TPE Q2 2026 - Post-Call Earnings Update

Event: Quartr Q2 2026 event Retrieved: 2026-08-06T10:55:00Z Comparison mode: maximal Scorecard contract: v1

Consensus scorecard

Management and Q&A

• The single most important new number on the call: the H1 one-off charges were quantified for the first time. CFO Markus Groß said Q2 was hit by non-period expenses of "a little less than 4 million", of which "the largest one is the provision" for "a potential compensation with the customer in Material Solutions". The preliminary flagged these one-offs as named but unsized in both documents; they are now sized at just under EUR 4m against a Q2 EBITDA of EUR 3.0m.
• Prior-year quarterly EBITDA was disclosed only here. Groß said "the EBITDA in the second quarter reduced from 6.7 down to 3 million", giving the year-over-year quarterly comparison the release and interim report both omitted. Q2 2026 EBITDA of EUR 3.0m is therefore down 55.2% from EUR 6.7m.
• Groß named a second, smaller one-off explicitly: the 2023-2026 long-term incentive program was valued at end-2025 on a Black-Scholes basis, and the share price appreciation during H1 "was not matching the expectation coming from the volatility in the model", adding cost. He declined to itemise the rest — "I think it is not helpful here to go into much more detail" — and offered follow-up calls.
• Asked directly whether other one-offs from Q1 would fail to recur, Groß named only the Coburg site restructuring and said it "has been factored into our guidance". He then said flatly: "We factored everything we know as of today in our guidance. We do not expect any surprises here."
• Pressed on the provision itself, Groß said the company is "currently still in negotiations here" and could not give detail, but characterised it as "not a structural problem. It is an old model and it is a thing from the past... it is also a market we are not addressing in that fashion anymore."
• Quarterly gross-margin trajectory was given for the first time: 28.5% in Q1, 30.0% in Q2, and "for the upcoming quarters, we expect the gross profit margin to increase gradually."
• Q3 and Q4 shape: Groß guided Q3 revenue "in the direction of the second quarter of 26" — approximately EUR 65m — "plus an acceleration in the fourth quarter, which is coming from our order book". He expects the Q3 EBITDA margin "approaching double-digit levels again", and confirmed full-year guidance "in terms of the revenue and also in terms of the EBITDA. We see ourselves here at the lower half of the guidance range."
• The H2 EBITDA ramp was challenged directly and the answer was confidence, not arithmetic. Constantin Hesse laid out the implied math — H1 EBITDA of EUR 4.4m, a Q3 in the range of EUR 6m-7m, therefore "at least 16, 17, 18 million" in Q4 at "margins north of 20%" merely to reach the low end — and asked what the risk of a further guidance cut is. Groß answered that H2 revenue is "coming from our order book. We have a quite good visibility there. This means we can also quite good assess the gross profit margins we're expecting from these orders", and on risk: "obviously there are things we can't control, but looking at it currently, we're quite confident."
• Asked to reconcile a flat-looking Q3 with a step-change Q4, Groß gave two drivers rather than one: "It is not only the one offs you are seeing in the overheads. It is also that the gross profit margin is expected to improve in Q3, but also especially then in Q4 with the large orders coming into play. We are expecting that the revenue in Q4 will accelerate in comparison to Q3, and this will then give it additional jump here." Asked whether the Q4 product-mix shift is crystal-growing equipment specifically, he said "It is a mixed thing from Material Solutions. It is not only one technology."
• Operating expenses are guided down: "The OpEx is expected at a lower level than in the first half because there were some non-period expenses and some one-offs we are not expecting for the second half."
• The cause of the Material Solutions underutilisation was explained. Groß said the large orders won in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 "are still in an engineering and sourcing phase. This means the revenue contributions are still low, and in some areas of our group, we are suffering from underutilization because the production hasn't started there yet for these projects." He expects this to "turn around in the second half of 2026".
• Metrology's margin drag was attributed to deliberate spending, not weakness: EBITDA "is currently impacted by strategic investments, which are temporarily weighing on our profitability" in sales and service infrastructure and increased R&D, plus Q2 "expenses for free demo systems".
• Metrology capacity was quantified for the first time, in an analyst's words that the CEO accepted. Michael Kuhn proposed current capacity is "closer to maybe 100 million annual sales and then a significant step up towards year end"; CEO Jalin Ketter answered "Roughly". Ketter separately said everything in the volume business "for the first half year... is already used in capacity", that a capacity ramp "will go live until year end", and that the resulting higher 2027 capacity "is already also starting to fill".
• Indium phosphide was sized for the first time. Ketter put the total furnace market at "a rough volume between 500 and 600 furnaces in the base case scenario", then cut the addressable portion sharply: "as competition in this area comes more from internal design, we expect the addressable market down to 20 to 30% of the total market." Timing: "we see that market development from 2027 to 2030", growing strongly to 2030 and requiring re-evaluation thereafter. First orders are already in the books executing in 2026 but at "very low volume. That is why we excluded that already in that forecast." He declined to give a per-furnace price or any customer geography, saying the market "is so tight" he cannot disclose.
• Customer qualifications are largely complete. Ketter: "The majority of qualification processes that we already talked about that we are in have been finalized... We are in the volume business now with these customers." Of the large logic and memory players, "we are having half of that big players already qualified and the other half is something where we are working on" — including "final agreements" with some. Asked pointedly whether the second Korean memory player is close, he restated the half/half split rather than confirming.
• Reported metrology order intake understates the underlying shift, per management. Ketter said the mix has moved from manual and semi-automated ultrasound systems toward high-volume automated business; in 2025 the split was "nearly 50/50" and this year "that volume area significantly overachieved that more manual system area". Legacy manual markets "are not as active today as they have been before", and the Coburg closure deliberately removed order volume "from activities which are not having too much scale potential".
• On the metrology order ramp, Ketter was explicit that it will not be lumpy: "It is not a one-off impact that we will see in one quarter where order intake is jumping up. It is more a steady development", with four to six months of customer lead-time visibility. He said the company has "a better situation today as we had before because we are having a lot more transparency on what is coming next and what the final investment plans of our customers are."
• Visibility now extends into 2029. Ketter said passing the qualification phases means "we are getting more and more transparency on the volumes that are expected to invest over the next years... partly also into 2029". The order sources are "the North American market and the Asian market". For 2027 specifically, "the production lines that we are foreseeing and that we discussed with customers will be filled well in 2027."
• Ketter dismissed direct competition with the large metrology incumbents. Asked how the company differentiates from KLA and similar players: "We are not in competition with these kinds of players. This is an area of the market where none of the big players are sitting, same as in our ultrasound metrology."
• On winning share, he flagged dual-sourcing as the norm and framed upside rather than base case: "We are not expecting in our targets that we are single source everywhere. Normally, customers like that are working with a dual source concept. We did not expect to win every customer in our target that we set, so the more we are winning, the more positive this is contributing to our guidance."
• Two structural initiatives were detailed. All optical metrology activity is being consolidated into PVA Vision with a centre of excellence in Dresden, extending the technology from manual front-end systems toward automated back-end and packaging applications. Separately, Material Solutions operational processes are being redesigned, piloted at one site with new processes and new leadership structures, then rolled out once validated. Ketter warned on the timeline: "there is not a one off effect that we will see directly, but a gradual development."
• Aluminium nitride role has changed. Ketter said the company is "a partner in all major European aluminum nitride activities already today" and that its role "developed now from providing the R&D equipment into also owning the process by ourselves", preparing a full solution for when the material reaches industrial use in power electronics and UV photonics.
• On co-packaged optics, Ketter said it "is also relevant in certain aspects, and it is beneficial for that development", and noted activity beyond the large logic and memory customers. On OSATs, he said they are of "the same importance, just the volumes are different" — a broader set of customers at lower volume each.
• Asked about a large customer's reported discussions on additional Singapore fab equipment, Ketter declined to comment on single customers but said that through 2027 "we see a higher demand on whether [wafer] capacity coming up... We also expect a good contribution to our mid-term volume targets coming from that investment phase."
• The call ran over time and was closed by Investor Relations with questions outstanding; one analyst (Hartmut Moers) failed to connect on two separate attempts before getting through late.

Guidance and KPI clarification

Updated neutral analysis

• The call resolved the preliminary's single largest open question — the size of the H1 one-off charges — and the answer materially improves the read on the quarter. Q2 EBITDA of EUR 3.0m carried "a little less than 4 million" of non-period expense, so the underlying quarter was closer to EUR 7m of EBITDA than to EUR 3m. On that basis the operating business was roughly flat against the EUR 6.7m earned in Q2 2025 rather than down 55%.
• That improvement comes with a caveat management did not volunteer: the largest one-off is a provision for a customer compensation still under negotiation. A provision is an estimate of a liability, not a settled cost, so the amount could still move in either direction, and management explicitly could not discuss it.
• The second-half EBITDA ramp remains the central risk and the call did not de-risk it arithmetically. Management confirmed the lower half of the EUR 26m-31m range, which implies EUR 21.6m-24.1m in the second half against EUR 4.4m delivered in the first. The only defence offered was order-book visibility and confidence; no quarterly phasing, no backlog figure in euros, and no gross-margin target were given.
• The Q3 guide is the informative part of that ramp. Revenue roughly flat at approximately EUR 65m with EBITDA margin "approaching double-digit levels" implies roughly EUR 6m-6.5m — a large improvement on Q2's 4.6% margin, but one that leaves the great majority of the second-half requirement in Q4 alone. The company's implicit Q4 is the least-evidenced quarter in the guide.
• Management's Q4 case rests on two stacked assumptions: that gross margin improves as the large Material Solutions orders move out of engineering and sourcing into production, and that Q4 revenue accelerates meaningfully from Q3. Both depend on the same project timelines, so they are not independent sources of comfort.
• The metrology capacity figure is the most useful new datapoint for sizing the business. At roughly EUR 100m of annualised volume-business capacity, already fully used through the first half of 2027, with a ramp going live by year-end, the segment's near-term ceiling is now visible. Metrology delivered EUR 53.0m of revenue in H1 2026.
• The metrology order-intake mix disclosure cuts both ways. It is a genuine explanation for why reported order intake understates growth in the strategic business, and it is also an argument that the headline number should be discounted — which management is asking investors to do in the quarter where headline metrology order intake fell sequentially.
• The indium phosphide sizing is the first hard number attached to what has been a narrative opportunity, and management sized it conservatively: a 500-600 furnace base case cut to a 20%-30% addressable share because customers design in-house. That discipline is more credible than an unqualified total-market figure, but it also means the opportunity is materially smaller than the headline, and the 2026 orders are explicitly excluded from the forecast as immaterial.
• Nothing in the call revisits the balance sheet. Cash of EUR 6.3m, net debt of EUR 38.3m, working capital absorbing cash, and a 12.4% increase in headcount against flat revenue were all in the preliminary and none was raised by management or by any analyst.
• Management's structural initiatives — the PVA Vision consolidation, the Dresden centre of excellence, and the Material Solutions process redesign — were each presented with an explicit warning that benefits arrive gradually. That is honest, and it also means none of them supports the second-half guide.
• The competitive claim that the company does not compete with KLA and similar incumbents is asserted without evidence and was not challenged. It is a load-bearing assumption for the metrology growth case.
• Analyst tone on the call was skeptical rather than hostile, and concentrated almost entirely on the credibility of the second-half ramp and the composition of the one-offs. No analyst asked about cash, net debt, or the working-capital build, and the call was cut off for time with questions outstanding.

Market context and limitations

• The Quartr transcript for this event (99 paragraphs, complete and non-live) was read in full.
• The consensus scorecard is carried forward verbatim from the event's preliminary report (reports/preliminary/2026-08-06-tpe-q2-2026.md) and was not recalculated. Both rows remain unpriced because API Ninjas carries no earnings-calendar row for the XETRA listing TPE and no depositary listing is configured in config/listing-map.json for this issuer. No formal Beat, Miss, or In line result is published for this event at either stage.
• All figures in the Management and Q&A, Guidance, and KPI sections above are management's own statements on the call unless identified as carried from the preliminary report. Reported Q2 and H1 actuals come from Quartr earnings release 3963341 and half-year interim report 3676496 as used in the preliminary.
• Quarterly EBITDA, quarterly gross-margin percentages, and the one-off quantification are narrative statements on the call. Neither the release nor the interim report prints a quarterly EBITDA reconciliation, and EBITDA is not defined in those documents as a reconciled non-GAAP measure.
• The approximately EUR 100m metrology capacity figure was proposed by an analyst and confirmed only with the word "Roughly". It is not a company-published figure and no basis, definition, or period was given for it.
• The Q3 EBITDA range of approximately EUR 6m-7m and the implied Q4 requirement of roughly EUR 16m-18m were stated by analyst Constantin Hesse in his question, not by the company. Management neither endorsed nor corrected the arithmetic. The second-half requirement of EUR 21.6m-24.1m used above is calculated here from the confirmed lower half of the EUR 26m-31m guide less the reported H1 EBITDA of EUR 4.391m.
• The customer compensation provision is not sized separately from the "a little less than 4 million" of total Q2 non-period expenses, its counterparty and circumstances were withheld as being under negotiation, and no expected settlement timing was given.
• The long-term incentive program remeasurement was described but not quantified, and management declined to itemise the remaining smaller one-offs.
• Speaker attribution in the transcript is imperfect: several paragraphs merge an answer with the following analyst's question, and speaker labels are numeric rather than named. Attributions above were assigned from context (the CFO handing back to the CEO, and the CEO opening with "Thanks, Markus"), and only statements whose speaker is unambiguous from that context are attributed by name.
• One exchange could not be reliably read. Asked whether the metrology order ramp should be based on Q2 order intake or H1 order intake, the transcribed answer is "And two. H2, Q2." That response is not parseable with confidence and is not reported as a management statement above.
• Two other passages show transcription corruption — "whether capacity" for wafer capacity, "the oocytes" in a customer-type list, and "Crystal silk" in an analyst's question about crystal-growing equipment. These are read in context above and are noted here rather than reproduced as management's words.
• No market reaction is assessed. API Ninjas carries no price or volume snapshot for the XETRA listing TPE. The release was published at approximately 05:00Z and the call held at 07:00Z on 2026-08-06.
• No quarterly segment revenue, segment EBITDA, order backlog in euros, or second-half quarterly phasing was disclosed on the call, so the second-half guide cannot be independently modelled from the sources available.
• The presentation slides (3973638) attached to this event were not read for this update.

Source links

• Quartr Q2 2026 event transcript
• Quartr Q2 2026 earnings release
• Quartr Q2 2026 half-year interim report
• TPE Q2 2026 preliminary report