Xaar H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 4, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Revenue rose 9.2% like-for-like in the first half, with printhead revenue up 5.5% and Megnajet revenue up 27%. Adjusted profit before tax improved to £0.2 million from a £0.7 million loss, keeping the company on track with consensus expectations.
  • Negative Sentiment: The Flashforge Desktop 3D product launch has been delayed again, although Xaar says it is in pre-launch and has received orders for initial production batches. Inventory buildup to support the launch contributed to a £4.3 million adjusted free-cash-flow outflow and could reverse quickly if the launch proceeds as planned.
  • Positive Sentiment: Xaar highlighted expanding adoption of its high-viscosity printhead technology across advanced manufacturing, PCB coating, ceramic glaze, batteries, semiconductors and solar panels. Management is also pursuing higher-value integrated print modules and expects its Dongguan facility to improve cost efficiency, supply-chain resilience and regional responsiveness.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management sees substantial long-term opportunity in Desktop 3D, estimating that full-color digital printing could eventually represent about 10% of an 8.8 million-unit annual desktop 3D printer market. The company also expects recurring replacement-printhead revenue from a growing installed base and is targeting gross margins in the high-40% range, potentially reaching 50% over time.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Near-term performance remains exposed to delayed capital spending, geopolitical and economic volatility, and lengthy customer qualification cycles that can take several years. Battery, automotive coating, semiconductor and solar opportunities are progressing, but management expects meaningful revenue from many of them only over the medium to long term.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Xaar H1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Company Representative at Xaar

Hello everyone, welcome to Xaar's half year interim results for 2026. Captions are enabled on Zoom, however, these are automatic and can sometimes contain errors. If you would like to ask a question as part of our Q&A later, you can submit a question on Zoom by using the Q&A function. You could also use the raise hand function, and we will invite you through to ask your question in person. I'll now hand over to John Mills, Chief Executive Officer, and Paul James, Chief Financial Officer.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Yeah, good morning. Thank you all for coming on to Xaar's 2026 interim results. As you said, my name is John Mills, CEO. I'm joined by Paul James, who's our CFO. Today we want to take you through our half year results. We're really pleased presenting that the group revenue is up 9.2% like for like. I think we started the year hopeful that this was going to be a year without any major economic crisis around the world. Unfortunately, as you know, that's not been the case. Despite that, the growth has been pretty good. Printhead revenue up by 5.5%. This has really been driven by progressing new applications, which we'll talk about in the next few slides.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Gross margins have improved, just over two basis points. That really is a function of better financial management and also stronger pricing as we move into some of these new markets where pricing is a little stronger. Today, we were all hoping and expecting to have been talking about the launch of the Desktop 3D. Unfortunately, there has been a few additional delays, all of which we understand, all of which we're involved with, and it's really about making sure when the product is launched, it actually is launched and works and gives the right customer experience. However, we are in the pre-launch phase. We have received orders for the first production batches, we're confident that will happen in the next short while.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

The basis of the business is that we compete with other major international companies. The unique capabilities of Xaar and the differentiated architecture that we have in our printheads is really the thing that drives the value proposition at Xaar. The way that our printheads work enable us to have a wider operating window, which means that we can deliver products and applications that use a wider range of fluids, give better industrial performance. That is actually protected by not only a significant patent portfolio, but the fact that actually we've got over 30 years of manufacturing experience. Even if you had access to the patents, you still have to know how to make one of these printheads. There's quite a bit of production knowhow that goes into these things.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Over recent years, we've developed more and more application expertise, so actually using the printheads in industrial applications. There's knowledge and experience that we've gained in those areas. These unique benefits on which we base our value proposition and our expertise deliver the ability for our customers to do more. You can have fluids with high pigment loading in there that are much thicker, higher viscosity. Ultimately what that means is the customer can do more with the fluid, and it's ultimately the fluid that wins. This generally results in higher levels of efficiency, higher levels of performance of the fluid, which ultimately leads to less waste, reduced cost, and overall operational efficiencies, which is why we're seeing much more of the new applications moving into industrial manufacturing environments.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

The challenge for us is actually moving into these new markets requires multiple steps of qualification. If you're moving into an industry, so for instance, the semiconductor industry, the first stage is actually them identifying that you need to have a printhead to do some of the things that move their processes forward. You then develop a fluid, work with them on that process, you have to go through a development process where that process needs to be tested, and then it needs to be accepted within a broader manufacturing process. That whole thing can take years to deliver. The frustration for us is that we don't really have control over any of those time frames. We get very excited when we engage with an industry like solar panels or semiconductor of these things, and we can see the size of the application.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Once we've actually got the printhead working within that application, how it's commercialized is really not within our control. As we talk about a lot of these applications, many of them have been running for years, and we can see the progress that's being made. One of the things that I think everybody finds slightly frustrating is that these can take longer than we really hope. The good news is that once you're in, all of those barriers to adoption work in your favor, because once you're in and you're qualified in that process, then actually to be changed out and swapped out with somebody else's product, then all of those factors really start working in your favor. It's an incredibly sticky technology. Once we're in, we're going to be in for a substantial period of time.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

That means that any new product that's actually made requires new printheads. Once you build an installed base of printheads, then any printhead replacement is incremental revenue. That Effectively acts as an annuity revenue. If you have an install base of 10,000 machines and there's a printhead in each one, 10% replacement of printheads per year would give you another 1,000 printheads per year revenue. Building the installed base gives you that ongoing annuity, and we're seeing more and more as we gauge into more industrial applications that we're actually taking a share of the fluid revenue as we work with companies to develop these fluids. The key thing for us is all about broadening the breadth of the application base. We now have 21 applications across different market sectors.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

If you compare that to maybe a decade ago, where Xaar was pretty much in ceramics and maybe a bit of coding and marking, today it is a very different business. It is much more geographically diverse, it is much more application diverse, and that is going to give us much more resilience going forward. I think it is that resilience that has actually allowed us to deliver a result that we have made today, despite the challenges that we have seen in the Middle East and the impact that has had on the global economy. With that, I will hand over to Paul to take you through the financials.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

All right. Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I am very pleased to present the results for the first half of 2026, which has year-on-year growth in every part of our business, in all parts of our business. Group revenue is up by almost a third, driven by growth in all parts of the business. Sorry, up by 9%, driven by growth in all parts of the business. I am particularly pleased about EPS's recovery under new leadership, which comes with an ever-expanding pipeline. The core of our business is Printhead, and being up 5.5% prior to the launch of Flashforge's Desktop 3D offering is impressive. This revenue performance translates to a profitable first half for the first time in at least three years, and we are in line to achieve consensus.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

The balance sheet is almost net neutral, with a net debt position of GBP 100,000 and an adjusted free cash flow outflow of GBP 4.3 million, more about that later. This is primarily driven by the need to build inventory to support the launch of Flashforge's Desktop 3D product. Let us take a look at divisional performance. I am pleased with the growth in Printhead and with the expected launch of Flashforge's Desktop 3D in the second half. Year-on-year revenue performance for the second half is expected to be much stronger. This growth has been driven by new business, new applications, and uses for our unique technology. Within all of this, we have seen the legacy ceramics market stabilize after many years of decline, helped by the development of new so-called ceramics glaze technology.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

As such, this decline that we have experienced for a long time now no longer represents a headwind going forward. There is a wider and important point here. The Xaar today has a broadened appeal to many different sectors that continues to expand. As such, there is now a de-risked portfolio effect compared to the Xaar of old. Operational gearing effects show enhanced adjusted profit before tax profitability, improving by some 100 basis points year-on-year. As for Megnajet, gross margin is up 120 basis points, built on a revenue increase of 27% year-on-year. The Megnajet business underlies the importance of supporting systems or system components to our core offering, supporting our customer base. This growth both comes from new customers as well as increased demand from that existing customer base.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

As for EPS in the U.S., much hard work has been done to rebuild a durable pipeline, address the cost base, and solve long-term intractable problems. I expect EPS's recovery path to continue into next year. Let's take a look at the adjusted income statement as a whole. The group grew 9.2%, a performance that would be the envy of many companies in the current global climate, and growing gross margin performance by 220 basis points. Development of operational expenditure is worthy of particular mention. It is up 5.7%, but this increase is driven by building, some would say rebuilding, capability in the front end of sales and marketing, and the sharp end, research and development, to drive growth in the innovation pipeline, which is our lifeblood. General and admin expenses have actually declined by 1.6% note, a contraction in the cost of back office roles.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

Putting all that together, we now see a business that grew profitability substantially in the first half to achieve an adjusted profit for tax of GBP 0.2 million, compared to a loss of GBP 0.7 million last year, and similar losses for the first halves of the years before that. Turning our attention to cash flow. The group's adjusted free cash flow was an outflow of GBP 4.3 million. This was primarily driven by temporarily building inventory to support the launch of Desktop 3D by Flashforge. Once this launch has happened, we expect this to sharply reverse. In addition, the group has upped capital expenditure in the first half compared to last year, again, driven by building out capability to support anticipated higher volume levels in the future, particularly with our new manufacturing facility in Dongguan, China, and this is enhancing supply chain resilience.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

I want to emphasize, as I've done many times already since I joined Xaar, that the days of storing large amounts of cash on what is essentially a current account are over. We have entered into an expanded revolving credit facility, increasing it from GBP 5 million to GBP 10 million, with an EBITDA covenant of three times, whereas previously it was two times. In addition, we have an uncommitted accordion facility and an increased invoice discounting facility. At the moment, liquidity is substantial. With that, I'd like to hand back to John.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Thanks, Paul. I think the key thing for Xaar is really about the strategy of how we're actually going to exploit the opportunities in the market. The key thing for us is that we are not going to try and compete with big companies like Epson and Ricoh and Fuji on the basis of their core capabilities. What we have is the ability to print fluids that no one else can. What we found is that by exploiting that, we're discovering new applications where we are the effectively only company that can actually deliver the performance with these new types of fluids. This is opening up new markets. Therefore, the competitive advantage that we have is really the thing that we need to drive.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

As I said earlier, we're looking to get into more and more applications across a broad range of market sectors to actually eliminate, as much as possible, any volatility that we see through any changes in global economic conditions. Really, what does that mean? Product development needs to continue to be a core of our strength. We engage actively in looking at the next generation of products. What we have today is not the end. There are other things that are coming down the pipeline. The key thing is actually providing the customers with the solutions that make it as easy as possible to get to market. We'll talk a little bit about semiconductor.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

In that market, actually, what we're providing to the semiconductor company is actually a completed module, not just a printhead, because for them, time to market is much more important than actually the price of the unit. We're seeing that in these new market sectors where we can move to be slightly more vertically integrated in providing modules into applications, which not only increases our revenue stream, but also reduces the time to market. Also making sure that we respond to market dynamics by growing the presence in countries as they're required. We've done that recently by opening the facility in Dongguan. We now have some back-end manufacturing of printheads and manufacturing of ink systems, and that's completely changed the cost base for some of those products.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

We expect to do more of that over the coming years, which should help drive margins, but also means that we can actually respond more quickly to customers in those regions. The route to market is really the same. We have OEMs. These are people who build equipment and sell equipment into a given application. Increasingly, we're actually seeing what we would call user-developer integrators. Companies, like semiconductor companies, who actually will take the product and develop a piece of equipment for their own use with inside their manufacturing. What we typically try to do is to pick two or three customers in a particular market sector and give them the focus and the support to be successful and bring them to market.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

As I said earlier, the process of actually moving from initial contact with an end user to actually volume, we've got applications now that are maturing and actually starting to deliver volume that are five years in the making. As we move forward now, I think we've got a much clearer understanding of how long these things take. The good thing is that a number of things are actually coming through and delivering revenue today that were started several years ago. If I point to PCB conformal coating, if you look closely at the picture on the bottom left, you'll see some little blue coating there. If you have a PCB that needs to be waterproof, then we can actually put a coating over the top of that that makes it waterproof, and this is much quicker and cheaper than the previous manufacturing.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

As you can imagine, that fluid is quite a special fluid, and it's very difficult to inkjet print. That's an area that we've been working on now for about three years, and this is the first year that we've actually seen any revenue coming from that application. Ceramic glaze, Paul's mentioned before, this is a new application area in ceramics where we have a unique capability with the Aquinox printhead to develop and to put down glaze that gives you texture on the tile. Semiconductors. Semiconductors, we now have five semiconductor companies that are engaging with us to do trials. They are investigating our processes, and you could imagine the timescale. This is not something we expect to deliver revenue in the short term, but I think it's a very good sign about how the technology can be adopted in these new sectors.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Solar panels. We are replacing some of the processes within that with inkjet, and again, that's a market that will take a few years to actually adopt and deploy fully. They're all generating revenue in relatively small numbers at the moment, but they're exciting opportunities for future growth. This is becoming increasingly important, not just providing the printheads to customers, but increasingly people asking for print bars and print engines that actually then integrate all of the components together. That reduces their risk, reduces their time to market, and that's something we're seeing more of across the business. The support is really important as well. We are gaining a reputation for being one of the best support organizations, and that brand recognition now is building in these new market sectors.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

If you then look at the details by market sector, these numbers are kind of quite big and some of them look, particularly the -53.8, but it's a relatively small number. The 53.8 negative, that's one particular customer who's had some structural changes going on in there. I expect that to continue in the second half before returning to growth next year. I really would focus on the 3D and advanced manufacturing, which has grown really positively. That's where the wax market is. It's where we'll see the 3D, the semiconductor. That's the area we see the biggest growth coming in the coming years. It's really pleasing that for the first time in about six, seven years, we're actually seeing a small level of growth within the ceramics, and I see that continuing with the digital glaze.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

The coding and marking, that's really down to timing in H1. We see that being back on track by the end of the year. Overall, I think a good set of results. I think the backdrop of this is that when there is volatility in the market, people tend to push back their capital purchases. Capital purchases typically include printers. If they don't buy printers, OEMs don't buy printheads. We have seen some sluggishness in certain markets. Hopefully, if the world stabilizes and returns back to some level of normality, we'd hope to see slightly stronger results going forward. In summary, it's really pleasing that there's demand for the products across a really broader set of applications and new applications as we've just talked about.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

It's frustrating for everybody, including us and Flashforge, and a bit about the launch of the Desktop 3D. We understand what's happening. We're very confident that together we will fix what are relatively minor issues, but the product has to be right when it launches. We're confident that that will happen in due course. There are three other companies that are developing the similar product that will follow over the next 12 months. That broadening of revenue stream also as we build our installed base of machines, then the annuity revenue of replacement printheads and also increasingly revenue coming from fluids as well. With all of that, despite the difficult challenges in the market, I think we in the board look forward with confidence for the next six months and the future of Xaar.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

With that, I thank you very much and happy to take any questions. Tom.

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

Thanks. Yeah.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

There you go.

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

Thanks. Morning. It's Henry Carver from Singers. I just wonder if we could cover off some of the other target markets that we've been talking about, just progress in the automotive coating and the EV battery. They're the two. Oh, and the hot wax. Just those, I think, are the three.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Yeah

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

The five, if we can.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Batteries, I visited a battery line about three or four months ago. The application, we now have, I think, something like 13 or 14 new lines that have been installed with our technology. The big challenge for these machines is that the machines themselves cost about GBP 3 million. There's 1,000 lines. To actually replace all of the lines is around about a GBP 3 billion investment. It's a huge amount of investment for those machines. What we're seeing now is a shift towards bigger batteries for storage and cylindrical batteries for cars. That's where we see the growth from. I think this year has been steady. It's broadly in line with what we expected.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

We are expecting next year for there to be slight increase. I think that the broader adoption across all the sorts of 1,000 lines, I think will happen over more years purely because of the investment required from the car companies. I think the things which are clear is the industry is clear that digital printing of the insulation coating is the future. New lines, we're increasingly seeing new lines having the digital solution, and that's what we're seeing in terms of the revenue. The replacement lines, I think the barrier is really the cost of the investment from the car companies right at a time where electric vehicles Have in and out of favor. One of the small benefits of the gas price going up is people are more interested in electric cars.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

We see it's a really interesting market, probably taking a little longer than we expected.

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

Is it just the car batteries or a lot of people now installing batteries in their homes? Does it apply to those type of batteries as well, or just?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Most of the lines that are going in are for the storage batteries, so these are much bigger. For the car batteries, they're smaller, they're easier to wrap. The yield on the wrapping of small batteries is actually higher. When you get to a big battery, they're very heavy and very difficult to wrap, and so the yield on the wrap is much lower. What we're seeing now is that most large battery lines that are going in are going in with our technology. Also the cylindrical batteries are becoming more popular as well. Some of the big European manufacturers, Tesla and BMW, are moving towards cylindrical batteries. We see new lines as being the area. This year we saw about 14 lines going in next year. That might double next year.

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

The automotive coating?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

I think the targets have been in Europe. I think if you look at the European auto industry, I think that it's a really challenging time for them, and investment in Europe is actually quite challenging, and I think this project has suffered from that. I think that it's moving forward. There's progress being made. The enthusiasm for the technology is still there. Again, it's the investment, and all of this uncertainty stops people making those investments, and hopefully we'll see a bit of stability returning and a bit more confidence, and then that'll hopefully trigger the investment needed.

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

Brilliant. Thanks. Then just the hot wax.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Hot wax. The good news that the head works, we were able to jet at high temperatures. We've been running that quite successfully. As a prototype, I think we've demonstrated that. We'll be starting to share samples with customers so they can start testing it. It will take 12 to 18 months to actually get the product to market. That opens up, as we talked about, depending on who you talk to, anywhere between three and 10 times the size of the existing market.

Henry Carver
Analyst at Singer Capital Markets

Brilliant. Thanks.

Andy Edmond
Analyst at Equity Development

Andy Edmund, Equity Development. Paul, can we dig into gross margins a little bit? Nice move and some very big moves, particularly Megnajet. Can you give a little more steer on how important pricing, if your newer products is to that, and therefore, how much can it extend going forward? In terms of the much greater cost efficiencies, cost of capital, taking out back office, et cetera. Have you done the low-hanging fruit, or do you think there's a little bit more to go for there?

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

Yeah, okay. Our pricing strategy is pretty straightforward, okay. John's talked about this many times before. When we go into a new market segment, developing new technology, then we tend to charge a bit of a keener price for that particular customer because they're taking a lot of risk on board in developing a product and launching that product. Once we move into the other OEMs in that same segment, then we tend to be able to get better pricing, and I think that's a natural sort of thing to do. Pricing is something we really focus on. There's a lot of discipline around the strategy to try and get the best possible price for what is a very unique piece of technology.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

I think in terms of the broader question around what do we want to get to in gross margin, I think our ambition is pretty clear, and we've looked back over history. I've looked back over history about what was the high point, where did Xaar get to? I think there's no reason why we shouldn't set an ambition going well into the sort of high 40% and even ultimately trying to get to 50%. There are many levers to pull to get there. We obviously have a huge benefit from operational gearing. Overall for the operating margin at least, that's an important factor. We're doing a lot of work in the background around supply chain, getting better cost efficiency in terms of the materials that we use and how we use them, and where we manufacture stuff. That's all important, too.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

Yeah, gross margin's very much an important thing. In terms of are there any other low-hanging fruit, there's still plenty to do. No CFO would say, "We've ticked every box. We've done everything." There's still things to do. I think there is more progress to be made in things like procurement and on the supply chain. I think we've done some great things over the past 12 months on that, but there's definitely more things to do there. That will all feed into the ambition of that higher gross margin and a higher operating margin, too.

Andy Edmond
Analyst at Equity Development

Great. Thank you. Just in terms of competition, you've explained and demonstrated your IP mode, the long-term development. Is there anybody else in any of your core areas that you can see trying to catch you up, or are you still two, three years ahead of the competition?

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

That's probably a question John would better answer. I'm a newcomer, relatively. I've been in the business 18 months, personally, for me, the sort of penny drop moment was this whole piece of technology around viscosity, which we've talked about many, many times. It's very difficult with our competitor's form of technology to replicate what we can do in terms of viscous fluids, I think that for me was a penny drop, like wow. That opens up a whole world in terms of industrial applications and fluid deposition in those applications. That, for me, was an important factor. John?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

It's really interesting. There was a major inkjet conference, some of the big Japanese competitors, Seiko and Kyocera and Ricoh, were all there and presenting their technology roadmaps. It was incredibly flattering that the number one topic was jetting high-viscosity fluids. All of them announced their programs to develop high-viscosity printheads. The analogy I would use is this, is that for years, they've all been working on the best Formula One car. That's been the race, who can have the best Formula One car? We've come along with a Volvo Estate that will do all sorts of other things. It will still go around the track, but it will take the kids to school and take the stuff down the recycling center.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

If you want to develop a Volvo Estate, you don't start with a Formula One car, you can't just migrate from one to the other. That's really the issue with all of the competitors. You can't just say, "I'm going to do this to this printhead," it suddenly will print high-viscosity head. It just won't work like that. You have to start again, you have to develop something with a completely different architecture. In order to do that, you then come into our patents and our protection. I think that it's great that everybody is recognizing that high viscosity is the future of digital inkjet. I think we have a significant advantage. I think we can't be complacent because these are big companies with huge budget, they will do something.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

We currently have a big advantage, and we're going to run fast to make sure we keep it.

Andy Edmond
Analyst at Equity Development

Sounds good. Volvo's much more reliable than Ferrari, isn't it?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

That's right.

Andy Edmond
Analyst at Equity Development

Thank you.

Andrew Simms
Andrew Simms
Analyst at Berenberg

Morning. It's Andrew Simms from Berenberg. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, just on the inventory that increased in H1, can you just give us a feel for what is Flashforge related versus maybe some of the other OEM launches that I think you referenced in the statement?

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

I can answer that very simply. It's predominantly Flashforge. We've taken the view that we want to support this launch fully. We think that the projections that are out there, that we've talked to Flashforge about in terms of the share of the market and what can be achieved in volume terms, I think supports that decision. When this thing does launch, and as John said, it's not in the too distant future, we want to come at this running and get a really strong launch for that product because we think, we believe, that it will take on a substantial market share relatively quickly.

Andrew Simms
Andrew Simms
Analyst at Berenberg

I suppose, how does that reverse, I suppose, under some of those assumptions? Do you see a lot of that flow out through this year, or is this a sort of multi-year inventory build that we've had?

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

Yeah, I've said in my little speech that we do expect that to reverse quite quickly. We want to create a sort of bow wave for the launch and then get them onto a reasonable lead time, and move on quite quickly as business as usual. It's really about establishing that strong initial bow wave. As I said, we do expect that position to reverse quite quickly.

Andrew Simms
Andrew Simms
Analyst at Berenberg

Great. Thank you. Just on the China facility, you obviously talked about there being future growth there as well. What would you see as the sort of the CapEx requirements of that facility to aid that growth going forward from where we are now?

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

Well, shall I start? One thing I've learned about China is, it's much more cost-effective to do things in China than in the U.K., if I'm honest. The requirements going forward, it's six digits, not seven digits that we can see. I was out in China a couple of weeks back with John, three weeks ago, I think. We visited the facility, and it is truly impressive what they've done in a very short space of time. I went there last October, and it was a bare concrete shell building. I went back three weeks ago, and it's a fully functioning, set-up, ready-to-run facility. It's not just that it's much more cost-efficient, it's much faster as well to build these capabilities. I don't see the capital requirement for that particular build-out in the near term being millions. We'll have to see how things develop.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

We could come back a year from now and say, "Do you know what? It's been so successful, we would like to double it." I don't know. Initially, an initial period, I don't see overly substantial amounts.

Andrew Simms
Andrew Simms
Analyst at Berenberg

Okay, great. Thank you.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Any more questions?

Company Representative at Xaar

We have a question on the line from Sanjay Jha. Sanjay, if you could please unmute, go ahead and ask your question.

Analyst

Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Two questions, if I may. Do you have some idea of whether Flashforge How do their products sell, are they kind of strong quarter four type business? Or are just kind of very equal across the year? How does that affect your shipments to them and your inventory levels?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Well, first of all, hi, Sanjay. It's been a while. I think it's interesting We've been working with Flashforge on this project now for 4 years. When we started, there was approximately 3 million Desktop 3D printers shipped per year, and that figure has grown every year to the point that last year there was 8.8 million Desktop 3D printers shipped, and Flashforge shipped 700,000 themselves. The estimates are that the full-color digital print will take 10% of that market, that's 800,000 machines. That's a huge number. That clearly becomes the biggest opportunity that we have. The applications are really as broad as the 8.8 million people, because if you said to me, "What do people do with 8.8 million desktop?" I have no idea. They'll do similar things to what they do with the other 8.8 million.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

They'll just do it in high resolution and full color. Their expectation is, over time, it will get to 10%. Just to give you a scale, 880,000 machines, revenue for us per machine is about GBP 500. You can quickly do the numbers and realize that's a huge opportunity. 1% is still a huge opportunity. 0.1% is still significant. The reason why we have inventory and we're doing it is we're trying to plan for success. You build up inventory, and then if it doesn't launch, you find yourself standing here explaining lots of inventory. I hope that we get to a point where I'm standing here explaining why we can't deliver enough printheads. It really depends on the quality of the product and whether consumers buy it.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

The projections are that this is a new category, if the projections are right, it was going to be a very exciting market over the next number of years.

Analyst

Thanks, Jon. Just another question. I know we have been talking about technology viscosity for quite a few years now, do you think the main problem is that this supply chain is not moving fast enough? Is it the fact that maybe you have such a strong technology lead, there are not enough competing products out there, the customers, the OEMs, are reluctant to really get into digital inkjet printing? We've been talking about staying a very small market share for a long time now, it looks like it's very difficult to break through that barrier. Do you think that's what's happening? People are reluctant to move to new technologies in printing?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Yeah. Absolutely, Sanjay, we've had different layers of that. If I go back when I first started we started thinking about high viscosity, the first challenge was the ink companies, there were no high-viscosity fluids. We'd go to talk to an ink company and say, "We'd like you to develop a high-viscosity fluid for this application." They would say, "Well, that's great, what's your install base of machines?" We'd say, "Well, it's zero. You kind of need to believe in high viscosity." It probably took us two or three years just to get one or two ink companies to try and develop one or two fluids. That has taken a long time.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

We have pretty much all of the ink manufacturers all talking to us and developing a range of fluids for high viscosity because they recognize the benefits. The chemists have now understood it, the management have now understood it. Engaging with ink companies is now no longer an issue. We also now have actual OEMs who've seen the benefit of high viscosity and are now looking at second and third applications of high viscosity. For instance, the PCB is actually being done by the same companies that have done the battery. We're not having to go and sell the virtues of high viscosity into the OEMs that recognize it. The success of those applications becomes visible to other people.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

When you go and talk to somebody about, "Well, you could use high-viscosity fluids or high-pigment fluids in this application," we can now point to real-world scenarios. There's momentum building, and it's really difficult trying to convey the momentum. The fascinating thing is it's just the number of inquiries that we get. I would say, over the last six months, the number of companies that have called us to be interested in our technology for their industrial application has grown significantly. All of those will take four or five years to get to a point where there's substantial revenue, but that momentum is there. I think what I hope to see is that once we see the Desktop 3D launch, then hopefully that will deliver some of the success that we've been looking at.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

I think behind that, if you strip out those numbers, we need to be looking at the other applications and how they're growing and the breadth for the applications. I think the business is really all about momentum and the industry understanding that you can now do these things with high viscosity. It has been, Sanjay, breaking down barriers across multiple sorts of areas of the business, and I think we're getting there now.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

I think, can I just add, because I always have my new guy perspective. Again, I've only been in the business 18 months, so I haven't experienced some of the history that John talks about, some of the difficulties that Xaar's been through. I've only ever known momentum.

Paul James
Paul James
CFO at Xaar

That's why this business is actually currently a very exciting place to be. New applications, new ideas about how to deploy technology, it seems like they're coming almost monthly. As John says, they will take time to exploit those opportunities, but there's no shortage of enthusiasm pull coming from the customer base, and that is generally quite an exciting place to be.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Any other questions?

Company Representative at Xaar

Yes, we have another couple of typed questions online. The first one of those is: what are the revenue opportunities like outside of China, for example, in the U.S. and in Europe?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

I think in the U.S., number 1 opportunity at the moment is semiconductor printing. For those of you who are familiar with some of the processes, spin coating of the semiconductor wafers is actually an incredibly common process step in all semiconductor processes. You basically take the wafer, you spin it, you put material fluid in the middle of it, and the force is basically force the fluid out, and you end up with a nice even layer over the surface. A lot of it gets wasted, so a lot of it flies off the edge, and it can end up being challenging to keep that clean and you actually waste a lot of expensive fluids, where if you actually inkjet print it over the area, you don't have any wastage and it's much cleaner.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

We've actually seen quite significant success in applications and I can't talk about the companies because we have confidentiality with these companies, but there are products out there today that are starting to use our technology with inside consumer products within it. That's an interesting area, and that's broadly, the main area is in the U.S. We also see the U.S. market as being much more a systems market. Companies who are interested in using our technology, they are much more interested in buying a solution rather than a printhead. In Asia, in China, they really just want to buy a printhead because they believe they can do the rest of it cheaper themselves. I think they can ultimately, but it takes them a long time to get there because they make the same mistakes.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

In the West, we're seeing increasingly, we'll see much more of the Western companies selling them a fully integrated solution rather than just them a printhead.

Company Representative at Xaar

Our next question is, do you foresee the 3D wax market going into a growth phase again once global economic issues settle?

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Yeah, this year's actually been quite challenging for wax. Wax has actually grown over last year. However, the Middle Eastern market has really been taken out, in terms of jewelry sales. Just think of the number of people who would fly to Dubai on holiday and buy some jewelry while they were on holiday. The wax market has been affected by that. It's also the price of gold and silver, because as the price in gold and silver goes up, then people buy less jewelry because it becomes more expensive. That's been a negative effect as well. The things that will really drive the wax market is going to be price of gold and silver and stability in the market so people feel like they want to spend their money on expensive jewelry. Nevertheless, it's still grown over last year.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

I don't see it growing substantially within the jewelry market, I think most of that growth has already occurred. I think what the next growth area is really going to be for the hot head, because as I've said previously, the wax for jewelry is really expensive. If we can actually develop a head that can print wax that's much lower cost, which means we have to operate at a much higher temperature, then that opens up casting of different metals and the market for that is substantially bigger than just the jewelry market.

Company Representative at Xaar

Thank you very much. That was the last question from online. To you.

John Mills
John Mills
CEO at Xaar

Great. Well, thank you very much for your attention today. We're pleased with the results. We're very excited about going forward, and hope to see you again in March next year. Thank you

Executives
    • Company Representative
    • John Mills
      John Mills
      CEO
    • Paul James
      Paul James
      CFO
Analysts
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