Mycronic AB (publ) ($MYCR)
Earnings Call Transcript · April 24, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesHello, and welcome to the presentation of Mycronic's Q1 report. My name is Sven Chetkovich. I'm the Director, Investor Relations at Mycronic. And with me today, I have Mycronic's CEO, Anders Lindqvist; and CFO, Pierre Brorsson, who will be presenting today. And with that, I hand over to Anders. Please go ahead and present Mycronic's Q1 report.
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesThank you, Sven, and hello, everyone. Welcome. So today, of course, we'll talk about the quarter 1 result and then go a little bit deeper in the different divisions and how the development is. Pierre Brorsson will explain more about the financials. We will have a few words on sustainability, and we will end with the question-and-answer session today. And as you -- as always, you will find in the material on the website also the market update in that part, which we will not present. So talking about the first quarter 2026. So first of all you need to -- we need to keep in mind that also the quarter 1 of last year was a very strong quarter. So we compare this quarter to an already very good quarter. But despite that, we have a strong increase on almost every row. So order intake up 23% to a little bit more than SEK 2.5 billion so very strong and a very strong contribution from Global Technologies. We will see that when we go into the divisions. Also net sales following that almost as much 17% up, almost up to an equal number of SEK 2.5 billion, where we had increases from all divisions. and also a record high EBIT of quite close to a billion, SEK 938 million. So of course, a very strong margin of 37%, strong backlog of SEK 4.7 billion. And we also, during the quarter, have completed 2 acquisitions, ETZ and Cowin DST, and I will talk more about those when we talk about the divisions. So looking on the different divisions, starting with Pattern Generators. So here, we closed the acquisition of Cowin DST, which is a company in South Korea. The acquisition was announced quite some time ago, but we had a quite long process to receive regulatory approval from the Korean authorities, as this is a strategic investment and also strategic business in South Korea. Cowin will contribute to the Pattern Generators' product portfolio, both with the products that are adding to the portfolio, but also with knowledge and new capabilities that we didn't have before. So super exciting to be able to develop that business now. On the business side, very strong sales because of -- we delivered the most expensive machine that we have ever built, P8000. Prexision 8000 Evo was delivered in the quarter so the sales increased 8%, up to SEK 1.3 billion, more or less. Order intake close to SEK 600 million, which is not really a bad number, but we had a very strong quarter for last year of close to SEK 1 billion so that was down 38%. On the order intake side, we got 1 Prexision 8 Evo, 1 SLX and 1 MMX. So very strong gross margin, 77%, extremely strong EBIT, SEK 831 million and backlog of SEK 1.9 billion. And in this backlog, we have 14 systems. Also notable is that after the quarter, we received a very special order for a customized SLX mask writer that is quite customized, which you can see on the price tag. The normal price of an SLX is between $4 million and $10 million, and this one was sold in a range between $27 million and $30 million. And it's not a product that we will be able to sell more of really. So this is a one-off event, but still a very good order. PCB Assembly Solutions. So here, we struggle. We have done that for a while. So the continued -- we have a continued weak market almost everywhere. We have a strong headwind in the European market in the first quarter. Also in the U.S. market was quite weak in the quarter. And we can see that there's a lot of hesitation around customers to hold orders until then they have received firm orders commitment from their customers. So this is creating quite a lot of delay in the -- on the investment side. So order intake, SEK 287 million, which is 3% down and sales, SEK 318 million, which is a little bit up, but still not very strong. Gross margin, stable at 37% and EBIT at 8 million so very minor EBIT and an order backlog of SEK 116 million, which is also quite a low backlog. So you can see that we struggle in this division. On the high-volume side, we see very strong market demand, both in the Chinese domestic market and also from outside of China. And especially to be noted is the aerospace industry in North America, which is very strong at the moment. We also have reached a milestone with the new factory that we have built in Thailand, where we have the first machines, both assembled and delivered. So we are able to make made in Thailand, not Made in China, which is a positive thing in this geopolitical situation that we are in right now. And very strong order intake, SEK 737 million, which is 33% up on already strong comparative number. Sales up 24% to SEK 400 million, stable gross margin at 42% and EBIT at close to SEK 40 million. On the EBIT, we have an impact of this employee share ownership program of minus SEK 24 million as well, included in the number. Order backlog, a little bit more than SEK 1 billion. So very strong development in the high-volume division. And then we come to Global Technologies, where we had a super strong demand. I can talk first about the acquisition that we have made, which is a company called ETZ. This will not add much to the sales because this is a supplier that we have had for many years. So this is a strategic acquisition where we reinforce and safeguard our supply chain. You can see that we have a super strong order intake, 260% up for the division and up to SEK 915 million. And the 2 business lines that are contributing most to that is the PCB Test and the ETZ company, is a supplier to PCB Test. So we have a very large backlog, very good momentum on the orders and good situation on that one. The other strong business line is Die Bonding. On this one, we also have a good increase. Both these demands are very much driven by AI-driven demand that we have applications that goes into AI products or products for AI and drives the investment in this area. You can see that if we had a sales of SEK 492 million, the contribution from the recently made acquisitions, it's SEK 77 million so a little bit effect from that side as well. Gross margin, strong, 49% and EBIT start to move now with the increased sales up to SEK 199 -- no, SEK 119 million, sorry. And we have a little bit noise from acquisitions, both positive and negative. So we had some acquisition effect on the recently acquired businesses of minus SEK 5 million. And we had the revaluation of consideration related to the purchase price of Vanguard Automation, which was positive SEK 22 million, a little bit plus and minus in that one. And a super strong backlog of SEK 1.7 billion so a very good situation here and EBIT margin of 24% as well. I think, it's -- we are very happy with that. So the strong order intake and our view on the market has made us to revise our outlook for 2026. So the previous outlook was SEK 8.25 billion in sales at the end of the year and now we see that we will have a sales of -- in the neighborhood or in the area of SEK 8.75 billion. So quite a good change on that one as well. So with that, I will hand over to Pierre Brorsson to talk a little bit more about the financials.
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesGood morning from my side as well, and happy to stand here and have a good quarter with us and presenting that. First of all, looking at this graph, you see the strong sales level that we have had. We have been above SEK 2 billion a couple of times, but not in the neighborhood of SEK 2.5 billion, which also happens to be 1/4 of our long-term financial target. And this quarter, we hit that in revenues, and we also hit it on the orders received side. Aftermarket revenue contributing with SEK 525 million, which is a good level and in volume, actually higher than the number we had a year ago. But given that we also have a bit of headwind with the exchange rates, we were just below the level of last year. A record EBIT margin at 37%, reflecting that the sales also had a positive mix between the various businesses that we have with a strong sales, in particular, in Pattern Generators, as Anders explained. If we look how this looks on a rolling 12-month basis, we hit SEK 8.3 billion in the quarter, which was just above the mark we had for -- in our previous outlook for the year. But we have now revised that one to SEK 8.75 billion, as Anders just mentioned. The EBIT margin is on a good level at 25%, and we are closing in on the SEK 2 billion in our aftermarket, which is a key focus area for us to continue to grow this one. And we are growing it in volume, but numbers take a little bit of time with the headwind we see on the FX side at the moment. If we cut our total profit and loss statement by cost category, you can see that we moved the EBIT from SEK 775 million to SEK 938 million, and this was largely driven by a higher volume in the quarter than what we had last year, keeping more or less the same gross margin overall, which is a high level for us. On the R&D side, we continue to spend, in particular, on Pattern Generators. So about half of this increase is attributable to Pattern Generators. And for the rest, it's mainly related to the newly acquired companies in combination with some ESOP costs and some increased spend in the High Volume division. On the marketing and sales and G&A side, it's also largely related to that we have added businesses to our baseline. On other, we had a very negative impact of revaluation of FX last year. So this year is slightly positive, and this supports then the delta as well as about SEK 25 million that we had to reverse for the earn-out liability in the Vanguard case. Ending on SEK 938 million, 37%, extremely good level. If we cut it the other way around, you can see that we had, despite a very strong Q1 last year in Pattern Generators, we had an increase, SEK 80 million almost. We also managed to improve the situation for PCB Assembly Solutions. This is a small profit generated in the quarter. So we are continuously working to get that up to a higher level, but we also know that we start the year relatively slow, typically in PCB Assembly Solutions. High Volume, you see a minus SEK 20 million here. And I would say that this is not really displaying the performance of the division. We have, in these numbers, SEK 24 million of costs for the ESOP program. And we also had a fantastic order intake in the first quarter. So with a little bit delay on the revenue side, yes, but a really good performance there. On the Global Technologies side, a very solid profit improvement. And this is stemming from the business lines, which we have been owning for some time. So the business lines PCB Test and business line Die Bonding. This has been fueled by the demand in AI infrastructure investments and is really doing well at the moment. On the Group Functions side, this is a revaluation of cash and internal loans to a degree and the cost base is more or less similar as before. Ending the quarter on SEK 938 million, so 37%. Cash flow-wise, of course, we -- the result contributed very well in the quarter. And similar to last year, we had a negative impact on the working capital. And here, we can sometimes contribute from large orders in Pattern Generators with advances, which we did not have to a very high degree. And at the same time, with strong invoicing, we also had a buildup of the trade receivables. On the investing side, the highlights for the quarter was the acquisitions of ETZ and Cowin DST, which accounted for 2/3 of that. Still, we remain in a strong cash situation. And on top of this, as many of you who follow us well know, we also have SEK 2 billion revolving credit facilities at hand, should we need to. And with that quick overview, I hand the word back to Anders to speak a bit about sustainability.
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesThank you, Pierre. So yes, sustainability. So we have applied and been approved by the science-based target initiative organization and have committed to reach certain targets related to that. And we're happy to see that we already have reached the target that we have on Scope 1 and 2, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, while we, on the other hand, are not yet reaching the Scope 3 target, which is related to emissions from the use of sold product. You may remember that we launched a few years back a new laser model for our Pattern Generators equipment, where we can change from very energy-consuming gas lasers into solid-state lasers in the mask writer. And we're happy to see that we have -- and this will be the largest contributor to reaching the Scope 3 target for us. And we are happy to see that even though we have not yet reached the target, we have a trend, which is positive on that side, where we have seen the penetration increasing of solid-state lasers in the installed base, starting from 38% beginning January -- beginning in 2025 and January 2026, we were up to 47%. So still more to do, but the direction is very positive on this side. So Sven?
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you, Anders, and thank you, Pierre, for the presenting. And now we move over to our Q&A session. And first, we will head over to London and Oliver Wong at Bank of America. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Oliver.
Oliver Wong
AnalystsMy question is regarding Global Technologies. It was quite strong, very strong performance. And I noticed that in terms of the EBIT for Global Technologies, it was at 24% in Q1. And that was a -- that's a significant jump even over last quarter in Q4, where your gross profits in Q4 for Global Tech was actually higher than in this quarter, but you managed to achieve significantly better EBIT margin. So I was wondering if you could give some color on that, give some context on that. Is this kind of -- are the EBIT margins for Global Tech expected to stay at this level and continue to increase as presumably you'll continue to grow your revenues there? And yes, what accounted for the big jump?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesFirst of all, we had a couple of percent support in a way by reversing the earn-out provision for the Vanguard case. So this was about SEK 25 million. So this is a couple of percent. With that said, I think we are not specifically guiding a certain EBIT number, but we do see a very strong demand in our traditional business lines here. And I think we remain confident on the outlook for Global Technologies going forward.
Oliver Wong
AnalystsOkay. Perhaps if I can ask another one. Just maybe an update on the trends that you're seeing for the Pattern Generators -- sorry, my camera just turned off. Yes, just maybe an update on the trends that you're seeing for the Pattern Generators. I'd be curious in terms of, let's say, demand from Chinese mask shops, demand from Western mask shops. I think I heard a little bit about perhaps -- because they may be inherently losing share to the Chinese, perhaps they are more hesitant on their investment plans there and whether it be new capacity or whether it be replacing old machines? And then also maybe an update on OLED. Any update on kind of when you see kind of an inflection in demand there in terms of the underlying OLED proliferation, what that means for your mask writers?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesYes, I can start to talk about that so starting with China and semicon. So there was a certain peak in '23 and '24. We are down from that level, but it's still quite solid. But I think we will not really see levels back to the '23 and '24 peak in China. So it's kind of more normalized now. Still China semicon manufacturers import the majority of mask and China still want to be more independent on this side. So I think the investments in China will continue, but maybe not as crazy high, as it was in '23 and '24, but still a solid demand on that side. Globally, I think we see a similar. We have more -- much more places where people want to manufacture semicon equipment or semicon products and so on. So I think we see demand from all over. We still really -- we have not yet seen a big increase in this replacement cycle of the installed base. And the longer it take more urgently it will be likely because this is to start to get really old. So we really believe that we will see a market that is also being contributed by the replacement that should and will happen on that side. But overall, quite strong. I think -- just recently, both Photronics and [indiscernible] released their quarter 1 reports, very, very strong ones, both of them, I think, where they also point to that they will continue to do CapEx investments and also more to the more advanced nodes. I think that is also a way to beating or to stay ahead of China, although both of them have operations in China. So it depends on where the factory is. If you take on the flat panel display or market, I think that is quite stable. We really see this OLED penetration happens still. OLED is not really -- it's not still the largest portion of displays, but it starts to happen on a higher scale now in the IT-related equipment, tablets, laptops, desktop screens, displays and stuff like that. So we hope that we can see some increases in that. And the recently sold and shipped P8000 is, of course, a part of that transition. It will be able to produce masks for the most advanced OLED displays. So this is happening. Yes, I don't know if that was the answer of -- you had a number of questions built into that one.
Oliver Wong
AnalystsYes, yes, you answered all of them.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesOkay. Thank you, Oliver. And now we go to ABG Sundal Collier and Henric Hintze.
Henric Hintze
AnalystsYes. So sort of continuing on PG there. You talked a bit about Prexision 8000 and OLED penetration. I was just wondering now that you've delivered the first Prexision 8000, what do you sort of see as triggers for other customers to invest in this? Like what kind of requirements does the model satisfy that previous models do not?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesYes. So it can write masks with higher precision, higher resolution or higher speed. You can choose a little bit what -- but normally, when we sell the first of a new equipment, that manufacturer of mask can sell their mask at a much, much higher market price. So the one who bought this one will enjoy this for some time. But this is also, of course, a trigger for others to do the same. We saw that pattern when we introduced the previous high-end mask writer P800 that the first one took some time to sell and then it followed after that. So we believe and hope that this will happen now as well. And logically, there should be more customers for the P8000.
Henric Hintze
AnalystsYes. Okay. Very good. And still on PG, given the strong deliveries and the good mix here in the quarter, are you sort of satisfied with the margin in the segment? Or were there any maybe elevated costs related to the fact that it was the first time you delivered the Prexision 8000 or maybe the R&D investments you're making?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesI think -- no, the margin is where it should be. The margin on PG is very much related to the mix of products. The price and the costs are quite fixed on those. So depending on what we ship, the margin will vary and then the portion of the aftermarket, which is also quite stable. So the components will contribute -- there was no variation in the different components of contribution to the margin. On the OpEx cost side, we are running at a very high investment or cost on R&D. And this is related to the new product, what we call IQS, which is metrology or inspection tool that will be released later this year. And this high spend will remain this year and into next year as well on this high level, and this is mainly related to that.
Henric Hintze
AnalystsOkay. Great. And maybe if I could just ask one more question. If we turn back to Global Technologies, we talked about the margin already, but I think even more impressive were the orders in the quarter here. So I'm just wondering how are you going to be able to deliver on these orders? And how long are the lead times now? And do you think this is a sustainable order intake level with the capacity expansion plans you have in place?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesYes. So that's a very good question, which we also are struggling with, of course and how long will the AI demand really be there, I think maybe. But the -- no, we are -- we have longer than normal lead times, especially on the PCB Test equipment. Lead time is a year, 12 months, maybe a little bit more even -- which is longer than usual. We are expanding our facility. We built a new factory already -- what was it last year? 1 year ago?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesOpened a year ago.
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesA year ago, yes. And we are already digging for the expansion of that one. So already the new factory that we built last year had a much larger capacity than the previous one, and now we're expanding that already to meet this demand. But we also work with efficiency and improvements and sub-suppliers and so on to increase the delivery capacity. So, so far, not a constraint on that one. But it's true that the lead times are getting long and the backlog are also large because of that. So we try to balance that. We can see that this demand goes into next year as well. But beyond '27, it's very difficult to say which -- how it will go on this.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you, Henric. And now we move over to DNB Carnegie and Mikael Laséen.
Mikael Laséen
AnalystsYes, I will start from the beginning maybe with the guidance that you raised for this year. If you could break it down maybe and explain the drivers why you have upgraded it. So is it timing effects or how much is underlying demand strength?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesThere is a little bit of timing effects on the PG side, but largely, it's demand, in particular, in High Volume and Global Technologies. I think that's where we have really seen strong demand, and we foresee this to remain at a somewhat higher level than what we saw going into the year.
Mikael Laséen
AnalystsYes. I also have a question on Global Technologies. And coming back to the margins there. Just a question on -- if this current business mix, if the current margins of 20% adjusted for this temporary, I mean, effect in Q1, if this is representative of the current mix and how we should think about Hprobe, RoBAT, Surfx and ETZ, which are loss-making still?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesYes. I think we do see a strong situation for now. So I think the 20% underlying that we see is definitely a level where I think we can be. On the acquired entities, the idea is, of course, not to continue to make losses even if there are certain acquisition-related costs to bear for some time. So this we expect -- I think we have also stated that we expect that to -- typically, within a year or so, they should start to contribute to -- positively to Mycronic. So...
Mikael Laséen
AnalystsCan you maybe follow up on one there with Surfx, you acquired it in mid-'25, and it looked like it was really profitable, but then you had a temporary cost for -- in connection to the integration, I guess and not some things like that accounting issues. But -- so are you reinvesting in the business right now? And that's why it is -- is it sort of on the same profit level as you had before? Or are you taking action to, I mean, expand the capabilities?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesThe gross margin and so on is perfectly okay. The volume in the first quarter is not where we think it will be going forward. And we have, call it, supersized the organization because we do believe that this will grow quite fast. There is a little bit of timing difficulty when the investments fall in this industry, especially as it's new technology to be adopted and new process to be adopted by our customers' customer, in particular. So timing-wise, it can slip a little bit another quarter or 2 before we start to see the ramp, but we believe in this a lot. We are investing in the organization a lot, and this may result in a short-term negative result.
Mikael Laséen
AnalystsOkay. So how much of the sales -- just to understand the answer, how much of the sales in that part is to external packaging players that you deliver to them? And how much is sales of own systems directly to end customers?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesThe majority is where we are a part of another solution.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you, Mikael. And now we move over to Handelsbanken and Fredrik Lithell. Please go ahead and ask your questions, Fredrik.
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsCan we maybe talk a little bit about the SLX machine, the order you received in Q1 and what drives that price tag? You alluded to it in your presentation, but is it also on the technology side that you take new steps? Is that something that you will be able to use for your line of SLXs going forward in any way? Or can you talk a little bit more about that one?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesYes. So first of all, we are not allowed to talk a lot about that order from the customer actually. So -- but in general terms, this is also a very unique machine. It's based on the SLX platform. And the higher price tag is very much related to development work that is needed to be made on that platform to meet the specification. So this will not become a product that we will market to others, really. So this was really a unique event. The development work we do could be reused in part. So I think it will contribute to the plans we already have to extend and expand the capabilities of the SLX range. It will not add anything that we didn't plan to do anyway. So it's -- but it will certainly make it happen maybe faster or cheaper or something. But anyway, it's -- so that is the contribution of that. But even so, we still believe it's a nice order and happy that we got it.
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsAnother question, the raised guidance for '26. Is Cowin -- is that contributing into that changes? Or was that already part of your assumptions?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesWe -- it has a very marginal impact on that. So this is not the reason. We believe already when we issued the guidance that we would, at some point, get the acceptance.
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsOkay. And Anders, you talked in the Q4 report about that you're sort of stepping up your R&D spending a little bit this year in front of new machines you will sort of launch in the second half of this year. Are you on the right track there? Or are you peak in your R&D spend? Or where are you in that sense?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesNo, we are on the right track. It could possibly increase maybe a little bit more, but we are in that -- in the range, I would say, where we should be, maybe a little bit -- maybe we need to increase a little bit more on that one, but it's not too far away right now. And the project is going according to plan. We have -- the demand from customers is extremely strong. So there is no -- the market is not a problem. It's our own speed, which is kind of the critical line here. So what we said in quarter 4 still is valid on launching it and so on. And the intention is that when we have the Capital Markets Day later this year, we will talk more -- much more about this machine, of course.
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsAnd Pierre, is it -- I haven't been able to look at the very small details, but are you capitalizing more of your R&D just in front of sort of the launch? Is that how it works or...
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesNo, we are following the same principles. And as you analysts know, we are very cautious in putting things in our balance sheet so we are not cheating that way either.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you very much, Fredrik. And now over to Ina Djupsund at SEB.
Ina Djupsund
AnalystsSo I have a question on High Volume. Does kind of this year follow the same pattern as we saw in last year with Q1 being seasonally very strong? And yes, could you give just some more flavor on high volume, what you expect going forward?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesIt's, of course, a little bit hard to predict the future. The past is much easier. And no -- but I think we do see strong demand for now. It's been strong in China for us. We also see more and more international demand. In the quarter, we also entered certain new customer segments where we deliver solutions for dispensing in the optic module assembly, et cetera. So this is developing very nicely for us for now. Of course, I think the biggest threat is more on the geopolitical side than anything else. I think we have a very well-functioning organization, a strong product portfolio and we are now building international organization here.
Ina Djupsund
AnalystsAnd then a question on the acquired Cowin business in PG that you closed here in Q1. Can you talk a little bit about kind of order values you have here and what does the kind of order dynamics look like? And yes, will it be announced orders that you doing with the rest of the PG orders or what?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesThis has not been the plan to change the way -- we are today disclosing the PG orders because they have such a huge -- not only volume impact, but also profit impact. Should we have similar orders on the Cowin side, we may consider that. But for now, we have not considered that. Cowin has a bigger spread of -- there can be some orders in the same magnitude as a PG -- lower-end PG machine, but typically than in the lower end. So it's not display mask writer order size.
Ina Djupsund
AnalystsOkay. Okay. And a little bit, I guess, a boring question, but what kind of FX impact did you have on order intake in this quarter? Is it the same magnitude as sales or...
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesIt's a similar magnitude as the sales is slightly lower, and that's because we had an upward revaluation at the end of March because you revalue the backlog at the period end rate, but it's double digit.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you. I will actually now run through all participants again just to give another chance to ask an additional question, which might have popped up. So Oliver, Bank of America, do you have any additional questions that you would like to ask?
Oliver Wong
AnalystsI'm all good for now. Thank you.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you. So Henric, ABG Sundal Collier, anything else you would like to add?
Henric Hintze
AnalystsYes. I'd just like to add on high volume. It seems to me even if you adjust for the effect of the option program, the margin was down a bit here in the quarter despite quite solid sales. Anything special driving that? Or is it just natural variance there?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesI think the gross margin is where it should be. We do invest in building up the organization -- organizational footprint also outside the traditional Shenzhen facility that we have, both operation-wise in Thailand and then building organization in -- both in Korea, U.S. and so on. But this is marginal deviations. And then, of course, on the R&D side, there is a slightly higher spend, but it's not fundamentally different.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesOkay. Thank you. Mikael Laséen, DNB Carnegie, any additional questions from you?
Mikael Laséen
AnalystsNo, thank you.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesAll right. Then over to Fredrik Lithell, Handelsbanken, do you have anything else you would like to ask?
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsYes, I have a few questions, actually, if I may then. On -- start with PCB Assembly, you talked about that, Anders, you feel it's a bit on the soft side and all that stuff. When we visited Productronica in November, it was really a very high level of buzz and activity, customers walking all over the place in the PCB booth and all that stuff. Do you feel you have a very solid pipeline, but that the customers are sitting still, they don't really want to put the pen to the paper. Is that the problem?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesThat is exactly what it is. I think I don't really have historical data, but the pipeline is almost bigger than ever, I would say, but the closing rate is very, very low. And it's -- the hesitation is really there. I think we have a lot of quotations, a lot of discussions. We have new products, a lot of interest for them and so on. But orders are slower, and it seems like customers need very, very firm commitments on their own business before they want to move ahead. So it's a little bit of difference before -- and we can see that other players in this struggle equally or even worse than we do. We can see that ASMPT announced a strategic review on their SMT business. We have seen that Kulicke & Soffa didn't even try to sell their business. They just closed it and took a big hit on that one at end of last year. So it is a very difficult market at the moment.
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsAll right. That's interesting. High Volume, the order intake -- strong order intake, you've opened up your facility in Thailand. Are there any customers that haven't really been able to purchase products from High Volume as long as they were only Chinese based. Is that a trigger for the order intake? Or is that not part of it at all?
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesNot yet, but it -- we see this as a positive thing. We have had customers that didn't want to buy or couldn't buy depending on which sector they are in and which country they are from. And so they didn't want to buy from China. It's both related to tariffs, but also to political regulations and desires. So made in Thailand will open up for more -- for new customers that we couldn't sell to before. But so far, there's very little effect on that.
Fredrik Lithell
AnalystsOkay. Final question, ATG, and it's a probe machine. It's really flying. They're pretty much alone on the flying probe as it is. But as demand is increasing this quickly, do you see or hear any competitors making moves to participate in this specific part of the space?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesWe do see, local China companies starting up trying to get into this market. We think that for the high end, in particular, server boards -- advanced server boards market, we think that we still have a very good position, both technology-wise, patent-wise and et cetera. So we've been able to maintain and enjoy that market position for now.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you, Fredrik. And now finally, over to Ina Djupsund, SEB, do you have any additional questions you would like to ask?
Ina Djupsund
AnalystsI could ask one question on Global Technologies. So super strong in the quarter, but obviously, it's been going strong for some time now. Can you -- what kind of signals or kind of indicators should we be looking at to better understand the drivers of Global Tech? Is kind of semi CapEx spend a good proxy? Or is there something more specific we could look at?
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesI think for now -- I mean, for us, it's been really good. We have now 4 quarters in a row where this is the division with the strongest order intake. So really, really strong. And this has so far mainly been powered by the Die Bonding and PCB Test business lines, and they are both AI infrastructure driven. So this is the best leading indicator for now. And then we have the other smaller still business lines. They have other driving forces as well.
Sven Chetkovich
ExecutivesThank you, Ina. And with that, we have reached the end of today's presentation of Mycronic's Q1 report. Thank you very much for attending.
Pierre Brorsson
ExecutivesThank you so much.
Anders Lindqvist
ExecutivesThank you.
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