So, a brief summary of MY VIEW of the Q3 conf call. Sorry but it is in english so that CWL1 can easily follow given his excellent contributions here in the Forum!
Conclusion:
- Overall a very confident call from Mgmt. The range of the 2018 EBIT guidance mainly depends on the EUR/USD FX rate with 1.20 being in the budget. My take on the EBIT range is that they are rather conservative and I personally regard the upper end as likely, also given where EUR/USD is today.
- They have recently not experienced any change in customer behaviour, no delays in orders or similar. (very helpfull to me given the share prices in Semiconductor land).
- Order backlog is currently at the highest level it has been for the last 7 years and it sounded like order intake momentum has remained solid in Q4.
- Regarding OLED they are confident that they will get an order in 2019 but highlighted, that there obviously remain risks, e.g. if the Gen2 System delivers upon customer expectations. Whether the application is for TV or Smartphone is decided by the customer.
- The new Silicon Carbide System: They are working on a new machine here in a market where they currently have 0% market share. This machine is going into qualification with 3 customers in a couple of weeks and if successfull they hope to gain a meaningfull market share in 2019. The qualification results should come in summer 2019, early enough for potential orders to be converted into revenues in 2019. They sounded very confident to gain a good share of this market. They commented that a big investment wave has happened in this market in 2018 with more growth in 2019 and further growth in 2020, so a potential continous revenue stream.
- VCSEL: 3 types of customers: OEMs, Fast followers (from Taiwan) and new entrants from China. Aixtron has seen orders from the OEMs about 12-18 months ago, their capacity is now installed and Aixtron expects these customers to potentially expand production. Aixtron is now seeing first orders from new customers (that never ordered with AIX before) from China, they are aiming to gain a share of the 3d sensing market in China.
Also on VCSEL they stated, that 3d sensing is at an early stage of adoption and that they are in all key concepts. Sounded like a multi-year growth opportunity.
- Gallium Nitride: Management sees this market at a positive tipping point now, but it will be a long-term story. Driven by IoT etc. investments from Telecoms (base stations) and High frequency market. This market seems to be relatively small today in terms of revenue contribution but management thinks it has a lot of growth potential, "we are talking to all leading players in GaN".
- On costs into 2019. Not as specific as in the Q2 call but it sounded as if costs will certainly decline in 2019 depending on when the OLED order comes in. I think here the company talked about 20-25m in costs that could potentially drop out of the P&L but I am not 100% sure about this.
Overall I would recommend to listen to the conf call replay. But to me it all sounded very much on track, no change from customers in recent weeks and a number of exciting end-markets opening up near (2019) and long-term (2020+).
P.S. Nur um sicher zu gehen: Alles meine Meinung/Interpretation.
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