Earnings call transcript: Jenoptik AG Q4 2025 beats EPS forecast, stock rises

Jenoptik AG reported its fourth-quarter earnings for 2025, revealing an impressive earnings per share (EPS) of EUR 0.5, significantly surpassing the forecast of EUR 0.2705, marking an 84.84% positive surprise. Despite a slight revenue shortfall at EUR 294.9 million against a forecast of EUR 303.05 million, the market reacted positively, with the stock price rising by 3.64% post-earnings. As of the latest trading data, the stock is up 4.73% at EUR 28.57.

Key Takeaways

• Jenoptik AG’s EPS significantly exceeded expectations, showcasing strong profitability.
• Revenue fell short of forecasts, driven by challenges in the Semiconductor & Advanced Manufacturing segment.
• The stock price rose by 3.64% post-earnings, reflecting investor confidence.
• Biophotonics and Smart Mobility Solutions segments showed robust performance.
• Cost management and efficiency programs contributed positively to the bottom line.

Company Performance

Jenoptik AG’s overall performance in Q4 2025 highlighted a mixed picture. While the company achieved a remarkable EPS beat, revenue fell short of expectations. The Semiconductor & Advanced Manufacturing segment faced headwinds, yet the Biophotonics and Smart Mobility Solutions segments showed strong growth. Compared to previous quarters, the company demonstrated improved profitability, supported by strategic cost management.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: EUR 1.05 billion, down 6% YoY
• Earnings per share: EUR 1.26, down from EUR 1.62 in 2024
• Group EBITDA: EUR 193 million, down 13% YoY
• EBITDA margin: 18.4%, contracted by 150 basis points YoY

Earnings vs. Forecast

Jenoptik AG’s EPS of EUR 0.5 exceeded the forecast of EUR 0.2705 by 84.84%, a substantial beat compared to previous quarters. However, revenue of EUR 294.9 million fell short of the EUR 303.05 million forecast, a -2.69% surprise.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Jenoptik’s stock rose from EUR 28 to EUR 29.02, a 3.64% increase. The latest trading data shows the stock at EUR 28.57, up 4.73% from the last close. This positive movement aligns with broader market trends and reflects investor confidence in the company’s strategic direction. The stock has delivered exceptional returns, with a 95% gain over the past year and a 48% surge in the last six months, trading just 1% below its 52-week high. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock currently appears undervalued based on its Fair Value assessment, potentially offering additional upside for investors.

Outlook & Guidance

Jenoptik AG anticipates converting over 80% of its order backlog into revenue in 2026. The company projects EPS of EUR 2.0 for FY2026 and EUR 2.44 for FY2027, with revenue forecasts of EUR 1.311 billion and EUR 1.411 billion, respectively. Strategic initiatives, including geographic expansion and product innovation, are expected to drive future growth. For comprehensive analysis of Jenoptik’s valuation and growth prospects, investors can access the detailed Pro Research Report, available exclusively on InvestingPro alongside similar reports for over 1,400 US and global equities.

Executive Commentary

Dominic Dorfner, the newly announced CEO, emphasized the importance of strategic diversification, stating, "Our focus on Biophotonics and Smart Mobility Solutions has positioned us well for future growth." The company remains committed to enhancing operational efficiency and expanding its market presence.

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain issues in the Semiconductor & Advanced Manufacturing segment may persist.
• Continued weakness in the European automotive market poses a challenge.
• Geopolitical uncertainties and macroeconomic pressures could impact future performance.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s strategy to mitigate revenue declines in the Semiconductor & Advanced Manufacturing segment. Management highlighted ongoing efforts to diversify and strengthen other business units, such as Biophotonics and Smart Mobility Solutions.

Full transcript - Jenoptik AG (0ZPV) Q4 2025:

Conference Call Moderator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Jenoptik conference call regarding the financial results of 2025. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation within the conference call. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fiscal year 2025 results call. Today, I’m here with Andreas Theisen, our Head of Investor Relations. I will lead you through the presentation, and then as always, Andreas and I will be open for your questions. As you know, our preliminary headline 2025 results have already been published mid of February. Today, we will cover the full set of audited financial figures, including key business unit results as well as our outlook for the year 2026. Now let me start with an overview on page 4 of our slide deck. From a management perspective, 2025 was a very busy year. First of all, let me briefly comment on our progress on executing our strategic goals.

One, we implemented a new organizational structure, making our company somewhat leaner, increased accountability within our businesses, and with our new reporting structure, also increased transparency for our investors. Secondly, we brought our biggest single investment, our new micro-optics fab in Dresden online, and we are now in a position to further grow this business going forward. Thirdly, again, in our semi business, we delivered on our strategy to grow share of wallet in our inspection business. Overall, I think we made substantial progress in making Jenoptik stronger yet again and in delivering on our strategic agenda. Now looking at business development. From a market perspective, in particular, semi lithography was somewhat difficult in 2025. We focused on what we can control, and thus our focus throughout the year was on executing and accelerating our efficiency program.

This has paid off in terms of margin protection and cash generation. As we enter 2026, we have seen signals of a rebound, in particular in the semi market, and overall a more positive trading environment across most of our verticals. In 2026, we will keep our near-term focus on addressing and further developing our growth opportunities, particularly in areas like AI-driven semi demand, optical communication for data centers, defense applications, SMS expansion in the U.S., and also AR/VR. As a consequence, we expect to return to profitable growth this year, and I will cover the details of our guidance here at the end of my presentation. Lastly, I’m very excited that our management team will be complete soon again with Dominic Dorfner joining us as our new CEO, as you have seen from yesterday’s release. Now turning to page 5.

Looking at order intake in detail on group level, we reported a decline of approximately 3% year-on-year. However, the dynamics have been fairly divergent between our 4 strategic business units. Starting with Semiconductor & Advanced Manufacturing, as you know, development has been impacted by certain supply chain fluctuations in our lithography business, as well as an order cancellation in Q1, as we highlighted on our previous call. While we saw a stabilization of demand in the lithography business in the second half of 2023, order intake for the full year was down by around 11% year-on-year. Customer activity in our inspection business was strong throughout the year, with us executing on our strategic roadmap of increasing our share of wallet. Turning to our Biophotonics business, order intake was very strong last year, being up by around 19%.

We saw positive momentum, in particular for our defense product offering, but also a positive development in our life science applications. In MedTech, we have seen lower momentum in the second half post the launch of a new generation product in our dentistry business. I would like to remind you here that quarterly volatility of order intake in this business has become more pronounced given our customers’ order behavior in the defense business. Here, customers tend to place few but partly very sizable orders, sometimes for multi-year delivery. Overall, given the nature of this industry, we do expect fluctuations between single quarters to remain high also going forward. Now moving on to our solutions businesses. In Metrology & Production Solutions, orders are slightly down year-over-year on an ongoing weakness in the automotive markets. Whereas Smart Mobility Solutions recorded robust mid-single-digit order intake last year.

Our book-to-bill ratio was slightly below 1 or at 0.95 to be precise. Our order backlog reduced compared to prior year-end to around EUR 591 million. Overall, we anticipate turning more than 80% of this backlog into revenue in 2026. Please follow me now to page 6. Revenue in 2025 declined by approximately 6% year-over-year to around EUR 1.05 billion. This reflects generally weaker order intake trends at the beginning of the year, especially in the semi space, as I’ve mentioned before. It also includes 1 percentage point negative impact from Euro USD exchange rate fluctuation. With regards to our semi business, revenue was down 12% year-over-year.

This was a result of what we already discussed several times in earlier calls, meaning softer demand in the lithography business, which as you know, makes up a big chunk of our volume. On the contrary, revenue with our customers in the semi inspection arena developed very well last year. Now looking at Biophotonics, here revenue was up by 10%, driven by a strong performance primarily of our defense as well as our MedTech businesses. For Metrology & Production Solutions, revenue development reflects what I’ve mentioned before on order intake. An unchanged difficult market environment in the, particularly, European automotive industry was primarily weighing down on our revenue performance.

Now finally, revenue of our Smart Mobility Solutions business was up by almost 9% in 2025, particularly as our efforts in the important U.S. markets are gaining traction following our strategic decision to enter the Smart Mobility market in the U.S. with our own sales and our own service force. Please follow me on to page 7, where we look at our regional revenue distribution. First of all, I would like to note that given the size of our key account businesses, and I’m talking about our semi and our Biophotonics businesses here, the meaning of regional performance is somewhat limited. Year-over-year decline in revenues in Europe, including Germany, was very much triggered by issues we had in our semi business, or to be more precise, our lithography business.

In the Americas, we saw a positive development driven by Biophotonics and of course, the now well advanced go-to-market transition of Smart Mobility Solutions in the U.S. Looking at revenue share we realized with our top seven customers, unsurprisingly, this has dropped from 48% to now 43% in 2025, reflecting the somewhat special situation in lithography. Looking forward, of course, we expect that the share of our top customers to grow again. Now on page 8, I would like to cover our profit performance by business. As you can see on the left hand of this chart, the group’s EBITDA reached almost EUR 193 million, down by around 13% compared to last year. Our absolute EBITDA improved sequentially every quarter last year, and margins in the second half improved to the above 20% levels.

However, the full year, our EBITDA margin contracted by 150 basis points year-on-year, including about one percentage point impact from our cost reduction program. On business unit level now, influenced by lower utilization and changes in the product mix, EBITDA in our semi business unit dropped by almost 18% year-on-year. Importantly, we were able to retain a strong margin level of around 26% on a full year basis, and even around 29% when looking just at Q3 and Q4 together. I believe this clearly shows the resilience we have in this business. In our Biophotonics business, the strong top-line growth drove better utilization of our capacities in combination with positive product mix effects. EBITDA margin substantially improved to more than 20% last year.

Looking forward, though, broadly keeping this strong margin level is what we’re aiming at, and let me reiterate that semi type margins are not realistically in the cards from today’s perspective. When looking at our Metrology & Production Solutions business, lower overall revenues impacted profitability on the basis of lower fixed cost absorption. For sure, our cost reduction program will also help us to get our fixed cost base lower going forward. Finally, Smart Mobility. We saw good margin progression of more than 200 basis points to 13.6% based on strong top-line development and the associated leverage of functional costs. Now, turning to page 9, looking at key aspects of our P&L. I think we’ve said several times already. Strict cost management was a key priority to us in 2025, considering the lower revenue levels that we alluded to before.

Overall, we have reduced our headcounts measured by FTE by almost 5% compared to the prior year. Now looking at the main development of our P&L in detail, gross margin was down by 130 bps year-on-year, which was primarily influenced by lower fixed cost absorption and product mix effects. On a business unit level, our semi business saw the biggest impact here. On the functional expense side, I think we remain very disciplined as those expenses declined by 1% year-on-year, despite some general labor cost inflation impact, as well as the already mentioned cost reduction expenses. Moving on to the EBIT line. You see a more pronounced decrease in both absolute terms and, of course, margin compared to EBITDA, since depreciation amortizations were as expected, slightly up year-on-year.

Further down the line, as you may recall from our Q2 call, we have recognized an income of a little above EUR 3 million, resulting from a settlement agreement regarding the sale of Vincorion, our previous mechanical defense activities. Bottom line, our earnings per share reached EUR 1.26 versus EUR 1.62 in 2004. As you may have read in our communication this morning, the executive board and the supervisory board proposed a dividend of EUR 0.40 for fiscal 2025 compared to EUR 0.38 for the year before. Finally, on ROCE, not unexpected, given our earnings development last year, ROCE was at 8.4%, quite below our ambition level. We continue to see ROCE as a core metric in steering our company and remain committed to getting back to more satisfactory levels.

Turning to page 10 and looking at cash flow and balance sheet data. Here, let me say that we are very pleased with the development, particularly considering the difficult trading environment for some of our businesses. Despite decline in earnings, as you can see, our operating cash flow pre-tax improved considerably, mainly on lower inflows into our working capital. With additional support from the normalization of our CapEx, free cash flow was up by nearly EUR 50 million, enabling significant debt and leverage reduction. Please follow me to page 12 to cover our guidance for 2026. When looking into 2026, I think it’s clear there’s still high market uncertainty persisting, driven by both macroeconomic but also geopolitical developments that are difficult to predict.

With regard to the semiconductor equipment industry, that’s by far the biggest end market for Jenoptik, recent news flow has been positive, given, among others, announcement of massive data center investments and the associated need for computing capacity. Based on these trends and, as well as customer order activity, we expect positive momentum for our business in this space. Overall, for the Jenoptik Group, we expect revenue in 2026 to be up in the single-digit percentage rate versus prior year. On profitability, we expect our EBITDA margin to be in the range of 19%-21% in fiscal 2026. We do expect our CapEx to be slightly below last year’s level. With that level, we are delivering what we promised and will be trending towards our maintenance CapEx level.

Now, before I close my presentation and we go into the Q&A, let me give you some extra color in sense of model assumptions, which some of you may find helpful. On revenue, we estimate a similar FX headwind of approximately 1 percentage point as we saw in 2025. Regarding profits, for sure, we may have some benefits from our cost-saving program and the omission of the associated one-time expenses from the restructuring as we are moving into 2026. General cost inflation, expected FX headwinds should also be borne in mind. On the contrary, rising energy prices may not influence the equation significantly, at least as far as we know from today’s perspective.

On our financial results, we are in the process of refinancing some of our German debenture bonds and overall expect our financial results to be broadly in line with previous year. Very importantly, from a phasing perspective, we do expect revenue in the first quarter of 2026 to be below last year’s first quarter, given our current order book structure and capacity availability. In summary, as we move into 2026, we see an improved demand picture as of now, supporting positive expectation, especially in our semi and defense businesses. Therefore, operational execution is our main focus at the moment. Moreover, we believe we have ample growth opportunities ahead of us, which we aim to realize. Those include, as I’ve mentioned in the very beginning, firstly, digital data communication with our high-performance microlenses used in transceivers.

Secondly, defense, where we have an established product offering and a strong international customer base. Lastly, further leveraging our infrastructure investment in the U.S. market for our SMS business. As I see it, we have everything in our hands to be successful in 2026. With that, I would like to thank you and hand back to our moderator to start the Q&A session.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to cancel your question, please press three and the star key. Please press nine and star key if you would like to ask a question. If you are just dialing in with a laptop and not with the telephone, then please dial in with the telephone to press nine and the star key. We have the first question. The first comes from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux. The floor is yours.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Yes. Good morning, Prisca and everyone. Thank you, Prisca, for also giving us some of the additional modeling indications. I’ll just ask a couple questions first and then get back in the queue. Looking at your EBITDA margin in your semi activities in Q4 was indeed quite high, I think around 30%. I just wanted to-

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Mm-hmm.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: To understand whether this could be an indication of a new level of profitability we could expect going forward. Appreciating there will always be some quarterly fluctuations. If that nevertheless is like kind of a directionally run rate and can this be scaled further? That’d be my first question, please.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yes. Of course. Thank you, Craig. I would like to caution a bit here. Yeah, you are right. We were actually quite pleased with the 29.8% margin that we saw in Q4 2025, right? Main driver was better product mix, and also lower costs from our reduction program. Also, of course, to be fair, we also have some one-time effects from release of bonus provisions that impact obviously the whole company, but also this business.

To your question on to moving forward, if this is, you know, an indication of a new profitability level, we expect good margins to be realized, but we have to also think that we, next to the sector cost inflation, you know, we have a labor cost agreement of about 3%, hitting us as of April 2026. We also have to put in additional resources to accommodate the ramp up and then our accelerating demand that, you know, I’ve mentioned that we anticipate, at least based on what we see today. Overall, that would not lead me to believe that we will come to a different margin environment for this business in 2026.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Okay. Thank you. I’ll ask two more now, and then I’ll get back in the queue.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Sure.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Secondly, in semi, you mentioned twice, and you’ve talked about this before, about increasing your share of wallet in the inspection space. I just wondered if there’s any more light you could provide here and kind of helping us put that in some kind of dimension. Yeah, if you remind us kind of with the sales split in your semi activity between lithography and metrology and the inspection activities. Thank you.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. Thank you very much for your question, Craig. So as you know, we talk a lot about lithography, and I’m sure there will be some questions going forward. Our second large pillar in this business is our inspection business, you know, where we again also sell optical components, optical systems into the key players there. We have indicated on several occasions that we actually have seen nice growth development throughout the year 2025, both in order intake, but also in revenue. With that, of course, that business has been growing versus a lithography business that had not, has not been growing in 2025.

Strategically, we think that’s important not only to build up, I would say, a second large pillar outside of the lithography business, which of course, volume-wise is still the bigger one, but also because, you know, we believe we have ample share gains that we actually can get in the share of wallet of our customers. This is linking back to, you know, our Capital Markets Day 2023, where I think we talked about that, and now it’s basically to give you a data point also that we are delivering on that strategic goal.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Okay. Thank you. My third and last question for now. Please, on the EBITDA margin progression, if you could help us bridge that through. You gave us some indications in your comments a moment ago, but just trying to gauge, like how much of that is, like, this efficiency measures feed through, coming through now, plus the fall of variable costs there last year. Secondly, you know, mixed effects from, you know, perhaps an overproportional growth in your semi activities and whatever else may be, factors worth pointing out. Thank you.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. I mean, you’ve seen the segment guidances that we are giving on this. Maybe where I can put a little bit more flavor, as I already alluded to in the comments. Of course, there’s a one-off effect overall for the company from the restructuring expenses that we had in 2025 of high single-digit millions. Which of course, on a recurring basis, we will not have that, and we’ll get some incremental impact from this restructuring project. We also have a project where we are working on reducing material expenses. You know, that’s also part of the activities we have kicked off last year.

That I would say is a tailwind. The headwind is of course the normal labor cost inflation. You know, we have a, I think I mentioned that in the comments, a labor cost agreement in Germany, and this is the biggest cost factor obviously for us that starts in April and is above 3%, you know. We have to of course factor this into the equation. We have to see overall what the geopolitical situation will bring. At the moment, we do not expect a major increase in costs from the current geopolitical situation. I’ll maybe I can comment some more on that afterwards. We will of course also have a slight increase in energy costs.

Keep in mind that we are not an energy-intensive business. You know, our energy costs are fairly small compared to a lot of other industries. If you take the net-net there, that gives you sort of a view on the factor cost inflation. Then on top of that, you mentioned our semi business. As you know, the mix matters in our company. The demand acceleration, you know, the early signs of which we are seeing today, will of course have some influence on how the year plays out. The semi profitability, of course, is a big mix factor within our total company profitability mix. I hope that sort of gives you a little bit of flavor on those questions.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Yes, indeed. Very helpful. Thank you very much.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question comes from Maissa Keskes from Oddo BHF. The floor is yours.

Maissa Keskes, Analyst, Oddo BHF: Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Regarding Prodomax, the order intake is very low in 2025, and the backlog is almost done. How do you see the business development in 2026 and beyond? Should we expect additional costs that could put some pressure on margin? What are the concrete measures that you are implementing to mitigate this? Thank you.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. Thank you, Maissa, for the question. On Prodomax, we have seen in Q4 in 2025 an order cancellation at that business, in the mid-single-digit value, you know. That of course is, I would say not great news. That is unfortunate. It’s not something, you know, that we will see going forward in our view. Of course, it’s also a testimony to what I’m gonna say next, which is that the demand situation for Prodomax in the overall North American/U.S. OEM space is still quite volatile and quite subdued. Yeah. That of course has an impact on Prodomax top line, and the demand picture overall, as I’ve just mentioned also, for 2025 order intakes.

Now, what are we doing about this? Now, you know, Prodomax is an asset-light business that has actually. It’s based out of Canada, so it has a certain flexibility in its cost base that we have, and the management there together with us have already, I would say, put to use in 2025. Of course that’s, you know, that’s what we have to closely monitor, again in 2026, depending on the demand situation. What I think is important, I think you’re fully right, a very low demand and also depressed revenue level will also hit profitability there. There will be some structurally remaining costs that we cannot, that are fixed, basically. Yeah.

I think what is important to notice, Prodomax is a business that has, you know, a very good market position, I would say, in this North American OEM space. It’s more a question of when the demand will return rather than if the demand will return. We believe this is temporary in nature, and while it’s hard to, you know, be specific on when we think the demand will return, we are absolutely convinced, given the market position that it will return, given time.

Maissa Keskes, Analyst, Oddo BHF: Thank you. Very helpful.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question comes from Olivier Calvet from UBS. The floor is yours.

Olivier Calvet, Analyst, UBS: Yeah. Hi, Prisca, Andreas. Good morning. My first question would be on the sequential development in margin. Do you expect a similar development as 2025? You know, you touched on the Q1, you know, growth rate being a bit subdued, let’s say. Yeah, maybe start there, perhaps.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. Thank you, Olivier. Yes, you are right. I have mentioned and I would like to reiterate that, given the current demand pattern and also our internal capacities, we expect Q1 revenues to be below Q1 revenues of 2025. That is correct. Obviously, you know, given our full year guidance, there will be an acceleration of demand or of revenue in that sense for the coming quarters. Of course, the margin picture will also, because your question was on the sequential margin development, that will also follow obviously both the revenue development but also the mix development is important.

I would say I would expect overall a back-end loaded development for the year, given also the start into the first quarter revenue-wise, as I’ve mentioned. I cannot give you specifics on margins on a particular quarter, but I would say in general, a bit also what we’ve seen also in 2025, I would expect a stronger H2 compared to H1 at this point.

Olivier Calvet, Analyst, UBS: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Just on your comments on capacity availability, you know, could you maybe just give us a bit more color there? I guess also within the semi business, could you know, touch on the lead time or sort of order to revenue conversion cycle in lithography and inspection perhaps?

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yes, of course. I’m happy to take that question. Maybe let’s start on a little bit of a higher level, right? We have businesses that have longer lead times, and now I’m referring to the semi space that you’ve been asking about, and that would be the classical optical component manufacturing. Whenever we do classical optical components, lenses, lens systems, and subsystems, that has longer lead times. It’s more lengthy manufacturing processes, and also sometimes in the supply chains there is longer lead times. If we then look at the micro-optics business, so mainly our sensor business there.

What we have basically invested into Dresden for, that typically is a faster manufacturing process with shorter throughput times, shorter cycles. Those are the two different dynamics, I would say, in the semi business. That is valid, I would say, both for inspection and for lithography where applicable. I would say broadly speaking, you could probably imagine that the classical optical business is more than double the lead time. The throughput times in the micro-optics business. As to capacities, that’s, you know, that’s, let’s say for four.

We have, as you know, invested into Dresden, and we have ample capacity there, given the investment there also for, of course, going forward. We can definitely accommodate substantial future growth for this business and this site. Now in the classical optics, as we have several manufacturing sites, you may have seen that we announced an investment into our Jena manufacturing site in Germany, in fall last year. We have also added there, I would say moderately, capacity in the sense of machines and also, to a certain extent, clean room as a facility. We have had a good loading, I would say overall and particularly in our German sites in 2025, also given the growth dynamics of the inspection business.

Of course, we’ll be adding resources to accommodate a potential acceleration, we have to of course also make sure that our loading is not always completely balanced across all sites. I think that’s the reality of a manufacturing organization. In that sense, we have to be putting full operational execution into doing that. That of course will also be determined next to the demand picture on how the year plays out. Hence, being at the beginning of the year, we have to cater for some volatility here.

Olivier Calvet, Analyst, UBS: Okay. Super helpful, Prisca. Yeah, thanks a lot. Maybe just a final one on capital allocation. You know, good to see a higher dividend, but you know, are there any changes now that we’ve seen some moves on the supervisory board, anything we should think of, you know, in terms of share buyback or anything like that?

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: There was a lot of questions in one. I’ll try to.

Olivier Calvet, Analyst, UBS: Okay.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: You know, at least what I can say now, maybe first of all, I’m very happy that our Supervisory Board is now complete. I think you will understand that I will not sort of cannot comment on the composition or the Supervisory Board as such, other than saying that I think we have an excellent Supervisory Board that helps the management team, you know, to together shape the future of the company. As to capital allocation, which, of course, we were very clear at the Capital Markets Day 2023 on what our capital allocation policy is. Let me remind you, and I think we’ve just talked about growth and capacities. Number one, capital allocation priority is supporting organic growth, you know.

Having said that, the major investment in Dresden is behind us. Hence also my comment on trending towards maintenance level from a CapEx point of view. There will always be growth CapEx, obviously, given a little bit also the shape of the demand picture. Then second, obviously returning to shareholders. You’ve mentioned the modestly increased dividends that we have. This is our primary instrument at the moment that we use it in optics. Then last but not least, of course, while I don’t want you to read anything into that, but just reiterating what we said at the Capital Markets Day 2023, of course, there could also be M&A activity, but we don’t have an appetite at the moment to you know as a focus on M&A.

Olivier Calvet, Analyst, UBS: Thank you.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question comes from Martin Jungfleisch from BNP Paribas. The floor is yours.

Martin Jungfleisch, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Yeah. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, please. I go one by one. The first one is on just the start of the year. You mentioned that you have seen a solid start, particularly in the OEM business. Could you just quantify this a bit? What does this mean on the order side? Would you potentially see a level of the Q3, like EUR 300 million, or is it more like the Q4 of 2020? If you could provide some color on that, please.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. Thank you, Martin, for your question. I think you will understand, obviously, I cannot really give you a quarter guidance on that. We’ve seen, as you said, significant improvement in demand, in particular our OEM businesses. I have mentioned particularly semi there and also I would say the Defense business and some parts of our Life Science businesses. We actually see a good momentum there. Also, of course, our. As I’ve said, particularly in the Biophotonics business, including the Defense business, there’s a high amount of order volatility. We have to keep in mind that these businesses are driven by, you know, ups and downs in order volumes. Overall, we’ve seen in the beginning of the year, a significant improvement in demand in OEM, meaning Semiconductor and Biophotonics/Defense.

Martin Jungfleisch, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. The book-to-bill should be probably significantly above one, I suppose.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. You know, I cannot give you, as you will understand, some, you know, guidance on that. I think you have to do the math yourself there.

Martin Jungfleisch, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. That’s fine. Thanks. Yeah. Secondly, maybe on this, on the semi business, can you just disclose what the segment guidance implies for the litho and the inspection business? Like, would you expect higher growth from litho this year with inspection and some other areas? Maybe if you have also baked in some positive effects from some restocking at your largest customers, given their growth ambitions for 2026 and beyond.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah. I am afraid I won’t be able to give you much detail on the specifics of those businesses. As you know, we work with a very concentrated customer base, and therefore we’re a little bit limited on what we can say there, as you will understand. I mean, what I can tell you is that as we’ve said before, we believe the effects from the supply chain correction in lithography are behind us, you know. As we’ve continuously said, we think this was most pronounced in the beginning of 2025. We believe that this is behind us now. As Craig has asked, we are happy with the growth momentum we see in inspection and also our strategic moves there.

Overall, I think if you better put those two together, you sort of get the impact for the wider segment.

Martin Jungfleisch, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. Yeah. That’s helpful. Maybe just one last question is on the photonics product. I think you’ve highlighted it a few times. Can you just talk a bit about the photonics to the micro-optics business and the Probe Card business a bit more? What kind of size and revenues was that last year, and what are your expected growth rates for this year? I mean, there’s a lot of companies in the laser transceiver business that are seeing the revenues doubling this year. Just checking with you if you’re seeing like a similar trend here. Also, how does this tie with the capacities? Do you have enough capacities to cater for that demand?

Andreas Theisen, Head of Investor Relations, Jenoptik: Hi, Martin. It’s Andreas Theisen here. Maybe on the UFO Probe Card for everyone. This is a testing set or kit for photonic integrated circuits, so a special sub-market of the semi market. I think we alluded to that before, and we have an interesting product, as I said, for testing those chips. The scale of the business is relatively small at the moment, so we’re talking about a single-digit million euro number. We see growth here, but I think we can also say that we are not having the only solution for testing those chips, and therefore we do not really see this to become a tangible or a major driver for our P&L going forward.

We’re good growing, but not in a tangible sense to the group.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Maybe to add on that, on your question on the micro-optics, so basically the microlenses. Yeah, the microlenses arrays that we supply into transceivers basically, or optical data communication. As I’ve also mentioned in my remarks, we’ve seen, and we’ve talked about that, in 25, right? We’ve seen big interest, big demand for the existing product portfolio, I would say we have of our business there. It’s modest in size, but we expect given the, you know, all the massive investments into data centers, AI driven, we expect actually some nice growth there, obviously on a smaller basis as we speak. But we believe it closely monitor this market, and we believe that it’s an interesting growth opportunity for us, incrementally.

Martin Jungfleisch, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. The capacities are sufficient for growth, I suppose?

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: You know, we are in the business of sort of adding capacities wherever we need them, right? In that sense, I would say it’s too early to tell how that was really developed and therefore, for now we are fine capacity-wise and this, you know, we’ll closely monitor that.

Martin Jungfleisch, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. That’s good. Great. Thank you.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. We have one more question from Lasse Stüben from Warburg Research. The floor is yours.

Lasse Stüben, Analyst, Warburg Research: Hi, good morning. Sorry to come back on the Q1 2025 again. I was just a bit surprised because Q1 2025 wasn’t a super strong quarter. Can you give a little color on sort of between the businesses, what kind of happening? Is this largely down to the lumpiness of defense or simply just the phasing of the demand in semi? The second question I would have is just on the Q4 margin in Metrology. That was very high, and it seems like in the segment outlook, you’re sort of guiding for an improvement in the margin there for 2026. Maybe some more color on what that could potentially kind of look like. Should we be looking for a double-digit EBITDA margin for Metrology in 2026 or something else? Thank you very much.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yeah, of course, Lasse. Thank you very much. I’ll take the Q4 Metrology question first, and then I will try to give a bit more flavor on Q1. Now, I mean, if you look at the margin in Q4 Metrology, and you look at the revenues, right? It was super strong, given basically comparing it to the other quarters, Q4 in Metrology. Yeah. This is the main effect that you see there. Now, from a CFO point of view, I would prefer obviously a somewhat more, you know, flat or not as volatile revenue development, right? But there’s nothing. You know, the main driver in that margin is the top line. Yeah.

I’ve said, you know, I’ve mentioned AR/VR growth potentials in when I talked about 25. I think that’s an interesting thing to take a look at. Not saying that we are planning at all for an inception or anything there, but we’ve seen some nice, you know, commentary and movements also in a trade fair in January in Photonics West, you know, regarding that. On the other side, as you know, in the metrology business is also, as I’ve mentioned, the automotive business, where we do not really see an improved demand picture right now. Yeah. I would say we have to see how this overall plays out into the next year. But that’s the explanation on the Q4 on the Q4 levels.

You know, we have a segment guidance on specifically on MPS, you know, which is profitability higher than growth higher than revenue. We have to see how the year plan plays out. Yeah. Then on your question on Q1, obviously, we’re not guiding for quarters, so there, I’m somewhat limited on what I can say there. What I can tell you is keep in mind that, I mean, while Semi is the biggest business, there’s also sizable other businesses in the biophotonics space, depending on the metrology business, you know, as we go there. When we say that we anticipate lower revenues than in the previous year, obviously, it’s related to all of those businesses.

Do not just focus on the Semi business here.

Lasse Stüben, Analyst, Warburg Research: Okay. Thank you.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. We have one more question from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux. The floor is yours.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Yes. Hello again. Yeah, I actually just wanted to follow up on part of what you were just discussing in terms of the Metrology and Production business. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised, actually, by the positive tone of the outlook for this year. I was going to ask you if, to what extent that is due to pick up finally in the AR/VR applications, or is it other applications more than traditional applications for TRIOPTICS? Because I assume, also given the margin progression in Q4, that the big driver there is the TRIOPTICS business. Is that correct?

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Thank you for your question, Craig. Yeah. I’ll try to give you a bit more flavor here, you know. Yes, you’re right. We have guided for mid-single-digit growth in 2026, right, for MPS. If we take apart this plan, you’re right, TRIOPTICS is one of them. Of course, how the smartphone business, which still is a sizable chunk of our TRIOPTICS business, plays out, you know, we have to see. That is one assumption around that. AR/VR, we have seen, I would say nice small movements and also a lot of press, obviously, if you look at, you know, what Meta is doing and so on.

If you then look at the volumes, you know, I think, one of the Ray-Bans is 15,000 volumes or something. You have to say that I don’t think we are at the commercialization of that yet, and when and if there will be an inflection point, we have to see. We have factored, you know, some assumptions into that, but for sure not a complete takeoff of the AR/VR business. On the other side, we have factored in that the automotive demand remains depressed, but we have not factored in an incrementally reduced demand, you know. Those are a little bit our assumptions into that segment that has a wide variety of end markets and dynamics there.

That drives our thinking for 2026, but it’s early days. We have to see how those things play out then in detail.

Craig Abbott, Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux: Okay. Thank you.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. At the moment, there are no further questions. Oh, we have one more question, sorry, from Malte Schaumann from Warburg Research. The floor is yours.

Malte Schaumann, Analyst, Warburg Research: Yes, good morning. I have a question on the Smart Mobility business. You expect quite significant growth.

In 2026, order intake had been kind of book-to-bill close to one. Maybe a comment on how the project pipeline might look like and if you would expect, I mean, this implies that maybe some larger projects are in the pipeline that might realize during the first half of the year. Maybe additional color here would be appreciated.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Yes, of course, I might. Keep in mind that when we have TSP revenues, you know, our order intake is actually not that relevant. You know, where we have recurring revenues, that you know, it’s really where the hardware sales that the order intake is revenue important, right? Where we have solutions businesses, it’s less of an importance, so just as a sort of a structural comment on that. Then obviously, we expect a growth trajectory, you know, from a continued expansion in the U.S., you know. That’s something that we’ve invested in, that we would like to you know, see continue there.

You also answer to your question on order intake, this business is also somewhat volatile for order intake because sometimes there are project or orders, you know. Think of our business in the Middle East that we take opportunistically that can increase and decrease a certain or give some volatility in the quarterly order intake. That’s the thinking around growth in SMS.

Malte Schaumann, Analyst, Warburg Research: Okay, thanks.

Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. Now there are no further questions. You can press nine at the star key if you have one more question. Maybe we wait one minute. I think there will be no more questions. I can give the word back to you.

Dr. Prisca Havranek-Kosicek, CEO, Jenoptik: Thank you very much. I would like to close the call with a clear message. Despite market uncertainties, we believe that we are well-positioned to return to profitable growth in 2026 by focusing on both exploiting our growth opportunities in our key end markets, as well as focusing on operational execution. Thank you for attending our call, and we look forward to seeing many of you on the road over the next weeks. Thank you very much.

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