Hello, everybody. We'll start in a few seconds. I'm just waiting for a few more people to come in. I think we might as well start now. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the LPKF conference call for the financial year 2023. My name is Bettina Schäfer. I'm from the investor relations team at LPKF, and your host today for this call. For the first part of the call, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a Q&A session, and you can write your questions also into the chat, or you can give me a hand signal later on and speak directly. The conference will be recorded and published for a period of two weeks on our website after the call. Klaus Fiedler, CEO, and Christian Witt, CFO, will now give you an overview of our business development in 2023. Before we start, I would like to point out that any forward-looking statements in today's presentation are based on information currently available. These forward-looking statements are not to be understood as guarantees of future performance and results. Ladies and gentlemen, I now hand over to Klaus Fiedler. Please go ahead, Klaus. Thank you very much, Bettina. Hello, and welcome everybody to the presentation of our 2023 annual report. I want to lead in first with a summary of how we actually performed in 2023, and then giving you a lot more details and insights, how we see our individual markets, our business developments, and our operational performance. Next slide, please. So key takeaways from financial year 2023: We ended the year despite a record Q4 at the lower end of our guidance, both in top line and following out of that in revenue. We will go to more details in a few minutes, but this is largely not market-driven. We are actually content with our market positioning and how our markets are developing. We were basically limiting ourselves in our performance due to operational constraints, which we identified and of course addressed, which was basically the key driver behind not ending at the mid or upper end, but at the lower end of what we committed to for 2023. When we look at the bigger picture, where do we want to be as a company, and what progress did we make in that in 2023? There were a couple of points where we say, "Yes, we are on track where we want to go." For me, a big highlight was that with the large contract we achieved to sign in Q1, but also with the general development, our foothold in the semiconductor market has significantly increased, and that is exactly what we need to achieve where we want to take the company in the future. So that was good. We took longer in our beta testing phase than expected for our biotech products, you know, ARRALYZE, where we enter a completely new application field. But we worked through that phase and now have launched our product. It is in the market, and we are now at the stage of really filling the funnel and working towards revenue realization, which is where we begin to reap the benefits of our labor now. In the solar segment, we see a very strong development in the market. This is a sector benefiting from global mega trends and from a new technology coming into the market, which creates a lot of activity. So good tailwind in that area. Nice growth in laser depaneling that's consolidated in our core business, if you remember our strategic structure, but has strong growth drivers behind it and showed it in the numbers in 2023. That's something we're really happy about. And also our businesses, which are established already for a longer time for prototyping, simply performed very solidly in top and bottom line in 2023. So that's something where we say, "That's good." Let's take a look into a bit more details and also look at where we had constraints that didn't make us make the rubber hit the road to the level we wanted to. Next slide, please. So let's look at the market situation. We continue to have a heterogeneous situation in electronics. New technologies, where we basically replaced existing technologies with something better for the customer, better in the application, that's running really good. Depaneling basically doubled in 2023. That's great. But when we look at established products like our stencil lasers, there we had, we still have a slow market situation. We, of course, looked into the details. It's not like we are having a competitor eating our lunch or something, there is just little appetite for capacity expansion due to the global demand situation in the electronics industry here. I'm happy that we have the new products which deliver now, and at least allow us, in the big picture, to show a moderate growth. With only, let's say, established product portfolio, the market would not allow us to realize it at the moment. When we look at the situation in semiconductor and advanced packages, I think most of you will have seen that big players in the market now actively announce that this is the future, and this is where they will be in the future, and this is key to making the next step in semiconductor performance. That, of course, helps us a lot, not yet in volume business, but in portfolio business, because a lot of players that were a bit on the fence with that now say, "Okay, my God, we gotta catch up. We need this technology in-house." So we see a significant increase here in the market activities, which benefits us. We already mentioned solar. Market for thin-film solar is growing, and there is a strong global appetite for investment, specifically in new technologies, perovskites, where we see a lot of customers knocking on our door and us also realizing the deals. We just made a press release about a EUR 15+ million deal we made a few days ago. This is a strong market dynamic we see. Absolutely no slowdown, absolutely no, let's say, market reluctance for investment here. In laser welding, here our markets are clearly below our expectation. We were expecting in 2023 follow-up orders in markets where we are well-positioned, like medical, but those were postponed. And, we see a good growth in a new sector. We already informed you about, e-mobility. There we are happy with how the markets are developing. But in general, the markets for welding are, at the moment, in a slow phase, and this is something which led to us here clearly not achieving our ambitions for 2023. Rapid Prototyping, we mentioned it. This is just going strong year after year. Good top line, good bottom line. This is organic growth because we are already at a very high market share, but a very solid business where we are really saying, "Yes, just keep it like that. Defend the position, keep the margins, and continue to have it as a nice part of our portfolio." Our first biotech product, as already mentioned, our planning was to get the beta phase done earlier. We learned in the beta phase we are new in that market. We implemented all the learnings in our first product to really have a good market compatibility. We are now out. That is the important one. When I look at the first data in the funnel, what leads, what opportunities do I have? How many customers do I have that request now application tests in our centers in Boston or in Germany? On track. That is exactly pretty much what I was expecting. So here it's now really important to convert. We invested in this, we continue to invest in this, but now it's time to convert, and the technical and machine-tuning hurdles are finally behind us. It's ready. Now it's time to go out and sell. Business development. So we see that especially prototyping lines for the new technology of perovskite and thin-film solar are in strong demand. We were betting on the right market, and as it quite often happens, LPKF is the pioneer, and then when the market opens up, we also see competitors now trying to jump in. Our strategy is clear: superior customer benefit through technology edge, and that is what we are currently selling, and we see that globally as a good position, but also with challenges. I'll come to it in operations. And now I'm not having... Oh, sorry, that was an IT issue. I'm back. For electronics, we mentioned it, really good growth. Very happy with how the turnaround for electronics is running with our new products, where we replace legacy technologies. Our products like stencil lasers, where we say when customers expand, when the global market is growing, then we grow. That is rather slow now, but the new products are able to compensate and partly overcompensate. Good that we have them. Business development. E-mobility solutions continuing well. We have the POs at hand, and we are working on getting more. But this is, let's say, more a project business, few and large deals. Slowness in established markets. Here we made some operational changes to make sure we can really grab the most of what is available, and demand for LIDE semiconductor clearly increasing in the portfolio business. There, I am really optimistic about order entry right now as we see it, but also continuing in 2024. Our display project, the technology phase is over. We are now in the evaluation phase for operational use, and put our best foot forward. Overall, when I look at business development, order entry is on track. We had one large bulk order for solar we were expecting in Q4. It came in Q1 now. That's basically the customer cycle. That has nothing to do with general demand situation. We said in the bag, we look at order entry and backlog on a growth trajectory, and this is our ambition, and this is what we want to achieve. Coming to operations - Sorry, I need to move out of my screen. So supply situation, which in the past years was a constant concern and really slowed us down, that is now significantly improved. There are still some individual items, but it's definitely no longer a front-burner topic where we say needs constant observation. That has relieved now. Where we are seeing that we are limiting ourselves, and this needs front-burner attention and already has front-burner attention, is operational bottlenecks, specifically in solar and welding. We need, as LPKF, a scalable business and operation model. This is the key to improvements in EBIT, and this needs true structural changes in some product lines. We kicked them off, partly also with external help, because we see the market demand, specifically in solar. We need to make sure that we work more efficient and specifically faster. Faster is key. Lead times are key to really get that revenue on the road, and in 2023, we clearly were overburdening the organization in the setup that they are running in these areas, and therefore, couldn't fully convert to revenue what we see as an actually quite good market positioning and demand situation. Well, what we of course also see, like all companies, is a clear fixed-cost inflation, and this is something we simply have to deal with. We of course put measures in place in 2023 to counter that and keep our break-even point stable, but we also have conscious investments in ARRALYZE that we do. So we see, if we look at the overall big picture, marginal growth that we could realize in top line, but the EBIT was clearly not at the same point. So here we need to do more. We have put additional measures on the road and continue to push that topic with high priority in 2024. We believe in our new growth opportunities. We absolutely want to support them in the way they need to be supported to realize their potential, but we also need to make sure that the overall cost situation results also without hockey stick growth in a good profit situation. I guess this is a topic that Christian will now give you a lot more insights on. With that, I hand over to Christian to walk you through the numbers. So thanks, Klaus. Welcome, everybody, from my side as well. Let me take you through the financials of the financial year 2023. Next slide, please. Looking at sales, sales have been slightly growing, largely stable, and have clearly been below our expectations. When looking at the gross margin, we were able to improve that slightly, despite the negative FX impact of the U.S. dollar, huh? Then going to the bottom line, the EBIT in the end follow sales as expected, and it includes the investments, especially in ARRALYZE, as well as inflation on the fixed cost side and the material side, and some fixed cost savings we were able to realize already in 2023. So that is why we do have a less EBIT here than we had in 2022. One more aspect, is that we've had some, extra items where we had some restructuring costs already. That's another EUR ± 700,000, which we were spending in 2023 already, which we call adjusted or adjustments in the future? Looking at cost reduction measures, as Klaus already pointed out, there's a number of things. There is items on the operational side, like modularization and so forth, what Klaus, Klaus entered a bit more into details. And there's other cost reduction measures we have started more on the structural side, which is not the big 10% cut or something like that, which is a number of different measures where we take out structural costs, which we don't need and don't want, huh? Where we are looking into certain areas, will we do that in the future ourselves, or will we source it from the outside and reduce cost by doing so? Or improve our strategic position, and other areas where we are going through a number of particular items, larger items in the company, where we want to become more efficient, have to become more efficient, in the way how we work, how our business model in the end works. And efficient in that sense also means scalable, because the more automated we are, the easier the scalability for future growth is to be done with that without additional cost. And on the operational part, we have started with some external support already in 2023. On the pure fixed cost part, we will also go for external support in 2024 when we continue the program. One more note on the financial statements. We've had a correction on the 2022 financial statements, which is basically based on IFRS 16, IFRS 19 recalculations or reconsiderations. The EBIT impact of that was EUR 0.26 million in 2022. I think any further details can be found in the, in the notes to the financial statements. Looking briefly at working capital, working capital is up quite a bit due to a strong December and the related, receivables, as well as the pre-production in solar for the first quarter. But we'll come to that in a second in a bit more detail. Order entry and order backlog generally improved when we consider the Q1 2024 Solar Order. That order has had been received in the first quarter of this year. We've had it in 2022. We've expected to receive it also in 2023, and now it was a quarter later. So basically, when we consider that, order backlog as well as order entry is on a decent trajectory for the path we want to take in 2024 and 2025. So let's go into the business units and look at the financials there, at the segment reporting. In electronics, we have slightly higher sales, and as Klaus mentioned, that's where we see reflected, on the one hand, the success of our depaneling products, of the new products we have in the market. We do see a weaker market trend in certain parts of the stencil areas, and that is a market trend. As Klaus said, it's not someone else eating our lunch. It is a market, electronics market, which is slower, especially in China, and on that part, we have to take a small, but hit there. Looking again at the magnitude of the segments, depending where we are growing very nicely and have been growing very nicely, is a much larger segment, and gives a lot more opportunities also towards 2024 for further growth. Looking at the EBIT side, we are continuing with certain restructuring measures there. We've done that in earlier months, not just in Q4, and we'll continue that also in next year. It is again, selective. It is where we see that in a certain market, this product won't have a future, then we take out the respective capacities and cost there. On the other hand, where we see other markets where we do need it, we might add it there or see if we can even do without, huh? We have higher depreciation, not a surprise, but planned due to some of the new products we've been launching in 2023. Looking at development, Rapid Prototyping had a successful year and was growing there even despite a negative FX impact of the U.S. dollar, which is mostly affecting the prototyping area. So that's, that's decent on the sales side, on the turnover side. On the EBIT side, there is one negative impact we clearly have. We have invested in ARRALYZE furthermore during the course of 2023, building up sales structures, building up our lab in Boston, building up service and so forth, without any revenues yet. So that is basically the EUR 1 million difference you see in the EBIT side that is related to the additional cost we are incurring in ARRALYZE in 2023. First commercial use of CellShepherd, we are there, and that's a good step forward. So looking forward here for 2024 to tap into the market, to really have sales, have more machines on the ground with customers and so on, and to have first visible contributions on the sales side and compensate some of the... or, or earn some money on the margin to cover some of the fixed cost on the EBIT side. Welding, looking at welding, we've had operations issues, as mentioned by Klaus before, which have limited sales. That's what we've also seen, what you can also see here in the turnover, and that's what's then reflected operations issues, costing money, but also limiting sales on the EBIT side as well. Looking at solar, solar has had a very strong year, 2023, which is good. When you compare with 2022, bear in mind that we had about EUR 11 million in goods which have been invoiced in 2022, but produced in 2021, huh? So it has been quite a bit of growth for the business unit and the operations there, and we do expect another strong year in 2024. So looking forward towards that. Here in that case, despite the trouble which hindered us to have above EUR 40 million turnover, basically, we have even managed through cost consciousness and through an improved pricing as well, which was basically compensating problems we had before. Due to those two factors, we were able to even improve profitability despite the operational challenges we've had to tackle in 2023. When we go further and look at cash flow and working capital, then we see that we've had a much higher working capital at the end of 2023 versus 2022. What's the background? The key part, as you can see in the financials and balance sheet, is the higher receivables, and that's due to the strong Q4 December we had, because it was more December even than the rest of Q4, and also due to the operational issues in solar. We have about half of our receivables, a bit more even, in solar, and we have all measures in place to get those down again, to get the cash into our, into our bank account. And that's why we are very clear that we'll take down the working capital, the receivables, but also the inventory, to the levels where it should be, which is between 10% and 15% of our annual sales. Huh? Looking at last year, we've also at the exact balance sheet date of 3Ist of December, we've also had some additional stock there in solar for the Q1 volume, which has been pre-produced. And we were also able to reduce stock in some of the other business units, which is good, which was what we planned. Because after the Corona -Ukraine increase we had to do, we want to take the stock down to where it should be, and that's well on track. Payables, we're able to compensate some of the working capital, not all of it. So all in all, these EUR 14 million more working capital is what dominated the free cash flow, why that is negative this year, and we'll have the positive swing again in, from the working capital plus the earnings in 2024. Our net cash position is still plus, minus neutral, which is important for us. We have a solid balance sheet. We don't rely on debt financing, and I think for a tech company like us, that is the right financing structure. Next one, please. Looking at our guidance, looking more in detail at 2024. We expect revenues of EUR 130 million-EUR140 million and an adjusted EBIT margin of 4%-8%. Let me briefly explain what we will adjust and what we will not adjust. We will and want to separate deliberately what is our ongoing recurring EBIT and what is one-time effects. These one-time effects will arise mainly due to two factors, yeah? One is restructuring and severance, huh? Restructuring in terms of the specific consulting for that item and severance costs in whichever way we will see them. The second one, if we have the long-term incentives, which is for 2023, still a stock, a virtual stock option plan, which will become a real stock option plan in, in 2024, subject to AGM approval. Whenever we take the charge for handing out the options, of course, that's normal EBIT. That's personnel cost, as it should be. But when we have fluctuations of that due to the share price, that is something we will put below the adjusted EBIT, because that's a fluctuation up and downwards, and has nothing to do with the operational performance of the company and the, the, long-standing base earnings, quality earnings of the company, huh? That might be altogether 0.5%-1.5% of revenue in the 2024 financial year. That's a rough estimate what it might be, but subject to what we'll see in the end. So EUR 130 million-EUR 140 million revenue, growth coming from all sectors, and an adjusted EBIT margin of 4%-8%. Our midterm aspiration is unchanged, and as Klaus mentioned, we are well on track for this midterm aspiration. Medium- to high single-digit growth for the core business. The new technologies like LIDE and ARRALYZE should contribute low triple-digit million EUR figure in revenue, and with that, an EBIT margin, an attractive double-digit level is what we should clearly reach. For Q1 and the quarters in 2024, distribution will not be as uneven as we've seen that in 2023, where we had an extreme weight on the fourth quarter. So we'll start with a somehow stronger quarter, huh, in the revenue side- ... and that will generally continue. Yes, Q4 will again be our strongest quarter, but that's our customers, huh? Our customers say when they want their goods, and this company will always have a bigger Q4 than a Q1, but we'll have a more even distribution. So revenue guidance is EUR 23 million-EUR 26 million, and adjusted EBIT would be EUR -6 million to EUR -3 million. And with that, I think we've covered the key financials. We've covered the outlook, and it's a clear guidance we've given for the year 2024, which is macroeconomically not an easy year. But given the products we have, given we are out where we are in the markets, that we aren't just the capacity expansion guys for something existing, but we are the ones who deliver solutions for something new for our customers, where they want to advance. That is what enables us to grow in a year, 2024, where not all the macro signs are truly positive. Thanks very much, and we now open up Q&A. Bettina? Exactly. As I said, you can ask questions directly. Just give me a hand signal, and I will unmute you. The first question comes from Adrian Pehl. Just a second. I don't think I can unmute you. Ms. Mallock, can you help me, please? I don't have any- Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes, yes. Ah, very good. We can see you, even. Oh. At least the photo. The picture, yeah. The picture at least. Yeah, right. So, thanks for having me, actually, and taking my questions. Well, first of all, let me start a bit with what you presented, Klaus, in the slides at the very beginning, talking obviously about LIDE, and that you were quite optimistic. I mean, just from the idea, because you have been saying also that the business is slower in some legacy parts of the operations. Should we take it that, let's say there is a significant pickup in LIDE that you see, which is then partially compensating slower business on the legacy side? Otherwise, I'm tempted to say that the guidance does probably not necessarily reflect a strong increase in the LIDE business, probably. Anything that you could add additionally on, on flavor would be quite nice. Then, I know you're not guiding quarter by quarter on the order intake, obviously, but given that this has been slower in the last two quarters in particular, now obviously you have the EUR 15+ million order intake in Q1. I was now just curious to hear how the non-solar business did quarter-over-quarter, and do you see already some sort of pickup in the short term? That are my first two questions, and I probably have some follow-ups. No worries. Thanks, Adrian. Thanks for being here. Let me start with LIDE. What I see, as already mentioned, is a lot more players have now woken up and say, "Yeah, we want to get a first LIDE machine in. We want to work on this technology," and that helps us. And there I am more bullish than I was, let's say, six months ago, before the announcement was out. That helps us. This is not the volume adoption yet. This is a clear increase in portfolio business. And yes, I also see that some established businesses that are following general market demands, like stencil lasers, also prototyping, they may be a bit slower than expected. That is simply something where I say, "Look, if I have no numbers, but if I have a very, very high market share, look, I cannot compensate by eating somebody else's lunch. I follow this market." There, yes, I see that now the new products we have, LIDE is one of them, they help us. They help to compensate and hopefully overcompensate such fluctuations. To your second one, order entry. Yes, the big order, and again, for me, no concern at all if it comes in Q4 or Q1, normal business cycle of large customers. In the big picture, I see, yes, the numbers show growth. When I look more individually into regions and into product lines, in certain areas I see slowness. In certain areas, I see, "Oh, I expected that number to be higher." We've made huge progress in our tool base for immediately getting alarms and follow-ups on that. And when we look at it, we say, "Yes, the pipeline looks great, full, but the customers get cautious. Let's wait another month with this PO. I gotta talk again to my CFO if I get the CapEx." Yeah, in certain areas, we see here a slowness, and I'm really happy we did the right thing in the past years, investing in certain areas that show something completely new, where the cake is there, and you just eat a bigger slice of it. That helps us in the big picture to compensate. That is also a reason why we guide cautiously with the EUR 130-EUR 140. We are well aware that the macroeconomic situation out there is not bullish, and we are able, with our new product, to get nice compensating effects in place. Hope, Adrian, that gave you a bit more color here. Yeah, thanks for that. Maybe I had some semi-number, so some not numbers, but semi-quantitative indications, let's call it like that. When I look into the growth, part of the growth really comes from the LIDE portfolio business. And that is something which is in our plan numbers. That is something where we sometimes have an LOI, sometimes have something delivered, sometimes are very close to it. So that is very tangible. And that we can see that not only strategically, as Klaus mentioned that, we can also see that operationally in order intake or what I would call pre-order intake. And that portfolio business is what happens before the volume business. So that is something which is not somewhere in the air, that is happening on the ground as we speak. So I think maybe that gives you some indication where we are there. That's good. Actually, just to be very clear on this, so the feedback that you're getting on your tools you have shipped into the market so far, that is flawless kind of. So that's not the issue for, let's say, kind of a slower technology adoption, I guess. Oh, well, we gotta have a balanced picture here. Let me, let me add a bit more flavor. We basically upgraded our mission vision values lately, and we have three values now, which is pioneering, partnership, performance. It is very clear, whatever customer I talk to—I'm just back from a one-week China trip, "Technology, great, you are the pioneers. You get the best performance. Wonderful. Mm-hmm. Thank you." When I look at partnership, great response times from the local teams that we have globally, but more application support needed from the European, in this case, mostly German teams. So no, we gotta do more here. And performance-wise, the machine itself performs beautifully, but when it comes to lead times and so on, that is something where also the customers say, "Look, I'm planning to use it now to fill a factory and not a prototype. You've gotta be faster. You've gotta be more agile." So it's not like we lean back and say, "Everything perfect, let's go for lunch." No, we got work to do here to really meet the operational demands in all aspects of our customers. Okay, that was helpful. And then lastly, before I jump back into the queue, on the solar business in general, well, obviously, there seems to be, in particular, one customer that likes to give you frequent orders of a very good size. But can you speak about the rest of the portfolio, which is then obviously geared towards China, and what are the signals there? I mean, in general, on the, let's say, classic solar business, obviously there has been quite some overcapacity so far, but are investments now coming back? I guess, since you are pretty much talking about perovskite here on the side of things, that's probably not the same market necessarily. So any flavor you could add on that would be helpful as well. Sure. Again, our strategy is be positioned both in established, I don't like the word legacy, and new technologies, and be established both in the East and West, let's say here. Mm-hmm. That's working, and you specifically ask about China. Lots of activities in thin film, both in established and new technologies, clearly stronger than in, let's say, standard solar. So a lot of investment appetite, and specifically with new technologies coming up, lots of activities in getting that stuff to a maturity level. Because in China, people are looking currently strongly for what's the next big thing, what will be the next multi-billion business we can invest in, and this is a topic that is very much on everybody's front burner. I wanna keep a balance. I wanna keep a solid business development, so we will continue the course, support the established technology, but be very present and at the forefront of the new, and keep a healthy business between Western and Eastern companies. Very quick follow-up on that. So that is also incrementally more, that you see in terms of activity when you compare it to, whatever, one year ago or so? Absolutely. A very resounding yes. Okay. Thank you. Adrian, I wanna be very clear here. My worry in solar is absolutely not demand. Right. Not at all. I think I, I can do nothing, and I get the demand. Yeah. My worry is we need to get to a different structural approach, how we design and produce these machines, because we need to be faster, more agile, more flexible in really supporting customers who say, "Look, great product. Price is acceptable." They will never like the price, but it's acceptable, I pay it, but, "Guys, I need that in my factory latest by X." And if we say, "No, it's one quarter more," that's the problem. That needs front burner attention. That has to be improved. Yeah. But that is where we have started the activities last year. We see the first positive impact already this year, and we'll see more of it in the next year, huh? Some things already are effective, 2024, and help us. And as I said, some of what we are doing will rather help us in 2025, which is fine, because when you look into the prospects we see now, the international customer, you are all aware, yeah, and we've published. China is different. In China you have somewhere things are still within six months, plus, minus, huh, what people, what customers want. But there's a lot of projects, and a lot of very tangible projects, which we will see in 2025, huh? So I think that is where we will see a significant uptake on the solar, in China, additionally to the strong international demand. Thank you. Thank you, Adrian. Thank you, Adrian. ... One more. Yes, we've got four more questions here in line- Thank you. The next one comes from APUS Capital. I guess it's probably Johannes Ries, and I have unmuted you. You can hear me? Yes. Yes, we can hear you. Now we can't. Can you unmute yourself? We've just heard you. Now, now you can hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay, the mute came in again, sorry. I don't know why. Maybe on LIDE and the midterm planning, a little bit the perception of the market, forgive me, is a little bit that securities, although maybe before the monkey and the sun tune is moving every year, another year ahead. Therefore, maybe in the different growth areas, first on display, I heard much less on displays than it was maybe the case in former years. Maybe can you give us a little bit more an update, you talk about the evaluation, but that's also not new. Could it be that maybe the opportunity of display is getting smaller because maybe the adoption pressure of the folding displays maybe is not such maybe around the corner as than we expected? So for maybe an update here, because I heard not a lot of statements in this call so far on displays. Okay, let me start with that one. Mm-hmm. So basically, where are we? The reason we didn't talk that much about our work is done. Yeah ... in terms of we delivered, the technology is proven, we can do it, check mark, and we even got money for it. Nice. So where do we stand? Well, now I've got to be careful. Yeah. The customers basically now say, "Hey, great, and now we want to try out this, and we want to try out that, and I'm going to throw some more money at you." Nice. Well, what I want is, "Look, guys, where am I in operations? Mm. Where am I designed in?" And so on. So we put that much more on the front burner now. We are now talking to the right people, namely the ones that own the operations pipeline. And there we are currently talking about, "Yeah, why don't we use that one and design it into X?" Hey, different characters in the world, I'm the guy who wants to achieve something and then talks about it- Mm ... and not say in a volatile situation where tomorrow there's a new manager and whatever, make big projections and then not deliver. So yes, the discussions are running, the engagement is strong. My goal is, "Nice and well, when am I logged into your ops pipeline?" And that's what we very much are having as discussions, and I'll be on a plane very soon to have these discussions also on site. This is the next step now. Technology as a proof point that the customer knows I can use that, those guys deliver, they can do it. That is done. I hope that gives you a bit more flavor on where we are. It's clear. So, importantly, the customer hasn't given up on this project? No. Okay. But again, the customer can also run for five years in circles doing R&D trials. Okay. That is not actually my goal, you may understand. Even if he pays me for it, no, I want top line. Okay. But a little bit is a display also, nevertheless, working is the backside of the display, nah? Here you have business, nah. I cannot go into details. I have- But I think, I think, Klaus, what we can say is that we have already sold and in the market and producing machines and LIDE, which are apparently in that field of application. ... for general display backplanes, we can make that statement. Exactly. Yep. Great, super. Now on the maybe more exciting because you had definitely good news, you mentioned it on the topic of semiconductors with a glass substrate, substrate. Give us only a timeline, because I, if I spoke with guys from, from, from the back-end side, now, yeah, very different statements of the substrate guys, no? One saying maybe it's come in 2026, maybe in the general production. Intel is pushing, even Samsung is adopting it. On the other side, as the organic substrate guys are talking, it's not before 2030s. Any feeling how far is this general adoption, with all the advantages have glass substrate, more heat responsible, maybe harder? You can maybe dig more holes in it, and so on. Any feeling from you maybe how far is this a real uptick in this technology is away, with all the risks apart from you know? Well, again, this is subjective now. Mm-hmm. My crystal ball isn't that great- Mm ... but I want to give you at least my subjective feeling. The people who work already for a longer time in that field, they basically give high volume adoption perspectives more in the number of 2030 you were mentioning. Mm-hmm. New players jump in now. These are the ones who said, "Oh my God, I'm, I'm missing a huge trend. I gotta catch up," and boy, are they throwing resources on it! Mm. This is enormous. Those guys now go out with very bullish statements about ramp-up times, and so on. They are sending me their initial POs, so yay, great, thank you. I personally would guess that they take a risk of over-committing in timeline a little bit, and learning the true hard facts of what it takes to really get the full process chain qualified. So people who tell me, "I'm gonna ramp up in 2026," I tell them, "Great, I'm ready for you. Give me your volume projections, and I'll be there. I'm your partner." But privately, I think that's maybe a bit aggressive. Mm-hmm. But nevertheless, if it comes, it's a huge opportunity, and you are the only one with LIDE who can deliver maybe the solution at the moment. Well, there is competition, of course, as always. This is really like Groundhog Day with LPKF. LPKF is a pioneer, identifies a new market, brings the solution, and then when the market really gets big, others say, "Oh, damn, I also want to do that." They pop up left and right. I see myself as the only one who can deliver a proven operational track record, great KPI technology, but of course, others now want a piece of the cake. It would be quite surprising if they wouldn't. I see myself as, if you wanna use it in operations, and you don't want to buy a PowerPoint slide, but a proven technology, it's LPKF and nobody else. Okay, great. And only maybe to these new guys on the block that are not small players. No, they're not. Mm. They are very big, and they put very many resources into it. We know that very big guys try to catch up in the semi space, and, they have aggressive plans, is clear. Mm-hmm. Okay- I'm ready if they wanna buy- Yeah ... I will continue to guide based on facts and achievements. Mm. I'm not, let's say, a hockey stick guy. I wanna get things done and then report. Okay. And on, finally on biotech analyzer, if I got it right, there's also a slight delay. When do you see the uptick there? Is it the next year when we could see maybe- Well- ... volumes coming in and? Again, the product is there. If you look at the SLAS, which is one of the biggest biotech equipment conferences, we had a formal market launch. You can buy the cell trapper. So I don't expect a massive contribution this year. I want some contribution, but I want to get a good market traction. And yes, from next year on, I expect a solid growth out of that business. Our team Samsung, we got external consulting in, that all makes sense. But I also expect that it's not smooth sailing from now on. We will learn, we will tune market access channel. We will learn how we need to partner to really maximize our chances. But yes, we put a lot of money in that. I hate my EBIT. Now it's payback time. We want to get payback out of that business now, and I'm a numbers guy. You know, I'm a physicist. I look at the pipeline. Show me the number of opportunities. How many have asked for a trial in our application centers? That shows me, okay, it's getting real. This is getting real. And so Foundry is seeing also business. But that's one, I think one more part on that one. Mm ... to reiterate that when we transfer it into numbers, if we make two handful of machines this year, and a low to mid-single digit contribution to our sales, then we are really happy- Mm ... because it's the introduction into a new market where we are not in... and just to give you an idea, if you have, as a very tangible, practical thing, if you say, "I want to buy a piece of prototyping equipment," rapid prototyping, for example, it's a known process, it's a known type of product. So you send the drawing, and you send a piece of material, and you get it back a week later. Then you know, "Okay, can do what I want. Take the microscope, that is it." If you want to do the same with single-cell, it's a bit different. First, you have to design the right experiment, then you have to prepare living cells, you have to ship them. You might come to our lab yourself to do the stuff with us or to accompany it, yeah? It's a much more complex process, where the customer also commits more during the process of sampling, so that's good, huh? Christian, we gotta watch the time a bit. Yeah, I've seen that. It's pushing us. Yeah, we've got another five questions. So- Let's go. Mr. Ries, are you finished? Very, very brief, fast one. Welding, is welding a growth part of your business going forward, or is this something, maybe you, you cut the cost and, and try to make it profitable? No, we've come to—we believe in growth opportunities. What we need to put is differentiated technology that's in development right now, really on the market fast, so that it again fits the LPKF strategy of superior customer benefit through technology edge. But this is not something we now treat as a transactional business. We believe in the growth, and we will support it. Okay, thanks. I can go back in the queues. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Lukas Spang- Mm-hmm. You should be able to speak now. Yes. Hi, gentlemen. Hi. Perfect. Yes, we can hear you. Perfect. I would like to follow on the last explanation and the number you said. Did I get you right, that you said low-to-mid single-digit contribution to sales this year was concerning LIDE, or was it- No, no, no, no, no ... just part of LIDE? Sorry, concerning ARRALYZE. ARRALYZE, okay. LIDE, significantly higher, and clear growth from last year to this year. And can you give us also for LIDE a rough indication, where we? High single digit ... came from last year? No, I don't do that, but high single digit is where we will be this year, and clearly, somehow below was where we were last year. Okay. And then on cost measures, you said it's not a big one, cost jump or cost decrease, but, what should we expect from your cost measures in total? We haven't planned out everything, yeah, but it will at least be a low single-digit million euro figure. It might go up to mid single digit. Mm-hmm. And then on Q1, if I compare your guidance with Q1 2023, it seems that you have more favorable cost base. So you have more revenues, but on the lower end, more or less the same EBIT as last year's quarter one. So why is that? Where, where did you lose efficiency or the margin? We have some additional comment. It's the same things which move the P&L, which moves the first quarter now as well. It is some areas of personnel inflation, yeah. It is some additional cost for ARRALYZE, and on the other hand, we already have some of the savings from our savings measures in, but the main effects of our cost reduction efforts, you will see in the starting in the second half of this year, huh? So in the first half, we have, for a technical reason, we have two years of personnel inflation in, yeah. That's due to different timing here. That's just the way it is. And we have ARRALYZE in there, yeah? ARRALYZE, in the first quarter of last year, had very low costs. There was no lab in Boston, much less, power into R&D and the service and so forth. That was all built up during the year of 2023, rather around mid 2023, and that's why you now have it in the Q1, huh? Yeah. That's explanatory. In action, as mentioned, we are working on further cost reductions, huh? Okay, and short, final questions about seasonality. You already said Q4 will be, again, the strongest. Yeah. Quarter, what should we think about the Q2 and Q3, so between the Q1 and Q4? I would invite you to join our conference call on April in Q1-... to get a guidance on Q2. But as I said, it will be less Q4 heavy, than this year, than last year, but last year was extreme. We will still be Q4 heavy. And why is that the case? Because development, electronics, and welding are all Q4 heavy every year, and that will not change in general. And solar depends really on when the project timing is, and we have quite a bit of volume in Q1, and we have some volume in Q2, Q3, and we have a bit more volume again in Q4. That's what we're expecting. So yes, we'll have a strong Q4 again. Okay. ... Is that it, Mr. Spang? Okay. Yes, yes. The next question comes from Tim Wunderlich. Hi. Yeah, hi. Can you, can you hear me? All good. Yes. Perfect. Thanks for taking my question. I apologize in advance, I couldn't listen to the entire call, so I hope I'm not asking questions that you've already answered during your presentation. So a few of my questions have already been asked and answered, but one is left on welding. Do you expect welding to return to growth and profitability in 2024? Both questions, yes. It's a tough market in some areas for them, but there is business to be done. They positioned themselves well in markets we actively also developed together with our customers, and I see signs that replacements orders, specifically in the medical field, that were clearly below our expectations in 2023, are now coming back. We are monitoring it very, very closely because, this is a tough market at the moment, very clearly, but we fully believe in the growth and also in the profitability of welding. And we are accelerating activities where we say, especially in a tough market, more differentiation. We need it on the road. That's what LPKF stands for. Okay, understood. Thank you. Regarding the one-off expenses that you are going to incur in 2024, which quarter is going to see the impact? Is that all going to go into Q1? No, that will have different quarters when it goes into. Okay. We will have some in Q1. We've had some in Q1 already. We'll have some in Q1. We'll have some in the subsequent quarters. That really depends on the project execution in the end, huh? Okay, understood. And the- Will not all be Q1. Will be some here, some there, and it doesn't really make sense to guide that. That's why we go on the adjusted, huh? All right, understood. Maybe if we look at 2023 again, you had the negative U.S. dollar effect, you had the inflation burden, and you had the cost headwinds from investments into new technologies, especially ARRALYZE. Could you quantify the combined effect of these cost headwinds? It's mid-single digit. Okay, and this is gonna go down in 2024? Also, the US dollar is not so different in 2024 than it was in 2023, huh? Mm-hmm. So I don't expect any improvement there. Sorry. '2022 was better. '2023, '2024 should be somehow similar from what we can see at the moment, huh? So on the cost side, we are clearly improving, and on ARRALYZE, we will spend more again in 2024, huh? But we will also have revenue and gross margins against it. Mm, yeah. So part of the revenue growth here also needs a fixed cost growth, because we need to build up. Well, we need to continue to build up the ARRALYZE infrastructure and sales and service more than anything else. That's the two parts where we have the key built up blocks, huh? All right. Understood. And then my last question, you spoke about ARRALYZE should be mid-single-digit euro million revenue this year, if I understood you correctly. You- Low to, low to mid, is what I said, huh? Low to mid, okay. First half, huh? Okay. LIDE should be high single-digit euro million. And then the last thing, the last really promising technology is evidently depaneling, Tensor. Could you also quantify this? And maybe one last thing, is Tensor also cannibalizing a bit, or is that all incremental revenue? Thank you. Let me take the last one quickly. Think of the pyramid. Still a lot of singulation of PCBs is done with old legacy technologies, cutting, milling, you name it. We are basically replacing step by step these old technologies with laser depaneling. That's a fundamental driver. Tensor is helping because in certain application, it significantly reduces the TCO for the customer. But the general trend is that the one thing we are cannibalizing is the legacy technologies, not us ourselves with Tensor against non-Tensor. That's application specific. And that is really, when you think about, you have one machine, you put a Tensor in, it's like an... It's like a module. Not exactly like a module, but kind of, huh? It's not cannibalizing, it's expanding. And, when you ask for the order of magnitude of Tensor, it not of Tensor, depaneling, that's low double digit, huh? Compared to, compared to what in 2023? Christian, we gotta be careful here a little bit. Okay. Sorry, everything I tell you. Low double digit is fine. That's what's full stop, huh? All right. Well, I appreciate- We've had a very nice growth in 2023, I think, that we've mentioned and we confirm. Okay, appreciate the insights. Thank you. Thank you, Tim Wunderlich. The next question comes from Miguel Lago. You should be able to speak now. Yes, yes, now you- Now it's right? Yeah. Okay. That's fine. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good morning, thanks for leaving me on. I think on the solar side, I think you've, you've been very clear on, for me, on the, on the demand side. Is it that those operational measures you are implementing right now, and you have been already implementing, will be implemented fully this year so that we will not see those working capital effects from, from this segment? Or is it, is it, is it going to continue like that? It's the first question. As of the working capital trouble will be eliminated this year, huh? Then we will still have seasonal effect, but not trouble effects. I think that we can say very clear. Okay. From the project execution, good old 80/20 rule. I expect that 80% are on the road and visible in our operations this year. Yeah. I expect some further things that we need to tweak, also stretching into 2025. Yeah. But the receivables, that will be cleared this year, that is clear, huh? Those issues. And on the inventory, a pre-production, if you have a very strong Q1, in some point in time, that is not something bad, that is something good. Yeah? Because you shouldn't try to deliver everything on March 22nd and build it in the four weeks before that. So that is normal. That's what I call seasonality or order cycles. That is normal, that will not change. What will change and what is changing is the troublesome part, increasing the receivables as well as some of the inventory. No, that's understood. Okay. And from the demand side, you're experiencing no lags, no downsides? So are you currently, like capacity-wise, fully loaded in the solar segment? Are you denying orders right now, or how is the situation? Let's put it that way, we are focusing on orders that fit our architecture and operational flow, and we need to, and are evaluating scenarios, increase our operational capacity. Yeah. And let me lead over to a question which Mr. Schiesl asked on the chat. "What about CapEx and personnel for 2024?" On the CapEx side, it will be low CapEx again. There's two investment items. One is completed, that's a clean room for our semiconductor project, which we've announced about a year ago. That's completed, that's in operation now, yeah? Since for a couple of days now, yeah. And then, as Klaus mentioned, we are looking into possible capacity expansions on the solar side, but that will be a low investment this year. That will not be a large investment. So the investment profile of LPKF will stay the same as before. Okay. Last one for, for clarification. Those effects from the cost savings, mid- to single-digit... No, no, no, it was a low- to mid-single-digit million euro. Uh- That's full year effect, right? Full year effect, yes. Okay. We will start seeing effects this year. Yeah. We'll see close to full effect next year. Okay. Understood. That's it from my side. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Miguel. Well, thank you, everybody. There are no further questions, and we are already- Wait, but we had one in the chat, I heard. Yeah, that, that was the one that Christian just covered. Okay, great. Yeah. So we've covered all the questions. We are a little bit past our time, but I think not much more left than to thank everyone very much for joining this call, and our next one is already in four weeks' time, when we release our three-month report on the 25th of April. Thank you very much, everybody. Thanks very much. Bye-bye. Bye.