SCHMID Group (SHMD) Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Orders Accelerate, Margin Guidance Cut

Key Takeaways

• SCHMID Group reported revenue of EUR 27.8 million in Q2 2026, up from EUR 18.2 million in Q1, after a weaker-than-expected start to the year.
• H1 2026 equipment revenue increased to EUR 39.4 million from EUR 10.7 million a year earlier, while spare parts and services revenue rose to EUR 6.4 million from EUR 5.9 million.
• Gross margin was 21.2%, constrained by lower scale and a higher share of lower-margin China production. Management expects the regional mix to shift toward German production in H2.
• Order intake reached EUR 52.3 million in Q3 and EUR 96.6 million year to date, driven by flip-chip BGA substrate and AI server board capacity investments. The order backlog stood at a record EUR 89 million.
• Full-year revenue guidance remains at least EUR 100 million, but adjusted EBITDA margin guidance was lowered from more than 12% to 6%-9%. Management expects order intake to finish in the upper half of the EUR 125 million-EUR 150 million range.
• SCHMID reduced debt from EUR 53 million to approximately EUR 23 million following a EUR 30.75 million debt-to-equity swap. The company said it does not expect to require new equity financing over the next six months.

Key Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

SCHMID delivered one of its first InfinityLine H+ systems for 700x700-millimeter panel-level packaging to a U.S.-based customer. Management said panel-level packaging demand is increasingly performance-driven, including applications requiring larger packages and glass core substrates.

Recent orders were supported by new flip-chip BGA substrate factories and continued AI server board capacity investment. Management said most projects expected to contribute to the remainder of 2026 order intake are already under negotiation, while many recently received orders will flow into 2027.

The company is consolidating two leased manufacturing sites in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, into one company-owned campus. The EUR 11 million project is expected to double effective China production capacity and become operational by Q4 2027. Management estimated that revenue capacity could increase from approximately EUR 50 million at the existing sites to around EUR 100 million at the new facility.

SCHMID’s Malaysian facility is operating and expanding to serve growing regional customers. In Germany, management sees sufficient building and machinery capacity, but identified labor recruitment, training and retention as the principal constraint.

The Sprint 1 cost program reduced more than 14 full-time equivalent positions in German overhead functions and achieved approximately EUR 4 million in annualized labor-cost savings. Restructuring costs are expected to total about EUR 700,000, of which roughly EUR 400,000 was recognized in H1.

Sprint 2 targets savings of at least 5% on purchasing expenses. Management expects most of these savings by year-end, although component redesign initiatives are more likely to contribute in 2027.

Management Guidance

The revenue outlook was maintained. Adjusted EBITDA margin guidance was reduced from the previous target of more than 12%, reflecting the weaker first quarter, lower scale and gross-margin pressure.

Management expects stronger H2 2026 activity and said the current order momentum supports a promising 2027. These expectations depend on order execution, production mix, purchasing savings and the company’s ability to scale labor capacity.

Risks and Areas to Watch

• Working capital reached approximately 14% of last-12-month sales at the end of June, compared with negative working capital in December 2025. Management’s medium-term objective is to reduce it to around 10% or less.
• The company cannot currently obtain certain guarantees required for European customer advances, limiting prepayments and increasing working-capital needs.
• China’s existing facilities face building-capacity constraints until the new Zhongshan campus becomes operational in Q4 2027.
• Rapid growth in Germany could be limited by the availability, training and retention of skilled labor and contract workers.
• Glass core substrate adoption still depends on customer qualification. Management identified through-glass-via metallization as a key technical bottleneck.
• China production currently carries slightly lower margins, although management expects a greater contribution from German production in H2.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Management said SCHMID is currently well financed following its convertible funding and debt-to-equity conversion. It does not anticipate new equity requirements during the next six months, although it may use debt in China for working capital and the new factory. The expected average funding cost for new Chinese debt is approximately 2.7%.

On margins, management expects improvement from both operating leverage and product mix. Semiconductor customers typically require higher service levels but also pay higher prices, supporting stronger contribution margins for panel-level packaging and other newer products.

Regarding glass core substrates, SCHMID said it is engaged with major participants across the Intel, NVIDIA and AMD supply chains. Investors should watch customer qualification and progress in through-glass-via metallization as indicators of movement toward volume production.

Management also said the new China facility should deliver better unit economics once revenue rises roughly 20% above the current run rate. Consolidating two sites will remove internal transportation inefficiencies and reduce exposure to future rent increases.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we warmly welcome you to the H1 2026 Results Conference Call and Webcast of the SCHMID Group. I'm pleased to welcome the CFO, Arthur Schuetz, and CSO, Roland Rettenmaier, who will guide us through the presentation shortly, after which we will move on to a Q&A session.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 20-F, for a discussion of these risks and uncertainties. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. In addition, today's discussion may include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings materials and filings. And with that, I'm handing over to you, Arthur.

Arthur Schuetz

Thank you, Mara, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by giving you the headline picture of the first half of 2026. In short, this has been 6 months of significant transformation. We've prepared the balance sheet. Our cost program has been executed, and we're seeing real momentum in order intake. Let me walk through the 4 numbers that tell the story. EUR 33 million of new net capital was raised through our convertible and SEPA, EUR 31 million of debt was reduced through a debt-to-equity step-up announced in May, EUR 4 million of fixed costs were taken out through our Sprint program and EUR 52 million of orders we saw in the last 8 weeks.

2026 remains a transition year, but the foundation is now in place for a strong second half of '26 and a promising 2027. Let me now walk you through the P&L of the first half. First of all, this -- the Q1 was a slow start. It tends to be seasonally weak, but it was weaker than expected. We've seen EUR 18.2 million revenues in Q1, which increased to EUR 27.8 million revenues in Q2.

Out of this, equipment revenues was EUR 10.7 million in the first 6 months last year, which was a very weak half year, to EUR 39.4 million in H1 2026. Spare parts and services increased their revenues from EUR 5.9 million to EUR 6.4 million year-on-year. Our gross profit margin of 21.2% was lower than expected.

This is partially just the lower scale and then also a shift towards China, where we have slightly lower margins and -- which we expect to reverse in the second half to more German production-based revenues. Our G&A expenses increased by more than EUR 3 million because of the Sprint restructuring, share-based compensation and capital structure items. I will talk more about that on the next page.

Other income and other expenses include about EUR 1.7 million foreign exchange losses. This was EUR 6.3 million gains in the first half of '25. The financial results losses reflect the accounting treatment of the XJ Harbour liability, which we converted into shares in January, and to a lesser extent, also the fair value movement of the company's warrants. It also includes for your information, about EUR 875,000 of interest on our debt.

Now let me move to the next page and walk you through how we get to our adjusted EBITDA. So the adjustments include about EUR 420,000 of Sprint restructuring costs. Share-based compensation reflects 2026 and 2027 C-level rewards for shares and options. Under IFRS, these had to be recognized mostly in H1 of this year. Capital structure restructuring costs reflect the fact that we had 2 20-F filings this year -- this half year. We are still under the NASDAQ monitoring period, which means higher filing requirements until February 2027. We also had some costs that came with the debt-to-equity conversion.

Let me now talk about our Sprint program. So we concluded Sprint 1. We reduced headcount for full-time equivalents of more than 14 in our German overhead functions. Most of those departures will happen in Q3. We had -- or we will have about restructuring costs, about EUR 700,000, of which, as I mentioned, EUR 400,000 was expensed in the first half. This is mostly for paid leave, again, running into Q3 mostly and then some small severance payments. The run rate has been achieved of about EUR 4 million of expenses, savings in labor costs. And this also reduces our fixed costs and lowers our breakeven point.

Now we have started moving to the second phase of our Sprint program, which is a purchasing cost savings program. More than 50% of our total expenses are purchasing materials. And our target for savings are 5% of those purchasing expenses, at least 5%. As we now see a period of increasing volumes for purchasing, this is a good time to renegotiate terms and conditions. We think that most of those 5% minimum savings we can achieve by year-end.

However, we also redesigned some high-cost components and this design to cost will take us a bit of time and will be more something for 2027.

Let me then walk you to cash flow and working capital. We had EUR 29.3 million of operating cash outflow in H1, which was mostly the EUR 26 million of investments in our working capital. As you can see, we had negative working capital in December of last year, and we're now at about 14% of LTM sales by June, end of June. Now medium term, we think we can reduce this back to more something like 10% or less. We also believe that the absolute amount of working capital is something that we can keep flat or reduce by year-end. We spent about EUR 800,000 on the CapEx. We're typically running at EUR 1.5 million of annualized CapEx. Obviously, in the second half, we will start seeing some of the spending on the Chinese factory, which in total, will be for around EUR 11 million, and this is land plus building. It's not so much the machineries that we effectively have already. And as I mentioned before, we raised about EUR 33 million to the convertible and the standby.

That leads me to the balance sheet. We did a EUR 30.75 million debt-to-equity swap announced in May. This meant the total debt has been reduced from EUR 53 million to about EUR 23 million, which we believe is a sustainable level and also means that we actually now have some debt capacity and can fund some of our growth in debt rather than equity. Additionally, obviously, we have -- this -- have a convertible. The Black Forest convertible of EUR 2.5 million that matures in March. Of the $30 million convertible issued in January, $11 million remaining and we have $20 million convertible that was raised in July. As part of the convertible financing, we now have additional debt capacity for China as long as this is nonrecourse to Germany subsidiary or to our Topco.

So that means, for example, the Chinese factory can be financed on a nonrecourse project base of debt. We can also raise additional working capital or bank loans up to the EUR 20 million level. The average cost of funding for our Chinese debt, the new debt will be around 2.7%. So very attractive rates. Additionally, we still have $21 million of standby equity remaining. We have not drawn on that in the second half of this year and are not intending to draw on this for the rest of the year.

With that, I now hand over to Roland, who will give an operational update and talk about our order intake situation.

Roland Rettenmaier

Thank you, Arthur. Let me give you an operational update. We executed well in the first half of 2026, and we also delivered one of our first InfinityLine H+ for 700x700-millimeter panel level packaging to a U.S.-based customer. In addition to that, to grow with our customer, we decided and started to consolidate and expand our Chinese manufacturing campus. We will move the currently leased 2 locations to 1 bigger SCHMID owned manufacturing campus in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, which is the same province as today. And with this, we are consolidating our current operation and will double our production capacity in China.

The total investment is about EUR 11 million, and the new facility is expected to be operational by Q4 2027. Our Malaysian facility successfully established, up and running and currently expanding to fulfill the demands of our growing key customers in this region.

Our order intake is accelerating. In our investor call in May, I have stated that Q1 was rather slow due to new factory planning flip chip BGA substrate customer and I expected some momentum in the market through flip chip BGA substrate capacity investments in the second half of 2026. We already recognized this momentum in late Q2, and we do see continuing market demand through the rest of 2026 and the full 2027. Due to these flip chip BGA substrate and continuing AI server board capacity investments, we already achieved EUR 52.3 million order intake in Q3 and are totaling out to EUR 96.6 million order intake year-to-date.

These high-end equipment orders also balanced loading of our German and Chinese manufacturing locations, as Arthur has previously explained. We published and raised our order intake guidance for 2026 in July this year to EUR 125 million to EUR 150 million. Based on what I currently see and the information I have, I do expect us to land in the upper area of that guidance. With this, I'm handing back to Arthur.

Arthur Schuetz

Thank you, Roland. So looking at our new guidance, the revenue guidance remains unchanged. For the full year, we expect at least EUR 100 million revenues for the -- if you're looking at the adjusted EBITDA margin, obviously, this used to be more than 12% guidance for the full year. We now expect 6% to 9% on margin, EBITDA margin -- adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year. And then order intake, as Roland just mentioned, within the EUR 125 million to EUR 150 million range, we now expect to be at the upper half of that range. With that, we conclude our presentation, and I hand over back to Mara to organize the Q&A session.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

And I have a risen hand from Sebastien Naji from William Blair.

Question-and-Answer Session

Sebastien Cyrus Naji

Great. Well, congrats on the solid results here and the continued build of the pipeline. I just wanted to ask maybe first on the order guidance for this year. So you talked about, kind of, the upper half of this EUR 125 million to EUR 150 million range. You already have nearly EUR 97 million through mid-August. So if you could just expand a little bit on what gives you some of the confidence that you can get that remaining portion as we move through the rest of the year? And how much of that is tied to identify projects already in negotiation versus just broader pipeline?

Roland Rettenmaier

Thank you for your question, Sebastien. I think mostly -- I know that most of the projects are mostly the order intake projected for the rest of the year is already in negotiation. So this project is already in negotiation.

Arthur Schuetz

And maybe to clarify. So obviously, most of the orders are in. There's a few small remaining, but we know exactly which machine we're going to manufacture in Germany and China. Most of the orders that we received recently in the next few months really goes into 2027.

Sebastien Cyrus Naji

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then just on the financing. Following this $20 million convertible, do you believe your balance sheet, in combination with some of the customer prepayments that are tied to these orders, are sufficient to fund your growth outlook here? Or would you need additional financing down the line? Just maybe what are your thoughts there?

Arthur Schuetz

Yes. So we're pretty well financed at the moment. And yes, we look at customer payments. For the next 6 months, I don't see any issue raising new equity at least. As I said, we now have the ability and find it very attractive to raise debt in China. So for example, working capital requirements that we may have in China, whereas some of the payment terms, especially on the receivables side, are pretty long. We can finance with debt in China and also indirectly effectively finance the German business, so we don't see any financing requirements other than some of the debt in the next 6 months.

Sebastien Cyrus Naji

Okay. Okay. Great. And maybe just on the topic of the China capacity that you are buying. I guess what kind of revenue level can this enlarged footprint support and does moving from rented to own capacity improve your unit economics at all?

Arthur Schuetz

So basically, at the moment, we have 2 facilities, both rented, which are a few kilometers apart. So there's an inherent inefficiency as we have to ship stuff between the 2 facilities. The new facility is not quite double as big, but the increased efficiency, we think that the real capacity -- effective capacity, let's say, is double. And roughly speaking, we can do about EUR 50 million of revenues in the old 2 factories. And the new factory, we can do about EUR 100 million revenues. So it's a significant increase. We think that if we -- as long as we can increase the current, let's say, run rate, we're effectively running at EUR 50 million in China, certainly in the second half and the first half of next year. It's all pretty much booked out. We -- as long as we increase -- can increase that by something like 20%, the unit economics are starting to look better than the current plant. So -- and obviously, with the current rental facilities, we always had a risk of rent increase, while with the owned facility, we have basically next 50 years, we're going to pay for this.

Sebastien Cyrus Naji

Got it. Okay. And maybe just last question, more on the product side and specifically just on glass core substrates. I guess, what technical or customer milestones should investors be watching for to know that the market is moving from proof of concept and qualification into a volume capacity cycle. And what exactly are some of the bottlenecks? Is it TGV formation, metallization? Is it yield? Is it just simply end customer qualification? Just any thoughts on that?

Roland Rettenmaier

Well, the technical bottleneck is, for sure, the metallization of the TGVs. This is something we have also a very strong solution for. But then, of course, the customer qualification is another thing you want to watch for.

Operator

We have another risen hand by David Williams from Needham.

David Williams

Again, thanks for letting me ask a question here. I guess maybe firstly is just on the demand trends and you talked about the acceleration over the last 8 weeks. What do you attribute the new demand from relative to the first half, just given the strength we're seeing across the markets generally and more broad-based. When do you attribute that -- the recent demand from?

Roland Rettenmaier

Well, we have seen -- in the first quarter, we've recognized -- or let's put it that way, in the last quarter of 2025, we have recognized the shortage in IC substrates. This is what I mentioned with flip chip BGA substrates. And in the first quarter of 2026, the big substrate manufacturer were making plans to stop and stop the incremental investments and made plans for stage investment through new factories. And this took some time in Q1, and they made it on the way in Q2, and this is what we currently recognize these new factories are being built and up being equipped with new equipment. And this is what we started to recognize in the late Q2 and already in Q3.

David Williams

Great. And then as you kind of think about your capacity and what you're doing in China, but more broadly, how do you think about capacity and the ability to meet the demand you have in front of you? And maybe what are the constraints to outperforming the guidance range?

Arthur Schuetz

Yes. So it's quite a different situation in Germany than in China. In China, we do have a building capacity restraint that resolve in Q4 next year. We have been hiring, I think, in March, April, we hired than -- more than 100 people, which is not without challenges, but that's kind of done in China. In Germany, we have a lot of space. I don't see any capacity issues there. We -- obviously, labor is always the bigger capacity constraints.

By the way, there's no machinery, so you find little very little machinery in manufacturing, that's never constrained. Labor will be the main constraint in Germany. And what we are targeting to do for probably next year when we anticipate to have some capacity on the labor side is to hire effectively contract workers to supplement our labor here in Germany. That's the main constraint, I would say, and obviously training them and then retaining is, sort of, the main challenge.

Operator

We have another risen hand by Mrs. Katherine Thompson from Edison Group.

Katherine Thompson

I saw in July that Intel made an announcement about a partnership with Lens Technology, talking about glass core substrates. I just wondered what kind of conversations you've been having with your customers over the last few months on glass core substrates?

Roland Rettenmaier

Well, glass is solving a lot of -- a lot of topics over composite materials, a lot of player in the Intel supply chain, in the NVIDIA supply chain, AMD supply chain, you name them, putting an eye on glass core substrates as it's but in terms of its flatness, it's smoothness in terms of diverse constants like dielectric constants and signal integrity. So we are engaged with most of or the major of the supply chain player, and we are supporting them with our technology and equipment to make glass core substrates real.

Katherine Thompson

Okay. And I think the question for Arthur. I just wanted to understand a little bit more detail on building the new Chinese manufacturing facility. So I think you said the cost of that will be EUR 11 million. Are you able to just give me a sense of over what timeframe you expect to spend that money?

Arthur Schuetz

Yes. So effectively, we're now finalizing plans with the architects. We actually haven't actually purchased the land, although that's all agreed and signed up. But I think in about a month or two, we would expect to start construction. And effectively, we -- it's a typical construction loan that ramps up with the building, but I -- from all I know, it's roughly in equal amounts, I would say, from September, October this year for about 12 months.

Operator

We have another risen hand by Mr. Andrew McGrath from Linden Advisors.

Andrew McGrath

I think it's come up a few times, but as you see architectural shifts and panel level packaging emerge, where do you see the opportunity specifically for you and kind of any product shifts? There's the kind of your customer deployment of PLP and some of these other elements changing your products and kind of gross margin mix? Or is it less specifically driven to that.

Roland Rettenmaier

Well, panel-level packaging is an important piece of our domain, our domain is panel as SCHMID is producing panel-level equipment. We see different kind of flavors of panel-level packaging. Initially, a few years back, some player entered panel-level packaging for a cost reason to save costs on a larger substrate. Nowadays, we recognize panel-level packaging is used for performance reasons, like glass core substrates like the 310x310, which you currently see in Taiwan and larger kind of panel for getting the performance of a larger package. So currently, it's done for the package size and not so much for cost reason. So this is what we see in the market and what we support in the market.

Andrew McGrath

And I guess on the back, again, kind of order intake, how does the gross margin of that product mix compared to the first half and historical.

Roland Rettenmaier

Well, this is a different segment of customers. This is semiconductor customers who are typically used to pay higher prices for the products. They also expect higher service levels, and they are used to pay for this. So this will affect our gross margin in a positive way.

Andrew McGrath

Got it. And then last one for me, just on working capital and kind of cash balances, recognizing kind of Sprint 1 and 2 and some of the other liability offsets. Any -- it sounded like you expect working capital to stay flat, if not be a cash benefit. Any added color you can provide to the cash management component?

Arthur Schuetz

Yes. I mean maybe if you look at the working capital items, the cash advances are -- haven't increased as much as we would have thought. We do require guarantees in Europe, something that we, at the moment, cannot get. And I think this will change over the next 9 months, maybe that is fall, maybe spring. So there are actually contracts in Europe where we don't get any cash advances, which is obviously not great for the working capital. That's one thing that hurts working capital at the moment is a little bit, I would say. Other than that, in general, what you see is that China, both the receivables are made, but also the payments are made.

So the whole working capital gets expanded, the more business we do in China, but that -- it's actually not that dissimilar from Europe. And then of course, some of these items are lumpy. You know, these are some lumpier contracts. And there, it really can depend on the exact quarter. But obviously, in general, we do get the cash advances before we order and pay for the parts, which is important.

Maybe the other point to make is because of the issues that we had end of last year, some of the payment terms or cash that we had to give to our suppliers, i.e., we had to pay in advance for some of the parts. That's mostly resolved and also only recently, and that will also help the working capital to get to more normal level, I would say. So it's a little bit higher than what I would have expected in the normalized situation.

Operator

We have one more risen hand by Ms. [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

So I wonder if you can talk a little bit, I mean, I guess you hinted at it, the margins on the backlog or just approximately like give us a sense. And the -- is this more of like a mix or a volume ramping up story to get the margins by '28 or '29? Longer term, up closer to where some other guys in the industry are.

Arthur Schuetz

Yes. I mean, obviously, we do have a certain amount of fixed costs, R&D and actually, our listing costs are not insignificant. And as a fixed cost block, which at the current revenue level is pretty significant. So there's definitely a huge scale benefit as I also hinted at -- we -- some of the newer products and depending on the customer, we have the big margin differences in terms of contribution margin. So I think we will see both. Clearly, the order intake that we're seeing now mostly flows into '27. And if you look at the order backlog, EUR 89 million, that's pretty much a record. So there will be big scale benefits, but also the new products, the more we can sell the new product, the higher will be the contribution margin. So it's hard to say what's more important, but it's both going to be quite critical for the improving margins.

Unknown Analyst

And then just one longer term also. Can you give us any sense about how your capacity is scaled? Do you have enough scale after the China factory is done to get to, say, 500 million of orders? Or like can you give us any sense of where you would need to really ramp up your capacity or where you could get to today, just based on -- I'm not asking for a forecast, but just based on the capacity you have today?

Arthur Schuetz

Yes. So as I mentioned, we have lots of space here in -- we're in the middle of the Black Forest. So one thing is good. We have a lot of space. Also we used to have the solar operations, et cetera, and we still have that space effectively so to speak. So space is not a constraint. Machinery is not a constraint, it is people. And there's no, sort of, capacity limit as such as, I would say, that is [indiscernible] as much as we can grow. But there will be, sort of, the challenge operationally if we grow -- continue to grow very fast, we need to train and hire. And again, maybe use contract workers fast enough to make sure that we can deliver on the quality that we need to deliver, I would say, that is the most challenge, but it's not -- I don't see -- we have discussed a third site. I don't think that's anywhere imminent because again, we can grow pretty fast, pretty far here on the German side.

Operator

We have not received any risen hands nor do we have any questions in our chat box. Therefore, I would say, we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your participation and your interest in SCHMID Group. If you have any further questions at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. A big thank you also to you, Arthur, and Roland, for your presentation and the time you took to answer all those questions. I wish you all the success today. Thank you, and bye-bye.

Arthur Schuetz

Thank you very much, everybody.

Roland Rettenmaier

Thank you very much.