data from AI applications, a demand pickup will not materialize in 2025 and visibility in 2026 is still limited. With that, let me now move to our guidance. Due to the market situation just described, we had to adjust our guidance for 2025 two weeks ago. Based on the current soft market environment and assuming an exchange rate of $1.15 per euro for the remainder of the year, we now expect the following outlook for 2025. We expect to generate revenues in the range between EUR 530 million and EUR 565 million, which corresponds to the lower half of the initial guidance, which was initially EUR 530 million to EUR 600 million. FX effects led to an approximately 1% point reduction of gross margin and EBIT margin. As a result, we expect now a gross margin of around 40% to 41% and an EBIT margin of around 17% to 19%. The guidance for the gross margin and EBIT margin includes a one-off expense of a mid-single-digit million euro amount in relation to the implemented personnel reduction in the operations area earlier this year. The measure will lead to annualized savings in the mid-single-digit million euro range in the future, which corresponds to an improvement in the gross margin and EBIT margin of around 1 percentage point. As previously stated, we expect our tools to remain exempt from U.S. tariffs. However, we continue to closely monitor the impact of U.S. trade policies on the global economy and stand ready to implement any necessary measures to ensure the best possible outcomes for our customers and stakeholders. Let me at this place also give you a first outlook for the next year, 2026. We clearly see that the medium and long term drivers for AIXTRON's growth such as demand for GaN and SiC power devices, LED and Micro LED applications, lasers and LEO solar applications remain intact. However, visibility for the fiscal year 2026 remains low and as of today we do not see signs of a demand recovery yet. Therefore, our view today is that 2026 revenues are likely to be slightly below those of 2025, maybe flat. Furthermore, assuming an exchange rate of $1.15 per euro, we expect the EBIT margin not to come out below the range of the current year, maybe better. As always, we will give you firm guidance with the release of our financial year results end of February 26th. With that, I'll pass it back to Christian before we take questions. Thank you very much Felix. Thank you very much Christian. Operator, we will now take the questions. Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. Please note questions can only be asked via telephone. If you wish to make use of this option, please ensure you dial in by phone. In this case, we recommend muting the webcast. Please press nine star now to state your question. The first question comes from Janardan Menon from Jefferies, over to you. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to touch upon your final comments on 2026. To start off with, you said that 2026 is likely flat or down, but it sounded like you expect Opto to be up and your trend when I look at your Q3, GaN seems to be doing quite well while SiC is down quite sharply. Would it be fair to say that at current visibility you would expect Opto to be up, SiC to be down and GaN to be somewhat flattish? Is that a view? That would be sort of a preliminary view for next year. I think you get a perfect read on this one. Let me try even to quantify it for you. I think roughly in terms of percentage of revenues we expect as to percentage of total revenues next year we are expecting to gain about 10% points for Opto, 10% points gain for GaN and minus 20% points in Silicon Carbide. Yeah, so a pretty weak year for SiC but very strong year for the Opto segment, used to be a smaller segment, so adding 10% point of the total is quite a significant one. This also helps on the margin. You have seen my comment related to margin quality and GaN also as a percentage gaining a bit. Understood, thank you. Just to follow up on the SiC side, I understand that demand is quite weak right now. There's quite a bit of supply out there and automotive is still sluggish. Listening to companies like STMicro and all who are under quite severe margin pressure on the Silicon Carbide side, they seem to be accelerating their 6 inch to 8-inch transition because they see that as a way to improve their profitability, and ST specifically said they'll do it through the course of 2026 and by early 2027. I would assume that would be true for other parts of the installed base as well? Given the price pressure on Silicon Carbide, do you not see this as a driver at all for your Silicon Carbide revenue and do you really need the end demand to recover before any improvement happens? I think you catch it very well. Yes, the 6-inch to 8- inch transition is going very fast, especially outside of China players. I think worldwide outside of China we see the 6-inch to 8- inch transition progressing at rapid speed as you have indicated with one company name, and we see the same in other players. In fact, we do hear from some of our customers that while end customer revenue is flat or down, the unit numbers are going up. Unit numbers is of course what we as an equipment maker like, because in the end it's about wafers and increasing numbers of wafers. In fact, we expect that by the end of 2026, the transition in the Western world, as I may call it now, including Japan, is probably concluded. In 2027, 2028, I would expect the volume to be completely going on 8- inch. We do see on 8- inch also much better quality wafers, which helps the customers in terms of yield. That's one of the cost reduction drivers. Also, 8- inch substrates are getting good pricing now. Initially, they used to be very expensive. Now the pricing for 8-i nch substrate is going well and that at some point needs. The excessive overcapacity that I was speaking about at some point will be digested. I would not dare at this point to give an exact prediction because there's multiple variables that we are just discussing. I think we can clearly see at some point the overcapacity will be digested and that there will be new demand. That transition doesn't mean buying new 8-inch machines from you, is it to generate revenue for you. At some point it will mean buying new demand and new tools when the existing overcapacity is consumed. Right now we talk about existing overcapacity which is just being converted. Got it? Understood. Thanks. Next up is Martin Marandon-Carlhian from ODDO BHF. Hi, thanks for taking my question. The first one is on something that you put on the press release on Gallium Nitride. You talked about utilization rate rising in data center and I was wondering what does it mean exactly? I mean, does it mean that you already anticipate orders in the near term linked to the new 800 volt architecture from NVIDIA? Does that mean something else? Let me explain what we mean by that. Thanks for the question. What we have seen is we have seen in the years, especially 2023 and 2024, we have seen quite a number of Gallium Nitride orders which were happening a bit ahead of the wave, such that I would say early 2025 at the existing volume customers, we have seen quite a significant overcapacity of installed base also in Gallium Nitride. That was the reason why in 2025 compared to 2024, our Gallium Nitride shipments have been slowed down quite a bit because our existing and established volume customers literally had also in GaN, not only in SiC but also in GaN, some overcapacity to be digested. As we started into 2025 and some of our customers also in Gallium Nitride, we've seen installed base utilization to be quite low. Now towards the end of 2025 and looking into 2026, we see that a much larger fraction of the installed capacity is being utilized at the existing GaN customers, while those who newly entered the GaN market in 2024 and 2025, in previous earnings calls you may have recorded that we said there are still new players entering the market to Gallium Nitride, and those new entrants at this point in time are still in the qualification or in the device and the sampling phase of their technologies to their end customers. You have seen the numbers that I was just commenting towards the question that was asking. We expect the GaN segment for us to be slightly up next year. Again, it's an indication, qualitative indication as we see that utilization is increasing and we expect due to the increasing utilization some expansion orders from some customers kicking in. The broad market recovery as I've indicated with a real volume pull, we don't expect in 2026, we rather expect that in 2027-2028, but some increasing orders in 2026. Does that answer the question? Yes, that's very clear, but just a follow up on this. I mean, why would you anticipate more of that volume in 2027 and 2028? Because we read that this, a new architecture from NVIDIA is supposed to be for Rubin Ultra, which is launched in H2 2027. You know, I was expecting capacity maybe to come a bit earlier than this. Does this mean that maybe it will not be 100% GaN for some steps at the beginning, you know, the 50 and 12- volt steps, and it will go gradually? Can you explain a bit why it should come more gradually? Let's say. this is based on our current view, what we have and the signals we get from our customers. I share the view that the new 800-volt architecture will lead to significant volumes around 2027, 2028. This is also our view. For us, it's always very difficult to predict the exact timing when customers will place the orders for new equipment because we do see certain trends, but we cannot look into the exact budgets and plans of our customers. Therefore, at this point in time, we can only comment on what we are currently seeing. If later on in the year volume kicks in and orders accelerate, we are very happy to see it. We don't see signs to that yet. Great. Maybe a last question on GaN. Yole is saying that the GaN market will be close to $500 million this year. Without data centers being really a contributor, what would you guess would be the size of the data center market for GaN compared to the overall size of the market this year, like $500 million? I do not have the exact timing for my message in mind. We have looked at a midterm perspective, I think somewhere triangulating 2028, 2029, 2030, something a little further out. In this triangulation that we've done, the data center opportunity with an upside of about 50% on top of the market, without the data center opportunity, you may recall that we have a slide out there in the investor deck which on the X- axis has three time horizons. I think 2020 to 2023, I think 2024 to 2026, and whatever 2028 to 2030, something like this. On the Y- axis, the different voltage levels, low voltage, medium voltage, and then very high voltage. There we have put the AI data center opportunity, and this is the market that I'm referring to. Okay, that's clear. Maybe last question for me on the gross margin. I mean, the current guidance implies record gross margin in Q4. Can you help us maybe see the main drivers of this? Yep. Hey Martin, Christian here. I take that one. I mean like in the last years the Q4 will be the strongest quarter just by volume, purely shipments. Beyond that, we expect an improved product mix, especially a higher share of final acceptance revenues coming with high margins and also some fixed cost aggression effects. Little bit of color on the product mix, we expect a big share of T10 family products, around 50% of Q4 revenue, so that you get an idea. Also, looking at the comparing this with the last year margin, these margin ranges appear cheaper for us. Yeah. Agreed. Thank you very much. Next up is Didier Scemama from Bank of America, over to you. Yes, thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Got a couple of questions of a clarification on the comments you made earlier on 2026, and perhaps my math is not right, so please don't shout at me if I'm wrong. I think you said the SiC part of the business would be down 20% points in terms of group sales. I mean, by my calculation, that would imply pretty minor revenue contribution in 2026. Is that correct? Equally, Opto, I think you said 10 percentage points within the group. That's going to put it at something like $150 million next year. Is that the right ballpark? I would say right ballpark, right indications, yes, as far as we can say. I mean, it's very early, but we really wanted to give you something. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Now that's incredibly helpful, to be perfectly honest. I guess the question, when I look at the comments you put on the nine month report, you said about 50% of the bookings came from power electronics. I have to assume that the rest mostly come from Opto because LEDs, etc., is fairly de minimis, which, if you compare to what you said last year, means that the bookings in Opto are probably up meaningfully, which is again consistent with what you said. Perhaps, you know, when you look at history, Opto, like all the other segments, have tended to be incredibly cyclical. Would you think that there is duration in that growth in Optoelectronics beyond 2026, or do you think that the big CapEx cycle we see currently for silicon photonics and lasers is going to be, as we've seen in the past, a big, big year and then it falls off a cliff? Oh, I think you ask the trillion, the multi-trillion dollar question, how long the AI bubble will last. I do not have the crystal ball for you. Right. If I would, I might not be sitting in this place right now. Okay. Honestly, I wish you good luck. I think it fully relates, given the serious note. Some joking aside, a big part of the laser part is in fact coming from the datacom. Right. The datacom again is driven by the AI and the AI data center build out. It really hinges on that one to a very big part, probably 50%, 60%. It really depends on how exactly that's progressing. We can only see what we have now in our visibility. A longer term view, two, three years out, I think it's as difficult as for everybody predicting the AI trend. No, for sure. If I may, as a follow up, you mentioned Nokia, slash, Infinera as a customer for your G10 platform for their peak products. Can you give us a few more examples of key customers for that division so that we understand the underlying dynamics? Please. Unfortunately, I cannot because we keep customer names always strictly, very strictly confidential as under NDA. We stick to that. We are extremely sensitive to that. I can give you a qualitative indication. Imagine you think who may be the top 10 providers for data communications devices for AI. You can assume that at least 80%, 90%, maybe 100% of those guys are our customers currently placing order with us. 90% of those are placing orders for the G10-AsP. Maybe I can give you that indication and I really mean it as I say it. Yeah, no, no, that's very clear. Thank you so much. Now we're coming to the next question. It comes from Madeleine Jenkins from UBS. Thanks for taking my question. I just had one. On utilization rates, you mentioned that the GaN power were increasing. Could you quantify that at all? Also, I guess get a sense of your Silicon Carbide utilization rates at kind of Chinese and then Western customers. Thank you. So I understand your question about detailed utilization rates. We don't have those and we could also not share them if we would have them. What we can say is that based on spare part orders, based on service orders, we see a trend here, which is a good utilization increase for the GaN power, which leads us to expect some volume expansion orders in 2026 at a moderate level, as we have indicated. At the same time in Silicon Carbide for the overall market, I think towards the beginning of the year, we have seen very low utilizations. With very low, I mean, really far below 50%, means far more than 50% of the capacity installed in the market was standing idle early in the market. Maybe we are now approaching a 50%, 60%, 70% utilization in Silicon Carbide. We do see it increasing, but we are still far from a level on the market where customers are really going into reorders and expansion orders. I think that's not yet on the agenda. Okay, that's helpful. I guess all your kind of new orders in Silicon Carbide specifically, are those kind of new customers in China? Is that the right way to look at it? Yes, we did have significant orders and shipments in 2025 in Silicon Carbide into China. Quite a diverse set of customers, highlighting the success of our G10-SiC platform. I think we've managed to establish that platform very well in the China market. That was all relating to the earlier question by John Arden. That was all for 8-inch or having 8-inch in mind. However, we are all aware of the large overcapacity in Silicon Carbide in China. Also, the China Silicon Carbide business at this point in time has slowed down. I think the market overall is digesting the existing overcapacity. I think we all see the very nice success of Chinese electric vehicles. At some point, the overcapacity will be digested and there will also be new orders. That's very helpful, thank you. Just a quick final question. Do you have a sense of how much of your current Gallium Nitride revenues this year, let's say, are for data center applications? That's honestly very difficult to predict. Sorry for having only a vague answer because our Gallium Nitride customers, I think we all have a couple of very big names, leading power electronics makers in mind, right. They use our platform, essentially our tools, essentially for all the applications across the board. On our tool in the same configuration, you can produce a 20- volt, 100- volt, a 650- volt, and even if you want a 1,200- volt device without any change in configuration, and therefore we as a maker just send the tool as it is and the customer can do whatever the customer wants with it without a modification in those power ranges. Therefore, it's for us very difficult to predict. If there would be a different configuration by voltage range, then at least we would have an indication. Therefore, it's difficult for us to say, sorry, sorry for that one. Silicon Carbide is different, right? 6 to 8-inch, right. It's always the customer needs a configuration and we see spare part orders or parts orders and we can at least give you here in the call a qualitative indication for the GaN. It's really one size fits all. Yeah, customer takes it and then we don't know. Okay, makes sense. Thank you very much. Next up is Ruben Devos from Kepler Cheuvreux. Yes, good afternoon. I just had a follow up on Silicon Carbide, but I think you touched upon it already. It was around your comments on benefiting over proportionally when the cycle would return. I think you talked about a more diverse set of customers, so that might be an explanation, right. Just curious around what degree of confidence you have, right, to make that statement of outgrowing the market. Even outside, like automotive, how does the pipeline shape up? You know, thinking about industrial as well in Silicon Carbide. Thank you. Thanks a lot. I think your question hints very well towards the future direction of silicon. Let me go a little deeper to expand on it. Maybe some of the backgrounds, the technical backgrounds are interesting. The first generation of Silicon Carbide devices which we have seen, I would say in the last five years, with a very simple MOSFET consisting essentially of just one thick layer, one thick EPI layer. Now what I mentioned, the next generation of devices which to the expectation of all market participants will be the main volume in the next wave. Everybody expects the next wave of growth, 2027, 2028, exact timing to be TBD, to be super junction MOSFET. This is a device where this one thick layer is split into three or four thinner layers, each of them about 1/5 or 1/4 thick of the initial one. It's not just one big EPI, but the wafer would be put into a tool four times. You make one thin layer, then you do some device processing and then the wafer returns to the Silicon Carbide EPI tool, comes the next thin layer and so on, multiple times. This super junction technology shifts the operating point from one thick layer which, let's say, has in the past been deposited, let's say, in about one hour to two hours processing time, now into multiple thinner layers depending on which type of equipment. Let's say it now takes 15, 20, 30 minutes instead of one or two hours. The wafer gets into the equipment multiple times. With that, the complete dynamics about the productivity of the tool, the key KPIs, and so on, is shifting because essentially it's a very different operating point. You can buy, in an analogy, a car which is perfect as a city car, small and nice and fits into parking lots, but doesn't drive very fast. You don't care. A perfect travel car for long distance travel or a nice sports car for going up the mountain pathways or driving races. Each of the operating points has a different optimum. This new operating point about thin layers, to our calculations and also to the feedback we receive from customers, is very beneficial for the batch tool which we are offering. This is the reason why we've made these positive earlier statements. Let me come to the second part of your question. The other part of the market which may provide further growth, I think it's still a little further out than 2027, 2028, is the market for industrial applications. That market could probably towards the end of the decade grow very big. What we are talking here is about the following. Today we use the Silicon Carbide devices mainly in switch mode power supplies or like power devices for the car, the main inverter, and in voltages 650 to 1200 volt. We can also make Silicon Carbide devices which have 3,000 volt or 6,000 volt or 10,000 volt, much, much higher voltage classes. The industry is working on that. It was, for example, one of the elements in the NVIDIA power architecture. I think everybody here in this call has the chart of the architecture. If you look at the chart of NVIDIA, on the very front end, you come from the grid and you enter the grid into the data center at voltages around 14 kilovolt. That's 14,000 volt. This down conversion from over 10,000 volt, eventually down to 1,000, is done by Silicon Carbide, and then from 1,000 to 1 is done by Gallium Nitride. You cannot only use the Silicon Carbide in a data center for these high voltages, but in the entire grid. We all know as more and more renewables are being used worldwide, I think China leads the pack with driving down the costs of solar and wind, but the whole world is following. We need much more active grid stabilization, load management, active management, and so on and so forth. The worldwide power grid will experience over the next two decades massive investments into switching infrastructure. Today, this is all being done by transformers. I think everybody knows next to the highway, like these transformer stations standing. In the future, many of those will be done by active switching, and this will all be done by silicon power devices. All the leading grid suppliers, whether this is a Siemens, an ABB, a Schneider Electric, General Electric in the U.S., are working on such devices. It's a nice end segment for Silicon Carbide. However, I think this is a longer term trend. I would not put the years 2027, 2028 on it. I would rather put 2029 onwards as a nice trend for the turning of the decades on this trend. All right, great. Thanks for the context, very helpful. Just my second question related to Optoelectronics. Basically, I think you've called co-packaged optics as a key driver for indium phosphide adoption. How quickly would you expect the market to move there from pilot into volume, co-packaged optic to deployment? You've very helpfully framed the tool market size for Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride in your slide deck. May I opportunistically ask whether you've done a similar exercise for the G10-AsP platform? Thank you. Thanks, thanks a lot. I take the suggestion. It's a good one. Let's take that on our action item list. He smiled around me here in the room. Yeah, it's a good one. We don't have it yet for today, so I cannot give it to you. Maybe in the next earnings call. Now to your question about the sizing and what we see for the Optoelectronics market. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to predict than for the GaN and for the Silicon Carbide market. Let me try to illustrate to you why. In GaN, in SiC, we talked at least for the main volume segment, for pretty standardized segments and types of devices. Right. For GaN we talk 20 volts, 100 volt, 650 and an exotic 1200. Silicon carbide, 650, 1200. Now I was talking a bit about the very high voltages. You can put it into two or three classes. Unfortunately, the Optoelectronic market is extremely fragmented. We both see that in the number of players. I don't know, there may be a couple of hundred electronics producers and companies, while in power electronics we talk probably about maybe a dozen or two dozen, three dozens maybe at most. It's extremely fragmented and such are the different technologies which is competing with each other. The good thing is this is physics. They all have in common. As of today, they need a wide band gap semiconductor. Yeah. Gallium arsenide or indium phosphide for generating the light. Then the way the light is being processed, whether this is on an indium phosphide or gallium arsenide based photonic integrated circuit or whether the light coming on is put into a silicon photonics, you can use silicon, silicon silicon dioxide waveguides and switching devices. This is extremely diverse and therefore very difficult to predict. I wouldn't dare at this point to make a prediction where it goes. We are aware that all the guys who are working on the leading edge CMOS nodes and also doing heterogeneous integration, all of them work on multiple technologies. Even for the big guys in the industry thinking at TSMC, it's difficult to really say, this technology is winning out against the others. Okay, great, thanks a lot. Next up is Andrew Gardiner from Citi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. I just had one on the margin outlook into next year that you provided us, Felix, saying that you thought EBIT margin next year would be in line, perhaps better year on year. Can you just sort of give us some of the drivers there in terms of, you know, gross margin? I mean obviously you've given us the mix in terms of opto and GaN up and SiC down. How would you sort of quantify that in terms of magnitude of gross margin change next year? Also, you've done a sort of workforce reduction earlier this year. Given the still slow market in SiC, do you see any need to continue to reduce OpEx or are we far enough through this down cycle now where you just sort of have to weather it because you can see the long term opportunity? Really there's not much change, incremental change in terms of OpEx into next year. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot for the question. I think part of the answer you've given. Let me try to give an end to end consistent picture. We were referring to EBIT margins really to bottom line. I have not given indications on the gross margin. Not more quantitative. Right. I was really mean EBIT margin. I think there's three drivers behind our indication towards. We wanted to give you a very clear indication that the margins is not getting worse yet despite the top line suffering probably a bit. I think there's three drivers behind it. On the one hand we see margin wise a bit stronger product mix. I indicated the gain of output that helps a lot. Secondly, we will see the full year effect of the headcount reduction which we conducted early in 2025. There's also cost and restructuring costs in 2026. We get the benefits of that. The third topic is we use the slow period of the cycle right now for some operational improvements, be it working on our storage topics, be it working on logistics topics, be it currently working on our operational efficiencies. We have quite a bunch of these things ongoing which are just making our operations more fluent, which reduce the external spend that's going out the door all the time, and we expect some of those effects to kick in. Based on those three effects altogether, we expect in terms of absolute terms a stable bottom line or percentage wise stable or even improved bottom line despite the probably slightly weaker top line. I think that's important in the end for you guys, also then to everybody here in this call, to give an indication where does it look on the profitability. Thanks very much. The next question comes from Adithya Metuku from HSBC. Yeah, good afternoon guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, I just wondered if you could give us some clarity on what drove the push out this year. Which end market drove the reduction in outlook for the year? Sorry, I didn't acoustically, the line was very bad. I didn't get the question. Could you repeat it please? Sorry, apologies. I was just wondering if you could give us any color on what drove the reduction in guide in 2025. Where did you see this push out? Which end market? Ah, okay, sorry. Now I get it. Thanks, thanks a lot. Honestly, this was all across the board except for the laser market. I think the laser market we've indicated is strong and continues to be strong and growing into next year. As we have just discussed, we have seen a weaker than expected GaN in Silicon Carbide initially as we started into the year. For us it's always very difficult to predict the full range and we have put the full guidance range accounting early in February 25th. Looking now seven months back, in our full guidance range we have accounted for both a slow market scenario which now is unfolding. Therefore, we now look at the lower half of the guidance and early in 2025 with the other end of the guidance we have also taken into account a more positive market environment. As we all see, the more positive market environment for power semis for electric vehicles is not yet unfolding. The upper half therefore had to be corrected now down to the lower half. We are narrowing down the lower half of the guidance. Understood, got it. Just on the LED and the Micro LED markets, you talked about seeing signals of improvement. I just wondered if you could give us a bit more color on what exactly you're seeing, especially on the LED side. Is it driven by China? Is it anything construction related? Just any color you can give us on these two end markets in terms of the signals of improvement. Yeah, thanks a lot. On the LED market, this is typically almost exclusively a China-only market, I think we can say, because of cost and volume effects. We all know China is very, very strong these days on display making. It used to be, as you have indicated in your question, historically there used to be a lot of the LEDs going into construction. In China, they put these big, big walls on the skyscrapers. As we all know, the China housing bubble has collapsed. That was also the reason why the segment was dead for us for two years. Now we are seeing the classical LED market coming back with what we call fine pitch displays, and especially display backlighting, local dimming, local backlighting of display. You can achieve magnificent effects by either having white LEDs behind your LED display. You can create a beautiful black, or you can produce quite some nice bright colors on it with that one, and that's even going now into turning into RGB. The good news is it is revenue already today. The bad news is it makes it much more difficult for Micro LED to gain ground in the televisions because the normal displays are already getting much improved quality. Let's see what it means for Micro LED. The other point which I was indicating, we still see that on Micro LED research work is ongoing. We've seen some first devices. I was relating in my prepared notes to the Garmin watch, which is the first Micro LED watch coming out, quite high prices and unfortunately with low battery lifetime. We are seeing that coming, and we see a lot of companies currently doing work on AR glasses and VR glasses. You may have seen the glasses launched by Meta. There's much more stuff in the preparation. I think this is a new device category which will really come into the market quite soon, and we see some moderate demand for that also next year, as I've indicated in my prepared notes. Again, it's far away, to be clear, it's far away from the Micro LED massive investment wave that all of us, two, three years ago, were expecting, where we would expect that Micro LEDs are penetrating everything from smart watches to notebook displays and televisions. That one we are not seeing yet. We still see the research ongoing, so many companies are still working on it, but we don't have it here in our view when exactly. That's. Got it. Just one last question. With TSMC getting out of the GaN market, I just wondered, do you see a market for secondhand tools, for your GaN epitaxy tools, and would that affect demand maybe next year or the year after? How do you see the implications of TSMC getting out of the GaN market? I see it as a bit of a reshuffle which happens normally in all the markets where there's a bit of a slowdown in the market. I think we see the same in Silicon Carbide. Some players are exiting, some others use the opportunity to buy some used tools to get a hold of or to get used to it and then newly to enter the market. I think it's a normal play that happens in a softer market environment for the overall market. For us this has essentially no implication because whether a used tool is installed or whether a tool is installed at company A or changes the ownership and is later on installed within the factory of company B, it doesn't change the overall installed capacity in the market or doesn't change the market dynamics. For us as an equipment maker, we support customers when they need help in either way, sometimes for moving to it, for reinstalling to it, but it doesn't change or doesn't impact the market. Understood, thank you. The next question comes from Michael Kuhn from Deutsche Bank. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll start with, let's say, the usual update on 300- millimeter GaN. I think it's quite well known that Infineon Technologies is quite advanced in that context, and obviously no big surprise, they are cooperating closely with you in that regard. When should we expect tool orders to arrive, and let's say outside Infineon Technologies, what's your view? How many companies are currently working on the transition and preparing orders? I think with 300- millimeter GaN, the market unfolds pretty much as we have expected. If you recall, we stated earlier that we see the 300-millimeter GaN as a subsegment of the overall GaN market. Initially targeting the lower voltage classes means 100- volt, 20- volt, maybe 200- volt. Maybe at a later time, also 650, but really starting at the lower voltage classes and we get confirmation from many customers. What we had expected early on is that customers are really targeting to switch and to reuse existing silicon MOSFET or silicon IGBT capacities and to rededicate existing fab for Gallium Nitride. Of course, customers need to buy a new EPI tool because the silicon EPI tool is a completely different tool from a Gallium Nitride EPI tool. In any case, there's a new tool demand for Gallium Nitride tools. However, the market adoption and the customer decision to the largest part depends on the installed base of factories. Customers who have today their silicon MOSFETs running in a 200- millimeter silicon fab are likely to switch to a 200- millimeter GaN tool. Customers who today are running the silicon MOSFET in a 300-millimeter fab will want to switch and rededicate their 300-millimeter fab to a 300-millimeter GaN fab. That is the market dynamic. Based on that dynamic, you know, we never comment on customers unless we have a joint press release with customers. Allow me to describe the trend without names as we always try to do. We really see customers who have installed 300-millimeter silicon capacity are switching now and starting to switch and have plans. The many, many, many other customers who have 200-millimeter silicon fabs continue to work on Gallium Nitride 200-millimeter. As a result of that, our strategy going forward is that we will support both groups of customers. GaN 300 is not displacing GaN 200. We have our GaN 300-millimeter roadmap. We're very happy with the results that the 300-millimeter tool is giving. At the same time, we also maintain an active 200-millimeter GaN roadmap where we also work on improvements. We have multiple very close customer collaborations on 200-millimeter tool improvements or even next generation tools for 200-millimeters. Understood, thank you. On cash flow and working capital, given that you don't expect top line growth next year, how much more would you think you can further optimize working capital? Because I think you mentioned you see further potential also into 2026. Let's focus maybe on the inventories. The rest of the working capital is always a little bit arbitrary, the receivables and the down payments. On the inventories, our key ambition is to drive them down further. It's a little bit difficult yet to predict, not knowing the exact product mix and so on. At first, high level expectation would be another 20% down. I would be more ambitious. Let's check. I would say by the end of this year I would expect inventory $275 million plus $15 million, to give you a number. Let's see how close we come. Maybe next year, $200 million. Let's see, something like this. OK. Looking forward to it. Maybe you can do a little bit between the two of you who comes closer. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions. Good. Perfect. I think we had a lively discussion. We very much appreciate, as you see, and stay tuned. I think there's a good exchange and I think we all see each other, latest in the February call for the full year results. Exactly. We will be on the road at various conferences. A lot of you at one of the conferences. For those we don't catch before end of the year, already a Merry Christmas. In October. OK, cheers guys. Thank you. Bye bye.