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

November 4, 2021

Vienna Stock Exchange AT Information Technology Electronic Equipment, Instruments and Components earnings 64 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the A&T -- AT&S conference call on the current business environment. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Philipp Gebhardt. Please go ahead.

Philipp Gebhardt

executive
#2

Thank you, Mr. Koppes. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the AT&S H1 2021 to 2022 Conference Call. With us today are Andreas Gerstenmayer CEO; and Peter Schneider, CSO. Mr. Gerstenmayer will start with a brief overview of the key developments of the first half year, followed by a market update from Mr. Schneider. Afterwards, Andreas Gerstenmayer will comment on our H1 figures, our current year guidance as well as the midterm guidance. As Mr. Koppes mentioned, the presentation will follow by a Q&A session. Now I would like to hand over to Mr. Gerstenmayer. The floor is yours.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#3

Thank you very much, Gebhardt, and a warm welcome also from my side to our first half year's earnings call. Before I enter into the details, let me take the opportunity to give some general comments. First of all, I want to welcome -- Mr. Gebhardt is our new IR Manager, Director at AT&S. And at the same time, I want to take the opportunity also, despite she is not participating today, to appreciate and thank Ms. Koenigstorfer for her contribution over the last couple of years. She has resigned on -- based on personal reasons. And I think with Gebhardt, we have a very nice and, hopefully, successful successor in this position. And I ask everyone to support him as you did so far with Ms. Koenigstorfer and with us as well. In parallel, I'm sure you have read the news about the resignation of Ms. Faath a few weeks ago, again, due to personal reasons. We did some rearrangement in the intermediate situation in the Board. I took over again the role of the CFO temporarily, but also, Mr. Schneider, who is also joining the call today, accepted to support and take over for the time-being the Investor Relation agenda. So this is the reason why he is participating today. This is a great opportunity also for you to get more insights about market development. With him, you have really the best competent member of the Board to talk about market sales customers, whatever you want to know and what we can talk about. And I will try to guide you through the numbers as we did in the past as well. In that regard, I also want to announce that in the background, we have Mr. Beglari, Mr. Leitner S in the past, when I was the acting CFO to support me. If there are any specific finance questions, they can jump in and provide you the details about that. So this is about the setting. Again, thank you for your understanding and your confidence in AT&S. And now I propose we jump into the presentation. Starting with a brief overview about the key developments in the first half year. So from the announcement, I'm sure you have read it already. On Slide 1, you see again AT&S is continuing its growth path. So we could generate a strong revenue growth in the first half year of around about 30%. The good message here is that all business segments are contributing to the growth. It's not just one, the one or the other or a single customer. So it's really a broad-based growth what we have experienced in the first half year. But we have also some significant negative FX effect, which we will cover on later in the revenue generation, but also in the profitability side. So this is still a very volatile situation out there, but I'm sure you're aware of that as well. With a global economy and the sharp increase of the recovery after the pandemic situation, the pandemic crisis, we all know that the turbulences, the volatility in the global market is still quite high. And also that is causing a certain impact on material costs, capacities available at customers and suppliers. But also transport energy costs show certain impact from this turbulent and volatile environment. To maintain our technology leadership, we continuously strive to strengthen our R&D activities, especially when it comes to our growth areas of the business, the ABF substrates and the modules. This also we will see later is again an increase of our R&D activities that show certain impact. The capacity expansions we have communicated when it comes to Chongqing. Chongqing III and others are full on track as usual. From this widely discussed and communicated chip shortage globally, so far, we did not see any significant impact, for sure. The market is tight. The market is volatile. But on the other hand side, so far, we could manage quite well. But you will also see it, for example, in our cash flow and our working capital development that we have taken some activities to mitigate the risk of running out of materials. And last but not least, the good message at the end. With a better visibility, we have gained -- and also the nice development in our market and our customers, we could also increase our revenue guidance again. The numbers will be communicated later. So more details about the market. Now I will hand over to Mr. Schneider, and I'll come back with the numbers later.

Peter Schneider

executive
#4

Thank you, Mr. Gerstenmayer for the introduction and the flowers. I'm still working on catching up on your 11 years of experience. But nevertheless, I'm very happy to introduce to you the market development as we see it today and would like to start with our segment AIM. And what you will see overall segments is double-digit market growth. And to enter a little bit more into details, as far Automotive is concerned, compared to the first half year last year, we see, of course, a dynamic recovery out of the COVID situation, which, to some extent, also led to the chip shortage in the automotive industry. For us, as Mr. Gerstenmayer mentioned, the effects are limited. To some extent, limited because the OEMs prioritize the rather expensive cars, which has a higher share of high-end PCBs that we focus on. So we don't see this massive impact. Of course, we are in close contact with our customers to manage the supply situation. We have a well-balanced portfolio, and that also helps us to keep the loading of our factories high. And particularly in the Industry segment, we see a quite good market environment. I would say, to some extent, driven by the overall positive economy, our Industry segment is quite adverse. And one of the focus topics is infrastructure and everything, which is around infrastructure. And here, we take advantage of the infrastructure investments. And therefore, also, we see that overall market growth also in our business is quite positive. Medical, as you would expect, is rather stable business. There was some impact in the medical field in the U.S.A. during the COVID crisis when budgets were reduced. Our main market here is Europe as with the other segments. So we were not so much impacted by that. Our main application is hearing aids. We are working on diversification, and we believe that this will also pay off in the future. As far as consumer and computer and communication is concerned, we see as it's going through the press growth driver of work, stay, play at home. We take advantage of that. And also here, for us, very important topic is to diversify our application, and we are taking advantage of 5G in mobile phones and all the developments that you see with true wireless headphones and so on. Our most important growth driver, for sure, is substrates and semicon. This is where the major investments go into. And as we have announced earlier, we are in close partnership with our customers to bring up capacities and expand our market there. All in all, if you summarize the overall market for PCBs and substrates, growth this year by 17.5%, a very big market, almost USD 74 billion. We are focusing on the high end that allows us to outperform the market. And we believe that we'll significantly outperform the market in the future where the overall growth is in the area of 4%, whereas we will grow more than 20%. One of the big growth driver, of course, again, are the IC substrates, which are predicted as the highest growth segment. You can see it here in the right column in gray, plus 9%. Also, here, we will see an outperformance from our side. And I do get very often the question, to which extent are we depending on this growth rate? Or what is behind the fact that this market is growing so fast? And I have brought with me one slide to explain as what from my point of view explains it quite well. What happens in this high-end market for ABF substrates, particularly if we talk about servers is that in order to increase the performance, the chip producers move from single chip to heterogenous packaging. It's called a multichip setup. And if you take this example here that we've chosen here, we show here on the right side 4 chips side-by-side with different functionalities. And of course, if you put 4 chips instead of 1 chip side-by-side, the surface increases by 4. So we have 4x the net square meters. That's not enough. In order to connect these 4 chips -- this is our job, right? We do this with our substrates. In order to connect 4 chips, the substrates get more complicated. It needs, for example, more layers. And since the whole thing is larger and has more layers, quite naturally in production, yield goes down. So if you factor in all these topics, overall, we estimate that it requires an eightfold of capacity -- 8x the capacity in order to supply the same number of units. And that you see on the next slide translated into a comparison of how the number of units grows. Of course, there, we grow with the substrate number of units. The market grows hand-in-hand with the server number of units, if you look, particularly, for example, on the server market. But in value and in revenue, growth is, of course, much steeper. And you see here for the next -- our estimate for the next, let's say, 4 years, 5 years, we see something in the area of a tripling of the market, depending on where you set the point of the curve. And of course, it's hardly predictable what will happen after the year 2025. For sure, there's a very high uncertainty. But over the next couple of years, I think there is quite some certainty in the growth here. And this is the reason why we are quite confident that with our capacity expansion, we are doing the right thing. The customers are very well known to you. These are the big players in the market, and all these big players are potential customers to us. Of course, as you know, we do not disclose who are our partners that we team up with. To give you a quick update on the expansion in -- particularly in the IC substrate area. Chongqing III is very well on track. We have started already high-volume manufacturing, and we expect to have full capacities available in the beginning of the Q3 '23, '24. That's Chongqing and of course, the big investment in Malaysia, Kulim, EUR 1.7 billion. Groundbreaking has been done very successfully, what I heard from my colleagues on November 1, a very well-received show in Malaysia, for us, very important because we have a massive recruiting topic ahead of us. And yes, filing started, and we expect, as announced, high volume production by the end of our -- of the year 2024. We do not only invest in Chongqing and Malaysia, but also in Austria. Overall investment in Austria will be EUR 5 million -- EUR 500 million and in 3 areas. One is a technology upgrade, which is particularly focused on the topic to supply substrate cores, a component that is needed to build substrates, to build up the layers of substrates. And there, we have in-house supply out of our factory in Hinterberg Leoben. We have also already announced that we will build a new headquarters. If you pass by, it's already almost fully erected in height. It's space for 300 employees with growth of AT&S, of course. We have to grow also in the administration and build the floorspace and also move some offices from production locations into our new headquarters together. And also recently announced a very big step for us and probably, to some extent, also for the European industry is the R&D center that will build up. It is a little more than an R&D center. We can use this facility here in the picture shown in gray. On the bottom will be the new, let's say, kind of factory, which will allow us to scale up customers. So in order to prepare the future expansion -- potential expansion in Kulim, Malaysia and do some prototyping there and, of course, go into the -- more intensively into R&D for substrate and as well packaging, which is a very important future topic for us. So all in all, I think we have a very positive market environment that we take full advantage of.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#5

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Schneider, for the nice overview about the market environment and the latest development of the company. We now enter into the financial numbers. Let's start with the next slide. As you can see, we almost generated in the first half year EUR 700 million of revenue, which is an increase of around about 30% compared to last -- first half year. The EBITDA margin came in with almost 19%. As I said in the beginning, we have certain negative FX effect factor in there, which is in the level of EUR 29 million to be considered. And if we adjust for the start-up and ramp-up costs we have to consider in, especially in our Chongqing factory, the EBITDA margin adjusted would be on a level of 20.1%. So all in all, it's a nice development. Next slide just shows the comparison between half year last year and half year this year. So I think also there are no significant deviations. We have a great growth in revenues. We have a nice development in EBITDA. If you would also here consider the adjusted numbers, it's even better. And also on the net profit side, we have improved by 30% compared to last year's. Explaining a little bit about the major drivers in terms of EBITDA development. And here, we need to consider mainly 3 areas. The one part is, as said already, the foreign exchange impact with this EUR 29 million. Then probably accumulated, we have the additional R&D, additional SG&A and start-up costs, which we need to accept because of our -- because of preparation for the future growth. Thus think back on our midterm guidance, we are planning to grow until 2025, 2026 to a level of EUR 3.5 billion. So the company definitely will transform into a completely different size and structure. And therefore, we need to prepare ourselves on time. And this is what we are doing in that regard. On the one hand side, doing all the technology preparation, but also preparing ourselves for the supporting functions that we are able to digest and benefit from the growth and, finally, also able to manage that one. And for sure, start-up cost comes with the investment. And last but not least, and this is finally the operational good story. We can compensate that with the sales mix and volume. And finally, we end up EUR 130 million, EUR 131 million EBITDA for the first half year. But I think this gives you a bit more transparency what are the main impacting factors under the EBITDA development, and I think this should be quite helpful. So here, you can see again the quarter-to-quarter comparison to last year. Revenue last year was EUR 290 million. EBITDA was on 29% margin. If you compare it now to Q2 this year, we come in 31% higher in revenues, EUR 380 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin is 24%, and the non-adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 22%. So finally, summarizing, this is the highest quarterly revenue ever generated in AT&S. Thinking back 10 years, 11 years, I can already talk about that time spent. This was almost the annual revenue we have generated in 2010. So you see the growth is ongoing and showing a certain impact. Yes. And I think the rest we have already mentioned. Digging a bit more into the details about the business units. Also here, you see the main growth driver compared to last year on the one hand side in terms of absolute volume is our business with the mobile devices and substrates, also growing by 31% from EUR 218 million to EUR 287 million. For sure, the driver behind is that step by step, the additional capacities in Chongqing are coming onstream. But also, we see nice development in the so-called module -- PCB for module business, which we have been mentioning throughout the last calls -- quarter calls that this is taking up, and we are seeing now really the impact coming. And again, we have, mainly due to the U.S. dollar euro RMB exchange rates, the major impact also in this business unit, and that is mainly also causing the slight downturn in terms of EBITDA margin because we have, on the one hand side, the ramp-up cost, which is mainly allocated to this business unit regarding Chongqing. And we have the major impact of the FX effect also out of that business unit to accept because this is the one who is really exposed to all of these currencies. Going to the next slide. Also here, you can see compared to last year, our business unit Automotive, Industrial, Medical is showing nice recovery. We have experienced a lot of negative impact throughout the COVID crisis last year. First half year was definitely a weak one, but you can also see here that the recovery is showing impact, is coming on stream. And we are back to a really good level again and -- either in terms of revenue growth, which is also 31%, and also recovery of the EBITDA margin to 15%, which is not a bad number in that business. What we need to consider as well, what we incorporated in the numbers here is potentially, you know there is a European funding scheme it's called -- it's a important project of common European interest, which is supporting technology investment in Europe, which I consider to be a very important instrument to further develop the European economy and technology companies to stay competitive and also to be able to invest in Europe because of the global environment. We all know in other countries and other regions of the globe, the governments are heavily supporting investments under the so far European funding scheme. It was not simply not allowed for the national government to support investment, it's only allowed to support R&D activities and things like that. But under the IPCEI scheme, they are now allowed also to allocate support for investment activities, which we digest from and which is important, especially in the microelectronics environment. Moving on. Here, you see the financial position, which I still consider a very robust and solid one. You see we have still a very nice situation regarding our cash position and available cash. And also the unused credit lines are significant. So the solid financial structure is continuing. Surely it's [ decreasing ] because of the heavy investment in CapEx we are driving forward, which also you will see later, but still a very comfortable situation with no limitations in access to financing facilities. Balance sheet, I would say not really any surprise here. For sure, the total asset position goes up following the investment. The equity also increases due to the positive development of our profitability. We have slight decreasing equity ratio because the -- because of the more -- or the bigger growth in terms of total assets compared to the equity position, but still nothing which should concern us. And the net debt, for sure, is in line with the investments increasing, but also there, definitely no surprise to anybody, I hope, at least to be that. Moving on to the cash flow. Also, here, I think just only one topic, the operating free cash flow, which is finally the net between the cash flows from operating activities minus the CapEx. For sure here, the CapEx is the dominating factor again with EUR 307 million, and the cash flow from operating activities divided from there with almost EUR 80 million, the operating free cash flow comes in with minus EUR 229 million. But also, here should not be any surprise again and -- but only one other hand side, we are well positioned also what I have talked about in the balance sheet already. This brings me to my last 2 slides. First, the guidance for the current year. As announced at the beginning of this meeting already, we -- with the better visibility we have and with a very nice development, operational performance and development on our customer demand side, we could also again increase our expectation regarding revenue growth to a level of 21% to 23%, which is also reflecting the gains revenue growth so far, but also takes under consideration that we need to consider certain seasonality, especially in our Mobile Device business for the, at least, last quarter. So finally, it should come in, in that range. Profitability stays the same, 21 to 23 percentage of EBITDA margins. The adjustment for start-up for the full year is approximately EUR 50 million to be expected, also catching up more at the later part of the year. And net CapEx to be expected up to EUR 700 million. This is always depending a little bit on the -- in the detailed timing and adjustments. Finally, from the past, we are always trying to pay as late as we can. So invoices are only accepted if suppliers can really prove the performance of the equipment, and that leads in all of the years to a certain delay of payments, but not in terms of delay of shipments. So this is -- there's quite some volatility in that number. And the midterm guidance also here, we can increase the expectations also again due to latest adjustments of our projects, mix scenarios and better visibility regarding investments, customer demand, technologies and pricing. So our revenue expectation until 2025, 2026 is now on a level of EUR 3.5 billion. I think this is also a great development coming in line with all the latest decisions we have made with the investment decided and also a lot of detailed adjustments in terms of production setup, equipment mix and all these kind of things. Continuously, we try to optimize the balancing of equipment and improving the output of the intended or already decided investments. The profitability stays on a very nice healthy level of 27% to 32% in terms of EBITDA margin. Still, we expect, once the investment phase is more or less solved, our ROCE should recover to above 12% level. In between, when we are now driving this intense CapEx program, our net equity ratio could come temporarily fall -- come temporarily below the 30%. But also that, I do not consider to be a big concern. It's like we have a situation we have. And I think it's better to digest from the opportunities we see from the market then to just purely focus on the ratios and the KPIs. On the long term, we have a clear picture that this is kind of reaching situation. And at the end, the cash generation will recover and also the cash flow will come to completely new dimensions we never have digested in the AT&S history. So all in all, you have heard from Mr. Schneider, a very nice outlook in terms of market, market environment and also opportunities for AT&S. Still, the position of AT&S is a very good one. Customers are in close collaboration with us to talk about and think about future and further opportunities. And on the other hand side, we are very sure that we have done the right decisions in terms of investment, thus remembering back 2013 decision on IC substrate, [ 16 H ] -- the HVM start. And now we continuously invest significantly into that area, which is driving fundamentally the growth of the company and also will transform the company into a completely different size, and we become a completely different player in the market. So this is our messages, our news and our summary for the first half year. And we are now open to getting your questions. I hand back to Mr. Gebhardt.

Philipp Gebhardt

executive
#6

Thank you, Mr. Gerstenmayer. Thank you, Mr. Schneider. We will now start the Q&A. And I would like to hand over to Mr. Koppes to handle the session.

Operator

operator
#7

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from [ Florian Treisch ].

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#8

Gentlemen, I hope you can hear me. So I have 3 questions. So the first one is on Chongqing III. In the presentation, you mentioned full capacity will be reached towards the end of 2023. Can you tell us what the current level is? And how important this is really for the next 1, 2 years when it comes to top line momentum? The second part will be around D&A. So looking at your EBITDA and EBIT, I think the market was much -- or expected a much lower D&A number. So are there any one-offs in the D&A number for the current quarter? Or what is an expected run rate in the coming quarters? And the last one is, as you said, at your closing remarks that you can temporarily exceed the net debt to EBITDA of 3x. I believe you will probably be there at the end of the current year, anticipating clearly negative free cash flow in the coming years. You will see a strongly rising leverage. So is there also like a maximum on a temporary basis? Or is it open in the end?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#9

Okay. Thank you for your questions. Chongqing III, first, I think we are progressing really nicely. We have at least the first line fully on stream now. What we expect is that for the rest of the fiscal year, we will digest from that output already and bringing step-by-step other equipment online. So for sure, Chongqing III is the major driver for the coming years, until Kulim will kick in. But finally, the big driver behind our growth until 2026 so far is the decided investment in regard of ABF substrates driven out of Chongqing and later than out of Kulim. Then talking about the net debt. The net debt, for sure, we are having that in focus. I'm not so sure what really will be the outcome end of the year. This has certain or more than one impacting factors. What we always try to achieve is that we will stay below. You're sure, if we exceed, there is a certain disadvantage in the market potentially to be accepted. But we're also talking to our financing partners, also to bring them on board and to think about how we can maintain the situation because, as I said before, it's a temporary situation and we need to find a good solution to bridge the next few years. Let's see how the final numbers will come in at the end of the fiscal year. Whether we really breach the 3, I'm not so sure so far. There's also an opportunity that we will stay around or slightly below. So I'm not sure what was the third question?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#10

It was around D&A. I think there was a much higher level than expected by the market. So is there a one-off in the D&A number? Or can we expect a much higher number going forward on a quarterly basis?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#11

No. So what we need to understand there is what we did, and I think this is what we show in the revenue generation, we pulled in as much as we can the ramp of the factory in Chongqing that for sure causes higher CapEx. So we also preponed CapEx. But on the other hand side, we digest from that situation because we can earlier ramp the factory and we can also generate revenues, cash flow and other things earlier and support our customers at the earlier stage. So it's more a timing variance than a real increase.

Operator

operator
#12

And the next question comes from [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#13

I have 3, if I may. The first is about the customer financing. So you were talking about your main customers for Kulim to potentially finance up to [ 60% ] of the CapEx. We haven't heard any news about this. Could you give us an update? And then still on the CapEx, there's a new midterm target. Is there any CapEx associated with this EUR 500 extra million revenues? And then the third question is -- so this 300 -- sorry, this EUR 500 million extra revenues in the midterm guidance, why is there no impact on the margin? So where is it coming from? And why is that is there no impact on the margin from this chunky extra revenues?

Peter Schneider

executive
#14

Shall I start with the customer financing. Basically, there's no change to what we have announced. We have announced, if you remember, the EUR 1.7 billion prices. These 2 factories that you have seen on my picture. And of course, when we have decided to go into the investment. We had a contractual situation that allowed us to make such a big step. There is no change towards what we have announced.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#15

Okay. Regarding midterm guidance, I think what we need to consider there in terms of revenue generation and also associated CapEx, it's quite kind of balancing the -- how should I say, the projects, which we are driving forward and the details -- the visibility of the project, the visibility of the technology and so on and so on. So it's -- as we talk about the time span of 5 years, there's constant changes in the underlying data and the numbers, if it's related to product mix, if it's related to the balancing of equipment and so on. So probably it will not always be a fluctuation by EUR 500 million, but our visibility gets better and better. So I think for our business, it's already quite a challenge to give a midterm guidance at all, especially when it comes to such heavy investment programs. What we wanted to give you now is the latest information about the gained transparency out of the business, out of -- about the simulation we have done regarding the portfolio of applications we will drive forward. And therefore, it is the impact we have seen. For sure, there is also a certain impact from the market side because of the significant demand development, and it's finally a part of the optimization of all of these impacting factors. Why not higher profitability? Let's take it that way, at a certain point in time, we are coming somehow also to the roof customers are accepting. So you cannot constantly increase margins to a level that finally, the market is not really accepting anymore. So there is a certain -- and with you can achieve, I think we have already a very healthy situation once we come to this level of 27% to 32%. But let's see what can be done in the future in -- when we come closer. There will be still a lot of changes coming in over the years, but this is what we can talk about with a certain level of confidence. And finally, we want also to take care that we -- what we announced to the market can achieve finally. So there's a lot of volatility underlying. We cannot always talk the one or the other movement from the market because, otherwise, the numbers would also fluctuate too much. But I think this is what we can say from today's point of view. This is what we see with all the numbers and data we have available. And for the time-being, I would propose to keep it as it is. And you can be assured that we still work on further improvements in development.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#16

Right. And just finally on actual the customer financing. Should we expect to see like an inflow from the customer financing at some point like a prepayment? I mean how should we actually model the part of the customer -- the 50% customer financing under [ EUR 1.7 billion ], how should we model this, really?

Peter Schneider

executive
#17

Yes. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to disclose details of our contracts, as you can imagine. What we can say is that we have already a first inflow. Of course, there's a minor stake, but we can only report on what we have received and not what we expect due to our contractual obligations.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#18

All right. So is it a contractual liability on the balance sheet?

Peter Schneider

executive
#19

Contracts with the customers.

Operator

operator
#20

And the next question comes from Daniel Lion.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#21

Congrats. Really good development. I would like to follow up on, firstly, on the cofinancing structure. So would you expect that also the remaining part of the cofinancing will be booked as a contractual liability or are there other possibilities as well?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#22

So so far, as you can see also from our quarterly or half year's report, this -- how the payments will be treated needs to be still sorted out. We are working with our auditors and also with other institutions to sort out how we can consider that. But so far, we have shown it as equity, not as contract liabilities. And this is also commented in our quarterly report.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#23

Okay. I understand. And then coming to the development -- business development especially in Mobile Devices, IC substrate segment, you have outlined that growth is not only coming from substrate, but also from the module business. Can you share a little bit more detail of how these components and maybe also if there is some content increases for -- from PCBs and hence yes, into -- when delivering into mobile platform, how this breaks down the growth in this segment year-on-year?

Peter Schneider

executive
#24

Yes. So if we talk about modules, we have to see 2 sets of developments, one is PCBs that go into the module area, which is, at the moment, our primary focus. And here, we take advantage of the modernization, for example, in smartphones. And that, for sure, helps us in the growth development. And basically, we do not report the figures in segments now, the MS. But yes, I can say that there is a very good development for us, which is, to some extent, also independent of the market development because we are entering into this field. So you can expect much higher growth rates in this field on, of course, a much lower level. So for us, it's very interesting. It's an interesting mix. It's an interesting diversification. The mobile phone area is on the way to commoditize more and more quite naturally. And the modules applications allow us to keep our margins higher than if we would remain on the main board level.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#25

But from the development, when we look at the incremental [ EUR 19 million ]revenues year-over-year, I guess most of it still comes from the IC substrates part and volume-wise and minor part is coming from the modules, right?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#26

Absolutely, yes.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#27

And regarding the content increase going forward, what do you expect? Could you give maybe -- I know it's hard to put it in figures. But maybe in percentages, how much more of content can you deliver in a platform going forward when -- especially with the module business and traditional applications that will be done with more modules that you can achieve that to now?

Peter Schneider

executive
#28

I think for the module, so if you really think of different kind of production setup, it's too early to say. We are here at the very beginning. At the moment, our focus, as I mentioned, are still PCBs that go into the module area, and we stepwise in large our, let's say, our move into the supply chain. So -- and here, the value is driven by the fact that it's typically a higher mix, lower volume. And therefore, square meter prices in that area are typically higher if you compare it to the main board. But this is less due to, let's say, more complicated or very different production is rather that the application is different.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#29

But [indiscernible] way should increase further is the trend towards modularization is anyway progressing. So there should be more and more applications being covered by modules. So do you see yourself also in a position to increase the growing applications in this trend going forward?

Peter Schneider

executive
#30

Yes. And if you look at our main factories in that area, Shanghai and Chongqing II, which are covering these markets, these are the production facilities that we can produce in and deliver from. And these factories will gradually develop towards more diversification and, therefore, more higher-end application.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#31

Sure. By nature, I think simply due to the multiuse of modules, you use it in different devices, for sure, there is an extension of applications on the one hand side and also the value contained in one application. If you start just supporting with the main board and later on also the same application with module PCB, whatever, definitely increases the value you're engaged in the one or the other application or device. So I think this is, by nature, the case. And once we are there that we can also increase our contribution in the module business, not only supplying PCBs or so-called substrate-like PCBs for modules, even if we can also integrate more components, then I think we can accelerate again.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#32

Yes. Okay. Understood. And then maybe on the EUR 500 million Leoben CapEx that you've announced, of course, when we strip out the EUR 130 million that were communicated earlier on, how much of this residual CapEx can be seen as maintenance, so upgrade of existing lines? And how much could you see as incremental CapEx? And how would you expect this to be split in the course of the coming 5 years? And also related to this, how much of funding would you expect to receive this EUR 500 million on both national and European level?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#33

So first of all, this is project CapEx for different kinds of projects. So typically, what we communicate regarding maintenance CapEx is in the past was between EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million. With the new factories coming on stream, most likely, it will increase for sure. But we need to see. This will evolve because of the maturity of the factories. Regarding funding, we are in heavy discussion because this is a quite diverse funding portfolio. It consists out of R&D funding part, its funding part. And you should also keep in mind that we are now talking about the so-called IPCEI microelectronic 2 project, which is in, on the European level, still under discussion and negotiation with the national states. So it's a little bit too early to talk about real funding quota, but it can be -- if all these things -- the schemes, how they are discussed today, it can be significant.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#34

Okay. So this means actually the full CapEx is incremental CapEx or we need to just see this as -- okay. And...

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#35

The topic was already contained in our guidance and midterm plans because it's more now we communicated kind of a bundle of activities. We see it between 2020 and 2025 in Austria -- in Leoben.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#36

Okay. Sure. Perfect. Yes. And then more of a strategic one. Would you expect the currently already [ close gap ] of high-end substrate suppliers to shrink going forward, along with the technological requirements as they're increasing? So maybe a similar development we've been seeing in the chip segment in the past decade.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#37

No, I would not expect that. So what we -- of course, we observe closely what our business partners do in the market and how they evolve. And what we see is that the few suppliers that are able to supply high-end substrates, all of them invest. And it looks like it's a new normal in the market that we team up with customers. Of course, we are also there. We don't have details, but we see a rather stable number of competitors. Maybe one or the other will be able to enter the market if the capacity that is provided is not sufficient to cover market -- to cover customer demand. But independent of that, we believe that with our investment, as you know, we expect to move up in the -- on the ladder of suppliers into the top 3 area.

Daniel Lion

analyst
#38

But it still seems anyway that there's a lot of additional announcement on the way regarding further CapEx and capacity expansion projects for substrates when listening to your competitors. So this seems a nice situation at the moment for you for the entire industry, it seems that. Okay. Perfect. That was -- yes, one last question, please.

Peter Schneider

executive
#39

Could we take this in a [ separate round ] because we have 2 others waiting and...

Operator

operator
#40

The next question comes from Teresa Schinwald.

Teresa Schinwald

analyst
#41

So am I getting it right this long-term guidance increase to EUR 3.5 billion is not [ tied ] to the EUR 500 million Austrian CapEx? Or is there indeed some contribution from that? This would be my first question.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#42

It's definitely a mix out of a lot of activities, as I said before, but mainly volume driver will not be Austria, the volume driver will be Kulim and will be Chongqing. There -- it's a composition out of different activities also coming from other areas like the Automotive, Industrial business and the module business and so on and so on. So therefore, as I said before, it's not a straightforward calculation. It's a contribution of a lot of single activities, projects, optimizations, mix, price, customer application, whatever we have. And out of that, the big picture we created, the scenario we created ended up in this number.

Teresa Schinwald

analyst
#43

At least an expansion or a bit of an expansion in Europe would explain the unchanged market margin guidance. But coming -- sorry.

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#44

What you should consider it communicated before and also today again. Quite some of the investment we are doing in Leoben is generating only internal revenues because we are supplying to Chongqing and in future also to Kulim's some preproduced products, which they use for their final production. So this is not adding any external revenues to our P&L. So this is a big portion out of Hinterberg.

Teresa Schinwald

analyst
#45

Okay. Then you mentioned already in IPCEI contribution in the first half. Could you give us a number on that?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#46

Yes. This is a number of around about EUR 7 million we received as a kind of provision for the subsidy for the investment we have done in Leoben for the so-called IC core production. And this is what I said before. This is the preproduct we are shipping later on then to Chongqing.

Teresa Schinwald

analyst
#47

Right. And did you have any impact from the electricity shortages in some regions in China? So maybe yourself or maybe indirectly from competitors, others, because there were reports that they had to shut down? Was there anything?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#48

So far, we have not experienced any real shutdown in our factories. What we are constantly observing is the situation at our suppliers. This is a very, very intense interaction with quite a number of suppliers in the area, whether it's chemical suppliers or others, that we need to observe very closely, and this is what I mentioned in between -- with our increase in working capital. We also try to mitigate any kind of risk we have identified to increase our stock levels for such materials and components that could suffer on the kind of shortage.

Peter Schneider

executive
#49

That's one major shut of one of our competitors without any impact on our supply.

Operator

operator
#50

And the last question comes from Jürgen Wagner.

Jürgen Wagner

analyst
#51

A follow-up on competition with the new iPhones now out. How do you see your market share in the mobile space going into next year? And you mentioned the EUR 7 million subsidy in Auto. How -- so if you take that out, how should we look at the margin progression in Automotive, Industrial, Medical, let's say, over the next 2, 3 years?

Peter Schneider

executive
#52

As far as the mobile phone, that's always very difficult to predict because our -- this is a very volatile market, which moves from quarter-to-quarter. So to give you a long-term guidance would be a [ glass-full ] prediction. And I don't feel that's really possible to give a valid guidance on that. And all this market is -- what we see in total is quite stable in developing. And as I mentioned before, for us, our main aim is to diversify our applications into that area. As far as the margins of AIM is concerned, Mr. Gerstenmayer has pointed out that we have done a quite nice development. Of course, here is the balance between raw material pricing and end market pricing, which we will have to manage, and this will strongly depend here also on loadings, right? This is a market where a lot of suppliers are available to produce and supply. And so whatever margin we predict, I think, would strongly depend on the overall market development and the loading of the factories. As we can see now, we have quite a stable loading over the next months. So I think short term, our guidance is quite good. Long term here also, I would say this is quite volatile given the competitive environment.

Jürgen Wagner

analyst
#53

Yes. Maybe a follow-up on the mobile space. So your increase in revenue growth this year is not based on market share gains. Is that the right conclusion from what you said?

Andreas Gerstenmayer

executive
#54

I think this is more following our diversification strategy. So as we said in the past, we're mainly focusing on the main board business. So as Daniel Lion also mentioned before, increasing our value share contribution to the applications. Now we enter also into the module applications. So at least we have the opportunity to contribute at one, you can call it device or one applications. Like smartphone wise, you ship the main -- or we ship the main board, and we can also take advantage from the shipment of the module substrates or module PCBs. And this is true for quite some of the applications we are talking about. So it's not so important for us if we have a big share in main boards. So it's more important for us how we can take most advantage by supplying not only one, by supplying more than one component to the customers.

Peter Schneider

executive
#55

That will depend on the features that will come in, right, which is the big unknown, so to say, what are the mobile phone producers will put in, in cameras, in antennas for 5G in the future.

Philipp Gebhardt

executive
#56

Okay. Thank you. If there are no further questions left, we will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and questions. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact our IR team, Johannes Mattner and me. Thanks again, and goodbye.

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