Our nine months and Q3 2021 analyst and investor call. Today, we will have our CEO, Rolf Unterberger, and our CFO and COO, Bernd Wagner, lead you through the call. As in previous sessions, both board members will be available for any questions you may have in the Q&A session following this presentation. Now, the presentation supporting this call is also available on the investor relations section of our website, which will be relaunched early next year to offer you a better navigation experience, by the way. However, if you're not online at the moment, you should still be able to follow the call. Ladies and gentlemen, today's presentation contains forward-looking statements regarding future developments, which are based on the information currently available to the company. As a result of risks and uncertainties, actual outcomes may differ from the forward-looking statements made in this presentation. Cherry does not intend to update these forward-looking statements. Also, financial figures in this presentation may not add up due to rounding. Finally, please take notice that this call will be recorded and a replay will be made available in the investor relations section of our website shortly. Now I hand over to our CEO, Rolf Unterberger, who will give you an update of the current business and market situation, as well as the medium and long-term view on further developments and trends against the backdrop of the focused company strategy. Then our CFO, Bernd Wagner, will give you some more details on the nine-month and Q3 financials before Rolf will conclude the presentation part of this call with a wrap up of the key investment highlights. Rolf, please go ahead. Thanks a lot, Kai. A warm welcome from my side to everybody on today's earnings call. Today, we are reporting about the first full quarter while being a publicly listed company, and of course, we are excited to report another quarter of strong profitable growth. We continue to focus on our organic growth, in particular, to advance and expand our position as a global innovation leader, to develop new innovative market leading products across all of our business areas, to expand our premium and leading brand presence, and last but not least, to deepen our global market penetration. Of course, we also continue to pursue our inorganic growth strategy based on our strong financial position. Our first acquisition this year, ActiveKey, has already contributed to the positive development this year. By pursuing other selected acquisitions, we will complement and further strengthen our product portfolio and our global geographic presence. Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see from the nine months figures, we are seeing strong company growth, and we are making corresponding investments in our human capital, bringing additional expertise and support in various areas of the company. We have added over 70 new employees, many experts in their area, which corresponds to about 15% increase throughout worldwide operations. Our strong revenue growth has been achieved with an even improved operational profitability of almost 30% on an adjusted EBITDA level. As just mentioned, our first acquisition this year, ActiveKey, has already contributed this positive development with around 2% of group revenue, and the integration process with our growing digital health business has been very efficient so far. Let's now turn to look at the medium and long-term trends, as well as the short-term developments in more detail. Overall, our growth of 31.3% in the first nine months remained at a very high level. This also applies to the Q3, where we generated 26.1% of revenue growth. The global gaming market has risen strongly over the past decade. Video gaming has become a mainstream form of entertainment, and many incumbents continue to invest into this market. There are now some estimated 3.1 billion gamers worldwide, according to DFC Intelligence, which equals nearly 40% of the world population. According to DFC Intelligence, Asia is leading for the number of paying gamers with 1.42 billion people. That's the reason why we are focusing on this attractive and largest market. Most important, 1.5 billion people play on PC. The specific growth drivers include, in particular, an increasing number of gamers, the gamers' buying frequency, and of course, their willingness to pay for the newest high-performing gaming peripherals. For example, according to the study by Technavio gaming peripherals data, the market for mechanical gaming keyboards in China is expected to grow with a CAGR of 16% until 2025 to reach a market size of about EUR 521 million. Furthermore, the professionalization of gaming and public interest in esports, as well as the high popularity of PC games, will continue to drive further market growth, combined with an increasing game control complexity requiring game devices with precise control and feedback. Similar to the gaming business, Cherry's branded premium peripherals are increasingly being adopted by professional writers, programmers, and creators. These not only cherish our brand signature quality, but also the ergonomic and the industry-leading design of keyboards, which allow them to type faster and more accurately, as well as our other products, of course. In 2020, we have sold 3.2 million units across office keyboards, desktop combos, and mice, and we are tracking to a higher volume in 2021. Our products are well-positioned to benefit from the trend towards high-end premium products in terms of technology, reliability, ergonomics, and design. Moreover, the increasing penetration of the B2C market will generate significant upside potential for this business. COVID-19 has globally increased the number of professional workstations due to the global trend to work from home, creating a high installed base of keyboards and mice with corresponding additional replacement cycles in the future. We are firmly convinced that the work from home trend is here to stay. Based on a survey on behalf of the World Economic Forum from April 2021, this is based on a better-than-expected experience from the reorganization of working arrangements, showing almost 60% with a higher productivity. Data from National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. indicate that average U.S. employee has invested about $561 in home equipment to facilitate work from home. The same survey shows only 28% of respondents intend to fully return to pre-pandemic activities. Finally, the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. expects a 5% productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to reoptimized working arrangement and less time spent commuting. In addition to this broader installed base and its corresponding replacement purchases, we are also seeing all product segments undergo a shift from corded to wireless. In the Q3, disruptions to Chinese supply chains and key customers due to COVID-19 pandemic restricted our originally expected business growth. We also observed a corresponding build-up of work in progress inventory, including switches at customers as those customers waited on other components in order to produce their finished goods. In Q3, this effect had a negative impact on ordering behavior and components business. We believe that the current headwinds from global logistics and supply chain issues had a short term and transitory impact on our overall industry in the Q3, while the underlying secular growth trends around our gaming and professional business will remain strong in the medium and long term. We believe that with our current and future innovative products, Cherry is in an excellent position to meet the market needs. Here are a few examples of success we have seen over the last quarter, which will continue to drive growth for Cherry. In the components business, in addition to Dell, we have added 4 additional customers for the ultra-low profile mechanical switch, which are designed for laptops. This first real mechanical key switch for laptops is only 3.5 millimeters and will be delivered to these new clients from beginning on 2022. Mechanical switches for gaming and office laptops are set to be one of the key growth drivers for Cherry during the next few years. Furthermore, the first phase of a new switch innovation continued to progress successfully in Q3 towards a market introduction in 2022. In the Q3, Cherry continued to expand its direct sales channels and prepared its entry into new regional markets for gaming peripherals, particularly in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia as planned. In operational terms, we added 3 new products to the range in the gaming peripherals business. The MX 3.0S Wireless keyboard, the MC 2.1 special purpose mouse, and the HC 2.2 headset in Q3, as well as a central control software to optimize the range of products sold in China. As you can see, we continue to expand our market position as technology leader. This also includes our recently developed advanced wireless technology, enabling a wireless connection transmission latency at a very high speed of 1 millisecond, which we believe will be highly relevant for the gaming and professional users group, thereby providing coded performance combined with wireless flexibility. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very proud to pre-announce today that Cherry's MC 2.1 mouse and the HC 2.2 headset will receive the German Design Award 2022. In addition to the MX 2.0S keyboard, which has been already awarded by the German Design Council, making every product in Cherry's two series as a winning team member. Of course, we also expanded our product portfolio in the professional peripherals for office and industry business with 5 new products in Q3, in particular with the new G80-3000N tenkeyless and the MX 10.0N mechanical keyboards. These products mainly address the so-called creative market segment for professional users. The new 2.4 GHz cordless STREAM KEYBOARD WIRELESS has everything that helps make a name for a successful wired counterpart. It is dedicated to those users who want the proven quality of a Cherry classic with a full-size layout. In addition, we have successfully onboarded a new distributor for both B2B and B2C in peripherals in China. In addition, we currently even further expanding our product portfolio with the introduction of a new full-size version, G80-3000N RGB, comprising state-of-the-art technology such as anti-ghosting feature, which prevents ghost keys when pressing multiple keys. Full N-key rollover allows users to press many keys as they need to do at the same time. The RGB lighting feature with over 60 million colors provides countless lighting options, from animated multi-color effects to subtle single color lighting or customizable single key illumination. Numerous lighting effects and colors can be selected directly from the keyboard. For additional individualization needs, a powerful Cherry utility software is available. Furthermore, plastic-free packaging for all products in the professional business area has been established in Q3, demonstrating our increasing ecological awareness and responsibilities throughout the group. In the digital health business, Cherry's total addressable market expanded as outpatient and inpatient care facilities became users of electronic healthcare records. We gained additional customers for Cherry's eHealth terminals and have successfully introduced our ST-1506 eHealth terminal at the German Nursing Day in early October. This device, which has won the iF Design Award, among other distinctions, provides a highly secure, hygienic, and easily disinfectable touchscreen solution for all users. Of course, all approved by gematik GmbH, the national agency for the digitalization of the German healthcare system. The high quality and IT security standards which are required for this product serve as a high threshold for potential competitors, and we are very confident to gain further market share in 2022 and beyond. A new generation of high-performance production assembly machines for manufacturing mechanical switches is expected to start production in Q4 2022. This state-of-the-art assembly machines mark a milestone for a new generation of production technology and are expected to make a substantial contribution towards further boosting our efficiency. At this point, I'd like to point out the main elements of our growth strategy. We intend to benefit from both our leading market positions and our attractive underlying market trends in order to drive growth through continued innovation. We also strive to create additional value to our customers and want to expand our global reach and penetrate further regional markets to reach additional end users for our products. We aim to continue to strengthen our brand recognition by a combination of organic growth measures as well as inorganic growth. Besides an overarching strategy for the group, we also have defined specific strategic objectives for our four businesses. In the components business, we intend to improve market penetration in the gaming laptop market segment with our Cherry MX Ultra-Low Profile switches. The strategy for our gaming peripherals business is marked by the introduction of new products like keyboards, mice, and headsets to expand all our product lines on different market price levels. It also comprises establishing a comprehensive ecosystem encompassing keyboards, mice, headsets, and central software in all lines. In our peripherals business for office and industry, we plan to introduce new products to further expand the portfolio, including new wireless keyboards and desktop combos and new corded keyboards. For example, a wireless keyboard featuring our Cherry MX Ultra-Low Profile key switch, addressed in particular to creative writers and heavy typers, is expected to be launched in 2022. Last but not least, we believe that we have several attractive opportunities for further growth of our digital health business in innovative markets. These opportunities arise mainly from our high rollout of existing products in our addressable German eHealth market and the potential to address the very large medical practitioner market segment. We also see an opportunity to replicate our software and hardware offering in other healthcare markets and believe that the increasing data security requirements will contribute to our product growth in this business. As you can see by the course of our business in Q3, but also the first nine months, we are well on the way to implement these strategic goals operationally in order to grow the scope of our business in the medium and long term. Having said this, I would like to hand over to Bernd for a more detailed view on the financials for the first nine months, but also the Q3. Bernd? Thank you, Rolf. I would like to also welcome all participants of this call. While Rolf has already given you a clear view on the underlying growth drivers and operational highlights, I would like to point out to you the main financial results in the light of our business operations. The group sales totaled to EUR 123.4 million in the first nine months, corresponding to a 31.3% increase compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year at EUR 93.9 million. In the Q3, we generated group revenues of EUR 43.1 million, up 21.6% from the revenues in Q3 2020 of EUR 34.2 million. The gross profit on revenue was 41.2% in the first nine months and 41.1% in the Q3. Marketing and selling expenses amounted to around 9.2% of the revenue in the first nine months and 8.9% in the Q3. Administrative expenses amounted to approximately 11.9% of the revenue in the first nine months, while they have been significantly affected by one-time special effects in connection with the IPO in Q2 and seven point three percent in the Q3. Our expenses for research and development amounted to 3.9% of revenue in the first nine months and 4.5% in the Q3, reflecting our organic growth strategy. Due to special effects with regard to our IPO, M&A, and some first-time application of IFRS regulations, reported earnings before interest and taxes amounted to EUR 20.1 million and the net income to EUR 3.5 million in the first 9 months and EUR 6.1 million in Q3. Consequently, adjusted EBIT amounted to EUR 25.6 million in the first 9 months, which corresponds to an increase of 33.2% over the prior year period. A full reconciliation of our alternative performance measures is included in the backup of this presentation and in the interim report, which is also available from our website. Our strong liquidity position enabled us to timely pay all due liabilities, as well as the realization of our planned growth investments. Payments for investments in fixed assets totaled around 4.7 million EUR in the first nine months, and payments for investments in intangible assets amounted to 1.9 million EUR. Overall, we have had an excellent quarter. The business area with the highest revenue was gaming, comprising our components business for switches and gaming devices business for peripherals, accounting for a share of 51.2% of the total revenue in the first nine months, followed by the professional business area, which holds our office and industry peripherals business and our digital health business with a share of 48.8%. Revenue distribution in Q3 was 49.2% for gaming and 50.8% for professional. Revenue in gaming business area grew at a rate of 18.4% to EUR 63.2 million in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, and at a rate of 5.8% to EUR 21.2 million in Q3. With an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.7% profitability in the gaming area remained high during the nine-month period. Revenue in the professional business area grew at a rate of 48.3% in the first nine months to a total of EUR 60.2 million, supported by the increased B2C business with office peripherals by the successful rollout of our eHealth terminals into the German healthcare market, as well as by the first-time consolidation of Active Key upon acquisition on 7 May 2021, resulting in a strong Q3 growth of 54.8% to EUR 21.9 million. We continue to expect strong sales growth and improved profitability for Cherry Group in the medium and long term. Our forecast of double-digit revenue growth for 2022 fiscal year remains in place. We have specified our revenue forecast for the current fiscal year to around EUR 170 million, corresponding to a 30% growth year-on-year, and taking account of the current supply chain uncertainties, particularly in China, and the temporary fluctuations in the ordering behavior of our customers. We continue to predict an increase of operating profitability to an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 30%. In the previous year, we have had 28.5%. Cherry has an attractive cash position of EUR 63.4 million to support further growth. We intend to further capitalize on our excellent market cap position in order to further drive our profitable growth in 2022 and beyond. Now I hand back over to Rolf. Rolf, please go ahead. Thank you very much, Bernd. Ladies and gentlemen, please let me conclude with a summary of what we believe are the key investment highlights for Cherry based on our business situation, our technology leadership, the underlying long-term market trends and our excellent position in this global market. We are clear global market leader for premium mechanical gaming switches with a market share of around 40% and more than 35 years of relevant experience. Our products are prized among the relevant user groups for their unparalleled speed, durability, and innovative features. Cherry's positioned as a premium winners brand, being the switch of choice for some of the world's leading influencers and the most sought after keyboard brands, several of which being advertised with Cherry inside. Our leading technology and our blue chip customer base provide us with pricing power, explaining our high EBITDA margins and attractive cash conversion. Our strong brand, our patents and economies of scale for our business model serve as entry barriers for competitors. We have a track record for leveraging our powerful brand to new markets. Therefore, we have already selectively established strong positions with our four businesses. Our future growth is driven by multiple secular growth trends and underlying market dynamics, which I have already pointed out to you in detail for gaming. However, the trend towards working, learning, and creating from anywhere fuels future growth for our business. Our new Ultra-Low Profile switch serves as a sweet spot to dominate the future market for premium laptops with the first real mechanical switch. Last but not least, the digitalization of the German healthcare system continues to gain momentum with the rollout of telematic infrastructure. To summarize, the underlying demand remains strong. We expect the supply chain issues to be transitory. We continue to invest in manufacturing capacity and human capital to support expected growth. Cherry retains its innovation leadership and has launched many new products. Cherry retains its premium market position and pricing remains strong. We stepped into several new geographic markets. We have also made good progress developing a portfolio of M&A opportunities, and we expect to execute on this during 2022. We expect to achieve double-digit sales growth rates and a strong EBITDA margins in the medium and long term. Ladies and gentlemen, many thanks for your attention. Now I'd like to hand over to the operator to manage the Q&A process. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions for our speakers, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question is from Marie-Thérèse Grübner. Hauck & Aufhäuser, your line is now open. Yes, good afternoon, everybody. I have a couple of questions. First of all, I mean, it's time to look at 2022, and I was wondering, when you mentioned double-digit growth, in the text of the release as it was, I thought rather referring to 2022 and now you're referring it to medium and long-term. Specifically, what kind of growth rates we could expect in 2022? You know, if you could narrow down the double-digit statement, that would be maybe helpful. The second question was, how much were really the bottlenecking effects on the 6% growth in gaming in the Q3? I mean, how many points of growth did you effectively lose because of that? On the ULP side with the four new customers, when can we expect and can we expect a press release announcing the names of these customers? How many roughly ULP switches would that represent in 2022, assuming everything's back to normal? Maybe those questions for start. Okay. I would like to start. Bernd, you add whenever you have anything to add. Double-digit growth, of course, we are right now in the planning phase for next year, and we also have to consider, of course, supply chain and IC shortage going forward. We cannot really talk about a number yet. We will do that definitely in the Q4 report when we are through with our planning at the moment. We're still in the middle of the planning phase, yeah. We cannot be more specific than what we said today. In regard to ultra low profile, our customers will launch their products end of Q1, beginning of Q2. We, of course, are not allowed to talk about these customers as long as they have not launched their products. Either we do a press release when we are ready with that, or we talk about it in the year-end report or in this conference, case by case. In regard to what we lost in gaming due to supply chain to other things, I would guess or I could say it's around, maybe 5% of top line, what we could have done, if we would have gone full steam, yeah. We saw two trends. On one hand, stock out on our customers, and the other thing is the shortage in the supply chain on the IC side with our customers, pushed them to move to other keyboards or other types of keyboards where they had to use then different switches, and this is always a challenge, of course, to the supply chain. Maybe one follow-up, Bernd, on the ULP. Is there a sense of the volume of switches that the 4 new clients would represent? Do you mean the capacity constraints? No, no. I'm asking the four new clients. The additional customers, yeah. Yeah. The additional customers. How many new switches that profit? It's not finally discussed, but what we guess is it will be, let's say, occupying the entire capacity of our current machine. It goes up to, I would say, around 30 million switches. Therefore, we're in the process to order the next machine in order to onboard additional clients, of course, in 2022. Okay. Thank you. We will start the ordering process now, yeah. Yes. Thank you. The next question is from Philipp Frey, Baader Helvea. Your line is now open. Hello, gentlemen. Well, first of all, also coming on the switches segment. You mentioned in your report the significant innovation for 2022 that you are planning to launch. Can you give us a bit of an idea, well, what's the benefit will be? What's the marketing strategy behind it or some kind of a sneak preview about the relevance? Is it the same category than the ULP or, well, is it more something like the Viola key in terms of relevance? Secondly, regarding the eHealth segment, well, if I'm looking currently basically in the telematics system regarding new product applications, I don't see Ingenico at all on the horizon. Can you provide us with some estimates what your current market share is actually? Would it be fair to say that you are currently significantly above 50% or some insight into that as well, please? Starting with the new innovation. All the switches you can see today are digital switches. Yeah? Is it a mechanical or optical switch? It's digital, it's on/off, on/off. We see a tremendous benefit by having a kind of an analog switch in place. This means you can use it as a kind of joystick function, which is most probably not the main application. The main application would be that you have different make points, different contact points on different levels. This means you can have a mechanical switch with an application of an analog switch where you can have 10 different make points, for example. Then you can adjust your keyboard basically according to the game you play or to the needs of the gamer who plays the game. That's to the innovations of the non-digital switch. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. In telematics. I mean, as you know, there are two competitors in the market. We have brought our new platform, which is really in regard to security, in regard to handling, in regard to even how to clean the surface of this terminal, very, very high end and I think unmatched so far. Ingenico didn't bring a new platform out of any reasons. You most probably know that they were taken over by Worldline last year, and they are reorganizing themselves. There's no new platform. What we can say is, you know, we started slow in the last rollout, where we only had 10% market share. We, as we see the numbers in this year, in 2021, we achieved at least a 40% market share. Our goal is during the entire rollout, which will last at least the next 2 to 3 years, as it is today, to reach a much higher market share than 50%. It depends always, of course, on the market, on what Ingenico is doing, of course. We have our plans to really increase market share strongly since this is the basis also for the telematic infrastructure 2.0 in 3 to 4 years. We definitely prepare for that as well. Sounds good. Would it be right to assume that you probably have around half a year from the start, when a new product enters the certification process by a competitor to prepare yourself for this product? Or how long do you see the general application period until the product is approved? You mean for a new competitor? For a new competitor product. Yeah. I guess that's the point when you start to see a new product is when the competitor starts the approval process or do you have a- Yeah, exactly. Approval on this. Usually, you have a visibility. Of course, we have a few on the market, of course. That's one thing. The other thing is, when the official application happens with all these certification bodies, of course it will become more transparent. But what we see today is since you need to. You know, first of all, Gematik is a German organization. You have to speak German in order to be part of that inner circle. If you're not part of the inner circle, you will develop a product, that's fine, which takes you, our experience, 1 to 1.5 years, with certain investments, of course. Then, of course, you start the process of getting certified with all the different organizations. In a good case, as we are part of that since many years, it took us 6 months plus. I would say for a newcomer, yeah, is not being part of that business the last couple of years, it will take at least 6-12 months. Okay. Sounds good. All the best for the future. Thank you very much. The next question is from Christian Bragett, Hauck & Aufhäuser. Your line is now open. Hey. Hey, Rolf. Thank you for the presentation. Could you give us an idea of how to think about a key switch with several make points? Because if I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about a player base on Call of Duty of 80 million people that then have the opportunity to adjust the moving speed like you do on PlayStation, that's quite an enormous tactical advantage that I think almost any PC player would be interested in and potentially could spur a little bit of an upgrade cycle. Am I thinking about this the correct way or how should we see that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it depends really on the gamer and gamer preferences, of course, and the games he's playing or she's playing. But definitely it's a very strong option. Yeah. If you go into competitions, if you participate in e-sports events, too, on one hand, really up speed, let's say your gaming. On the other hand, it gives also options really on tactical things. Therefore, there's definitely a strong market there. We will see how many people and gamers will really adjust to that. And I think it will also take some time that gamers are adjusting to that type of gaming as well. Yeah. But the feedback so far, what we heard from the market is very positive. We're also working closely with one of our launching customers because as you all know, most probably, we don't do an innovation just because to do an innovation, yeah. It's really something which we synchronize and discuss with really close customers in order to drive then a product end of the day with the analog switch to the market. That's great. Thank you. We have a follow-up question. It is from Marie-Thérèse Grübner. Your line is now open again. Yes. Hi. Couple of questions on the cash flow side. We've seen Q1 and Q2 affected by the inventory build-up. We've had a lot of commenting on that. Q3 was better. Seems you have generated slightly positive operating cash flow, which is again quite an achievement considering all the headwinds. How is the rest of the year looking like? That's the first side. On the financing side, are you drawing down on the new credit facility? Because I haven't seen that yet happening into the nine months. Yeah, first question. Yes, it's right. I think the H1 was predominantly challenged by two major impacts. First one was the IPO cost, and the second one, of course, was the repayment, the down payment of the Hayfin loans, which in total amounted to roughly both together, roughly EUR 20 million extraordinary cash out. Yes, the second question, did we draw down the UniCredit tranche? Yes, we did. It was after the, I think it was on the sixth or seventh of October. We have now more than EUR 100 million sitting on cash in the accounts, but that it happened in October. All right. Not before quarter end. Okay, good. On the operating cash flow, Q4, another build-up in inventory to be safe or rather starting to see some destocking? Oh, I would say only smaller ones, which we are now building up. It's more on the chip side, on the IC side, because the lead times are very, very long there. On the switch side, we are more or less at the level which we want to achieve, to avoid the air freight transportation costs. That is already at a very high level. It's a bit depending on next year when we see the customer demand coming in, especially on eHealth, because the lead time here on Tail Broma is quite long for the- For the products which we need for the terminals, the eHealth terminals. On the switch side, as I said, we are quite fine. On peripherals, we should be also very well equipped to sustain any shortfalls on the supply chain. Yeah, gaming peripherals anyway. I think we will see an improved cash flow in Q4. That's the expectation here. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. One final one, just to gauge the, you know, how fundamental the new sort of several actuation point type switch innovation is. I mean, Rolf, is it fair to say that it is in terms of, you know, game changer, is it the same as the ULP switch, or is it not as game-changing? I mean, it's difficult to say, yeah. I think with the Ultra-Low Profile, we moved basically in a total different segment, the laptop segment, yeah, which basically was untapped so far because nobody really was able to deliver a mechanical switch for this type of equipment. Whether you use analog or digital switches in future in the keyboards, but also in the laptops, by the way, it depends pretty much on the gamer's preference, yeah? I would not say it's not such a game changer, but I think it's a different innovation, I would say. Okay. To give the gamers options. Good. Thank you very much. Pleasure. The next question is from Julian Boudoire of Bryan, Garnier & Co. Your line is now open. Hi, good afternoon, gentlemen, and congratulations on the results. I have a few set of questions. First of all, sorry if I'm gonna repeat my question. The line got disconnected at the beginning. So, sorry in advance for that. The first one that I was, I'd like to ask you guys is, I was wondering if you could provide some more color on the revenues in both areas, gaming and professional. So maybe, you know, something on what have been moving parts over there, and how should we look at the only 6% year-on-year growth in the gaming business, which is actually a sharp deceleration compared to the previous quarters. Is this primarily supply chain induced effect, or there are some more elements in there as well? That's mainly supply chain. Yeah. If you look at the gaming peripherals, I think they grew quite significantly. I think the lower growth we saw on the switching part because, you know, in the H1 we were really in a tough position to deliver all the demands to the different customers. We even flew all the switches to the customers. Now the customers recognize that they cannot get all the ICs for their keyboards because you have in different keyboards, different ICs. They ordered switches, put them in their warehouse and recognized they don't get the ICs for those keyboards where they wanted to use the switches, yeah? They came back and said, "Hey, can we deliver this and this?" That's also very difficult for us to react on a very short notice. Therefore we saw a slowdown in Q3 due to the two reasons that the customers were stocking the key switches. Secondly, they brought it back to sea freight, which means then also roughly 2 months additional delivery time instead of the air freight. Got it. To kind of build on that, I remember during the IPO phase, you mentioned that for this year you're looking at commercializing something like 690 million switches, which by the way, 10 million, from top of my head, I think should come from the ULP switch. I was just wondering if this number still stands, in view of what you just said and basically the challenging logistical environment. Should we, let's say, look at something like, let's say, 100 million less, or how should we think in there? The total volume of switches to be commercialized by the end of the year. It will be a little bit less due to the two reasons I just mentioned. But we use that opportunity to build up our own stock, because this was always a challenge for us to really build the stock in our warehouse in Hong Kong to be really flexible to deliver on short-term customer requests. What we see right now is a very positive momentum at our customers, I have to say. Therefore, it will be a little bit less, but the positive thing is that we can build inventory in order to be really reactive and fast. It can react very fast to customer demands. Got it. Thank you. Probably also like to kind of delve one step deeper in that. For the 2022, how do you think the mix will look like between, let's say, actually if you look at all the classes of switches that you have in the portfolio and prioritize them, let's say low profile, ultra low profile, but also MX switches, how do you think the mix is gonna look like as of 2024? Also in the view that you're adding a new one, which will be the analog switch. Yeah, look, it's very difficult to predict, of course, yeah, because gamers change their minds within one month. In general, we can say if you look at traditional MX and RGB, so the MX only with the backlight, no illumination itself, you have to see that as one group. This group will be stable to grow slightly because there's a huge number which is in the market and will be further on used in different keyboards. We see an increase in low-profile. What we have in, for example, in the MX 10 in our keyboards, we see an increase in Viola, and of course, we see a strong increase or strong demand with ultra-low profile. As said, we're just in the position or let's say in the process to order the second machine for Ultra-Low Profile. Therefore, for next year, the production capacity is limited to one machine that we have, which basically can serve the four customers or five customers we have so far. Clear. Thank you. The final one, if I may. You talked, I think in the last analyst call as well, that you're planning to, let's say, install a new, more efficient production machine. I think it's Bernd referenced to it as the fourth generation machine. I said Right. I was wondering if you could quantify the efficiency gains. I think this is actually quote-unquote. You're talking in terms of efficiency gains to be realized in 2022 on the back of basically this installation. Could you give us an understanding, you know, should we look more on the bottom line or the top line? Where do you think these gains will be realized mostly? Bernd Wagner, do you wanna talk about it? We are just before signing the purchase order for the fourth generation machine. This fourth generation again the first generation is producing round about 30 units per minute. The third generation is generating round about 80 units per minute, and the fourth generation is able to generate 350 pieces per minute with an OEE above 95%. This is the availability of the production machines. They guarantee that the manpower which we need per machine is only nearly half of that which we need because the machine should be super stable. That would save us per year roughly EUR 4.5 to 5 million. Saying that, your answer or the answer to your question is that this will of course, bring our costs down because we will, reduce the direct workers over the next, 3 years, dramatically. We calculate round about minimum 50% of today's current workers will get out, by either we have time limited contracts, or they go into pension and they will not be replaced. Round about 50% of our direct workers will not be there in 3 years time because the roll-out period is roughly 3 years from now, and the first machine comes in autumn next year. Of course, we see during this period in the testing phase already, that this is really stable and safe and sound to 350. This brings us EUR 4.5 to 5 million savings, and that will contribute to an increase in gross margin, when because today we have round about 20 machines, and we have calculated that we need between 4 and 5 of the new generation only, and that by itself reduces the necessary headcounts in direct workers. Additionally, the performance of the machines, the guarantees which we're getting from the supplier is much higher the because today we have an operational performance on OEE, which is round about 85%. The new supplier guarantee is more than 95%, and we need less headcounts because we have less machines by itself and a less per machine. This brings the savings here, bottom line in gross margin. Sounds impressive, to be honest. Just to follow on this machine is some sort of, let's say, a universal machine with which you can make all types of switches or it's only for the MX switches? It's for the MX and the RGB. All right. Got it. Okay. Thank you so much. The next question is from Tomi Korpivaara at Carnegie. Your line is now open. Hi. I guess that's me. Tomi Korpivaara, Aktia. Just a question on the take-up and the sold units, ULP units from Dell. Has the demand been there for the ULP and Dell laptops? Now what we see at the moment, of course, I think I mentioned it also in the last meeting, we have to really look at the numbers over 6 to 12 months. Yeah, we've just been in the market with that for 6 months. What we can say, the adoption rate was around 40%. 40% of the Dell consumers bought the M15 platform with the ultra-low-profile switch. This was the reason why Dell also added the M17 platform to be the next model for the ultra-low-profile switch. It's a very successful switch and of course brings a lot of differentiation to Dell in this case, yeah, because they're the only brand who uses today ultra-low-profile switches and can provide a real mechanical keyboard on a laptop, yeah. They benefit a lot from them. Also, not talking about technical things only, but also pricing. Okay. The take-up kind of rate hasn't changed during the last couple of months then? Yeah. We have to see. I mean, they expected actually a much lower take-up, yeah. Therefore, for Dell- Yeah. It's a great success, and therefore they increased the number of switches because of the second platform. I'm sure this will over time picks up a lot, especially when other brands will be on the market next year. Okay. Another question on these 4 new clients that you have for the ultra-low-profile switches. Are they all for gaming laptops or are there also some office laptops? Those are all gaming and creator laptops. Yeah. Creator means heavy typers, fast typers, et cetera. They have to have a very strong and capable keyboard in there. What we do right now with Dell is to talk about the first office laptop as well. Okay. Do you have any further clients in the pipeline for the ULP switches besides these four? Yes, of course. We're talking every day to customers and of course, a lot of customers investigating. I mean, this takes also some time, yeah, to change your model with a new switch. You also have to change the laptop itself. What we experienced with all the brands now, with the clients we have, they need one year in advance to really redesign the laptop in order to make it happen that they can use the Ultra-Low-Profile switch. Yeah. We're talking every day to the guys, and most probably the demand is higher than we can deliver. Okay. The last question I had was on the new production language which you were describing. You said that it's basically one year kind of lead time to from Yes. Order to delivery. Okay. Exactly, yeah. You Exactly, we will. When did you order it? No, we're just about to order it. Okay. We're just about to order it. We're in the final discussion now with the vendor, and we will have a management meeting with the vendor in the next two weeks in order to be sure that all the commitments they gave will be kept. Therefore, we expect in Q4 2022 the machine to be put in production. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. The last question is from Christian Bragett. Your line is now open again. Hey, Bernd. Pre-IPO, you mentioned that you were targeting free cash flow conversion divided by EAT to go back above 100% at some point post-IPO, and that was gonna happen, if I remember correctly, through a mix of customers prepaying for CapEx, overall lowered interest payments, like post-IPO inventory returning to normal levels, something about injection molders and a lower global tax rate. Are you making progress on those factors, or are you able to comment at this time? Yes, we are. Really 2021, as you're aware, was heavily influenced by the IPO costs, the repayment, as I mentioned before. As you might have seen already, Q3, the cash flow is much better. In Q3, the operating cash flow was nearly EUR 6 million. Yes, we are working on the injection molding. This is still progressing. We have now the vendors identified with whom we want to finally negotiate. The financing model is already stable, sound and stable. On the leasing, we have sufficient lines for operating leasing. The new machines which are coming, the fourth generation, the ultra-low profile, the second one, they will be fully leased, operating leasing. That would outlast COVID. The only thing what we have not foreseen at the IPO is that the supply chain issues will arise in the Q3, Q4. We estimate that will go minimum till mid of next year, that you have supply chain issues, therefore, we have raised our inventory, as well as has already mentioned. To be able to deliver, because for the moment, it's very important to be able to deliver, then you win even customers, especially in the healthcare environment. As soon as the supply chain issues will decline, then at that time, we will take immediately action to reduce our lead times here. To reduce inventory. I think that is still valid, what we said pre-IPO. It's only for the moment because of the inventory that we are able to deliver. We do not know, and you might have heard that one, that trains are stopped for weeks at the Silk Road. Ships are limited, containers are limited. To sustain these problems, we have built up the inventory, especially, as I mentioned before, on the ICs, on the most critical parts which have up to 52 weeks lead times. We are very confident. The injection molding, leasing, all of that one is super working, and we are progressing here. It sounds good. Sounds like you're navigating the crisis well. As we have no further questions, I would like to hand back to Mr. Unterberger for some closing remarks. Thank you very much. First of all, thanks a lot for your participation, for your interest in Cherry, and the active question and answer session. We really appreciate that one, and we pretty much looking forward talking to you in person again in the next couple of weeks. Until then, wish you all the best, and talk to you soon. Thank you very much.