AT & S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik Aktiengesellschaft (ATS.VI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

August 3, 2021

Vienna Stock Exchange AT Information Technology Electronic Equipment, Instruments and Components earnings 60 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Beatrice, your operator today. Welcome, and thank you for joining the AT&S conference call on the results for the first quarter 2021/'22. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Gerda Koenigstorfer. The floor is yours.

Gerda Königstorfer

executive
#2

Thank you, and welcome, and good morning to the conference call of the first quarter of the current year '21/'22. Today's call will be led by Andreas Gerstenmayer, CEO; and Simone Faath, CFO. Andreas Gerstenmayer will start with the introduction; and of course, we will give you an overview of the highlights and the key developments of the first quarter. And also, he will give you a deeper insight in the demand of the IC substrates. Afterwards, Simone Faath will report on the first quarter results, the financials and also the guidance of the current year and, of course, to the mid-term guidance. Afterwards, as you know, we will have the Q&A session. And now I want to hand over to Andreas Gerstenmayer.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#3

Thank you very much, Ms. Koenigstorfer, and a warm welcome also from my side to our first quarter's results. Before we enter into the detailed topics, I want to take the opportunity to announce some recent changes on the Management Board and the Executive Board of AT&S. As we have communicated to the market with the 31st of May, Mr. Moitzi, our COO for the last 40 years, retired, and we took the opportunity to somehow rearrange the allocation of tasks and responsibilities within the Executive Board. Mr. Schneider came on the Board as the new CSO. The intention to establish a CSO role on the Executive Board level was to strengthen our market interaction in the light of the growth strategy. And we did also some minor changes for the task allocation for the other Board members. We have Mr. Schroeder as the COO, Ms. Faath, as the CFO; and I'm still the CEO with taking some roles from -- over some roles from Mr. Moitzi, like R&D and others. I also want to take the opportunity today to give Mr. Schneider the chance to introduce himself. And if there are any further questions, either you can raise them at the end or you can also get in contact with us as a follow-up. So I want to take over now to -- hand over to Mr. Schneider.

Peter Schneider

executive
#4

Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to join today's conference call, and I appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself. I have joined AT&S since September last year and took over the role of global sales direction. And I'm responsible for sales, business development, the market strategies and market intelligence. My onboarding was fantastic. I really appreciate it. It was great to join AT&S in this very interesting phase. As you can imagine, it's very interesting times that we're in with lots of opportunities. So I'm very much looking forward to the next years and to the things that are to come. Background on my career. So I have -- I'm a chemist by education. I started in Vienna and [ Leoben ] and then joined Wacker Chemie for 17 years. I have made a career there in various positions, sales, marketing, strategy, heading R&D and heading business unit at the end. And move then on to Mayr-Melnhof packaging, a European market leader for paperboard packaging and also listed in the stock exchange in Vienna. Both companies that I've worked before are stock listed and have quite a high share of family owners. And so there, I've been -- for Mayr-Melnhof, I've been for 7 years in operations. I had 2 different operation units. And I'm now happy to be back close to the customer, even though I have -- it's actually a little different. COVID is a challenge when meeting customers. But as you can follow the news, we are still quite successful in making contracts and, let's say, closing up on the topics that allow us to grow in the future. Thank you very much.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#5

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Schneider. So again, welcome onboard. And you can imagine this is quite turbulent times we're in, growing continuously and need to stay closely connected with the customers in the environment of COVID, not being able to travel a lot. So I think this is already a challenging environment even more if you reflect on our growth aspirations. So now entering into the first quarter's results. We turn into the presentation. So on the second slide, you see the key developments of the quarter 1. Just to remember, quarter 1 typically is the one where we can -- where we need to consider a certain seasonality, especially in the mobile device business. And this is also happening or has been happening this year despite we have seen a very volatile market environment in quite different areas. So it's, on the one hand side, the demand fluctuations we still see, especially in mobile devices, the typical seasonality preparing for the new generations. In automotive, I think you have also read the news continuously. There is a lot of volatility due to the chip shortage. In other areas, it's caused by a certain shortage in materials. So in total, we are not -- we are still in turbulent territories, and we need to manage that continuously. So interaction with customers is important, short-term fluctuations in demand, in scheduling of contracts, in scheduling of orders, mix changes. This is what we are doing constantly day to day, and this is the environment we are in. In that light, I think we have made quite a great job. We have been able to grow by 28% year-over-year. For sure, it was mainly also pushed by the additional capacities in our ABF IC substrate business. But also, we see nice continuous growth in the PCB for modules or system and package components business. Also, automotive has shown strong recovery despite of the chip shortage. A lot of projects are showing increasing demand. And also, the industrial area has recovered and shows a very strong performance, mainly driven by the 5G rollout globally. We also have strengthened our R&D activities to be prepared for the new technologies, especially again in the ABF substrate area. There, we are spending quite a lot of efforts to come up on time with the new technologies, new processes to be implemented and qualified. And we are growing significantly. We need to prepare ourselves for the future. So also, the company is in constant transformation. Processes needs to be adjusted. Structures needs to be prepared for the future and so on and so on. This is what we will -- we have seen already in the last quarters, and it will stay with us for the next coming quarters. Regarding the capacities, we need to prepare. We are full on track with our preparation for the peak season in the Mobile Device business. So we are ready to ramp in volume. Everything is in place. Everything is qualified. So now we are starting to ramp. And the capacity expansion, especially when it comes to the ABF IC substrates business is full on track. Chongqing III is really excellently performing and proceeding. I've talked about the last calls already, despite of the COVID environment, the team was able to bring up the construction of the building, the infrastructure ahead of time. We are also able to bring in the engineers of the suppliers to install and qualify the equipment. This was quite a big challenge. Just imagine, all these engineers, and this is hundreds of them, need to go to China. They need to go through quarantine sometimes 3 to 4 weeks. They can only stay for 6 to 8 weeks there. Then they need to leave the country, come back again and back and forth. So in that environment, being ahead of schedule is really an excellent result. And I just want to give you this background information to increase the confidence that we have really great teams on-site that are able also to manage in very challenging environment. About the market on Slide 4. Still, we are in a very nice environment. All the applications in segments we are active in show growth for the next couple of years, when it comes to the electronic system market, which is for sure, our important market environment. And we see a nice growth rate for the next 5 years of average 4.6%. Some of the segments grow faster. Some of them a little bit slower. But in total, I think it's really great opportunities we see out there, and we will select the opportunities which will fit to us the best, which is mainly represented by the applications in the certain market segment. Coming down to the PCB and IC substrates market. Here, you see a similar picture, probably a little bit different distribution of growth rates. But in total, also the market is growing by 4.2% in the coming years. We have been just been confirmed to be the #2 producer in the high-end PCB area. There is, every year, this Nakahara report issued, which is one of the benchmark reports of the industry, where you can see the top 100, top 150 PCB companies globally. And we're also targeting to outperform the market growth until 2026 by more than 20%, which is mainly driven by our growth activities in the IC substrates business. Some other areas will also grow but not that significantly because the main allocation of investment is done in the IC substrates area, which is anyhow the fastest growing business and market. Why is it like that? The left side of this slide, I have already talked about. Just to remember, the entire electronics industry is driven by the underlying rationale of data. And data is the driver of digitalization or also sometimes the result of digitalization. But nevertheless, finally, you need to manage this tremendous amount of data globally, and it will grow exponentially in the coming years. So you have the areas of data creation. You have the area of data storage, data transmission and data analytics. And all these areas need to be managed, need to be -- data need to be processed, and a lot of intelligence and processing power needs to be implemented. So with that increasing volumes data, also the architectures of the chip packages are changing constantly. This started with the so-called multi-die modules some years ago. Then we have seen the area of system in package, which is still discrete components in the package. And now we are entering into the generation of heterogeneous integration. All about that is called More than Moore because the typical classical rule of Moore is not working anymore. And this is the new way how the microelectronics industry is now tackling that to increase the processing performance and also to keep an eye on the cost development and the cost efficiency of the components. So moving from so-called monolithic chips, which is represented by system on chip to a chiplet architecture means that you just, to simplify, cut the one die into pieces, into functional pieces, and you allocate the necessary nodes and architectures to the chiplets. So you cut it into pieces like memory. You have the CPU core. You have the graphics core. You have the communication part and so on and so on. Not every part of a chip package needs the, for example, 7 or 5 nanometers. Typically, you need it in the CPU core area. It's not necessarily needed also in the memory or in the communications part. Just for example, in talking a little bit about functional distribution within the chip package. So this idea to introduce chiplets, on the one hand side, increases the opportunity to improve the performance of a package but also to improve the cost efficiency because you can select different types and levels of nodes, and you also can increase the quality and the yield levels because the areas where you need these very ambitious nodes are quite -- significantly smaller and the process control can be much better. To be able to implement that, for sure, you need very, very performant interconnect solutions like IC substrates. And sometimes in these IC substrates, you have special components integrated to ensure a good data transmission between the chiplets. And this is the -- somehow also the challenge behind the chiplet technology, how the interconnect between the different parts of the package is created. There are different solutions available. Some use so-called silicon interposers. Some use silicon bridges. And finally, it comes down to a cost efficiency gain, which of the solutions is selected. Nevertheless, this is the great opportunity for AT&S because increasing performance of packages having a high need for very performant interconnect. This is addressing the IC substrates as the carrier and the solution to connect the chiplets, gives us a lot of opportunity in terms of technology development but also in terms of growth by additional value, which is generated by this ambitious requirement and also these required architectures on the level of the IC substrates. And this is finally reflected in the market numbers I have shown before. The growth rate of the IC substrates for the coming years is almost 9% year-over-year on a very high level. So you can see this growth is driven by new technologies, new requirements but also by the increasing value, which is reflected by the technical requirements on the level of the IC substrates. Knowing that and keeping that in mind, we have decided 2 years ago to build the Chongqing III facility to increase our capacities. Just to remember back, the Chongqing III building, which is now under ramp situation, is significantly larger than all the other buildings we have done so far. It's somehow 1.2% -- 1.2x larger than Chongqing I and II together. So this is a building with 65,000 million square meters of production area, and it's really 1 of the largest IC substrate factories we know. Having said that and knowing that we are ramping that capacity until quarter 3 '23/'24, until then, the full capacity will be available, and we will see the first full year contribution of the additional capacities of Chongqing III in the fiscal year '24/'25 for 12 months. We have then discussed with some customers about additional needs. And finally, we ended up to decide for a new location in Malaysia, in Kulim new high-tech park. It is a location, a land plot of more than 200,000 square meters, which we acquired there. We've now closed the contracts with customers to get started with the construction and also with the interaction and collaboration for the additional capacity and new technologies. And we will already start construction in the second half of the year 2021. Expectation is that we will do the qualification in the production site until end of calendar year 2024. So then we will start ramping the capacities in the new factory in Malaysia. So this is about the market, market interaction and the growth projects, the main growth projects we have initiated. We know that other topics like our ESG engagement is also important to talk about and to connect to the Kulim factory. We already have started our discussions, what needs to be considered in -- when we do the construction, the specification of the new factory to meet our future ESG targets, which is somehow represented that we want to be CO2 neutral until 2030. And this is also implemented in the new projects already. Nevertheless, what did we achieve so far in the fiscal year 2020/2021? We are already on a level of 45% consumption of renewable energy. This is including mainly hydropower and other sources. Solar power in our case is not the big deal, especially when it comes to installing solar panels on the roof of our factories. If we would do so on all of our factories, the supply of our -- the quota of supply of our needed energy would be around 2% to 3%. So it's nice to do that, but it's not really solving the issue, so we need to find better solutions there. And we are working heavily on that. Especially in China, we had close interaction with the energy and the power bureaus in our locations to find ways to purchase renewable energy sources. For sure, we have also -- in light of our production processes, and you know we have a lot of chemical processes to -- and wet chemical processes to produce our PCBs and substrate. We use a lot of precious materials: gold, palladium, copper and so on and so on. So recycling is an important part of our strategy to extract all the precious materials out of the chemicals at the end of the process. Not to lose anything and dispense anything, I think, is an important part. We have ongoing projects, continuously generating new projects and also thinking about new processes which can avoid the consumption of these valuable materials. To support that, we have also started a so-called life cycle assessment, which shows us the consumption of energy resources and so on throughout the entire life cycle of a PCB starting in the mining area, starting -- and ending in the disposal of the devices. This, we will continuously build up now and to understand better where we have our levers to improve further. On the diversity side, it's just one KPI we have identified and defined. We have 34% proportion of female employees globally. I think this is not a bad number for a technical and production-oriented company. But still there, we want to improve further. Also, taking care about our employees during the crisis of COVID. We can proudly state so far, we did not have any cluster in our factories globally. We constantly could maintain our production operations, and I think that was also greatly done by the local management teams to follow the instructions and also operate on a very disciplined level. All our key suppliers have signed our code of conduct to 100%. We will now bring it down to other suppliers as well, so to develop further there. And last but not least, we have also collected quite some ratings of different ESG rating agencies. And in all that areas, we are on a quite sufficient level already, but we have still some good ideas to improve further. As I said in the beginning already, technology and innovation is the driver of our business, the driver of our growth; and therefore, we constantly invest quite significant amount of money, especially now when we bring new technologies in the IC substrates area into the factories. This year, we expect to estimate a level of EUR 167 million in R&D investments. So this is 40% more than we had invested last year, and it should just show that we are not falling behind. We are preparing ourselves very proactively for the new technologies to be ready once the technology is needed and also to ensure a flawless high level -- high-quality level during the ramp and introducing new applications to the factories, to the operations together with our customers in so-called joint development projects. On the other hand side, we only -- we do not only measure the input factors like the R&D expenses are. We also are measuring constantly the output, what is the result of all these activities and we could and can constantly maintain our high level on -- of the Vitality Index. Just remembering back what is that reflecting. This is the revenue generated with technologies not older than 3 years in the market. The number there is 20%. Why not higher? I think 20% of the revenues generated by these young technologies is already an ambitious target, and we have to consider that there is a certain volatility. There's not always a constant high-level stream. Sometimes some of the applications generate higher than they are maturing and until you can bring in the new next generation, it can also go down a little bit like it did last year. But you can also see the expectation for this year is that it already recovered almost 30% level again. So there is always, over the last couple of years, a certain volatility in that number, but we still -- we constantly stay above our target of 20%. So this gives you a brief overview about where we are moving towards, what is the market environment, what are we preparing ourselves for and also should show you that we are constantly working on the implementation of our More than AT&S strategy. I would give a quote on that. We are very much on schedule with the implementation, and I think this is already great achievements. And that will give now the opportunity to Ms. Faath to talk about the results and the outlook of the fiscal year.

Simone Faath

executive
#6

Thank you, Mr. Gerstenmayer. So good morning, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will be now presenting our financial results for the first quarter of this fiscal year '21/'22. I'm pleased to report that our revenue is again at a historic high for the quarter with EUR 318 million, which represents a year-over-year growth of 28%. We realized an unfavorable impact from the U.S. dollar of around EUR 22 million. Without this negative effect, our revenue would have grown 37%. Our EBITDA margin deteriorated in comparison to the year before by 130 basis points to now 14.6%. Our EBITDA was also burdened by negative foreign currency effects, mainly U.S. dollar and Chinese renminbi of approximately EUR 18 million. Our EBITDA adjusted for start-up costs linked to our ramp-up in Chongqing in the amount of EUR 4.5 million, shows a decrease of 50 basis points versus last year's Q1 and is now at 16% of revenue. Coming to the next page. In Q1 '21/'22, our revenue was, as already said before, EUR 318 million compared to EUR 248 million a year ago. This top line increase was driven by both segments, Mobile Devices & Substrates as well as Automotive, Industrial & Medical. EBITDA was EUR 46 million compared to EUR 39 million in Q1 '20/'21. This increase of 17% was mainly driven by our top line growth, but I want to give you more color on this in a few seconds. Adjusted EBITDA growth was 24 with EUR 51 million compared to EUR 41 million a year ago. Net profit was minus EUR 5 million and could be slightly improved versus Q1 last year, where we realized a loss of minus EUR 8 million. Now I want to give you a little bit more details of our EBITDA changes year-over-year. Let's start on the left-hand side. With our EBITDA in Q1 '20/'21, so means a year before, which was EUR 39.5 million. In Q1 of the current fiscal year, we had some good and some bad guys. Let's begin with the bad ones. First, due to our exposure with regards to U.S. dollar as well as to the Chinese renminbi, we realized an unfavorable FX effect of EUR 18.1 million. Second, as Mr. Gerstenmayer showed before, we significantly increased our R&D expenses to ensure staying on top of innovation and technology trends as major driver for our profitable revenue growth with the effect that in Q1, we recognized an increased R&D expense of EUR 8.7 million year-over-year. Third, given our accelerated ramp in Chongqing III as well as our expansion project in Kulim, our start-up cost increased year-over-year by EUR 4.6 million. Fourth, in order to be prepared for the future growth, we have to invest in other areas of the business as well, which resulted in a year-over-year increase in SG&A expense of another EUR 6.7 million. These unfavorable effects could be fully absorbed by our top line growth, coupled with a favorable product mix in some areas and higher depreciation than the year before. And this brings us then to an EBITDA of EUR 46.3 million in Q1 of the current year. Now going to the next slide showing our revenue and EBITDA development of the last 5 quarters. This quarter was, as I said before, the highest Q1 revenue quarter ever in the history of AT&S. With a growing share of our IC substrates business to our group revenue, the usual seasonality will be more and more mitigated. Our profitability, as explained before, has slightly decreased. Now coming to our best business segment, starting with the biggest, Mobile Devices & Substrates. This segment represents 69% of our Q1 group revenue compared to 75% in Q1 of last year. This segment grew 18% year-over-year from EUR 187 million to now EUR 22 million. The main growth driver was the continued high demand for IC substrates as well as the growing demand for PCBs for modules. EBITDA margin was with 17% slightly below Q1 last year, mainly due to negative FX effects as well as increased start-up costs related to the ramp of Chongqing III. Now coming to our business segment, Automotive, Industrial & Medical. This segment represents 31% of our Q1 group revenue compared to 25% last year. After a weak Q1 last year, which was heavily influenced by the COVID pandemic, we had a considerable growth in all 3 segments. Overall, this segment realized a year-over-year growth of 16%. Our business line Automotive could double -- almost double its revenue compared to Q1 last year. Industrial also shows the considerable growth year-over-year as well as Medical, which benefits from favorable product mix. Now turning to the next page and our financial position. Our liquidity remains strong. There is substantial liquidity available for our ongoing investments as well as for repayments. Our cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q1 this fiscal year were at EUR 561 million compared to EUR 553 million a quarter ago. Our unused credit lines at up to EUR 329 million versus EUR 419 million in Q1 of the year. Next, I will cover some details of our balance sheet. So total assets as of end of June '21 were EUR 2.5 billion, an increase of 5% versus the end of last fiscal year. This increase was driven by our investments in Chongqing. Equity is -- was roughly EUR 800 million, more or less at the same level as it was at the end of March. Equity ratio went down by 180 basis points to 32%. Net debt at the end of Q1 was EUR 638 million, a plus of 26% versus a quarter ago. Reason here was again the higher CapEx in the light of our investments in Chongqing. Now coming to our cash flow. Cash flow from operations was EUR 31 million versus EUR 28 million a year ago. Cash flow from investing activities was minus EUR 130 million and EUR 24 million below the amount from a year ago. Cash flow from financing activities was EUR 110 million, very close to what we had in the same quarter of last year. Our operating free cash flow calculated from cash flow from operations less net CapEx was minus EUR 123 million compared to minus EUR 54 million last year. This year-over-year change was mainly driven by our increased CapEx. Now looking at our capital expenditure. Our net CapEx in Q1 were EUR 153 million compared to EUR 82 million a year ago. Again, this year-over-year increase is mainly due to our project in Chongqing. Considering our latest investment decision regarding our new IC substrate production site in Malaysia, we increased our net CapEx guidance for the year from previously EUR 630 million to now EUR 700 million. And these EUR 700 million, the biggest portion of that, so here, we are talking about EUR 450 million plus EUR 800 million (sic) [ EUR 80 million ], are really coming from strategic projects, which we are currently driving. And another EUR 100 million are really coming from CapEx related to maintenance and tech upgrade. Now coming to current year guidance. We increased our revenue guidance from EUR 13 million to EUR 15 million -- 13% to 15% to now 17% to 19%. We expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to be in the range of 21% to 23% of revenue. Adjusted means that we excluded our EBITDA calculation -- in our EBITDA calculation the start-up costs, which are related to our construction projects in Chongqing III and in Kulim. Regarding our mid-term guidance for the fiscal year '25/'26, nothing has changed. We still stick to our targets, which are achieving a revenue of around about EUR 3 billion in the year '25/'26, achieving an EBITDA margin in the range of 27% to 32%, targeting a return of capital employed of at least 12%. And as mentioned before, when we announced our Malaysian investment, we are still in the evaluation process regarding the accounting treatment of the financing part from our customers. Depending on the outcome, it might be possible that we are temporarily exceeding our leverage target of less than 3 and fall below our equity ratio target of more than 30%. With this, I conclude our presentation and now hand over to Mrs. Gerda Koenigstorfer and our moderator. Thank you.

Gerda Königstorfer

executive
#7

Thank you, Simone Faath. Thank you, Andreas Gerstenmayer for the report about the first quarter. Now we can start with the Q&A session, and I want to ask Ms. Brune to handle and to organize the Q&A session.

Operator

operator
#8

[Operator Instructions] And now we're coming to the first question, so let me just check, please. [Operator Instructions] And we have Mr. Jürgen Wagner from Stifel in the line.

Jürgen Wagner

analyst
#9

I have actually 2. Who were your largest customers in Q1? And you mentioned that ABF substrate made a significant contribution to growth in Q1. What percent of sales was coming from that product group?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#10

So you touched the whole topics. First of all, we cannot disclose the largest 2 customers. So this typically is a problem we're always facing due to the strict NDAs we have in place. And also, what you see is -- or what you request is the pure ABF substrate revenue part. This is not part of our segment reporting. So we have the segment reporting about mobile and substrates combined. This -- Ms. Faath has shown in the segment reporting below that we do not disclose revenue and other financial numbers. I'm sorry to say that.

Operator

operator
#11

And the next question comes from Daniel Lion from Erste Group.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#12

I have a few. Maybe to follow up on your portfolio a little bit, but from a different angle. You mentioned the broadening of your portfolio. What would be the biggest contributions in terms of new products to your portfolio when you look at 1Q '21 and maybe also going forward for the coming quarters? And where would you see the biggest growth from new products? I'm really talking about single products where you supply into? Could you give us a little bit -- just an idea of what the drivers are, so the product drivers behind it that we could follow the development in a better way?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#13

To address that, I would propose to slightly modify. So we are typically addressing application area, which gives much better picture than single products. In the IC substrate, typically, it's all the subjects of CPUs, GPUs used in data centers, in 5G base stations, in future, more and more also in automotive applications but also in client computing areas. In the automotive part, it's definitely everything about advanced driver assistance systems, which is composed out of sensors, the central processing units and some interfaces between the driver and the car. It's also about communication modules, Car-to-X communication, things like that. For all of these areas, the drivers are, as I said before, more and more smart solutions, more and more trends towards artificial intelligence solutions and the -- we could say, networking or continuous connectivity requirements. On the mobile and -- area, for sure, 5G in the smartphones is a big driver, but we see also strong demand in everything what is mobile devices like watches, smart watches, which increasingly require new technologies. True wireless headphones is a very fast-growing market. These are the main drivers in the high end of the mobile market. When it comes to industrial, so this is a little bit a conglomerate of applications, still, we see an uptake in the area of industrial automation. But also a strong driver there is, in our portfolio, the 5G infrastructure business because the rollout already started heavily during the COVID pandemic, but it's taking up more and more speed and entering into the implementation mode globally. And for sure, in the medical area, which is probably not the largest applications but still a nice business for us, it's hearing aids, it's pacemakers and other implants, which are showing also, in future, very nice growth rates.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#14

Okay. Perfect. And maybe also related a little bit to it, but when you look at the new chip pipeline Intel just introduced to 2025, 2026, how do you reflect on that? And where would you see the impact for AT&S in the end from this new pipeline?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#15

As I tried to explain in the beginning already, I think the main 2 trends are -- is further functional integration in the packages, which finally is ending up in these technical terminals of heterogenous integration when it comes to the chips. This is driving the complexity of the substrates because with more functionality in the package, you need more fan-out and I/O coverage between the chip in the outside world. This is, again, increasing when the nodes are going down. So if the nodes is coming from 10 to 7 to 5, again, the functional integration, the functionality within the chips is significantly increasing and you need to connect to the outside world, which again increases the complexity of the underlying substrate, which provides the interconnect to the world. And secondly, to be able to somehow fulfill the performance requirements, we see also more and more coming the advanced interconnect technologies within the package like silicon bridges and things like that, which provide higher data rates when just using copper connection lines between chiplets. So finally, higher footprint of substrates, higher layer count, more fine structures. This is the trend.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#16

Yes. Okay, right. And then a question regarding the securing of capacity. So we are seeing actually more clients running around, trying to secure their capacities for IC substrates. So question, the first part of this issue, how are you dealing with new requests given your already rather tight investment plans? Will be possible to see this securing of capacities expand to other areas as well like with HDI or mSAP? Or are there other technologies that you supply?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#17

For sure, there is a very, very tight capacity situation in the IC substrate area. I can confirm that quite some customers are trying to get access to capacities also in the future, and this is what we have been reflecting with our investment plans. This is also reason why we decided for Kulim, to build up these large capacities there. This is what we can provide so far, and yes, sometimes you also need to see where are the limits of manageable expansions within the company. And for us, the situation is that the shortage most likely will remain for the next couple of years because the industry cannot simply build up this huge amount of capacities in that short period of time. But on the other hand side, there will also be the other developments like technology -- further accelerated technologies coming to the market; and over time, it will be rebalanced. But yes, this is what the industry is dealing with, and I think we have done our contribution to it and others will do as well.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#18

And expanding these contracts for other technologies, is this -- can this happen? Or do you see these potential discussions already running for, I don't know, HDI modules, whatever, that you could see additional benefits?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#19

I think this is different businesses. So this is a very special situation the IC substrate industry is in today. It's also a little bit historically caused because there was quite some backlog in investments similar like we see in the semicon industry as well, which is causing now the chip shortage in other areas. There was simply 1 investment cycle left out, and this cannot be caught up easily from 1 year to the other. In other industries, it's a different situation. For sure if the business is growing but also the opportunities to build up capacity is a little bit easier, I would say -- not easy but easier, and also the amount of potential candidates that can provide capacities in the HDI area is larger. So knowing in the high-end IC substrate business, we have, I would say, around about 5 to 6 companies being capable to meet the technical requirements on the top level with volumes. In high -- in HDI business, you have quite some of them who can provide the technologies. So we are focusing on the area where we can differentiate ourselves by technology. For sure, we are maintaining our position in the HDI any layer and so on area. But this is also done by a very dedicated application strategy underlying where we need to decide which of the applications are fitting best to our setup.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#20

Okay. perfect. And then 2 minor ones. Start-up costs expectations for the coming quarters, will you have some kind of a breakdown already? How you expect this to impact the coming quarters? And what would you expect in terms of start-up costs for the coming years? Is there anything significant we should have in mind? And regarding the accounting treatment of the cofinancing, what are currently the options on the table?

Simone Faath

executive
#21

We already said that, for this year, we expect start-up costs of around about EUR 50 million; and over the next quarters, the start-up cost will increase as I mentioned before. So this quarter, we had start-up costs of around about EUR 4.5 million, and this will continuously increase over the next quarters. And for next year, they will increase again because then really Kulim kicks in. Coming to your question with regards to the accounting treatment of the financial part of our customers. So this is still in process. It will take us a little bit more time. We are currently working on it really with full steam, and I hope that in our next conference call, when we publish our first half year's results, that I will definitely tell you -- can tell you more.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#22

Okay. So the start-up costs, you expect them to increase gradually, so it's not like seeing them evenly split in the coming quarters. But it's rather towards the effective start of the production, they will increase, right?

Simone Faath

executive
#23

Right, right.

Operator

operator
#24

The next question comes from Teresa Schinwald from Raiffeisen Bank International.

Teresa Schinwald

analyst
#25

Two questions from my side are left. The one is the supply chain issues for the semiconductors. I guess AT&S is not very much affected -- as affected because it's manufacturing in the countries of origin. But do you observe any indirect effect on the customer side? What are your observations there? And then the second one is on inflationary pressure, if you can see some in your value chain; and if yes, if it's rather in resources, in labor. Could you elaborate please a bit on that?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#26

I think in answering your question, we can already combine both with each other because they are somehow impacting each other. So supply chain semicon, as said in the beginning, for sure, is somehow impacting our customers, especially in the automotive area. If that would not be the case, the recovery, especially in automotive, would be significantly faster. So this is somehow slowing down the recovery. Nevertheless, we have seen quite nice development for the first quarter; and also, we are expecting to continue on that level, also to don't see a significant downturn there if all the announcements of the members of the supply chain will be fulfilled. On the other hand side, supply chain issues, I think we have also with some of our materials, with the raw materials, for example, copper and other precious materials in some areas, shortages, we can maintain it so far. And we're also optimistic that we can maintain it in future. But simply, the situation is due to the electrification of, for example, the automotive area. The -- on the mining side, there's a significant gap between demand and supply. And you can imagine, increase in mining capacities is not a short-term topic to be solved. We are talking about around about 4 million metric tons delta in the copper mining area against the demand. And this is what the entire industry is dealing with. And sure, when you have material shortages, inflation kicks in. Prices are going up. And this is then running through the entire chain. All the participants of the supply chain need to increase their costs because nobody would be able to cover a significant increased material cost. So it's handed over to the customers, from the customers to the customers, and finally, it's to the consumers. And that is what is now happening in the industry. And for sure, this is driving inflation finally.

Teresa Schinwald

analyst
#27

And on the labor side?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#28

On the labor side, I think this is the old story. In Europe, we have still shortage of skilled labor. The only way to cover that is either you bring people to Europe from other places of the world. And in other areas like we see it in China, in India, in Malaysia, Korea, I think this is quite sufficient situation, and we are able to get the people we need.

Operator

operator
#29

There are no further questions.

Gerda Königstorfer

executive
#30

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your questions and to attend this call about the first quarter. Due to timing, we will have to close this call, and we wish you a nice day. And if there are further questions, you don't hesitate to contact IR [ partner and team ]. Thank you. Goodbye.

Operator

operator
#31

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.

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