AIXTRON SE. Analyst Earnings Conference Call. Q Annual Results October Prepared Remarks. Martin Goetzeler, President & CEO

Transcription

1 AIXTRON SE Analyst Earnings Conference Call Q Annual Results October 2015 Prepared Remarks Martin Goetzeler, President & CEO Dr. Bernd Schulte, COO The spoken word applies 1

2 Slide 1 &2 Operator & Forward-Looking Statements Operator Good day everyone, and welcome to AIXTRON s Q results conference call. Please note today s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guido Pickert, Director of Investor Relations at AIXTRON, for opening remarks and introductions. Director of Investor Relations Thank you, operator and good day. Let me start by welcoming you all to AIXTRON s Q results conference call. My name is Guido Pickert, Director of Investor Relations at AIXTRON SE. Joining me on the call are our President & CEO Martin Goetzeler as well as our COO Dr. Bernd Schulte. As the operator indicated, this call is being recorded by AIXTRON and is considered copyright material. As such, it cannot be recorded or re-broadcast without express permission. Your participation in this call implies your consent to this recording. As with previous results conference calls, I trust that all participants have our results presentation slides, page 2 of which contains the usual SafeHarbor statement. I will therefore not read it out loud, but would like to point out that it applies throughout this conference call. You may also wish to have a look at our latest IR presentation, which includes additional information on AIXTRON s markets and its technologies, and is available on our website. This call is not being immediately presented via webcast or any other medium. However, we will place an audio file of the recording or a transcript on our website at some point after the call. With that, I ll turn the call over to Martin Goetzeler, AIXTRON s President and CEO for opening remarks. 2

3 Slide 3, 4, 5, 6 Key Financials Q3/2015, P&L, Cash Flow, Balance Sheet Martin Goetzeler President & CEO Thanks Guido, and a warm welcome to you all, on behalf of AIXTRON s Executive Board, to the presentation of our Q3/2015 results. I will start by discussing our financial performance as well as our recent decision to bring down revenue guidance for Bernd will then discuss the ongoing rollout of our AIX R6 MOCVD tool, and then I will conclude with some comments about how we view our major markets as well as how we see our business prospects going forward. During our Full Year 2014 conference call on February 24 we gave our 2015 guidance for revenues in the range of somewhere between EUR 220m and EUR 250m. We also stated that we would reach EBITDA breakeven in the second half of this year, with significant improvements in earnings and free cash flow over the course of the year. We reiterated that guidance on both our Q1 and Q2 conference calls. We are happy to report that we reached not only a positive EBITDA in Q3 but even a positive net result for the first time since This supports our target to see a significant improvement in earnings and free cash flow year-on-year. That said we had to announce earlier this month that we would not be able to meet our revenue guidance of EUR 220m to EUR 250m and reduced our guidance to the range of EUR 190m to EUR 200m. This is due to the postponement of shipments to our major Chinese customer which were planned for delivery in late Let me now take you through our numbers for Q3 starting with slide 3. [Slide 3] Revenues for the quarter came in at EUR 54.6m which was 35% higher than the previous quarter s EUR 40.4m and 20% ahead of the same quarter last year when we generated EUR 45.6m in revenues. On a nine-month basis, revenues for the year to 3

4 date came in at EUR 135.3m which is more or less in line with the EUR 135.8m we generated for the first nine months of As I said earlier, we had expected a much stronger 2015 in terms of revenue growth and much of this weakness comes from our business with LED production equipment. Despite very strong value based growth in LEDs for general lighting, in some applications as much as 40% year on year, 2015 has shown to be a challenging year for many LED makers due to a significant price declines in their end-markets. I will return to this point later. At the end of Q3 our equipment order backlog excluding spares and services, was EUR 72.3m which was 2% higher than this time last year but 21% lower than the previous quarter. This sequential drop in backlog is a consequence of a book-to-bill ratio below one due to a total order intake in Q3/2015 of EUR 34.4m and total revenues at actual USD/EUR Exchange rates of EUR 54.6m However, please note that we have not included any tools from the order of our major Chinese customer in our backlog. Our largest market in Q3 was Asia representing some EUR 97.2m or 72% of revenues for the first nine months of This was down both on absolute terms and relative terms from last year when sales to Asia were EUR 110.6m representing 81% of total revenues. The big change has been deliveries to the Americas which are up over two fold from EUR 6.5m in the first nine months of last year to EUR 21.9m for the same period this year. This is a reflection of increased demand for non-led application tools. In addition, 12% of revenues came from Europe which is a slight decrease on last year s 14%. Equipment revenues in the first nine months of 2015 were EUR 99.1m representing 73% of the total revenues with the remainder coming from the sale of spares and services. [Slide 4] Turning to slide 4. In Q3/2015, gross margin was a much stronger 33% as opposed to 9% in the previous quarter and 15% in Q3 last year. This increase in gross margin is a clear reflection of stronger revenues in the quarter as well as a favorable product mix including the above mentioned solid contribution from tools for non-led applications. Operational expenses for the quarter came in at EUR 16.3m which was below the previous quarter s EUR 21.5m and the same quarter last year when costs totaled EUR 24.6m. On a nine month basis operational expenses totaled EUR 55.4m down from EUR 68.7m last year. This is a clear reflection of our focus on key spending as well as on R&D and other key projects across the organization. 4

5 In Q3/15 we also recorded a net operating income resulting from grants we received as well as an income from a contractual compensation payment. The result of the strong gross profit contribution, ongoing control of operational expenses and a little help from the contractual compensation was that we were able to return to profitability for the first quarter in two years. We increased operating income from negative EUR -17.9m in the previous quarter to positive EUR 1.5m in this quarter. We also generated EUR 0.3m in net income in the quarter. These results illustrate the extensive work we have done over the last quarters which we believe bodes well for the future. [Slide 5] Moving to slide 5 you can see our cash flow statement. In Q3/2015, our Free Cash flow was at EUR -10m which reflects the increase of inventories for scheduled deliveries over the next months. Before moving to the balance sheet let me be clear that we continue being fully focused on managing our cash and working capital. [Slide 6] Turning to slide 6 you will see that we continue to have a solid balance sheet with equity of EUR 396.5m, an equity ratio of 75%, cash and cash equivalents including cash deposits totaling of EUR 243.5m and no bank borrowings. In summary, Q3 was a good quarter in terms of revenues and earnings. We have had some setback in deliveries expected for this year but we are confident that these are only slippages. We believe we are well positioned with a good balance sheet and strong product offerings in all of our core markets. Now let me hand you over to Bernd who will talk about the ongoing qualification of the AIX R6 MOCVD tool with our core Chinese customer. Bernd? 5

6 Slide 7 Technology Portfolio Dr. Bernd Schulte COO Thanks, Martin. I d like to start off by sharing our perspective on the launch of the AIX R6 which is currently going through qualification processes at a number of LED producers. With our largest customer for the R6, we have agreed on a structured milestone based plan to address the open issues toward the full production qualification of our tool. Recently, we have reached the first milestone representing a significant progress in the qualification process. We are now focusing on the improvement of the process and productivity performance on our platform. From our customers we are receiving good and constructive feedback on the product and we are confident that we will establish the AIX R6 across the LED industry. We will continue to build on the advantages of our R6 for our customers. Following the acquisition of PlasmaSi in April 2015, we have successfully completed the integration into our Sunnyvale operations in Q3/2015. This was an important step on the execution of our business plan and a prerequisite for the order we have received in this quarter. Additionally, I also want to point out that we are continuing to build on our strong positioning in the power electronics market as well to foster our broad positioning in the research and development of Carbon Applications although revenue contribution still being on low levels. Our BM series tools for the manufacturing of Graphene, Carbon Nanotubes or Carbon Nanowires are increasingly sold to research labs of meaningful industry players versus labs of Universities or research centers. We recently shipped a newly developed 8 inch R&D system which is a clear indication of development work being done on end-applications that are becoming increasingly more tangible. With those words let me hand you back to Martin. 6

7 Slide 8 Summary and Outlook Martin Goetzeler President & CEO Thank you, Bernd. Going forward, the major short term growth driver should continue to be in the LED general lighting market. Let s not forget that based on LED units installed, adoption within general lighting is still very small, in and around 10% globally which means that this remains to be a multi-year growth opportunity for not only us but the whole LED industry. Our view is that LED producers are coming to the point where they might consider investing in highly productive systems or upgrades not just to meet increasing demand for LEDs but particularly to strengthen competitiveness. In addition, we are expecting increasingly healthy contributions from other end markets such as production equipment needed for power electronics applications, solar, OLEDs and silicon semiconductor equipment where we do expect to achieve a qualification from a second memory manufacturer very soon. In the OLED space, after having acquired PlasmaSi in April as Bernd has just mentioned, we were able to secure an order for our TFE technology, which was in line with our expectations and our business plan. Additionally we also see progress in getting our large area demonstration tool ready for customer testing and due to increasing customer interest we expect results from customer demos late this year. However, the macroeconomic environment, particularly in China, remains fragile, potentially impacting the timing risk on orders and shipments. On the other hand, China is currently pushing the development of their semiconductor industry as part of the 13 th 5 year plan intending to invest USD 19 Billion. This central governmental investment is to be supplemented by contributions from private equity and local governments in the amount of close to USD 100 Billion. These investments are expected to support midterm further growth for several technologies and applications. In summary, 2015 is another year of transition for AIXTRON, a year in which we have accomplished a lot particularly in strengthening our business model, bringing our new technologies closer to market and adjusting our cost base. Our immediate goal is to getting our AIX R6 tool qualified and gain momentum in our core LED market while also gaining traction in other markets such as power electronics, Lasers, Solar, Memory or 7

8 Carbon Nanomaterials. In Q3 with regard to the different application areas we have seen initial success. We have also made good progress in our value propositions as evidenced by our Gross Margin as well as our cost control demonstrated in the OPEX development. On a final note, we remain confident about our strategy and positioning in our core markets and believe that we have the right business model with the right kind of flexibility and resilience. With the described risks all around us, we need to remain disciplined and proactive in executing our strategy while at the same time as demonstrated remaining vigilant about costs and cash flows. We believe that AIXTRON is well positioned to take full advantage of the different industry trends -- with our technology portfolio, as well as our service offerings and strong customer relationships. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q3/2015 results presentation. Bernd and I are now available to answer your questions. 8

9 Guido Pickert Director of Investor Relations Thank you, Martin and Bernd. Before we take questions could I ask everyone to limit your questions to a maximum of two each time. This will allow everyone a chance to have their questions answered. Thank you. Operator, we ll now take the questions. 9