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SUESS MicroTec SE
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Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of SUSS MicroTec SE. At our customers' request, this conference will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] May I now hand you over to Dr. Gotz Bendele, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you so much. Yes, this is Gotz Bendele. It is my pleasure and my honor to lead SUSS since the beginning of May, which is in a few days ago. For those of you who have not had any contact with me in the past, I'm a physicist by training, and spend a lot of my professional life in the semiconductor industry here in Europe but also in the U.S. and in Asia and Taiwan. The semiconductor industry is certainly what I'm passionate about, and that is one part of what attracted me to SUSS and which I enjoy very much now that I'm here. At the same time, I think if I looked at SUSS initially from the outside and now for the past 1.5 weeks also from the inside, I think it is a technology company with a very significant potential, which we've already seen to some extent in the development of the last, roughly, a couple of years. And so I'm very happy to take over SUSS at a time when it is performing well. I certainly would like to build on that together with my exec colleagues, Thomas Rohe, who joined as a COO with me at the same time at the beginning of May, 1.5 weeks ago; and Oliver Albrecht, who's also still somewhat new, but has been with SUSS, I think, now for at least a year and change.I think the 3 of us are together looking forward to unlock some of the potential, some of the additional potential that we see, that I see in SUSS in terms of growth, in terms of new business, in terms of operational excellence. Definitely too soon to go into more details of how we want to accomplish some of those things. That will be for another time, but I very much look forward to meeting, I hope, some of you at some point in person again at various events as we hopefully see the tail end of the corona pandemic. In the meantime, I look forward to working with you in the way we've been used to over the last year or so. Before I give it over to -- hand over to Oliver, I would like to ask Thomas, Thomas Rohe, to say a few words and also introduce himself. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you, Gotz. And hello to everybody on the call. Well, my name is Thomas Rohe. I joined SUSS also in May, as Gotz mentioned, as the COO. I'm also a physicist by training and have more -- we have now more than 20 years of experience in different positions in development operations, also in the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry and also about other manufacturing industries. And I'm really happy to be here and I'm very excited also to join SUSS because I think there's a lot of potential in the company to drive and even improve operational excellence, which we will hopefully see very soon. And we'll report also to you in the near future. That's it from my side. Thank you very much. And I'm really happy to meet you in person, hopefully, soon and hand over to Oliver right now. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first quarter conference call today. And before starting to present you the figures, I would also like to introduce to you Stefan Lutter. Stefan Lutter, he is the head of our business unit for Bonder. He is with us. And we have also with us Franka Schielke, which is our Investor Relations Manager. Yes. Let's start with -- on Page 3 with our figures at a glance. And I can say, compared to the previous year quarter, we have received strong improvements in sales and profitability. Order entry increased by more than 17%. Sales went up by 26%. We see strongly improved gross profit and EBIT margins compared to the previous year quarter. Free cash flow and net cash rose considerably. And in this year, we have no one-off effects from the closure of our activities in corona. Regarding our business segments, lithography, there, we have a strong quarter, especially for coaters/developers and mask aligners with significant EBIT improvement in our bonder business. There, we have received a good order entry in the first quarter, but lower sales due to postponement of 2 shipments into Q2. I will explain this later on in my presentation. Photomask Equipment business, it's a lumpy business quarter-on-quarter, but we have received also a good sales level in the first quarter. MicroOptics improved earnings margin at stable sales and order entries. I would like to highlight some more key figures on Page 4. Yes, on Page 4 here, let's jump directly into the sales of the group. So sales, as I mentioned already, went up by 26%, up to EUR 52.6 million, so a strong increase compared to last year. Our gross profit margin improved by 8.4 percentage points to 32.9%. EBIT, EUR 1.4 million, the EBIT margin 2.7%, also a strong increase. And if we compare it to the last year, so EBIT margin was not as good as in Q3 and Q4 2020. This is because one of the reason is that the first quarter normally is the weakest quarter in terms of sales. So the sales level was below the last 2 quarters in 2020. And finally, our quarterly EBIT margin also depends on how much sales is contributed by our Photomask Equipment business unit.And as I already said, we had some postponements in shipment. We have some mask aligner tools ready for shipment, which we couldn't ship out due to missing import license from our customers in China. The sales in bonder business was below our expectations. This is due to a postponement of a large tool into April with a sales volume of about EUR 4 million and a decent margin that is the major reason why the sales volume of bonder is below our expectation. Yes. Regarding free cash flow, you can see from minus EUR 8.3 million, free cash flow went up to EUR 9.1 million, also a strong increase. Our net cash position increased to EUR 39.2 million, so we have enough headroom available. Let's move over to Page 5. On Page 5, this slide shows you our quarterly order entry. And in the first quarter, order intake was again on a very high level with in total EUR 81 million. This is the second highest order entry in SUSS' history, as you can see here from the chart. Overall, the order entry level increased over the last years to a quarterly average of about EUR 70 million now and the order book amounted to EUR 148 million. Advanced packaging applications and 5G are the main business drivers. In lithography, order entries up by 23.8%, mainly driven by a high demand for coaters/developers and mask aligners. The order entry in the bonder segment increased by 61% to EUR 9 million. This is due to a higher demand, especially for temporary bonders. And as I said, Photomask Equipment is a lumpy business, which consists of few but high-volume contracts. Order entry decreased slightly in the first 3 months by 6% to EUR 12.2 million. Here, we have received some tool orders from our major customer in Taiwan, and we have also got a nice service contract. And in addition, we have got an order for another scanner from TSMC. Order entry at MicroOptics grew by 28% to EUR 6.9 million, and the demand from our automotive customer is recovering. Regarding the regional splits, order intake from the Asia Pacific region or the Asia Pacific region remains the dominant region with 60.8%, and we have increasing demand from Chinese customers. And for example, in February, we got another package deal of about EUR 50 million from 1 customer. This includes 11 ACS300, Gen2 coaters. It includes also 1 mask aligner and it also includes 4 manual bonder systems. So our order entry outlook remains strong, and let's move over to the next page and to have a closer look on our business segments. Starting with lithography. Here, sales from mask aligners grew by 21% and up to EUR 10 million, and sales from coaters grew by 27% up to EUR 50 million. So in total, our sales in this business division increased to EUR 32.2 million. With this sales increase, our gross profit margin improved to 32.6%, and the EBIT margin increased to 8.4%. That's compared to last year. Last year, we had closing costs. And in the first quarter, we had closing costs of EUR 3.7 million. This is now finished. And these figures now are without any special effects from closing costs. Regarding Photomask Equipment, order entry remains on a high level but slightly decreased. The sales volume increased strongly to EUR 11.3 million. The gross profit margin decreased slightly to 38.9%, but the EBIT margin increased to a higher sales volume with better fixed cost coverage. And as you know, here, especially in this business, our margins depend on tool specifications on the one side, and it depends also on country by country, in which country we are selling the equipment. Bonder. Order entry increased due to a high demand for temporary bonders, but sales decreased and are lagging behind our budget due to the postponement of a tool shipment into April. The tool is shipped in the meantime. And this tool or has a sales price of around EUR 4 million with a gross profit margin above 50%. So this has a major impact on our sales and also profitability in the first quarter. But our outlook regarding bonder remains very positive. And MicroOptics, here, we see a recovery of our order entry and sales. We have received slightly better gross profit margins and EBIT margins. And regarding the completion of our clean room, I can say there's a slight delay of about 3 months. And at the moment, we are ramping up. We start to bring in our first production tools in the clean room, and we will start production then in the second half of this year. I will move over to Page 7. And in order to give you our market estimates and our outlook of the market, I can say, we expect a continuously strong order entry in the average of about EUR 70 million per quarter, but there is still some uncertainty due to the COVID pandemic especially regarding the supplier chain. Here, we see some impacts on the supplier chain. The forecast for the semiconductor market grows, for '21, ranges from plus 4.1% up to 18%. So there's quite a good outlook for the future. The mega trend is fully intact, and we see future demand driven by emerging technologies like 5G, IoT, high-performance computing, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. These factors are driving the demand for our tools.With this, yes, I would like to finalize my presentation, and we can confirm our guidance for 2021. So still our sales expectations range between EUR 270 million up to EUR 290 million. And the EBIT margin, we expect here a range between 9% to 11%. And I see also it depends a little bit on the sales volume if we come up -- if we come out with -- on the upper level of the sales volume, then I also expect a positive impact on the EBIT margin. This is, I think, goes parallel to the sales volume. Free cash flow ranges between EUR 12 million to EUR 18 million.Yes. That's all for the moment. And now we are happy to answer your questions. And I would like to hand back to the moderator. And we are looking forward to answer your questions. Thank you very much.
[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Johannes Ries, Apus Capital.
Yes. Mr. Bendele, now it's a new position. We are happy you are there, although we have -- sort of both companies, your old and your new. Maybe first starting with the overall situation also coming back on what Mr. Albrecht had said. Is it right to assume that the strong demand has [indiscernible] developed that April is also maybe has supported and there is no signs of weakness in the market because there is a structural growth. And the structural growth get also maybe a second lag despite all this technology drivers by the geopolitical things that should be built additional capacity in China, that's always not totally new, but also in Europe and especially in the U.S.
Well, so I mean you summarized that I think in a way that I would probably report that the market has been strong, and it, at this point, appears to continue to be strong for a number of reasons, political, industrial. So what's important is, of course, for SUSS, that we continue to enjoy this and leverage this for our own growth initially and of course, at some point, also go beyond that. I think that's -- it's probably not a surprise for you or anyone to hear that I do have growth ambitions that go beyond simply going to the market. But again, how we want to accomplish that, SUSS, a little too soon to talk about at this point. But if you ask me, do I see any indication of the weakness for the coming quarters? I don't see that. And it is a question I obviously asked when I joined, whether people in the company see that. And so in that sense, I fully support what Oliver said. Oliver, I think you obviously have had more conversations than I've had with customers, with colleagues. Do you want to add to that?
Yes. I see also a continuous growth in the market, and we see some bottlenecks in the market. We see that our customers are extending the capacity. And as we already explained in the last conference call that we see a strong demand for our coaters, for masked aligners. Especially in China, at the moment, there's a strong demand for mask aligners, which is from us in terms of margin and profitability, a very good situation. And also what our previous CEO said that we see also in bonder business, we see here for us, a strong market potential and the growth opportunity with our new systems.
I would just try to follow on. Maybe -- you said MicroOptics, you are ramping up your clean room now in the second half. We'll also see a clear acceleration because of the orders, which will come or your party already received from the automobile industry.
Yes. We see here, as in all MicroOptics, our MicroOptics business unit last year has suffered a little bit from the COVID pandemic, especially automotive clients. They have reduced their demand. And SMO went into short-time work for 2 months, but now we see that the demand is recovering. We have got some nice contracts from the automotive industry, and we expect the growth in this year in this segment of course. And therefore, we need this second clean room. We need the capacity to scope with this increase in demand, especially for the automotive industry. And this second clean room is mainly dedicated to the demand from the automotive industry. And here, we want to invest in more automatic tools, which also would help us then reduce our cost in this business unit.
Okay. And that also maybe a base for the implant business in the future at your equipment sales. But maybe another topic, which is also highlighted always is the shortage of components even for the suppliers like you. Has your -- can you see any bottleneck of maybe components or you feel anything? Have you handled it so far? Therefore, the sales has not been limited. In other words, even in the first quarter by shortage of any component and it doesn't look at the moment that there is a risk.
I would not say that there is -- what we see, in some cases, we see some bottlenecks. We see that lead times extend a little bit. And therefore, we also set up a task force in our house to, yes, to qualify a second source, to qualify alternative suppliers. And also what is very critical for us is the trade war or the trade barriers between U.S. and China. And therefore, this task force, one of the main topics for this task force is to replace U.S. parts or parts from U.S. origin by European or Asian part that we do not suffer too much from possible trade barriers.
Okay. Maybe a question to Mr. Oliver, already can answer it. How much you see maybe potential to improve the efficiency of the production at SUSS, which was in the [indiscernible] regard bottleneck and maybe it was not always optimal in the past, as you know, and how much opportunity you see in Taiwan? You didn't -- nobody was mentioning of the Taiwan production. But if I'm learning from the last call, it's also maybe one angle to handle the growth going forward.
Yes. Thank you very much for the question. Well, for sure, I see potential there, but I hope you can also understand that after 1.5 weeks, I cannot say, okay, how much potential. But for sure, there are some topics, which should be addressed pretty soon. And also concerning the manufacturing in Taiwan, I have not been the chance to go there. And for sure, we will try, after the COVID pandemic, go there pretty soon and have a look at there, what we can do there. But for the moment, I cannot tell you exactly what we are planning to do in the next future. But what I can tell you is there is potential, and we want to address it pretty soon.
My other question [indiscernible].
[indiscernible] excuse me, what I can add -- Oliver?
Please go ahead.
Yes. What I would like to add to this is I think the setup of the Taiwan product is an important step for us. We needed to increase our capacities. This is one reason. For example, this year, we would like to assemble about 25 tools here. We started with the ACS200. And now we also increased our product portfolio in Taiwan with the ACS300. And in addition, as we already mentioned, we are going to transfer our scanner business, the production and assembly of the scanner into Taiwan. Taiwan is very important for us in terms of production capacities, but also in terms of proximity to be more -- to be closer to our customers and also to -- that we extend the supplier basis for us to have more Asian suppliers.
Maybe final -- maybe 2 part of a final question. You mentioned 2 things, Mr. Albrecht in the -- in your statement first. You expect an average EUR 70 million in orders per quarter. That would be a reduction compared to Q1. But is it only, I think, a rough maybe figure, which could be also fluctuate upwards or downwards? But it's not a clear guidance, if I got it right. And you mentioned this EUR 50 million deal in China. How much is in the first quarter figure? Is it spread over maybe a couple of quarters? So maybe wanted to see how much is one deal impact with Q1.
So first of all, regarding the order entry, what I wanted to say is that, as you might remember, in the past, we said order entry is about EUR 60 million in average. Now we are saying that we see, how can I say, a continuous increase. And what I want to say is that we see now an average EUR 70 million. And as you said, the order entry in the first quarter was EUR 81 million. And if you look back to last year, we have -- last year, we have received 1 quarter was about EUR 90 million. So it's -- this is not the exact guidance. It's not to say that we have a trend and the trend is increasing cost. And the second question was regarding this package deal. So it's this -- last year, we have got some package deal from the Asia Pacific region. And this is another package deal with EUR 50 million, 11 coaters. So this helps us also to benefit more from economies of scales. And the sales will be reconciled during the second and third and fourth quarter. So it's -- you do not see it in the sales volume in the first quarter. [indiscernible]
But the order intake was fully booked in Q1? Or was it...
Yes. The order intake is fully booked in Q1. It's fully included in this EUR 81 million.
Our next question comes from Christian Sandherr, Hauck & Aufhauser.
Maybe first question. You also mentioned that you had some issues sending, I think, mask aligner to China. How big of an order was that? And so basically, how much of ready-to-use machines are still held back? And do you have any visibility that this will change over the foreseeable future?
I think this is a regular procedure. So this means that the Chinese government updates the import license every year. And here, we are talking mainly about customers like universities, smaller customers. They have [ robots ] and manual tools. And here, we have, I think, about 8 mask aligners and the total volume is roughly, what, EUR 2 million.
Okay. Good. And then maybe second question on working capital. You seem to have improved working capital sales ratio in Q1. Is it something that's sustainable? Or do you expect a normalization over the next quarters?
Regarding working capital, if I look, we have -- definitely, we have improved our working capital compared to last year. We are working hardly to reduce, for example, trade receivables and also to reduce contract assets. And here, we have got some progress. On the other side, if you look into the working capital of the first quarter, you can see that compared to the year-end figures, our inventory increased, and this is mainly due to the fact that we have to build up some stocks in Taiwan. We still purchase a material for Taiwan over our site in Sternenfels. Here, we will change in the future the procedure and the approach. And we had also -- we started to stock and to increase some -- the stock of some critical parts because we don't want to lose time in the production in the assembly. We have seen, in some cases, that we could not continuously assemble the tools because some critical parts were missing and to avoid this that this was the reason why we increased our inventories.
Our next question comes from Robert Sanders, Deutsche Bank.
Yes. I just wanted to address a bit more this whole hybrid bonding opportunity at companies like TSMC. How much more dollar opportunity does this give you? And are you now qualified? I mean I think TSMC is in a qualification year, but I presume you are now exclusive. But how should we think about this revenue opportunity from hybrid bonding versus, for example, wafer-level concepts, which it seems like wafer level will stay in mobile and HPC will move to hybrid bonding.
Stefan, would you like to answer?
Yes, I can. So to answer specifically for the customer, we did not yet sell or ship hybrid bonding equipment to TSMC. We are still mainly working with institutes to essentially develop, demonstrate and qualify the hybrid bonding process. One important institute is IMEC in Belgium, who is using our equipment. So we have sold the hybrid bonder that Oliver mentioned previously, the EUR 4 million tool to an institute customer. On the institute level, we are qualified for hybrid bonding. We can demonstrate very good results. And the customer that you have mentioned, TSMC, we are certainly in discussions with them. But we cannot provide any further information at this point in time regarding that specific customer. What we do expect going forward is indeed additional sales contributions from hybrid bonding as we have also described during the presentations that we have shown on last year's Capital Markets Day. So this is certainly one of the largest growth areas that we want to grab a share of.
Got it. And how should we think about the split between cyclical business and technology business within your mix? I mean, I think basically talks about 15% of their business being pure technology business, which is, for example, TSMC, Intel, [ AMAT ] and stuff like that. Because I guess when I look at your business and I contrast [indiscernible] software and Besi, [indiscernible] software guided down for fiscal '22 because they see China pulling in aggressively. But they don't expect that to sustain, whereas, you could take a view given the structural trend that '22 could be a better year than '21.
Yes. We are seeing the qualification phase at customers like TSMC, and we are actually expecting additional growth for 2022. That's true. What we have to say is that for hybrid bonding, companies like Besi are mainly focusing on die-to-wafer hybrid bonding, whereas, we are focusing on wafer-to-wafer temporary bonding, and that is also to, not necessarily competing, but complementary technologies that will be used at customers like TSMC. So the fact this die-to-wafer bonding...
Are you [indiscernible] -- sorry, go ahead.
The fact that die-to-wafer bonding is going up or down does not necessarily mean that wafer-to-wafer bonding will follow the same trend.
But wafer-to-wafer is already in the market in CMOS sensor and stuff like this. That's what you're referring to...
Yes.
As opposed to die-to-wafer, which is the kind of key opportunity, which you are not currently leveraged to, okay.
That is correct, yes. And TSMC is actually working on both. They are working on die-to-wafer for their SoIC process. But they are also working on wafer-to-wafer not only for CMOS image sensors, but also for future generations of SoIC.
Got it. So they're basically AMAT partnership, you're -- is out of scope for you guys at the moment. Okay. Got it.
Our next question is from Jurgen Wagner, Stifel.
Yes. I have a question on your full year guidance. Until what month this year can you turn orders into sales? And how is the reentry into the scanner business progressing? I mean, do you get enough people, enough material, et cetera?
Yes. Normally, we -- I can say, if we get an order entry up to September, then we can bring it into sales. What we see here a little bit is that our delivery times are increasing in some cases regarding some specific tools. We also see that we have to rearrange some things in our production in order to accelerate the lead times, to reduce lead times. So this is a little bit the bottleneck for us. So we see, for example, our bonder business that here, the tools are quite specific and they are highly complicated. So this is -- here, we have longer lead times. If these are, let's say, manual tools, smaller tools, then there's no profit then to reconcile this order entry in up to September into the sales volume. I think this was the best first part of your question. The second part was can you...
How's the reentry? Do you get enough people? And how is it progressing?
I think this is a good question because, as we announced last year that we would like to close down our operations, and of course, we have dismissed some personnel, some staff in U.S. And now we are transferring the assembly to Taiwan. This means we have to transfer also the know-how to Taiwan. In the meantime, we have identified some of the key personnel. We could, let's say, maybe reactivate some of the key personnel and all these people are also willing to travel to Taiwan and to stay at our Taiwan site for a certain time period. So at the moment, it's okay for us. So we are finding the right people. And I think we are -- it's doing -- it's like planned. So there are no difficulties.
Our next question comes from Malte Schaumann, Warburg Research.
My first question is on the temporary bonders. The order intake you saw in the first quarter, wasn't that placed from your lead customer? Or was that kind of the -- one of the newer guys? And then what does the pipeline look like? So what is the market activity and especially in temporary bonding currently and for the upcoming quarters?
So this is Stefan Lutter again. So the orders that we got in the first quarter are from a new customer. This customer is coming from the [ 3, 5 ] materials segment, silicon carbide to be specific, so power-device related. And for the existing customers, specifically for the 3D memory area, we see a little bit of a recovery in the 3D memory segment. So we are expecting orders that we have planned later this year. But we also see new customers like the silicon carbide case, I mentioned, including other countries to add to the order entry.
And the new customers ought to be kind of in the [ 3, 5 ] area, application area.
That and also an expansion of, let's say, memory technology into new countries like China. I think we've talked about the activities in China. So Chinese customers are adding technology, and that includes 3D memory as well. So we are expanding our footprint from the existing customers in Taiwan and Korea into the China region.
Yes. And with respect to silicon carbide, are you already in talks with additional players in that area?
We are currently talking to one main player only, but that is a leading company in that segment.
Okay. And do you think that there's -- that the opportunity is larger so that you might enter other players as well? Or is that mostly focused on that one?
There certainly is an opportunity because our temporary bonding technology becomes attractive as scaling goes on from 6- to 8-inch wafers. And this scaling is essentially what opens the window to introduce our temporary bonding technology.
Yes. Okay. Good. And then on the scanner business, on the time frame, was there kind -- I don't know if you'd like to elaborate on the potential time frame when order placements take place. I think we sort of expect it for the second half of this year and then revenue generation for the next year, so if anything has changed within the time frame of your lead customer with the scanners.
So I do not see any changes from -- at the moment from the time schedule of our customer. It's -- we have got a lot of interest. We have got an indication regarding what could be a potential volume for orders from this major customer. And in the meantime, I think nothing has changed at the moment.
[Operator Instructions] We received one more question from Johannes Ries, Apus Capital.
Yes. Maybe 2, 3 follow-on questions. First, on silicon carbide, can you a little bit explain how you use your temporary bondings and in what step of the production?
Yes, I can explain that. So temporary bonding is used to basically thin down the silicon carbide wafer. So in the beginning, customers start off with a relatively thick wafer material, 350 micron in thickness up to 500 micron in thickness. And then this silicon carbide wafer is attached to a silicon carrier by temporary bonding using temporary bonding adhesive, and then that wafer is thinned down to sub-100 micron.
Okay, I see. So far, to use this expensive material, more efficiently, more -- by making it thinner. So far, this is your technology use, okay?
Exactly. And also in the final device, that wafer needs to be thin in order to deliver the performance that is required.
And at 6 inch and smaller, it was done another way, yes?
Yes, that's correct. So 6 inch and smaller wafers were still temporarily bonded, but a different debonding that was used. So the debonding method for 6-inch wafers and smaller was a thermal slide debonding. So essentially, the wafer stack was heated up so that the adhesive gets soft. And then the 2 wafers could be slided off from each other. And now with the transfer to 8-inch wafers, there is a technology switch from slide debonding to mechanical debonding, very much like we have also seen in the memory market where slide debonding was still used a little bit on the 200-millimeter wafer format. But once the transfer to 300-milliliter happened, quite a few years ago already, the technology has changed from slide deboning to mechanical debonding because the mechanical stress of sliding the 2 wafers off of each other increases exponentially with the increasing wafer size. So there will always be inflection points where technology changes are necessary. The next inflection point for memory, for example, will be the transitioning from mechanical to laser debonding as the memory devices are getting thinner. That's for silicon carbide, the inflection point and how it responds from slide debonding to chemical debonding.
Okay. Was that always in your plan, that it could be a new additional market? Because we hear the first time, I think all listeners in the call. Or is it something which was clear but you didn't talk about so far?
So we have to say that it was not a strategic plan to penetrate for 8-inch silicon carbide wafers. It was basically that the opportunity came up and it was a perfect fit for the equipment that we had developed for the memory industry. So it's a new market that we can serve with existing product portfolio.
Okay. And how much machine you need there? Because I -- to my knowledge, the silicon carbide market will go up 10x in the next 5 years. Therefore, how many machines are needed? Is it very efficient what you are doing now to your mid-comparably -- the number of machines to maybe -- how is the throughput in that regard?
So in the temporary bonding process, that is typically a 3-step process. So the first process that is to bond the 2 wafers. Then the customer is taking that wafer and is going through the thinning process. And then after the thinning process, the wafers come back for a debonding step. So that is the second machine. And then the third machine is a cleaning step where the adhesive residues need to be cleaned. So typically, 3 machines from SUSS are needed to do the temporary bonding, debonding and cleaning. And 1 machine can do around 10 to 15 wafers an hour. So this customer that we are working with is essentially getting a first equipment set consisting of 3 machines, and they can run 10 wafers an hour through that process. And now the number of machines essentially scales with the demand the customer has. That throughput will not scale. It will always be in the 10- to 15-wafer range.
Okay. Super. That's very helpful. Maybe another technology question. In print, the technology you're creating with your MicroOptic solution, is it still the case that we can expect here as a very interesting market coming -- starting in 2022?
Oliver, would you like to answer? Or should I?
Yes. I can more or less only in a general terms or may not answer on this question. Maybe you can give more insight here.
Yes. I mean what I can say is that we have on the road map to launch a fully automated in print cluster for 2022, and we do speak to customers that are very interested to get such a system. So the market is there and SUSS will come up with a product offering for an automated tool next year.
Okay. Maybe another question. I don't know I asked this question before, but I hear more and more, we had just this announcement of IBM, which is 2-nanometer process and the talks that [ all can ] will use this by using gate-all-around such as the front-end technology, but also maybe related to back-end. Is gate-all-around also a driver for your business going forward? Have you ever -- or is it something which is maybe you can handle with the traditional back-end solutions?
That is a question I cannot answer. So we do not know that IBM process flow in that level of detail. And we have not seen specific questions around...
No. That was more on the gate-all-around. It's not only for gate-all-around, it's not only specific to IBM. Also TSMC, looking at this for other solutions as a packaging solution.
Yes. I mean we do not expect the packages to change. If you look at TSMC's web page, they are still promoting the traditional processes like InFO or CoWoS, which they are going to combine with the new SoIC process technology. So any device that is produced with the new SoIC process, a new front-end process technology, we'll still reuse the same back-end processes that TSMC has developed. And I would expect a similar situation for other front-end technologies as well that they would still go into similar back-end packages.
Nevertheless, it looks -- if we look to what Applied is doing with Besi and your Austrian competitor, set front and then back-end coming closer to, as I said, is a trend going forward. And it's also something you're looking at now.
We are looking into that. We are closely watching what EVG and ASM and AMAT and Besi are doing, and we have some strategy prepared on our side.
We haven't received further questions at this point. [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. I will hand back to the speakers.
Yes. If there are no further questions, thank you very much for attending this call. And we are looking forward to speaking to you soon, latest in August when we are presenting our second quarter results. Thank you very much to everybody.
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