Earnings call transcript: LEM Holding SA Q2 2025 shows resilience amid market challenges

LEM Holding SA (LEMN) reported its Q2 2025 earnings on November 10, revealing a mixed performance amidst challenging market conditions. The company's earnings per share (EPS) and revenue figures were not explicitly disclosed in the forecast data, but the market reaction was swift, with shares dropping 6.54% to CHF 400. This decline reflects investor concerns despite some positive operational improvements and strategic initiatives.

Key Takeaways

• LEM Holding SA's Q2 EBIT margin improved to nearly 10%.
• The restructuring program "Fit for Growth" reduced SG&A expenses by 13%.
• The company's stock fell 6.54% post-earnings announcement.
• New product launches are anticipated in 2026, with market penetration expected by 2027-2028.

Company Performance

LEM Holding SA demonstrated resilience in Q2 2025, with EBIT reaching CHF 7.2 million, representing nearly a 10% margin, an improvement from prior quarters. However, the first half of the fiscal year saw a 5.3% decline in sales to CHF 148 million, and gross margins decreased significantly by almost 15% to CHF 59 million. The company continues to face increased competition, particularly from Chinese manufacturers, impacting its market position.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: CHF 148 million, a 5.3% decline year-over-year.
• Gross margin: CHF 59 million, a nearly 15% drop.
• EBIT: CHF 11.4 million for H1, with Q2 contributing CHF 7.2 million.
• Net profit: 6.8% of sales, down 90 basis points from the previous year.
• Free cash flow improved to CHF 5.6 million from a CHF 12 million negative last year.

Market Reaction

LEM Holding SA's stock experienced a notable decline of 6.54%, closing at CHF 400, following the earnings release. This drop reflects investor concerns over the company's declining sales and gross margins despite operational efficiencies. The stock's performance contrasts with its 52-week high of CHF 985, indicating significant market volatility and investor caution.

Outlook & Guidance

The company maintains a cautious outlook due to ongoing market uncertainties. It forecasts sales between CHF 265-290 million and aims for an EBIT margin in the high single digits (7-9%), with a mid-term target of 10-15%. LEM Holding SA anticipates market stabilization and recovery after 2026, driven by sustainability trends and strategic product launches.

Executive Commentary

CEO Frank Greifeld emphasized the company's commitment to sustainability, stating, "We are convinced that the trend to sustainability is going to continue." CFO Antoine Chulia highlighted financial resilience, noting, "We expect 40% to be kind of the new floor moving forward as we grow." These comments underscore the company's strategic focus on long-term growth and market adaptation.

Risks and Challenges

• Increased competition from Chinese manufacturers poses a significant threat to market share.
• Market volatility and economic uncertainties could impact future sales and profitability.
• The restructuring program's success in reducing costs may face operational hurdles.
• Dependence on new product launches for future growth adds execution risk.
• Fluctuations in currency exchange rates could affect financial performance.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on the impact of the restructuring program and market dynamics. Questions addressed the minimal impact of Nexperia and challenges in the renewable energy market. Executives clarified the company's gross margin expectations and provided insights into the order book's uncertainties, reflecting broader market challenges.

LEM Holding SA's Q2 2025 results highlight its strategic efforts to navigate a challenging market landscape. While operational improvements are evident, investor sentiment remains cautious, as reflected in the stock's decline. The company's focus on sustainability and innovation may drive future growth, but risks from competitive pressures and market volatility persist.

Full transcript - Lem Holding SA (LEHN) Q2 2026:

Conference Operator: Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the LEM Holding SA half year results. 2025-2026. At this time all participants have been placed on a listen only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Frank Rehfeld, CEO.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Thank you very much. Good morning ladies and gentlemen and a warm welcome to the presentation of our half year results. My name is Frank Greifeld, I'm the CEO of LEM and I'm here together with Antoine Julla, our CFO. For those who are not yet familiar with LEM, LEM is providing sensors for measuring electrical parameters, namely current, voltage and energy and with those help our customers and society to transition to a sustainable future. Here you see the agenda for today's presentation. After my opening remarks I will give you more detail on the business performance of LEM. Antoine Julla, our CFO, will then introduce the financial results and I'm going to outline what we expect in the future as well as talk about the adjustments we did with respect to our mid term ambition.

As you might remember, we had a tough start into 2025-2026, flat sales at constant currencies in comparison to the previous year. However, both the gross margin and consequently also the EBIT margin were under pressure in Q1. Despite not seeing significant improvement on the top line in constant currencies in Q2, we managed to improve in Q2 both before mentioned KPIs, and Antoine will go here in greater detail. For the first six months, the 5.3% decline in our top line can be fully attributed to FX losses, whereas the segments growing and those declining were balancing out each other. We were in particular happy with the developments in Automation, Automotive, and Track and saw good momentum in China. We are also happy to share that we are fully on track with our Fit for Growth program. That helps us to trim our indirect cost.

You might also remember that we reported CHF 12 million negative cash flow a year ago and managed to improve the cash flow to CHF 5.6 million in 2025-2026 first half. We will come to the guidance for this year that you see here in the numbers as well as the updated mid term financial ambitions at the end of the presentation. Again. Now with that, let's move on to the business performance in more detail following our business structure. You see here the development of the five businesses in comparison to the same period in 2024-2025. I will focus on the numbers in constant currencies. As you know, LEM is doing about 40% of its business in Renminbi that has been strongly depreciating after the announcement of the tariffs by the U.S.A.

We are happy to share that the Automation business has started to slightly grow again after four rather flat quarters. Our Automotive business with strong focus to China has been growing by 9% H1 versus H1 last year and saw an even more significant volume growth, and the Traction business was growing even stronger. However, we also saw weak segments like Renewable energy and energy distribution that I will explain in greater detail in the following slides. On this page you see the distribution of our businesses relative to each other. What becomes clear is that there has been movement in all businesses.

Looking at our two biggest businesses first, Automation grew in particular in the second quarter nicely by more than 4% since inventories normalized and Automotive, despite seeing a shrink in Q2 in CHF, continued to grow in Renminbi. The businesses in the smaller segments have been changing position. The very strong development of our Traction business has been making it our third biggest business, whereas Renewable energy has been shrinking by 2 percentage points, similar to the energy distribution and precision business that also lost 2 percentage points relative. Now let's go through the businesses one by one, starting with our biggest business, the Automation business that almost represents 30% of our global business. You see a small growth in Q2 against Q2 last year linked to normalized inventory levels. As already mentioned, this growth materializes mainly in power levels above 1 kW for LEM and happens across all regions.

Nevertheless, this has 3% reduction six months over six months. That is to be attributed to currency. In constant currencies, this business has been growing by 3%. Our automotive business saw a nice growth of 9% in constant currencies, 2% in CHF. Growth areas were China and Europe, whereas in particular the Americas suffer from the policy changes the U.S. Administration has been implementing. We continue improving our market position in China. We are working mainly with Chinese OEMs and Tier 1 that we are expecting to further expand globally. We also saw positive momentum in Europe with increasing new energy vehicle sales and the ramp up of some of our automotive products in the market. Rest of Asia depends very much on exports that were weak, in particular towards the Americas.

If we do not see a short term change coming, Renewable energy representing now 14% of our global business declined in constant currencies by 15% despite growing photovoltaic installations. The average content of current sensing by inverter is going to further decline step by step and the price pressure is going to remain high. We are expecting this to remain a segment that is as competitive as Automotive. The developments in Europe go into two directions. Domestic solar will be completely dominated by Chinese players and therefore served by us in China. Whereas large commercial projects will see European sources. We expect that we are restarting to grow in this subsegment and with our European customers. Notable are the positive developments in rest of Asia both in Japan and India with local government investments that we expect to continue.

The energy distribution and high precision business became our smallest segment with 13% of our total turnover. It also continued to shrink at 50% six months on six months. The lion's share in this segment is the DC meter for fast chargers that remained challenging both in Europe and the U.S. as the new energy vehicle sales developed below the installation rates on the one hand. On the other hand, some of our customers also lost market share. The Chinese expert business for DC fast chargers remained stable. The acquisition sub segments were rather weak due to lower demand in automotive EV testing. Whereas the UPS, the uninterruptible power supplies, were nicely picking up with the increasing installations in data centers. Looking at the Track business was the surely biggest fun in this quarter.

This takes up now 17% of our total business and developed with a growth rate of 15% in constant currencies. Very positively. The development happened across all regions based on the ongoing investments into public infrastructure and the increasing standardization of regulations across Europe. The consequence of this standardization is that this requires to retrofit energy meters across all of Europe. Projecting this business now from a regional perspective, we see important changes in comparison to last year. Our business share in China remains stable at constant currencies, however shrank due to the depreciation of the Renminbi. Therefore, it takes now 37% of our total business, 2 percentage points less than for the first six months last year. The segments Automation, Automotive and Track contributed.

As previously mentioned, the rest of Asia business showed a slight growth six months over six months and an even nicer growth in Q2 with more than 12%. The main contribution was coming here from traction. Just to report here the progress of our plant in Malaysia. We are meanwhile producing the same volume than in Bulgaria despite the fact that the sales share is still substantially lower. We see an increasing demand of customers who look for either a dual sourcing both from China or Malaysia or even a relocation of their production towards Malaysia. This confirms our strategic decision to set up this new site. That on the other hand is still burdening our P and L since it reduces the overall loading of our manufacturing footprint.

Clearly disappointing sales in EMEA shrinking 7% six months over six months where the reduction in EDHP and renewable was balanced out by automotive, traction, and automation. The Americas numbers are including the tariffs that we are passing on to our customers and the business is overall stable, albeit below expectation looking at the development in automotive. Nevertheless, the successes with catalog distributors give us positive signals for the future. With this I would like to hand over to Antoine for the financial results.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Thanks, Frank. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q2 earnings call, and I'm Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer. I'm happy to walk you through LEM's financial performance for the period ending September 30, 2025, broadly showing a welcome recovery trend after some challenging results recently. As Frank explained, at CHF 148 million, our sales declined by 5% in the first half of the year, which translated to a positive growth of 0.5% at constant exchange rate. Q2 saw a slightly higher performance at minus 4% or 1.2% at constant exchange rate. Our gross margin dropped by almost 15% to CHF 59 million in the first half, mainly due to forex, price, and mix. Q2 showed early signs of recovery at CHF 30 million, down roughly 10% from Q2 last year thanks to a large reduction in operational expenditures under the Fit for Growth program.

EBIT reached CHF 11.4 million in the first half, of which CHF 7.2 million in Q2, an increase of more than 7% from the prior year. This represents about 7.7% of return on sales for the half year and just south of 10% for Q2. Now before restructuring costs, this margin is topping 11%. As we reported in Q1, our gross margin slipped in H1 from prior year's level just south of 40% of revenue.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: This is a 400 basis points drop.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Now we observed a 150 basis point recovery in Q2 following the Q1 drop due to price pressures pretty much across the business spectrum, but driven by China in renewable and industry in particular. We have explained some of these pressures by overcapacity in some of these markets combined with an aggressive commercial stance since the end of last year, but we have started to adjust towards a more selective approach. In addition, supply activity in Q2 is coming with better manufacturing and sourcing variance contribution. Our SGA spend landed on CHF 31.5 million for the first half in sharp decline from the prior year by 13% and with further sequential savings in Q2. These savings are heavily concentrated on the general and admin expenses both in personnel and non personnel leveraging reduction in force as well as productivity gains from our Pulse program with our recent ERP implementation.

In addition to the SGNA reduction, savings in R&D were achieved with Fit for Growth through a reduction in overall R&D personnel, but more importantly in alignment of our footprint towards Asia. This yields a reduction of more than 20% which is enabled by constant prioritization of R&D efforts as we aim to increase the overall R&D efficiency and time to market. Our financial results improved by CHF 1 million to a CHF 30 million loss for the half year period. The loss is mainly driven by the service cost of our debt, but the improvement from last year stems from a more favorable forex drag. Income tax wise, we're back to our historical effective tax rate performance around 18% on par with last year's, especially in the second half.

The first half performance last year was lifted by a favorable one time affecting the country tax mix both in expected and effective rates. Our overall P&L performance in H1 shows an overall compression from the prior year lending on a net profit of 6.8% of sales representing a 90 basis points drop. This flipped in Q2 though thanks to a recovery on all lines except for revenue. Margin rate improved and both operational expenses and financial expenses decreased further, yielding to both operational and net profits well above last year at CHF 7.2 million and CHF 4.8 million respectively. Working capital inflated due to large cash out payments since March including severance and separation costs.

In the context of the Fit for Growth program, our net debt position improved in the meantime as we continue to de-risk and deleverage this balance sheet and aiming for and landing above 40% equity ratio. Aside from cost control, we focused our efforts this past semester on cash management generating CHF 5.6 million free cash flow to the firm from a large burn of CHF 11.6 million in the prior year on a lower profit and EBITDA than last year and in spite of large restructuring outlays, we've managed to stay on top and lift our operating flows and reduce our capital expenditures and tax flows. This cash flow focus will remain one of our core priorities in the current environment.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: With this I'll hand it over.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: To Frank who will explain how we see this environment moving forward.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Thanks a lot, Antoine. Let me now share our outlook for the business. Overall, the business environment is not substantially changing. We hear anecdotally about some positive outlook expected for 2026 in some segments, however, do not see those reflecting in our bookings yet. Therefore, we remain prudent considering the volatile business environment as well as the possible exchange rate developments and the fact that historically the second half of our business was always weaker than the first. Consequently, we guide towards a sales range of CHF 265 million-CHF 290 million and the high single digit EBIT margin. As a result from the Fit for Growth effort, we have decided to update our mid term financial guidance reflecting the developments in our market. As a reminder for all of us, LEM's core market of current sensing has been going through different phases for a long time.

LEM has been acting in a niche market in which we had a rather dominant position. This was a small market with limited growth potential, however very stable. Things changed once sustainability gained importance around 2018 where the market size as well as the growth potential increased. At the same time the market became also more attractive for additional competition. We saw faster growth in this phase and were accordingly more optimistic. With reference to our outlook, Covid, the semiconductor crisis, and the strengthening of Chinese competition was ending this market phase and we find ourselves back in a new reality. A new market reality for us, our customers like the machine building industry or automotive as well as our peers to which we reacted with our Fit for Growth program that was launched a year ago.

We expect now a market adjustment and stabilization to continue through 2026, 2027 and afterwards an annual growth rate in the corridor of 4-7% in constant currencies. We target an EBIT margin corridor of 10-15% depending on currency and market development. Since we will maintain strict cost discipline and focus on financial resilience. What remained unchanged, however, is the base on which our strategy has been built. We are convinced that the trend to sustainability is going to continue. Despite the headwinds that we are currently seeing, we are well positioned to capture the growth that is eventually coming back from this. Megatrends towards electrification, renewable energy generation and energy efficiency.

The important R and D investments that we made towards integrated current sensing, TMR as well as forward integration like the DC meter get encouraging customer feedback that gives us confidence that those investments will help payback. The importance to be close to our increasingly Asian customers as well as being fast is reflected in our footprint and the time to market improvements that we are seeing. The manufacturing footprint, strongly Asia based but balanced between China and outside of China, enables us to flexibly react to geopolitical shifts. I close here and would like to thank you all for your attention. Before opening the Q and A, I would like to invite you already for the nine months earning call on February 6, 2026. With this we are ready to take your questions.

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press 9 and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, press 3 and star on your telephone keypad. For any questions now here in the phone conference, please press 9 and star on your telephone keypad. The first question is from Charlie Fernbach, awp. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning gentlemen. My question regards your midterm guidance. A year ago you postponed your goals already for two years. You still mentioned their sales level of CHF 600 million and an EBIT margin of 20% and more which should be able to reach I think after the year 2029, 2030. Now you have the new guidance, 10%-15% margin and this growth perspective for 4%-7%. So the old goals, can we forget about them? This CHF 600 million and this 20.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Charlie, for your question. Let's first understand that the business realities have been further, let's say, burdened by geopolitical decisions, tariffs. The market reality has been changing. Do we, you said, can we forget about the 600 million? I would clearly say no. However, the time until this will be achieved is probably even longer than what we were believing a year ago. What is for sure not helping is that on the one hand our core markets move more to Asia, but at the same time we report our growth in CHF. Right. Every depreciation of the renminbi basically costs us several percentage points in our growth story. Hope this answers the question.

Okay, yes, you mentioned the sales. Now the EBIT margin of 20% also is something which could be reached far in the future.

I mean, let's be careful to talk about far in the future, particularly for EBIT because here the question is how the markets are further developing. As you've been hearing, business in China is for sure confronted with higher competitiveness levels and higher price pressure. Therefore, we've been moving 5 percentage points down at least for the foreseeable future. Whether this is possible again is probably possible again to reach 15%-20%, probably a bit too early to say.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thanks for the question.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Tommaso Aperto, UBS. Please start with your question.

Yes, good morning. A couple of questions. I'll take them one by one. Firstly, maybe on the Nexperia, I mean there's been, you know, loads of headlines. Could you share if this has impacted you as well as a supplier?

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Yeah. Hello, Tomago. We were in the lucky position to be for the time being not affected, obviously we've been starting a lot of actions to see also how vulnerable we would be, what sort of second sources we have. As you know, we do more than 60% of our manufacturing in China and Expera supplies out of China, out of Dongguan. We were basically not affected and believe that potentially this remains like this because what I hear is that the situation becomes less critical than we were expecting still a couple of days ago.

Okay, thanks. Maybe on your margin guidance, those 10-15% EBIT margin, what kind of gross margins does that imply? I mean, in Q2 you managed to go back to about 40% gross margins. Is that more or less what you can expect? Basically that you would. That would enable you to reach those 10-15% or is gross margins further improving from here in order to achieve those 10-15%?

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Tommaso, I'll take this one. Yeah, we're expecting 40% to be kind of the new floor moving forward as we grow. You heard our cautious stance here on future growth. As we grow, we should be able to expand on this one a bit. Remember that we're facing kind of structural headwinds here, especially if growth happens in Chinese markets and or automotive markets. Right. We'll battle both these headwinds as we grow. 40% is probably the new benchmark moving forward, and anything north of this.

Better capacity utilization, basically compensating for higher price competitiveness.

Right.

Okay. Last question. On the full year guidance for sales, I mean in H1 you achieved CHF 148 million. If I just, you know, would annualize that, it would be already clearly above the top end of your guidance range. Frank, you mentioned some seasonality impacting here. Is that really the main driver? Why you think H2 is going to be so much lower than H1 at the midpoint? Or is that also taking into account, you know, further FX headwinds or, or even, you know, potentially deteriorating end markets?

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Yeah, I think a very good question. In particular, one end market will be surely deteriorating and this is the renewable end market because here the feed-in tariffs will have an, or the abandoning of the feed-in tariffs in China will have a negative impact on growth for the Chinese market for sure, not for the export from China, but at least for the local market. There we basically expect weaker numbers. We also have indications that the Chinese market overall will potentially develop in the second half less strong than it was in the first half.

Very clear. Thanks.

Pleasure.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Bernd Low, CKB. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you.

Good morning gentlemen.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Two questions I have left.

One is regarding free cash flow. You have achieved the turnaround in the first half.

Do you expect that to be continued?

Free cash flow to also be positive for the second half of this year. The second question is regarding your investment in integrated current sensing and in TMR in particular. You slightly mentioned you have made progress. Can you be more specific here and tell us about how far away are you from maturity so that these products can really be sold in large quantities into the market and do you expect cannibalization of existing applications or is this only or almost only new applications that can be entered? Thank you.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Thanks, Berg. I'll take your first question on free cash flow. We're definitely expecting free cash flow to be positive moving forward thanks to a lift in our working capital performance as we keep focusing on these actions, and that's a very high level summary. It's been the focus of our efforts in the first half, so we're expecting to see more results in the second half from this. We're staying very cautious from a capital expenditure standpoint as well. Overall, we're expecting also probably less cash outlays from restructuring.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: So overall.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: We're cautiously optimistic here. Free cash flow launch for the second half.

Thank you.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Good. I take the ICS TMR question and for sure you basically had a multitude of sub questions. Maybe allow me to quickly summarize the picture here. This is the activity that we do in cooperation with TDK and the products that we've been developing there together has now been summed up to several customers both in the automotive and in the non automotive business. We've been receiving an overwhelmingly positive feedback. Do we expect cannibalization? Rather not. Because our today's business in the area of integrated current sensing is rather small. Therefore there is majority growth, growth, growth. Talking about launch, we will launch the product in 2026.

However, looking into, let's say, the typical qualification cycles that we have at our customers, we should not expect now an enormous sales contribution in 2026, even 2027 will be probably still a bit slow until really the applications are then picking up and getting launched and getting then in mass, mass production. I think here we need to be a bit more patient. This market is not in, you know, not in, let's say, iPhone market where suddenly everybody switches to a new iPhone. These are rather slow ramp up processes.

Okay, thank you very much, Frank. Pleasure.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Remus Rezaou, elvischebank. Please go ahead with your question.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Yes, thank you.

Looking at your midterm new growth target in sales of 4-7% in local currencies, not in Swiss francs.

I mean, given that you are moving.

More and more into, you know, volume markets, mass markets, there must be an underlying assumption here about volumes and prices. The only conclusion can be that volumes have to go up much more than these 4-7% OPEC prices.

Of course, then on the other hand.

Will continue to go down. Is that the correct assumption?

Yes, I think. Thanks for the question. I think this is precisely the correct assumption. By the way, not a surprise for a component business where you see regularly a price down to a measuring point like we also see. The more this business becomes in Chinese business, the more volume increase. You need to see a bit of increase in the sales eventually. Yeah, so that is exactly the right assumption.

Okay, now could you share these assumptions with us? I mean there must be numbers behind these 4-7%. You know, on volume assumptions and price assumptions you have baked into that.

Unfortunately we can not share them. You can imagine that these are also relevant not only for you, but also for competition. Let's be honest, we have seen certain developments in the past and for sure taking them, extrapolated them into the future, whether all that holds true, it also depends a little bit on the product mix. The more, let's say, high value products like a DC meter come in, that also distorts the picture. It will be not that easy to construct here a picture. Okay.

Looking at the margins, I mean taking out the restructuring costs, you should basically already be around 10% EBIT this year. I mean if you say high single digit EBIT margin, but there are restructuring costs still there. Basically net of restructuring you would.

Already be at the lower end.

From that perspective you should reach the lower end clearly next year, right? That is the first one. The second question, looking further in the future, it is a race between, you know, catching up the lower price levels which will go down further versus operating leverage. I mean higher utilization rates, they have to overcompensate the price pressure. That is basically what then results in the margin, right?

Yes, that's right.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: You basically confirming the bottom and the floor of our guidance. That is exactly what we are seeing. We expect to be at 10% post, well post and pre restructuring actually moving forward.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: At current levels. There's, you know, the uncertainty here on the price front is actually, you know, we're looking at the net contribution of price and costs.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right. So basically.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: The difference between what we're able to save on throughput costs as opposed to how much we're giving away. I mentioned that we can extract from the market and we expect that to be a slight negative moving forward. Obviously in the scenario where we're growing in more competitive markets, it's going to be more of a negative. That is basically the main reason why we do not want to signal too much of an upside from the bottom right from the floor of 10% as well as, as you noted, there's upside if the content of that growth is favorable. Remember also that we are quite highly leveraged from an operational standpoint, which has affected us in the short term since our investment in Malaysia.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: It is actually a good thing moving.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Forward as we expect to leverage on that fixed base of manufacturing costs. That's one, that's another driver that would offset some of this negative net cost impact.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Okay, good. Thank you.

Conference Operator: For further questions in the phone conference, please press nine and star. For the moment I would like to hand out over for the questions from the chat.

Thank you. We have a question from José Veros.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Who is asking if he could give some color regarding the restructuring program going forward and what cost base we target in the next two years?

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Thanks for the question. We intend to fully execute Fit for Growth. We're not quite there yet, even though we've seen some strong contributions to the P and L so far. We will execute Fit for Growth as intended in the coming months. Our objective is to defend the current profitability level as I was explaining in the previous questions. Hence, adjust our cost footprint depending on the sales development. That's the key here, right? Everything depends on sales development moving forward. We've shown that we're able to adjust to lower volumes and be cautious and selective with our spend. We'll continue doing so. No one knows at this stage what the future holds.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: We will continue to be extremely nimble and flexible with our cost base.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Daniel, my second question from José Meros who is asking if you could speak a bit about competition with differentiating Visa with other players and if there would be a way to target more niche markets like in the past in order to avoid high competition. I think very good question for sure. Referring a bit also to the strategic reflections that we have in the team.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: So.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: LEM differentiates clearly by having the widest portfolio in application, having customer closeness across the world with all our American, European, Chinese customers having the application experience and basically having probably overall the biggest scale that we have in terms of applications, products, but also volumes. This brings us into the privileged position that the products that we are defining really very close to the customer needs and allow us to basically deliver really what customers expect, that the rounds of optimization are reduced. We clearly see this reflected in the feedback that we are getting from our customers. Now, talking about the niches versus, let's say, the big volume, I think in the past LEM has been always playing in both areas.

I think we also have to, on the one hand, the level of competitiveness that you need in order to be successful in the Chinese market I think is a must and an important reference or benchmark to understand where we are. At the same time, for sure, you try to discover more growth areas, be it in smart grid, be it in new technologies like TMR where we also basically then see the next level of developments. To only do niche business will not allow us to be really on a competitive scale. I am deeply convinced we need to do both.

We have a third question from.

Jose Barros, regarding M and A, would LEM consider M and A, and if yes, how would this be financed? Maybe I take this. We've been saying in the past we would not go for M and A in order to increase our sales turnover. I can tell you that there are a couple of competitors on the market where basically the mother companies look for alternative solutions. We do not really consider this as the right way moving forward because we would in the midterm lose their business because customers would then look for other alternatives when that all goes to them. Here, our customer strategies actually speak against such a growth option. However, what we said is when we see technologically the partnering or M and A would make sense, then we would move forward.

You have seen this when you, for instance, have been acquiring R&D teams in Munich in order to strengthen our ICS capabilities, or when we moved into the partnership with TDK in order to bring the ICS business forward.

We have received a question from Gianmarco Cadini from Cape Vau.

Could you give a bit of color on the impact of volumes and prices on revenue in Q2 and H1?

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Yeah, thanks Gianmarco. This has been a hot button here since Q1 and I think not just for them. By the way, we've seen a large price target drag in most markets in the past six months. It has been led by our Chinese business, especially in Automation and to a lesser extent in Automotive. This impact has somewhat slowed down in Q2 as we've been more selective and prudent in our commercial efforts. Also remember that there was a demand trough in Renewable in China. Following the end of the feed-in tariffs, that resulted in overcapacity in the market and the corresponding price pressures. Overall, you can think of our flat revenue performance as a 4-5% volume increase offset by a 4-5% price drag in the first half.

We expect this level of delta price to reduce moving forward, to improve moving forward as we're learning to operate in this kind of environment. I hope that answers your question.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: There's a second question from.

Whether we.

Are able to reallocate production capacity from one segment to another to offset negative developments of specific segments like coalition renewable. I would answer the question with a partially yes. We do not have or we try when we plan and product and plan our new developments to allocate those products not only to a single market. This sometimes works, not always. In these cases we have the opportunity to basically shift demand between different segments. However, with increasing volumes, the let's say specific solutions that you need in order to be competitive that eventually also create payback and this is increasing. Also, the more and more specific very segment directed products need to be developed in order to be competitive. Hope this answers the question.

We have a question from Thomas Huber who's asking whether the goal for R&D is still 8.

To 10% of sales.

Yes. So that's still the sort of range in which we operate. Obviously when you suddenly see a dip in your top line, it looks like an artificial inflation of your R&D cost. We obviously don't then trim digitally the percentages down. We believe that for a company active in the high tech sector, that is a healthy amount that we need to invest in order to remain competitive and prepare for the future. Operator, we have no more questions in the chat. There are more questions in the telephone conference.

Conference Operator: There are now new questions here in the phone conference. One is coming from Miro Zusak, Jermaine Vast. Please go ahead with a question.

Good morning gentlemen. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple of them. I take them one by one, please. If I may. The first one is regarding the range that you have given for sales in the current year. It's quite a range. So CHF 25 million from CHF 265-290 million. And if I try to model the lower end now in the segments, it's really hard to model the lower end. In a sense it would be really a collapse more or less in the sense is it fair to assume that the lower end is really like really the lowest that you could imagine or are there scenarios where you think could be even worse?

I'm also reflecting on the comments that you made on China and also on the fact that China was flat on a constant currency basis year to date.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Good. Thanks, Miro, for your question. True, the range is a rather big range now. Unfortunately, we've been seeing a lot of rock and roll in the market in the past, and unfortunately, two weeks ago we were even not clear whether the whole electronics business would not see a more severe hit based on a player like Nexperia basically not being able anymore to deliver. We were considering all this, considering the uncertainty from the exchange rate, and therefore came up also with a guidance that rather had this big range. It's true we work every day on actually rather being at the higher end, if this is possible. That's where we are standing.

Unfortunately the last probably 12 years have been teaching us that we were also probably sometimes a bit too positive in our expectations what is still possible in this market.

Okay, very clear and connected to that. A second question regarding the EBIT guidance. High single digit implies 7, 8, 9% something in this range, which is not such a large range. It seems like there is not much operating leverage in the top line. Regarding your incremental margin, is it because you know, like, the less secure, the areas with the least visibility have the lowest margins.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: That's a good question. Look, I think it has to do also with, again, the content of the growth.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: We are being cautious here. Price wise, we are defending our price levels. The top end, the high end of our sales guidance might assume some or may include some more, let's say, aggressivity price wise. Right. Obviously, we'd benefit from the volume, but this would be a scenario where we're operating at current prices or even or slightly lower prices in some segments. That would, the tailwind on volume and on operating leverage would be partly offset by the price drag. The other round it works too. Right. The low end of the range is we would definitely defend our profitability and defend the low volume and the low cost control coverage through more selectivity price wise.

Very clear. A third question, if I may. You elaborated on the 40% as a floor for the gross margin. Now, looking into the upcoming two years where you gave guidance on EBIT.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: It'S.

Almost unthinkable or impossible to model 15% EBIT margin taking only 40% gross margin. Or is the cost lines, you know, the G and A cost really to decline even significantly further than it already did in Q2? I mean, you did a great job. We can see that in the numbers. Is it, can you, can you elaborate on that? Would 15% imply a higher gross margin than 40%?

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Yes, there's definitely yes. To reach 15%, we would have to generate more than our floor for margin.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Yes.

Thank you. The last question regarding cash flow and net debt. Your net debt went down by CHF 5 million more than the cash flow statement would imply. You can see that on page 13, if I'm not mistaken in the report, the fair value changes and others, CHF 4.8 million negative number, which declined or decreased your interest bearing debt. Could you please explain what that is?

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: There's a Forex lift on this one. I mean, lift. Some of the improvement is coming from Forex the same way it's impacting our sales the other way. Right. So that's the biggest contribution.

That means that would be for example, US dollar liabilities or Chinese renminbi liabilities that you have.

Yes, there would be non-CHF liabilities. Exactly.

Which currency is it? US Dollars or Chinese renminbi?

It's a blend. And some of that is from RMB.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Yes, thank you. That's all. Goodbye.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Thank you.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Thank you.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Bye bye.

Conference Operator: The last question is a follow-up from Tomasza Operdro, UBS. Please go ahead with your question.

Yeah, thanks. Just a quick follow up on the Fit for Growth program. I mean, this cost program was, so I mean, I apologize in case this is repetitive, but what I didn't quite understand, it was announced a year ago when you still had a different midterm ambition or guidance of the 600 million. And now you kind of, you know, adjust to this new reality. My question is, does this mean, does this new top line guidance, you know, indicate that potentially there would be an additional cost program? Or are you still fine even with the new market reality with the current Fit for Growth program?

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right. I think very, very good question, Tomaso. I think probably one cannot be repetitive on this question because it's one of the, let's say, really complex topics. You remember we basically started to implement the program, planned it in November, then basically saw some effects in Q4 where we saw the restructuring cost and the positives we started to see in April. Now this program runs according to plan and we clearly see that we are saving the planned range in this financial year and also go for further savings. You remember we said 18-22 in 2025-2026 and an additional 15 in the next financial year. That's what we currently plan and that's what we are all aligned about. It depends for sure how the market is developing at the moment.

We clearly do not foresee any further restructuring necessary because we do have a base that will allow us to go forward in the way we have been planning this. Again, therefore also you remember we were cautious with 2026, 2027. On the one hand we hear positive, I called it anecdotal evidence that maybe 2026 comes better, but our bookings do not show that yet. Therefore we rather talk about the stabilization this year and then a pick up after 2026 in 2027, basically the current planning base. When this for whatever reason would be again put into question because geopolitically short term something happens, then a potential further restructuring could not be excluded.

Okay, got it, thanks. Then a last question on order levels. I mean in Q2 orders were sequentially down quite significantly. Right. At the beginning of this fiscal year you started to take into account different shorter term orders as well. Yet they have declined so significantly. Could you maybe elaborate where that cutoff is and how we can kind of compare the current order levels to the levels a year ago?

I mean, looking at orders, and you remember what we already exchanged in previous discussions, the times where you can mathematically take order levels and then extrapolate them and mathematically say that it's exactly the sales is getting increasingly difficult. I give you a couple of examples. What we saw when, for instance, the tariffs were announced is that some important OEMs, car OEMs, were canceling some certain new energy vehicle car lines or pushing them out. We saw suddenly drops in our rest of Asia business that is mainly guided towards exports into the western market. We saw quite some surprising effects that then also were reflected in the order book question, negative orders of push outs and cancellations. Therefore, unfortunately, the times are a bit difficult to simply extrapolate out of the orders what then the real sales is going to become.

Hopefully you can live with this level of uncertainty as we have to.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Thomasov's things are technically comparable, right? Year over year. I think what we're looking at here is, you know, this is a reflection of the subjective part of how we book orders. And here the keyword is caution.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: We've learned from the noise in the market and in customers' behavior in the past six months. We are being very cautious with how much orders we're capturing in our book. Especially as the visibility, the long term visibility, is very, very muddy, very blurry. Right. Overall, we're seeing less visibility, so we're being more cautious in how we're capturing orders.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Right. Looking at the time, I would like to thank each and everybody of you for your interest in LEM, for your time you've been invested to follow up us here and looking forward that we stay in touch and that we latest talk again on the 6th of February. Thanks a lot and have a great week. Thank you. Bye bye.

Antoine Chulia, Chief Financial Officer, LEM Holding SA: Thanks everyone.

Frank Greifeld, CEO, LEM Holding SA: Bye.

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