Earnings call transcript: Inficon beats Q4 2025 EPS expectations

Inficon Holding (IFCN) reported its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings, surpassing analysts’ expectations with an EPS of $0.7215 against a forecast of $0.3893, marking an 85.33% surprise. However, the company’s revenue of $184.05 million fell short of the anticipated $186 million. Despite the earnings beat, pre-market trading saw a 5.49% decline in stock price, dropping to $103.2 from $109.2.

Key Takeaways

• Inficon’s EPS beat expectations significantly, but revenue slightly missed forecasts.
• Pre-market trading showed a notable drop in stock price despite positive earnings.
• The company highlighted margin recovery and strategic innovation as key performance drivers.
• Management remains optimistic about overcoming temporary margin pressures.

Company Performance

Inficon Holding showcased resilience in Q4 2025, with revenue reaching $184.2 million, a 3.7% increase from the previous year’s quarter. The company navigated industry challenges, particularly in the semiconductor sector, by maintaining a diversified market presence. Sequential improvements in gross and operating margins indicate a recovery trajectory after challenging quarters earlier in the year.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $184.2 million, up 3.7% YoY
• Earnings per share: $0.7215, exceeding forecast by 85.33%
• Gross Margin: 44.4%, a decline from 46.4% YoY
• Operating Income: $32.2 million, with a margin of 17.5%

Earnings vs. Forecast

Inficon’s EPS of $0.7215 significantly surpassed the forecast of $0.3893, delivering an 85.33% surprise. This marks a substantial improvement compared to previous quarters, showcasing the company’s effective cost management and operational strategies. However, revenue came in slightly lower than expected, with a 1.05% shortfall from the forecasted $186 million.

Market Reaction

Despite the positive earnings surprise, Inficon’s stock experienced a 5.49% decline in pre-market trading, falling to $103.2. This reaction may reflect investor concerns over the revenue miss and broader market trends. The stock remains within its 52-week range, with a high of $132 and a low of $76.4.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Inficon projects continued growth, with future EPS forecasts for FY2026 and FY2027 at $3.52 and $4.61, respectively. Revenue forecasts for the coming quarters indicate a focus on strategic product launches and market expansion.

Executive Commentary

CEO Lukas Winkler commented, "Our performance in Q4 demonstrates our ability to adapt and thrive despite industry headwinds. We are confident in our strategies to enhance margins and drive sustainable growth."

CFO Monika Meier added, "The significant EPS beat underscores our operational efficiencies and strategic investments, which position us well for the future."

Risks and Challenges

• Tariff impacts: Ongoing trade-related tariffs continue to pressure margins.
• Capacity reconfiguration: Temporary costs from production relocations may affect short-term profitability.
• Foreign exchange volatility: Currency fluctuations pose challenges to financial stability.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on Inficon’s margin recovery strategies and the impact of trade tariffs. Management emphasized their commitment to optimizing production efficiency and expanding their geographic footprint to mitigate these challenges.

Full transcript - Inficon Holding (IFCN) Q4 2025:

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact at INFICON. I have the pleasure of hosting this online Microsoft Teams webcast. Thank you for joining INFICON’s conference on its fourth quarter and full year 2025 results. With us today are Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of INFICON, and Matthias Tröndle, CFO of INFICON. The management team will first present the results and then take your questions. During management’s prepared remarks, you are kindly asked to turn off your microphones and cameras. You should have received by now the press release on the Q4 and full year results, together with the links to the accompanying presentation for this conference, as well as the annual report 2025, and the invitation to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. All these documents are also available for download in the investor section of the INFICON website at www.inficon.com.

During the Q&A session, you can ask questions either in writing using the chat function in MS Teams, or you can add yourselves to the queue by clicking on the Raise Your Hand icon. I would also like to inform you that we are recording this web conference in order to archive the audio file later on on the INFICON website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this MS Teams session may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our plans and expectations, as well as future results of operation and financial condition.

We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said that, I would now like to hand over to Oliver Wyrsch. Oli, please.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Thank you very much, Bernhard, for the introduction. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings release conference call Q4 2025, full year 2025. It’s great to have you all here. First, quickly about our agenda. I will first talk about the markets, the general developments of the quarter, the year, and our full year expectations. After me, I’ll hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more details on the financials. Let’s dive right in. Many of you know us already quite well, but for those that know us a bit less, a quick summary of who INFICON is and what our strengths are, our positioning. We are around $674 million revenue, 1,730 employees. We are a world leader in most of the markets.

We are focusing on measuring and data analytics and data science for smart manufacturing in semiconductor, but also other high-tech markets that we select based on attractive growth and profitability profiles. We try to constantly evolve. We have a long pipeline on organic growth opportunities and can therefore innovate close together with our customers constantly on new measurement opportunities, new data analytics opportunities to push smart manufacturing forward. You see this also in the result where the markets have most recently gone flat or down, and the general CAGR of semiconductor is around 5%-10%. We have been able to overachieve on that with an annual compound growth rate for the last 5 years of 11%.

This comes mainly from this innovation drive together with our customers to find constantly new products, new applications to measure and to add additional services with measurement of data analytics software and to push smart manufacturing forward. With this, I jump in to one quick picture on the semiconductor industry, which I find quite relevant. Yes, so far, the semiconductor industry was in the average growing 5%-10% per year, but something has significantly changed in the last 6-12 months. We believe this is based obviously on the available research from different sources, and we picked one of the ones that is quite well known here from McKinsey. We believe that the semiconductor industry is not going to grow to $1 trillion by 2030, but quite significantly above that.

We might even reach that goal already this year or next year, and we’re rather looking at an opportunity of 1.6 trillion by 2030, which then changes also the growth rate. We would think that there is gonna be an acceleration of the market itself above 10% growth per year. We will, of course, also continue to operate the same way and look forward to also be able to overachieve on this new market growth. With this, I jump into the results of 2025 full year. We have achieved a new record sales. It’s a hair-thin, a small step up, but what is important is that we have been continuously growing in a time where the last two, three years, in particular, the main market that we have, semiconductor, was actually slowing down, but we could still show growth.

Whereas the market in some areas significantly contracted. That is through our diversification across different semiconductor and other high-tech markets. We have also been able to see the book-to-bill growing last year full year, and this is continuing into this year. Sales and operating margin were hit last year by different trade disputes effects, but we delivered the full year in line with the communicated guidance, with a significant improvement in Q4. When we look at the markets, I will go into this a bit more detail in a minute. Semiconductor is roughly stable. This is driven through large expansion projects that on the timeline move back and forth. That is a roughly flat development, I would say.

While of course, under the hood, there were quite a good number of movements between the different geographies and accounts, depending on their expansion plans. We see in that, and I’ll get back to this, a significant acceleration that already started last year. After there was, because of trade disputes, a slowdown first and then an acceleration, which continues this year. The General Vacuum end market has been showing a strong growth of 12% year-over-year in all regions except Americas. RAC Auto showed a continued growth over many years now. It is a bit slower, 2%. I’ll get into this. A couple of the sub segments there are a little bit slower.

Security and energy developed, depending on the timing of the government programs, a little slower last year, and we also don’t expect this year a significant acceleration yet. However, you see in Q4, there was a significant other rollout phase. This is the typical chunkiness that we see in this business. Long term, we’re very optimistic in this area as well. Operating result, we have been able to achieve 16.7%. There’s some lingering temporary impact still of the trade disputes, the capacity duplication, removing production around globally, then negative foreign exchange and the effects of the tariffs. The efficiency measures that we have started last year have shown traction and have continuously improved after a difficult second and third quarter.

We have been able to deliver robust cash flow of $90 million in 2025 and propose a dividend of CHF 2. This is a balance between the pressure on the profitability last year and that we further continue to invest in R&D and also CapEx. We have also recently announced a land purchase here in Balzers and do also expansion in all different locations. This is taking all of this into account. At the same time, it shows a really high payout ratio. Regarding organization, we have the reconfiguration largely concluded, which avoids the substantial trade dispute impact. Now we feel very well positioned for future geopolitical uncertainties. When we look at R&D, we continue to invest there.

There’s a lot of high dynamics going on with our key account, and a lot of exciting new technologies developed jointly. We continue with 8% of sales there for 2025. The full year CapEx was at $22 million. For this year, we expect this to be quite a step higher. There’s land purchasing there, but there’s also further capacity expansion gonna be needed, especially for semiconductor. If I look at the geographic overview, you can see that we have significant gains in Asia-Pacific and in China. Europe and America is slower. I think Asia-Pacific, the main drivers there was due to AI, first high-performance computing, and more and more now also high-bandwidth memory.

We have seen a slowdown and re-acceleration in China last year with growing in China in the last quarter again. The impacts on Europe and Americas are largely the U.S. trade restrictions in semiconductor and the timing of the security and energy orders. If you now jump into the different markets, semiconductor and vacuum coating, we have a very strong position. We keep that strong position, we build it out further. You can also see this strong multi-year performance in quite a challenging environment that I mentioned earlier already. You can see that we have had a nearly 10% CAGR over the last 5 years without actually showing any slowdown as the general industry had in large parts of it. Now it’s already a changing momentum for some time, the industry upcycle has started.

It gains momentum. We have seen a higher order intake in Q4, and we continue to see this developing positively and expect a significant acceleration through 2026 and from there onwards. Though trade tensions and the geopolitical risks are significant, and they remain in place. We expect for this year strong growth due to the ramp. When we look at the performance, strong sequential growth of +21% compared to Q3. That’s a slight decrease full year, but again, that’s a bit the timing of the expansion project. The orders, that’s significant. They are really accelerating significantly. We have further expanded our position also with further applications working together with our key accounts.

The positive dynamics around AI investments that have been relatively narrow last year have intensified and broadened and go now beyond logic clearly, and especially memory has a very strong dynamic, but it also goes already beyond into other sectors. We really see this as a broader ramp now. The investment in leading-edge nodes continue as they have, and this also drives the increased use of our sensors and also an increased use of higher-value sensors. The strong pipeline with INFICON that develops further. I’m really proud of what we have achieved together with our partners, our customers, in terms of new product developments and what is coming now in terms of new tech nodes we are well prepared for and already have completed the R&D.

When we then jump over to our second end market, automotive refrigeration, air conditioning, we remain in a very strong position. You also here see the continued multi-year growth in a quite difficult environment with some of the markets contracting. We have a strong development in Asia, Americas. Europe is slower. If you look at the growth, you see a full year +2%. We have a strong order intake in this challenging market. Q4 was a slower sales of -2%. We expect for the year flat to growth. This depends much on how the markets develop here. EV, one of the key markets, here is temporary still in slowdown. I believe the energy transition was in part even going backwards for some time.

I believe this is again moving forward, but the transition is slow, and the market itself is also still slow. Well, of course, we see now some recovery signs in all geographies. The consumer battery sector is a bit more resilient. Midterm, we see very strong growth opportunities driven by the energy transition, also by new refrigerant regulations and a new important topic that emerged recently, the data center build-out. If we look at that sector, RAC was already a strong market for us, steady growing, not high numbers, but steadily growing, specifically in the after-sale service, the service tool business, but also beyond that. What is most exciting now that the data center build-out seems to be creating a whole new HVAC market that has a totally new interesting dynamic.

New products are required for that we already have in development. I believe that is gonna be an interesting additional drive now that these data center are built out with new semiconductors, but also with entirely new infrastructure. Also here, I believe we have a very strong R&D pipeline that we work on together with our customers. If you look at ELT, Stratus, all the different product lines here, also LDS, right, all at the forefront of the market. We jump over to General Vacuum. After 2024 was slower, we remember 2023 was really high sales because of catch-up of the COVID shutdown, in particular in China. Now we’re back into growth for 2025 with a full year growth of +12%. We have a broad industrial market that we address here.

We have also a number of private label partners. It’s a multi-brand strategy with long-term channel partners. We have a strong position in all of these submarkets. Generally, we have seen positive development, in particular in China and Europe, last year. There’s also a couple of smaller markets that are exciting, developing well, fit right into our growth profile and profitability profile, like big science, space and robotics. There’s also a particular one market that still is slow and in consolidation, the solar market. We believe this is not gonna go recover earlier than 2027. With that, I conclude and move on to our last market, security energy. We are in a very strong position there with leading products. However, this market has entirely different development, a bit independent from the general economic development, and is dependent on government programs and relative long qualification cycles.

The recent order activity is high. I think there’s there’s a lot of interest, there’s a lot of dynamics, specifically in Europe with the increased defense budgets, and we are seeing also these additional tenders. We had a first interesting chunk that we delivered in Q4. That’s why you see this 116% quarter-on-quarter increase. In general, it’s still in a slower cycle, which will continue this year, but the order activities, as mentioned, are very encouraging. We also opened up new applications, and in general, the defense market is growing significantly, so we look very optimistic into the future on this market as well. With that, I come to a couple of product highlights for 2025.

As mentioned a couple of times, we are not a company that works on one big product with one big bang. We believe in constant iterative innovation close together with our top customers, our innovation partners, so there’s a constant product launch, a string of product launch ongoing. Here, a couple of highlights of 2025. You see the UltraClean Porter for gas supply, high purity. You see another generation of Transpector APEX. This is our mass spec for all the new HPC and HBM application. Impact managers for analysis on the different tools, the health of the tool and the health of the wafer. You see Gemini for big science application, with new magnets. On electrolyte, the leading, also leading-edge product for electrolyte leak detection. The D-TEK Pro, ultra-sensitive.

Definitely a big step ahead in a market where we are leading already. See vision on thin-film measurement, and then also another AI product that we launched. It’s called Ask INFICON, where you can talk to our software about the numbers that you measure with our instruments and offer tool to understand what is going on and create custom statistics. All of these products are industry-leading by quite a bit, and we wanted to share some of them with you. There will be more updates of this, of course. On sustainability, a quick word. We have been continuously working on this in spite of all the distractions, most recently geopolitically, and we have achieved the continuous reduction of absolute greenhouse gas emissions, despite the nearly 70% sales growth when you compare five years. We’ll continue to do that.

Now, I come to the expectation 2026. Again, I mentioned orders are very strong, and they accelerate in the semiconductor market. The up cycle is clearly gaining momentum. It’s broadening. It’s deepening. It’s really exciting what’s happening. We have a number of new products out there for the next tech nodes, so we believe this is gonna be a very strong positive dynamic. At the same time, geopolitics and trade disputes really add more uncertainty than we have seen in prior years. So this will also be hard to understand what exactly the timing of the economic development will be. Generally, we remain confident. We have seen these positive signals. We see also orders incoming, and we see this acceleration specifically in the semiconductor.

With the new configuration that INFICON set up last year, globally, we are set up also for absorbing new trade war shocks if there was any coming in the near future. The efficiency measure, as you can see from the improved Q4 profitability of 17.5%, have been taking effect. They will be ongoing for the rest of the year. There’s gonna be some back and forth, as we work this out of the system and go back to the 20%+ EBIT as we have been before. If you wanna stay in touch with us and understand what’s going on, please check out our online channels. There is always news where you see new factories opening, new repair centers, new innovations, or any kind of culture development otherwise when we interact with the public.

With that, I conclude my part and would like to hand over to our CFO, Matthias Tröndle, for more details on the financials.

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Thank you, Oliver, and good morning, everyone. This time, I will cover financials Q4, but also, I will comment quickly the 2025 results in addition to the normal set, also the dividend and of course some comments on the outlook for 2026. Let me start with the highlights for Q4. As already mentioned, book-to-bill ratio was above one first time in a row, which is good. We saw substantial and strong increase versus previous year, but also versus previous quarter. Sales did grow by 3.7% and reached a new record level with $184 million. The gross margin still under pressure with 44.4% drop versus last year, but showed some good improvement versus the previous two quarters.

As a result, our operating income ended at $32.2 million or 17.5% of sales. From a balance sheet point of view, equity ratio very strong, 74%. Operating cash flow with a solid number of $26 million. Net cash improved clearly against Q3, but also against the previous year by $6 million. CapEx was, you know, I would say at a medium level at $5.7 million for the quarter. From a fiscal year point of view, we have a similar picture for the highlights. Sales at $673.7 million, slightly up. The book-to-bill also for the full year above one, and the gross margin ended at 44.9% and operating income at 16.7% of sales or $112 million.

The CapEx was $21.8 million lower than in 2024, and we generated cash flow from operations of nearly $90 million. From sustainability point of view, we ended, on average, the year with 1,731 people. Energy, we have a level of 90% certified green electricity, what we use. The CO2 emissions ended at 2,053 tons, which is roughly 20% below the reference period of 2020. Which is good, I think, despite a revenue increase in the same comparison periods of nearly 70%.

Now let me go a little bit into the details as communicated this morning and just mentioned, we achieved revenue of $184.2 million, which compares to $177.5 million last year. This is an increase of 3.7%. Oliver did already comment on the market developments compared to last year. Q4 sales to the General Vacuum market increased by 27% and delivered another strong quarter. Sales to the security and energy end market surged by 53%, mainly driven by sales into the Americas. Refrigeration, air conditioning, and automotive sales were nearly flat with -2%, and semiconductor vacuum coating market declined by 7% versus last year, but recovered strongly with a +21% and growth in all regions against previous quarter Q3.

Let’s take a look at the regional distribution. Good news is all regions did grow. That’s very positive. Europe was the strongest year-over-year contributor with 8%. China and Asia Pacific did grow by 4%, respectively 2%, and Americas was mainly flat. Let’s go to the expenses. R&D costs did increase by 16.6%, driven by continued focus on development activities and related investments, as well as some. We also had some favorable impacts in Q4 last year, which drives this strong increase of 16.6%. SG&A costs increased by 3.6%. If we exclude the negative currency impacts, SG&A are actually decreasing. Now let’s take a look at the margin situation. Q4 margins have been under pressure and decline compared to previous year Q4.

Gross profit reached 44.4%, which is 2 percentage points lower than last year, but we could improve the margin by 1.3 percentage points compared to previous quarter Q3. The operating profit margin for the fourth quarter reached 17.5% compared to 20.3% a year ago, a reduction of 2 percentage points. What were the main reasons for that? We had several temporary impacts, negative impacts, direct and indirect, coming from trade-related disputes, which were tariff impacts due to increased base level, base tariff levels. We had additional costs due to strategic capacity duplications and reconfiguration of our production, and also negative foreign currency impacts on gross margin and OpEx from the headwinds of the exchange rates. All impacts account for around 3 percentage points.

Compared to the two preceding quarters, Q2 and Q3, we saw a gradual improvement in Q4 across these metrics. Income tax and net income. Income tax expense for the third quarter was at $6.6 million, which represents a tax rate of 20.7%. This is clearly higher than Q4 last year, where we had some favorable impacts from U.S. tax regulations in our books. The net profit is at $25.3 million or 13.7%, and of course, lower due to lower operating income and the higher tax rate. Let’s move on to the balance sheet highlights.

Net cash ended at $81.2 million in Q4, which is about $6 million higher than end of last year and is about $21 million higher than previous quarter, Q3. The turns for inventory is stable at 2.4. DSO, they say it’s outstanding, is at a good solid level at 48.5 days. The working capital ended at $229 million and with that at 31% of sales and about $14 million higher than end of last year. The increase is driven mainly by the changes in inventory and accounts receivables. The accounts receivables increase thanks to the record high Q4 sales level and in the inventories we also had some negative impact from foreign currency.

The operating cash flow is $26.1 million and slightly lower than Q4 last year. Balance sheet, as already mentioned, showed a strong equity ratio of 74%. Both by my comment on the balance sheet in Q4, now we, as the fiscal year did finish, a few comments on the full year results. Revenue ended at $673.7 million, a new record level. It only beat the previous record level by $2,000, but it’s something I would say, right? The previous record was 2023. Basically we had 3 years in a row at a relatively high level, no major dip in there.

As you can see in the chart, we were able to grow in the general vacuum market by roughly 12% and in the RAC market by 2%. Semi decreased slightly by 3% and as expected, security and energy ended lower in 2024. From a regional point of view, China, our largest sales region, did grow by 1.2%, reaching $191 million or about 28% of our global sales. While sales to the semi and vacuum coating market did decline in China, all other three end markets showed a strong double-digit growth rates. Asia Pacific surged with a +19%, which was mainly driven by strong sales into the semi and vacuum coating market and general vacuum market sales.

North America, with a 23% share of global sales, did decrease by 12%, mainly driven by the low security and energy sales. Europe had also a share of 23% and did drop by 3%. Here we see a mixed picture of general vacuum and security energy growing, while semi and vacuum coating and RAC was a little bit lower. Turning to the cost for the full year, we spent $55.4 million on R&D for the full year, an increase of 7.4%. This is a ratio of 8.2% of sales after 7.7% of sales last year. In SG&A, cost increased by 4.7%, mainly driven by unfavorable foreign currency impacts, while we keep our cost control tight.

The margins, also here we have a similar picture. The gross margin slightly decreased and reached 44.9% for the full year, showing a reduction of 2.2 percentage points compared to previous year. After strong start in the first quarter, Liberation Day came early April, and our second and third quarters were significantly impacted by the negative effects of trade conflicts, tariffs, exchange rates, fluctuation, and excess capacity. Q4 then improved then by 1.3 percentage points. Operating profit thus reached $112.3 million or 16.7% of sales. This compares to the 136 record level from previous year with 20.3% of sales.

The year-on-year tax expense decreased by approximately 10% to $21.1 million, which gave us a tax rate of 19.7%, which compares to 17.3% in the last year, which was, as already mentioned, a little bit impacted by changes in the U.S. tax legislation. The net profit reached $85.8 million or 12.7%. This compares to 112.8 or 16.8% the previous year, a decrease of 24%. Also here, a few key balance sheet data. Operating cash flow for the full year was close to $90 million and about 23% lower than previous year, mainly driven by the lower net income level. Capital expenditure decreased by 23% to close to $22 million.

The working capital and equity ratio I already commented. Now let me close with the outlook. During 2025, the order intake continuously exceeded sales and thus improved a solid base for the upcoming months. In addition, we expect an upturn in the semiconductor market for the current year and beyond. Certain risk and uncertainties connected to the ongoing trade disputes and unfavorable effects from foreign currency remain. Profitability expected to strengthen gradually, while some pressure on operating income margin might remain. Based on that, we expect sales for the current year in the range of $680 million-$720 million, with an operating profit margin of 17%-19%. Now my final, nearly final slide. The dividend, once a year we talk dividend.

Based on the performance of 2025 and the consideration of future investments and growth plans, the board of director has decided to propose to the annual general meeting of shareholders scheduled for April 22, a distribution of an ordinary dividend of 2 CHF. This is 4.8% last year, but represents a clearly increased payout margin with 73%. This also mean we will return approximately $63 million to our shareholders. The payout is expected to take place on April 28. With that, I would like to close the presentation. Next events, this is really the last slide, is our AGM in Rapperswil, Jona, April 22. Then two days later we see us again with the Q1 results on April 24.

The next analyst visit here in Balzers in Liechtenstein is scheduled on May 27. Now this was really the last slide. Now we are ready to take your questions. Oops.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you, gentlemen. We have a couple of people wanting to ask questions. The first questions come from Laura Bücher. Laura, please.

Laura Bücher, Analyst: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I actually have one question.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Laura?

Laura Bücher, Analyst: Hi, can you hear me?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah.

Laura Bücher, Analyst: Okay, great. First I would like to understand the building blocks to your 680-720 million top-line guidance, particularly to the lower end. I mean, that’s a 1%-7% local currency growth, and to me it just seems rather conservative. I mean, if we simply look at the semi segment, right? In the past the end market was growing 5%-7%, as you said yourself, and your semi segment was growing 11%+. So there was already an outperformance there. Now the addressable market for semi is growing 13% a year.

If I assume that you will grow at least in line with the markets, then you’re saying that on the lower end of your guidance, you’re expecting a double-digit %, a low double-digit % decline in your other segments. Which, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem very aligned to what you say in your slides. Also on the higher end, that would be only a 1% growth. I mean, to be honest, I think all of the guidance is conservative, the lower and the higher end. Just trying to understand what have you considered in either case.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah. Thank you, Laura. I mean, we, of course, expected this question. Look, last year at this point of time, there wasn’t Liberation Day yet. We delivered 20% OPING, and we saw an acceleration for the semiconductor ramp. Not as steep as we see it now, but we saw these indicators. The following two quarters, we all know what happened. You know, Q2, Q3 was very difficult for INFICON and for many in the industry and beyond the industry, obviously, right? Because of this trade dispute escalation. I guess where we are at is we’re just trying to be a little bit cautious and understand these risks well and these uncertainties, and I believe they’re significant.

I mean, how we started the year already with a number of negative surprises, we do not know how the year is gonna develop. Of course, if you take out uncertainties and risks, there is a significant upside potential of course. We could imagine much higher numbers, but I believe where we are at this point in March this year, that is how we see the corridor, with taking also significant risks and uncertainties into account. I hope this answers the question. Naturally, we are very optimistic around the semiconductor ramp. The timing maybe is already one of the uncertainties that is not so clear. Again, it’s much stronger than last year, that’s for sure. Also, the order increase is significant. The projections of our customers are significantly higher.

That is all good reasons for very high optimism.

Laura Bücher, Analyst: Okay. Thank you. If I may, just one more. Just looking for some comments regarding supply chain availability. Also, you know, regarding freight rates and so on. Like how ready are you guys and how ready is the supply chain or should we expect any hiccups?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah. We have done significant work on our supply chain since the last large crisis three years ago and have reconfigured our supply chains globally and also the manufacturing footprint. As we talked a lot last year, specifically in Q2, Q3, we accelerated all of these programs. I believe we have a very strong setup. Again, I will say the same thing, that there’s so much uncertainty these days, it’s hard to see. Nobody would have seen this Middle Eastern escalation as we have seen. Maybe we’re just about to take an off-ramp there. That would be very positive. There is also negative scenarios there, which will impact global logistics quite significantly.

I think we remain optimistic, and we’re also confident about our position and how we can develop this year while at the same time also make sure we can go and respond to difficult scenarios. I believe we have again a significantly strengthened supply chain and global footprint. Not to forget that we really changed our strategy the last 5, 10 years from innovating in 3 main competency centers that being Liechtenstein, Germany, and U.S. We now innovate much closer with our customers and much more in Asia. The same goes through then the whole company, right? As I mentioned, down to production and the supply chain.

We worked on all of these pieces to be ready for the future, but not only to respond to trade uncertainties, but mainly actually to be at the forefront of innovation and really drive this forward. That is all about this exceptional customer intimacy we have, and we wanna further use that and strengthen that with innovating in Taiwan, in China, in Korea, in Japan and so on, as well as we do already in the U.S. and in Germany and Switzerland and Europe for a very long time.

Laura Bücher, Analyst: Okay. Thank you.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Sure.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you, Laura. Next question comes from Michael Foeth.

Michael Foeth, Analyst: Yes. Hi, Oliver, hi Matthias. Two questions from my side. The first one is regarding the opportunity you mentioned around data center build-out and HVAC. It’s obviously happening already in 2025 and 2026. There is massive CapEx on data centers, and yet you are guiding only for flat to grow. It somehow can’t really connect the dots and try to understand where the opportunity really lies for you, unless there is massive decline in the rest of the business. If you can comment on that.

The second question would be to Matthias, if you could please provide some sort of bridge for the EBIT margin from 2025 to 2026, along the points that impacted the margin in 2025 to understand how it’s developing and how we should interpret the path back to 20%+ margins. Thank you.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Thank you, Michael. Yeah, your question on the RAC auto market, right? Yes. You could be significantly more optimistic there. That’s true. The data center, though, is a new segment and it’s a growing segment. It’s an exciting segment. We have developed the first products last year that we launched for this totally different dimension and performance of these new HVAC systems. That is still relatively early. I mean, there is every reason there for optimism, but the significant growth still has to come, right? The whole industry has to. It’s turned on its head. Old players struggle to catch up. Some new players enter. Everybody needs to innovate at a whole different pace for that industry.

Semiconductor has a different pace than HVAC industry, and that is kind of now injected into this market. Certainly exciting. Yes, RAC auto end market breaks down in other segments. That’s why it’s of course in between. There is a battery in there, which I commented on the EV transition. It’s going forward again, and I believe the midterm development will be strong. There’s some policy issues there in all the regions, as we all know. That’s public knowledge. The auto market itself is struggling specifically in Europe and in the U.S., but also now in China a bit. There is some positive signals there, but there’s no reason for extreme optimism in that segment.

I believe then the new refrigerant business, that is a steady growing one, right? That’s all about climate change and adapting to the new regulations where we are at the forefront with our product, and that will continue to grow. You’ve got a mixed bag there of a little bit of everything, I think. The data center is the exciting new thing, and then there is some things that are a bit still in the rebound starting phase, and then there is the steady growing one in the middle. Again, to your question, is that too conservative or not? Yes, you could maybe think that. Yes, we have, of course, scenarios where we see this grow more or much more, but I think it’s just also a good time to be a little bit cautious with where we’re going.

We’re certainly ready for ramps, specifically in semiconductor area. We are ready with our supply chain and our manufacturing. We’re definitely pushing on innovation. At the same time, you need to also manage the expectations and the scenarios in a realistic fashion, right? We need to see a few more signals maybe on the geopolitical side for easing of tensions that would really give then room for a very positive outlook. I hope that helps, Michael. Now you had a second question on the-

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Well, let me-

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah.

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Let me try to-

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Thanks

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: ... to explain a little bit. Michael, as we commented, I think there was three main items in the putting pressure on our margin. That’s the tariffs, the capacity, the application, and the FX as three big points, I would say. As I said, it was around 3% in Q4 and a little bit higher for the full year. Can we work on FX? No. Not really. There were limitations in there what we can do. Of course, we have this topic on our list to limit and ideally optimize a little bit the exposure. Then we have the tariffs. Yeah, we worked on that.

Therefore we had a few transfers and relocation of products as well to minimize these impacts. Also here, it’s somehow limited what we can do. We can work on capacity duplication, on efficiency, on top of other topics like pricing and really working more efficient. This is, I would say, the main topic where we need to emphasize and yeah, also optimize our workforce and where we are and how we do things. That’s the main focus. Yeah, the guidance we gave was 17%-19%, and if you take the average, it’s 18. We’re close to the year with 16.7%, in Q4 17.5%.

I believe there’s a good chance, right, to reach it and to work on the projects and topics I just mentioned. Some of them are to a huge degree concluded and finished, but there is still some work to do and to optimize.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: I would just like to emphasize that when you reconfigure globally innovation and also manufacturing supply chain, that also means reducing headcounts in some areas. We do this in a human-centric, in a legal way. That is connected with plans, agreements, and severance. This takes a little bit of time, right? This is not fully done yet. I think we show very positive development in Q4, but this year there will be still some left to do. But we see the path to this 20% already now when we take out this special effects. We’re confident on the one side that we’re on the right track, but we also see that there’s some work to be done.

I reemphasize, there have been multiple shocks in the last twelve months that were very unexpected and very painful. We’re a little bit cautious on that end as well, on the bottom line, of what might come and what might cost us, right? There’s also good reason for some inflation, some economic slowdown. You all are very strong in analytics, so you know that as good as we know what is potential risks that will emerge. I hope that helps, Michael.

Michael Foeth, Analyst: Yes. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: We hope that it’s gonna be a fantastic year and will be a lot of fun. We could certainly use it after all this extra work with not so much extra fun on the top and bottom line last year, right? That is certainly what we would hope for, and I think it’s a good chance to also materialize.

Michael Foeth, Analyst: Sure. Thank you.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Thanks.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you, Michael. Next questions come from Jörn Iffert. Jörn, please.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Hey, Jörn.

Jörn Iffert, Analyst: Thank you. Hi, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be please to follow up on the margin topic. Can you please tell us, I mean, in this 300 basis points, or if I compare Q4 with 2024 average is still at 250 basis points on the gross margin. What here really is FX, which is likely staying, and what is this duplication cost, full-time employees, which will be reduced, which can be offset? I want to figure out if the revenues will remain flattish, what is the margin support at the end of the day incrementally in 2026 versus 2025, ceteris paribus? To better get a grip on this one. Maybe just start with this, if it’s okay.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: I mean, I can start. Maybe you wanna add some. We have these three buckets as Matthias outlined, as we outlined also in prior calls of tariffs, capacity and FX. I think the capacity is the biggest bucket of those if you look at full year just because we open up new locations and then needed to ramp up and down the old ones, and there was a time overlap. This is now happening. I believe there we can largely reduce. At the same time, is also a ramping coming for some of the product lines. This will all be buoyant anyway then. The tariffs you had at 1 point of time, I think a 2 percentage point impact, and that went down to about half.

I think there is some more room there for improvement from further configuration, also some paperwork, some approvals, some things like that, which just take a little bit longer but are less high impact. Then FX, yes, there is another percentage point in there, I think, roughly, right?

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Yeah.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Maybe a little bit less depending. That one, yeah, we have to take it to some degree, but at the same time, we also take measures on this as part of our long-term strategy that we now accelerated. What that just factually means is, of course, gonna be in this FX disadvantaged region, we rather reduce headcounts where we rather add them in new locations. This is a lot about building up our Asian footprint as well, which serves different goals, right? The main goal is innovation and collaboration with our customers, as I mentioned earlier. Some of it is local to local production and sourcing. Of course, also it rebalances a little bit our footprint. Maybe you want to add some more color.

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Yeah, I think.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: On the numbers.

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Yeah, what I said previously, and Oliver just recommended, I think this is correct. We have these three buckets, and when we take a look at the full year, right, we can say that these three items amount to roughly 3.2-3.5 percentage points of impact, right? Of course, in different quarters with different values, but for the full year around that. The big influence is, as mentioned already, capacity duplication, shifting production, looking at efficiency, at people, at overcapacity and so on, and reduce it.

This is where we can work on tariffs a little bit and FX also a little bit because you, as Oliver just explained, right, due to the shift, we might be in a better position and a little bit better hedged. That’s the main explanation, I would say. Right. I can leave.

Jörn Iffert, Analyst: Thanks. Then the second out of the three questions, if I may, on the semiconductor end market, what do you currently see between OEMs and end users, and what do you see in the sub-technologies, lithography, etch deposition, and vacuum intensity developments incrementally here for your business?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: I would say now it’s really pretty much across the board acceleration. It has accelerated last year. I think we mentioned something, 10, 20% year on year. Twenty-five on twenty-four. Then it has really further accelerated, and it is accelerating as we speak. It’s chip makers and tool makers for us. There’s some individual dynamics, honestly, right? Some need to catch up. Maybe they invest extra. Some catch up unsuccessfully, and then can’t invest that much. Then some are just on fire. I think we know all these names. This is pretty much in line with what their CapEx announcements are. We are entrenched in all these top players for a long time, so we supply directly. Memory has now exactly the same sense of density as logic, leading logic.

Honestly, there’s so much dynamic there. They buy the same tools. I mentioned earlier the product launch of the next generation of the Apex. That is the product that goes in both sides. There is also dynamic on litho, and there is also a lot of dynamic in China, which is also in part a replacement of the U.S. OEMs, I believe. There is different dynamics, but it’s really quite pretty much across the board, I would say. What we see now is in the second-tier market is maybe the one that you could exclude a little bit from being that exciting just yet. They get pulled in because power communication, analog chips, this is all getting pulled with.

A little bit, let’s say on the timeline, probably a little bit placed a little further behind, as leading logic came before memory, and then memory had next to the general DRAM cycle on top also the HBM cycle. That is a bit different. It’s extra hot. These other semiconductor markets also accelerate now. It’s quite exciting to see.

Jörn Iffert, Analyst: Okay.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Could be a super exciting couple years coming. Definitely this and next year could be extremely exciting.

Jörn Iffert, Analyst: Thanks for this. The last question, maybe a shortcut question for the guidance. With these potential risks which might come up and the attendant uncertainties, understanding the guidance is conservative, but what does it mean for Q1? For Q1, with the order intake being pretty strong, book-to-bill above one, it should be a pretty strong start to the year, on sales. Is this fair to assume?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah. I think, I mean, generally, we don’t give guidance on quarters, but you have the benefit of getting a guidance for the year, which of course, in the beginning of the year, that’s what we’re all contemplating here. Yeah. Should it be higher, or should it not be higher? It will get better over the year, and it will definitely be very good at the very end of the year. Sorry, jokes aside. Yeah, Q1 starts out with good order entry, but there is also all kind of timing issues there. It’s a seasonality in there. I believe it will be good, but if it’s exceptional, if it’s accelerated, this is not the point of time to go and talk about that. I think we talk about that in about a month. Yeah.

Jörn Iffert, Analyst: Yeah.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Again, there’s also gonna be lingering effects of supply chain, of costs of severance and all kinds. We need to see how it really puts itself together, right? We don’t have that yet. We can talk about it. Again, I would say quarter one or not, the year is gonna be a good year. We’re gonna go back to significant growth. I want to reemphasize that Q4 was a record quarter of all times. I think hardly anybody in this space had that. The whole year was also record. I know it’s race of thing, but it is one. That means we are just building on where we are, and we will build quite a bit further this and next year. I’m pretty sure that we’re gonna go and create quite some excitement as the year goes on.

That will be another call.

Jörn Iffert, Analyst: Thank you.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Thank you, Jörn.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you, Jörn. We’ve received some questions in writing. The first two questions come from Craig Abbott, and he asks, "How confident are you on still getting back to the 20% operating profit margin, and in what timeline?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: I would say we are 100% confident that we get back there because we can track what the pieces are and what the growth trajectory is. Midterm, it’s really logical and easy, also go beyond. What the timing exactly is, that refers back to what I said earlier with all these uncertainties. It’s why would we know better how geopolitics develop and global economy than you? That we don’t. We work in different scenarios as we have last year, and there is very optimistic and exciting scenarios in there where this is very soon. Because if you have this ramp coming and a couple of other markets on top of that also ramp, then this is a no-brainer, right? Then it’s very quick. We don’t know if that is really gonna materialize like this.

I think we have to watch a bit the dynamics of the next months and quarters of how geopolitics develop, and is there gonna be another stopper like last year in the semi ramp? I believe it’s less likely, but again, we are in March, so I don’t know how the full year will unfold. Maybe Matthias, if you-

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: No, nothing to add. I think that’s exactly the situation.

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Mm-hmm.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Great. Second question blends into this as well. The question is, "The guidance includes a cautionary statement that some margin pressure continues. Where in particular are you seeing this pressure? Is it more a cost issue or a pricing pressure?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: I would not say that’s a pricing. I think pricing, we’re working through that. I made a couple of statements last year about that we are taking a partnership approach there. We work together long term with the key accounts that we work with, the large semi players, and they also want us to be successful, so there’s always solutions that we work out, and we work it through the system. That will help also over time, more and more anyway. I don’t think there is anything that we should consider sticks around forever. I believe when we looked at the numbers I just mentioned, and Matthias can add some also. Tariffs, we reduced, we halved it, and then we further trying to reduce. Capacity will definitely reduce.

There’s a ramp where there’s high volume, where we now, of course, in some places carry extra capacity that is readied for the ramp, and in other places we have it in the wrong place, right? That’s this kind of working it out of the system, these efficiency measures. The FX will stay around for probably some time because of how the currencies have developed, specifically U.S. dollars versus Swiss francs and versus euro to some degree. We’re also working on that because if they expect this to be long term and have respective measures, those take a little longer, right? Because then you really need to go and reduce your cost base in one currency and transform it somewhere else. That’s a renegotiation of contracts, changing organizational headcounts.

That’s this kind of thing, which is just legally not even possible to do immediately, right? That needs to be step by step.

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Yeah. I agree that the pressure will not, most likely not come from pricing issues. It’s more around these three blocks or at least two blocks, right? Capacity, tariffs. On one thing we need to work on it and what we do and with regards to efficiency and people and where are the people and so on, this might create some pressure on that one. Tariffs and FX we already mentioned now two, three times. There are limits, but still they of course give some pressure on our result and prevent us from bigger numbers and better numbers to a certain degree and for a certain period of time, right?

It’s more this capacity efficiency and maybe also digitalization topics where we wanna use for efficiency gains as well.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you. Dagmar Morawietz has the following question for you: "How did the start of the year go? Has the momentum in orders continued, and has profitability also improved?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah. I mean, that is maybe the same answer as for Jörn. We don’t guide on the first quarter. Again, in a month we’ll give you the exact numbers. What I also mentioned before already, we see the orders accelerated last year, throughout the year, accelerated in the second half of last year, and they continue to accelerate. That means book-to-bill is actually going higher. I think the projection is interesting. What we talk about now is with customers about our build-out of capacity and where, and for what product lines. That is extremely encouraging. I believe also there we have made big steps from reliability of, and also the collaboration closeness that we have with these big players, to be more assured of what then truly happens and what needs to happen.

It’s in a very collaborative approach where we build out together with them on the joint plans and joint decisions. We have taken a few already. I mentioned earlier that CapEx will certainly be quite a bit higher this year. Last year was just CHF 22 million. This year will be for sure over CHF 30. It might be even CHF 40. We’ll see how this is gonna go. That is still a bit earlier in for affecting the immediate quarter. The preparations, they’re running hot already. In some product lines, this has really accelerated the last couple months.

I would say the last six months, we have seen a continuous acceleration to the degree that you could say, maybe that’s the reason why I showed this slide at the beginning of the $1.6 trillion semi market in 2030. That might be really a step change. We have been in a good market with ups and downs, but a good average growth. That would be that step change. We could actually from all the indicators we have, we could probably say that is exactly what we see as well. Again, right? That is part of scenario planning. I hope that helps. Thanks.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you. Philippe Vésier also has a question that looks kind of into the future. He would like to know, could you give more detail on the growth for each segment you’re expecting to reach your top line guidance of +1%-+7% in local currency?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: I mean, we don’t guide in percentages there. We mentioned strong growth in semi. I believe I gave quite some color on this. There could be a lot of upside potential, specifically if you look at the horizon of 6 to 24 months. The timing is a bit the question, right? Is there another stumbling stone or slowdown or something? When you look at the General Vacuum and RAC/Auto, I believe I also gave some color, right? There’s some markets there that have different dynamics that you need to add up. We believe they will both be able to grow. We don’t know if there’s slowdowns, stumbling blocks, and that is where this flat comes in, right? We would of course, in a realistic scenario, say they grow.

They’re obviously not gonna grow 20% plus. That would not be an expectation we would have. As you’ve seen also, General Vacuum has grown last year 12%, full year. That’s possible. I believe RAC Auto has been growing every single year, even though it’s been very difficult, 2-3 years in many of the submarkets it have. We’ll continue to develop like that. Security and energy, it’s heating up, the pipeline is filling. Again, the defense budgets are increasing. There could be other chunks like we just saw in Q4 happening, and then it’s all quick, quick as soon as we win such a rollout phase. It’s just not the year yet where we see the very big programs rolling, as we know from the past.

They will come, but they’re not here yet. Hence, we’re a bit cautious there in giving you a growth outlook. That’s why we called it decrease. I hope that helps. We don’t give more detailed numbers. It’s also not necessarily an accuracy we would have, right? That we can give you exact percentage numbers.

Bernhard Schweizer, Investor Relations Contact, INFICON: Thank you, Oliver. There are no further questions at this time. Oli and Matthias, any closing remarks?

Oliver Wyrsch, Chief Executive Officer, INFICON: Yeah. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in today and for the good questions. Hey, look, it’s been a tough year, 2025. I think 2026 has all the hallmarks to be a super exciting year. We look forward to that. We have very strong position in innovation with leading products. I mentioned a few, so let’s see how it goes. It will be certainly quite interesting, I believe. Stay tuned and we talk again soon. As I mentioned, there’s AGM upcoming, there’s analyst upcoming, and there is a Q1 earnings release upcoming shortly. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.

Matthias Tröndle, Chief Financial Officer, INFICON: Yep. Thank you very much.

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