I think Guido said that the order inquiries remain strong and hinted that Q4 orders might be ~100m or even higher. To qualify as orders strict criteria's like deposit, confirmed delivery date, etc. have to be satisfied, and Aixtron did not have the fully committed orders yet at the time of CC. It is also possible that some customers were cooking on larger orders than Aixtron initially anticipated so they need more time to ink the deal. That might lead to delay on commitment of orders.
The possibility of large orders coming in at Q4 was hinted by Felix in the Q2 CC:
David O'Connor, Exane BNP
Great. Good afternoon and thanks for taking my question. Felix, I'm just curious,
given the broad-based strength you talk about across the business. I was just
wondering why the order intake for the second half is going to 25% below the first
half? Maybe can you give us some of the puts and takes around that? Or maybe
even if there was only pull-forwards in the order intake into the first half, given the
tight supply chain across the industry? And I have a follow-up, thanks.
Dr. Felix Grawert
Thank you, very good question. So as said, we typically have a good visibility for 6
months forward, so we have a pretty good visibility now for third quarter. For the
fourth quarter, visibility remains moderate. We base our updated guidance on these
data points, resulting in EUR 220 million to go in H2 or average H2-orders per quarter
of EUR 110 million which is little below the first half. This is based on the upper end
of our order guidance for 2021, i.e. EUR 480 million in combination with EUR 260
million having been received in H1 of this year.
The first half was characterized by some very large volume orders. There could be
similar order patterns in the second half as well. But this we do not know.
However, we would not expect, such volume orders to surprise us again as they did,
triggering the trading statement in June. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude that
either. And that's the reason why we have given the guidance today, following our
logic not to fuel expectations going too high given the current visibility. This
expresses our current view on the demand for the remainder of the year.
In summary this is what we currently see in terms of the volume which we believe
is a very good volume. And we are here on a long-term trend.