Aixtron's Q1 revenues 8 percent down on last year
Aixtron, a provider of deposition equipment for the semiconductor industry, has announced financial results for the first quarter 2015 with revenues down 8 percent against the previous year's level (€40.3 million compared to €43.9 million) and 31 percent down against the previous quarter (Q4/2014: €58.0 million).
At -€6.4m EBITDA in the first quarter, 2015 improved both against the previous year and sequentially (Q1/2014: -€7.1m; Q4/2014: -€13.9m).
The announcement had minimal impact on share price.
For the first time, the company says that its order intake and revenues were influenced by the large multiple tool order from a Chinese LED manufacturer for 50 AIX R6 Showerhead MOCVD tools Aixtron received in September 2014. However, a large portion of this order will be booked in the course of the financial year 2015, according to Aixtron.
Overall, order intake including spares and service in the first quarter 2015 was solid with €48.9m against the previous quarter and year on year (Q1/2014: €49.5m; Q4/2014: €49.3m).
In order to better reflect industry practice and due to the intensified activities in the spares and services business, management has decided to start reporting total order intake including spares & service.
Alongside cost-cutting measures, Aixtron continues to pursue new market opportunities, for example with its new AIX R6 MOCVD product generation and future business fields such as power and logic semiconductors as well as OLED. The acquisition of US technology company PlasmaSi, effective as of April 1, 2015 took place against this background and offers market as well as customer synergies with OVPDdeposition technology, according to Aixtron.
The technology of PlasmaSi can be used for the cost efficient production of all OLED applications. Through increased throughput compared to existing technologies, Aixtron sees significant market opportunities for this thin-film encapsulation process.
"Currently, we have contracts with seven LED manufacturers that are assuring themselves of the performance of our next generation system," said Martin Goetzeler, president and CEO of Aixtron SE. "Due to the increasing utilisation rates, we expect a positive development for the demand in production systems. At the same time, we must continue to focus on the implementation of our 5-point program and, above all, bearing in mind the cost side. The fact that we are on the right track in this area, is demonstrated by the improvement of our performance indicators and progress towards the targeted expansion of our product and technology portfolio."
He added: "We have successfully expanded the technology portfolio in the field of OLED by the acquisition of PlasmaSi, Inc. at the beginning of April. Thereby, we will be able to cover nearly two-thirds of the value chain in the front-end of the OLED production in the future. Also, the preparations for putting our Gen8 demonstrator into operation for the production of large-area OLEDs are on track. Furthermore, it is encouraging that customer interest in our other technologies remains high."
Outlook
Management expects full-year revenues to increase to between €220m and €250m. As the company will be pressing ahead with implementing its innovation roadmaps, productivity and efficiency programs across all areas, management expects to see a sequential increase of the results in both halves of 2015 compared with the previous six-month periods and a return to positive EBITDA numbers in the second half of 2015.
