Good morning, and welcome to IPG Photonics' fourth quarter 2025 conference call. Today's call is being recorded and webcast. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to your host, Eugene Federoff, IPG Senior Director, Investor Relations, for introductions. Please go ahead with your conference.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone.

With me today is IPG Photonics' CEO, Dr. Mark Gidin, and Senior Vice President and CFO, Tim Momin. On today's call, Mark will provide a summary of our fourth quarter and full year results, as well as the overall demand environment, and then walk you through the progress we are making on our long-term strategy. After that, he will turn it over to Tim to provide financial details. Let me remind you that statements made on this call that discuss our expectations, our prediction of the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in our Form 10-K with the period ended December 31, 2024, and our reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any forward-looking statements made on this call are the company's expectations or predictions as of today, February 12, 2026 only. And the company assumes no obligation to publicly release any updates or revisions to any such statements. During this call, we will be referencing certain non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these non-GAAP measures and the reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, as well as additional details on our report results, please refer to the earnings press release, earnings call presentation, and the financial data workbook posted on our Investor Relations website. We will also post these prepared remarks on our website after this call. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mark.

Thanks, Eugene, and good morning, everybody. Fourth quarter revenue came in above our expectations, increasing 17% year-over-year and 9% sequentially. Revenue growth was driven by further stabilization in industrial demand, new opportunities, and a disciplined focus on our growth initiatives. This focus led to strong results in medical and advanced applications this quarter. Materials processing revenue was up 6% sequentially and 17% year-over-year, driven by stable general industrial demand and increased demand in battery and additive manufacturing applications. Sequentially, welding revenue was stable, while demand for cutting applications increased. Cleaning was another strong performer, and we're starting to see increased revenue synergies with the clean laser acquisition. Medical sales had a solid finish to 2025, increasing sequentially and year-over-year as new products gained traction. We also saw strong sequential and year-over-year growth in semiconductor applications, which drove higher revenue in advanced applications. Turning to full-year results, revenue grew 3%, our first full-year revenue growth since 2021. Materials processing sales were flat, with lower cutting sales being fully offset by growth in other materials processing applications, including cleaning and additive manufacturing. Our welding revenue was flat, as lower demand in the general industrial and traditional automotive markets was offset by higher demand in battery manufacturing. In particular, we saw a strong increase in sales of our welding products in Asia as battery investments rebounded in China. Demand is shifting from electric vehicles to stationary storage, which is a positive shift for IPG as stationary storage batteries often require more sophisticated welding processes. In addition, we're beginning to see increased demand for our solutions and process expertise in battery manufacturing for consumer and medical devices. In 2025, we made meaningful progress expanding our business beyond materials processing up. The portion of our business outside of materials processing accounted for approximately only 14% of our total revenue and contributed strongly to our growth this year, with micromachining, medical, and advanced applications all increasing by double digits. Turning to medical, sales grew by 21% to a new record level in 2025, as we benefited from a new customer win that became a major contributor to our revenue growth. In the past year, we also received FDA clearance for our next-generation urology system with our proprietary StoneSense and advanced modulation technologies. These solutions enable the surgeon to differentiate between kidney stones and soft tissue, improving precision and control during procedures. We started shipping this product in the fourth quarter. Our solutions are delivering clinically meaningful outcomes, and we continue to make advances with our innovation roadmap, with additional new product introductions planned in 2026. We also see the opportunity to continue growing medical sales through share gain and new product innovation, coupled with an ability to increase recurring revenue through the sales of consumable delivery fibers. In 2025, we took an important step forward in directed energy by rolling out our first complete standalone system for defense applications. We developed, tested, and introduced CrossBoat, a scalable and cost-effective laser defense system that can neutralize the threat of smaller Group 1 and Group 2 drones. In support of this initiative, we have established IPG Defense to drive product development and customer engagement, and we have recently opened a new office and manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama. Overall, 2025 was a positive year for IPG, affirming that our strategic approach is working, driven by high-value applications where differentiation and technical capability are critical to addressing complex customer challenges. Looking ahead to 2026, strong bookings in Q4 resulted to book-to-bill firmly above one on strong revenue, signaling improving market conditions and strengthening customer demand. While we are encouraged by these trends, we remain cautiously optimistic as we recognize that macroeconomic uncertainty continue to make progress with our growth strategy, with notable improvements across medical, micromachining, and advanced applications, which have been key investment priorities for the company. We expect this momentum to continue into 2026. The progress that we are reporting today reflects disciplined execution, a sharper focus, and a stronger alignment with our growth priorities. Over the past two years, we have strategically positioned the company to capitalize on the growth opportunity. The organization is evolving towards a team-led operating model that aims to preserve our entrepreneurial spirit while instilling the discipline and operating rigor required to scale. We've made tremendous progress streamlining operations, strengthening decision making, and accelerating product development. And these efforts have translated into better performance and a greater consistency across the business. While there's still more work to be done, I'm encouraged by our progress and confident in our ability to make further advances in pursuit of our growth objectives. We view our growth opportunities across two primary categories. First, we are strengthening our position in core industrial applications. Second, we are penetrating new non-industrial applications and markets where laser-based solutions offer clear cost benefits and superior outcomes relative to incumbent approaches. Together, these areas allow us to expand existing laser use cases, create new laser applications, and extend our reach into new high-growth applications such as medical, micromachining, and directed energy. These are exciting opportunities with great potential to significantly expand our addressable market and support long-term growth. Within industrial applications, we are growing through new business and accelerating the adoption of lasers in large markets, displacing incumbent technology. By combining our laser technology with deep applications expertise, we are helping customers address complex challenges where precision and efficiency matter most. This requires the innovation to offer superior and differentiated products, as well as the commercial acumen to provide outstanding customer service. We are also moving up the value chain by integrating our fiber lasers into differentiated systems and subsystems. This world-class laser applications capability enables us to address our customers' most challenging problems and deepen our long-term partnerships by expanding the value we deliver beyond the laser itself. A good example of this approach is cleaning, where we have successfully converted applications from chemicals and abrasives to laser-based solutions. The CleanLaser acquisition, which completed its full year with us in 2025, has helped our growth in this area by providing safe, effective, and environmentally friendly solutions that are truly differentiated from incumbent technologies. Our integration of CleanLaser went very well, with actual performance exceeding our expectations. We have also generated revenue synergies by leveraging our scale to reach large customers, and we continue to identify new opportunities for our comprehensive laser cleaning solution. Beyond industrial solutions, we are building on the success we achieved in 2025, discussed earlier in the call. Growth in these areas requires differentiated capabilities and applications expertise to address customer challenges, leveraging our laser technology and deep materials knowledge to create solutions that deliver results with precision and accuracy. Innovation remains a core focus for IPG, with continued emphasis on product performance, lowering cost of ownership, and delivering the service and application support that customers value. This strength is gaining increased recognition from both our customers and the broader photonics In that context, I'm pleased to share that IPG received a prestigious PRISM Award in the lasers category for our new 8-kilowatt single-mode laser at the awards ceremony held last month during the 2026 SPIE Photonics West Exhibition in San Francisco. Often referred to as the Oscars of Photonics, the SPIE PRISM Awards recognize innovative optics and photonics products that bring transformative technologies to market, with the winners selected by an international panel of academic, government, and industry experts. This honor further reinforces IPG's position as a global leader in fiber laser innovation and single-mode technology. Throughout the exhibition, thought leaders from IPG presented on multiple laser technologies and industry topics. One such presentation highlighted a major technological milestone in the ultraviolet spectrum with a successful demonstration of a compact 148 nanometer vacuum ultraviolet VUV laser source based on our proprietary crystal materials technology. This breakthrough has the potential to enable new opportunities in nuclear clocks, quantum computing, metrology, and other advanced applications. In summary, the team delivered solid performance in 2025, driving growth while meeting the needs of our customers. We have made significant progress on our strategic objectives and entered 2026 focused on continued growth through innovation and disciplined execution. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tim.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. My comments will generally follow the earnings call presentation, which is available on our Investor Relations website. I'll start with revenue trends by application on slide four. Revenue from materials processing increased 17% year over year in the quarter, driven by higher sales in welding, marking, cleaning, and additive manufacturing applications, partially offset by lower sales and micromachining, which was impacted by the timing of customer orders. Cutting revenue was slightly lower year over year, but improved sequentially and was generally in line with the stable revenue we've seen over the last four quarters. Revenue from applications other than materials processing increased by 15%, driven by higher sales in medical and advanced applications. Sales of our emerging growth products increased sequentially and year-over-year and accounted for 54% of total sales on higher revenue in the quarter, up from 52% in the prior quarter and matching our record high achieved in the second quarter. Moving to the revenue performance by region on slide five, sales in North America increased by 21% sequentially and 23% year-over-year, driven by higher revenue in cutting, cleaning, medical, and advanced applications. Sales in Europe increased 8% sequentially and 7% year-over-year, driven by higher revenue in additive manufacturing as well as cleaning, which saw strong growth resulting from the acquisition of clean laser. This growth was partially offset by decreased sales in cutting and welding applications. Revenue in Asia continued to improve and increased 5% sequentially and 19% year-over-year, driven by higher welding sales in China due to strong demand and new business in battery applications. Revenue in Japan was relatively stable year-over-year, but improved sequentially. Moving to the financial performance review on slide 6, Revenue was above our expectations at $274 million, up 9% sequentially and 17% on a year-over-year basis. Foreign currency increased revenue by approximately $6 million or 2% this quarter compared to the same period in the prior year. We saw very strong customer order activity at the end of the year and were able to respond quickly and ship in the quarter to satisfy this increased demand. Gap gross margin was 36.1% and adjusted gross margin was 37.6%, excluding accelerated depreciation on a long-lived asset and amortization expense. Adjusted gross margin came in at the midpoint of our guidance range, but below what we would normally expect at this level of revenue, primarily due to planned inventory management that drove lower absorption of fixed costs. You may recall that third quarter gross margin benefited from higher fixed cost absorption as we increased inventory. The impact of tariffs remained a headwind, reducing gross margin by 200 basis points year over year, which was 50 basis points higher than our expectations due to the timing of recognizing tariff expenses. We continue to work on ways to offset their impact, including cost reductions and pricing initiatives, but tariff impact will likely persist in 2026 or be at a slightly moderated level. Year over year, the decrease in gross margin was driven by higher product costs and tariffs, partially offset by lower inventory provisions. Excluding approximately $4 million in one-time costs, operating expenses remained stable on a sequential basis, but increased on a year-over-year basis due to investments we are making to support our strategy and strengthen our organization. Gap operating income was $3 million, and our adjusted EBITDA was $41 million for the fourth quarter, above the top end of our guidance. DAP net income was $13 million, or $0.31 per diluted share. Adjusted net income was $20 million, with earnings per diluted share of $0.46. Moving to a summary of our balance sheet and cash flow on slide 7, we ended the quarter with $839 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, $77 million in long-term investments, and no debt. During the fourth quarter, we spent $18 million on capital expenditures and $4 million on repurchasing IPG shares, supporting our balanced capital allocation framework of investing in growth and returning cash to shareholders. As expected, our cash flow from operations improved significantly in the second half of the year, driving positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter. Our 2025 capital expenditures came in well below our initial expectations due to the timing of expenditures for our major fiber manufacturing facility investment in Germany, which moved approximately $50 million into 2026. As a result, we now expect CAPEX to be $90 to $100 million this year. Excluding the amount delayed into 2026, underlying CAPEX is about 5% of revenue, and we expect to maintain this level going forward. While maintaining a strong balance sheet, we have continued returning capital to shareholders with our ongoing stock repurchases. We repurchase shares for a total of over $4 million in the fourth quarter and $53 million in 2025. We have returned over $1 billion to shareholders via share repurchases in the last four years. To enable us to continue with our balanced capital allocation strategy, the board has authorized a new $100 million share repurchase program, and we plan to continue repurchasing shares opportunistically. Moving to our outlook on slide eight, orders remain strong with book-to-bill above one. However, it should be noted that some of the bookings we received in the fourth quarter include medical and systems orders that are scheduled to ship beyond the first quarter. For the first quarter of 2026, we expect revenue of $235 million to $265 million, with some typical seasonality impacting revenue. We expect adjusted gross margin between 37% and 39%, including a potential impact from tariffs of about 150 basis points. We estimate operating expenses in the range of $90 million to $92 million in the first quarter, and anticipate that these expenses will increase moderately during the year as we see opportunities to further accelerate our key growth initiatives. For the first quarter, we expect to deliver adjusted earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.10 to $0.40, with approximately 42.5 million diluted common shares outstanding. Our adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $25 million and $40 million. In summary, we are pleased to report such strong sales in the fourth quarter. Although margin improvement deviated from the expected trend due to under-absorption of fixed costs and the impact of tariffs, product margin remains stable, and we continue to believe that we have significant operating leverage in our model. We continue to invest for the future, and our strong balance sheet positions us well to navigate a dynamic operating environment. I will now turn the call back over to Mark.

Thanks, Tim. In closing, we are pleased with the progress we made in 2025 and encouraged by the early results of our strategic initiatives, as well as the scale of the longer-term opportunity ahead. We remain confident in our ability to generate robust revenue growth with our differentiated solutions, which have continued to drive demand even in a subdued industrial environment. As general industrial activity recovers, this puts us in a good position to outgrow the market. Our market leadership, deep applications expertise, and ability to deliver complete solutions enable us to accelerate laser adoption, supplant incumbent technologies, and expand our addressable market. Growth initiatives in medical, micromachining, and defense are already showing meaningful progress and driving incremental revenue. While we are cautiously optimistic about the demand environment in 2026, we are continuing to transform the company to create long-term value for our customers and shareholders.

With that, we will be happy to take your questions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Reuben Roy with Stiefel. Your line is now live.

Hi, Mark and Tim. Mark, thanks, and nice to see, by the way, the return to growth on a full-year basis. So great to see the hard work paying off here. Mark, thanks for the overview on the strategic update and, you know, your kind of comments just now on sort of how to think about, you know, longer term, how you're thinking about the strategy. I guess first question, since we're entering a new fiscal year and I'm looking at some of the segment detail, if we look at cutting, for instance, we're down below 20 percent of revenue now. And I'm wondering, when you look at some of these sort of core markets relative to your area's investment, what are you thinking about where cutting is? Do you think that we're stable at the current level, or do you think there could be some further downside there that might offset some of the new growth businesses? And I guess the, you know, point of the question longer term is if we could start to think about, you know, targets, you know, for growth for the areas that you're investing in from a, I don't know, two, three-year perspective, you know, sort of how you're thinking about the TAM opportunity and longer-term growth. Hey, Ruben.

Nice to hear from you. So let me start with your questions about cutting. So first of all, if you look at our revenue now for the last several quarters, cutting's been quite stable. Actually, it's been pointing up in the last quarter. We have core OEMs, and those core OEMs, their inventories have now stabilized. And they see the benefit that we bring not only in the laser. Remember that we brought out our RAC-integrated platform last year, higher power, smaller form factor, lower cost. That's really, you know, helped in that market as well. So we've seen that piece stabilize, and then, you know, that's allowed us to also see growth in the other parts of the industrial market. And so that's still, you know, pointing up for us the industrial. We're continuing to, you know, invest in those core markets. cutting, as well as if you look at areas like additive manufacturing, welding, those are core markets for us as well that are growing. And then you asked about the other areas that we're making investments. You know, we've talked about core investments in medical and micromachining, areas like directed energy. Those are addressing, you know, a new TAM for us that's several billion dollars. And what we've said to date is that, you know, we expect to see growth in that area of hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years.

Yeah, that's helpful. And I guess if I could just follow up on that point, Mark, given the directed energy investment in the facility in Huntsville, has anything changed in terms of, I mean, you've gotten acceptance and it's great to see the system solution crossbow out there. How would you assess that opportunity from here? Are you getting more interest now that you're out in the marketplace? It sounds like you would be, given the investment in Huntsville, but any update on, you know, sort of how you're thinking about that market, you know, if that's changed, your view on that market over the last, you know, few months?

So, thanks very much, Ruben. And so let me just review for a moment that, you know, Crossbow is a product for us. It's a full system with all the pieces that can stand on its own for both military and civilian-type applications. You know, you've seen the recent issues at airports especially. The system itself, you know, again, we've been targeting the Group 1 and Group 2, the smaller-class drones. We brought the product out in the fall, so this was released first at the BSEI show in London and then followed on at the USAA show in Washington, D.C., and actually we had it at a show, the Singapore Air Show, just about a week or so ago. We've had very, very good customer interest in that area. You know, because of the key differentiation that we bring, again, this is based upon our single-mode high-power lasers that we make in volume for industrial applications, along with the surrounding photonics components that we make in volume and systems. So, you know, we can really do this at scale. So this offers the customer really a disruptive cost, volume, quality, and, you know, it's a commercial product with a part number. So this is getting very good interest, and we're, you know, we've had great, you know, we have great customer lists now, and we're working to convert that interest into orders.

That's great. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. Thanks for that, Mark. Quick follow-up for Tim, then, to finish off here. Tim, on the margin commentary, and I get the leverage and excited about the leverage, but you've got the tariff impact. You know, it sounds like that's going to persist through the year. Is there a way to think about sort of revenue levels that would be required to absorb the fixed costs to get back to the sort of longer-term targets on the margin side? So, let's say, lower end of that target, 45 percent?

Yeah, I think on the Q4 results, right, we called out that the underabsorption really impacted gross margin by 150 basis points. So if you take the 37.5% that we reported, you add that back to 150 to 200 basis points, you're actually close to 40% at that point on $270-odd million of revenue. That's with a 200% tariff headwind overall. our guidance estimates that the tariff headwind will be more moderate in Q1 at about 150 basis points, so more in line with what we had in Q2 or Q3. And so revenue improving beyond this level should continue to drive improvement in that absorption and get gross margins above the 40% level. It's clearly a target that we've got out there and want to do that. We're also looking at how to optimize operations even at more moderate revenue levels, right? There's a little bit of a task that that takes, but we want to really drive some more operating efficiency even below 300 million during the course of this year, and I hope to be able to report progress on that. I think the other benefits that are still not coming through fully are that we've got product cost reduction still ongoing. So Mark mentioned the RI, the rack unit, the rack units for the cutting market, but we're going to start rolling out the higher power diodes across a much broader suede of the product line, and that should help with the cost reduction initiatives on the products and drive improved product gross margin. There are other cost reduction initiatives as well around the BOM that we're working on too. And then you've got some pricing initiatives too where you're trying to offset some of the tariff impacts.

So overall, I think we're making good progress even though gross margin was a little bit light for the revenue level we reported in Q4. but we're pretty confident about the direction that we can take at the moment on this right very helpful thank you Jeff our next question comes from James or Schutte with Needham and Company your line is now live all right thank you so morning just given the early traction with CrossPo I'm wondering any plans to step up investment in directed energy applications particularly with the facility that you have now, or possibly extend the Crossbow product offering?

Hey, Jim, thanks for the question. So what I can tell you is that what we've launched to date is what we call the Crossbow Mini. So that's a three-kilowatt-based system for, you know, kind of the shorter range. Again, this is for Group 1 and Group 2 drones. We do have a roadmap that will, you know, increase the power level of that. We've talked about, you know, a six to eight kilowatt kind of product also on our roadmap. We're not heading towards the, you know, megawatt type systems. We're not doing government contracting. This is really about a, you know, a commercial product that we can deliver in volume and, you know, really targeting the smaller class drones. We're excited about it.

Got it. And Mark, maybe sticking with the new product focus, what are your expectations around the new medical product in 2026?

Yeah, no, thanks for that question. So just to review medical, you know, we've developed a new roadmap for that. It's one of the key areas that we're investing in. We talked about the product that we got FDA clearance on in Q3 and then launched in Q4. So this was a new product in neurology that has what we call StoneSense as part of it. So we can tell the difference between stone and soft tissue. That was the first of the roadmap. And I just want to remind you also that we also in the last year, we picked up a new major customer. So that combination, you know, we expect to give us growth into 2026. And I'll say also that in 2026, we'll be launching additional products in that roadmap, and that roadmap, you know, continues on for the next couple of years. And, you know, what we said is that, you know, over the next years that we expect the, you know, the business to double or triple.

And just one quick final question for me. You sound like you're encouraged by what you're seeing with CleanLaser. I'm just wondering if there's maybe a greater appetite on pursuing other inorganic opportunities given the strength of the balance sheet, and if so, maybe what areas might be of interest.

Yeah, no, happy to talk about that, Jim. So, you know, first let me just talk about it in terms of capital allocation. So, you know, as I look at capital allocation, first and foremost for us is, you know, investing in our organic growth. as we have a fantastic set of roadmaps and technologies that we're pursuing there. And next, in the M&A standpoint, it's really around tuck-in acquisitions. And CleanLaser was a great example, you know, where we can augment adjacent markets and get to some areas faster. And CleanLaser, just to, you know, dig into that for a moment, that's gone, you know, really well for the company. And it's integrated very well. And we have, you know, very good combined roadmaps going forward. And the, you know, it did better than, you know, than our targets initially. So, again, just to say the areas that we're looking at, and we are actively looking at M&A opportunities, again, in the tuck-in size, we've talked about it as being, you know, in the kind of revenue range of $50 to $200 million in revenue. and, again, areas that can really allow us to accelerate in some of the markets we're going after, technologies, those areas, so really that kind of tuck-in type.

Got it. Thank you, and congratulations on the quarter. Thanks.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our next question comes from Scott Graham with Seaport Research Partners. your line is now live.

Hey, good morning. Congratulations on the quarter and outlook. I wanted to maybe understand welding, the improvement in welding sales a little bit more. You mentioned a battery, and I'm just wondering, is that all storage, or is there some EV in there as well? And then what other drivers did welding benefit from this quarter?

Yeah, thanks very much, scott so yeah welding has been an important area for us and and uh you know batteries you pointed out is so drivers for that area are ev is one of them and and just from a driver standpoint that has electric vehicles i have seen you know 20 year-over-year growth and also then stationary storage as as you mentioned is an accelerating area as well that's uh that's seen growth of about 50% year over year. So those are the base drivers. We have very differentiated technology that applies to the whole area of batteries. We have specialized lasers plus the monitoring of the beam and actually the weld monitoring that's in situ combined with beam delivery and the process. So it's a very important piece to that battery. And it's important both in EV, the higher end of EV, and stationary storage. It especially becomes important as you have higher currents and thicker bus bars. Our technology is even more important there. And I should say battery for us goes beyond those as well. We also have important areas in consumer batteries as well as specialized areas like medical batteries. And it encompasses the areas that I told you, including areas like foil cutting and specialized welding, cleaning. All of those are key areas for us that apply to them.

Thanks a lot for that. And then the other question was simply around Huntsville. Could you kind of tell us a little bit more about that? Will it only be for, you know, the directed energy, or is there an opportunity to add some other product manufacturing there?

Yeah, thanks, Scott. So just to point out, it's a small site in Huntsville. Huntsville is a very important area for a couple of reasons. One, because of the personnel available in that area, but also it's an area that has cleared airspace, so we can do the testing there. So that's an important piece of that. You know, first and foremost, it's around the R&D and small-scale production for the directed energy, but it also gives us a footprint in that region to apply some of our industrial technologies to that, you know, growing region as well. That Huntsville area is a growing area for industrial for some of the, you know, military and defense arena.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Rodney McFaul with North Coast Research. Your line is now live.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I'm on today for Keith Housem. I was just wondering if you could maybe provide some updates on the competitive environment, especially in Asia. I'm wondering if you're seeing any pricing pressures start to seep out of cutting and into more advanced applications.

Yeah, thanks for the question. So in Asia, you know, really in China, cutting is a very small part of our business. It's in the, you know, couple percent kind of range. The biggest areas that we're operating in that area are areas where we're highly differentiated. So, you know, we've talked about the battery area, additive manufacturing, some of the micromachining areas. So those are areas where we, you know, we have key differentiation. And so, you know, our pricing is able to hold up in those areas.

Understood. And then just a quick follow-up to Scott's question. As you guys, as you're seeing a shift to more or from EVs to stationary storage, is that margin accretive? I mean, do you guys see, like, higher volumes of those devices just because, you know, these storage devices are larger? Just any color you could provide there would be great. Thanks.

Yeah, so the way I would look at it is so we're applying our technology across that area. So the battery factories are making batteries for EV and for stationary storage. The stationary storage ones tend to be on the higher end because capacities are higher, currents are higher, but they're similar to the higher end of EV. So our technology is applied to really across that area, and again, it's that differentiation that we provide with a combination of the very specific laser beam type plus the monitoring of the weld, actually being able to see in situ if the weld is good or not, combined with the beam delivery, and the process as well. That provides something that's highly differentiated, and it's important because it means that they can see quality control. They can tell whether the batteries, you know, whether you're overpenetrated or underpenetrated in the welds, and that has to do with quality reliability as well as safety. So all of those pieces, you know, point to how we have a key place in that area. And as you mentioned, that higher end, it's even more important because the higher currents have thicker bus bars in the batteries, and that's true in the stationary storage as well as the higher end of the EV, and that's an even bigger driver towards our solution.

Got it. Understood.

I'll turn it back. Thanks, guys.

Our next question comes from James Rusciutti with Needham & Company. Your line is now live.

Tim, I was wondering if you can give us any additional color on the bookings that you saw by region. Any variability? It sounds like the overall order activity was pretty healthy.

Yeah, it was pretty broad-based. I mean, having come in with that kind of a number, you'd expect it to be. North America was very good on the back of medical and systems orders, so it was really good to see that pick up on the systems side. Europe actually performed a bit better. I'd say it's still a little bit of a weaker region, but we actually had a very good set of orders there. There was also some good systems orders, particularly on the cleaning division with CleanLaser. There was actually a big order that came in from a major customer that we may not have won had CleanLaser not been part of IPG. So that was a very important part of some of the synergies that had been realized out of that acquisition. And then Asia was strong, both Japan, China, Korea had a good quarter. So it was pretty broad-based, Jim. I'd say Europe's just a little bit – it's starting to show some improvement, but it's a little bit weaker than some of the other areas still. I think that's reflected even in the PMI data where it's improved, but still a little bit behind North America, China, and Japan. Got it.

And, Mark, you mentioned, at least in the presentation, you highlighted strong demand related to semiconductor. Remind us of your exposure there. How are you thinking about the growth there in 2026, just given the investment that we're hearing about across the semiconductor sector?

Yeah, thanks, Jim. So the places that we play there, it's really in the lithography, metrology, and inspection part of the segment there. And we have new products that we've been developing that are now aligning well with roadmaps in those areas. And we've really focused on improving not only performance but quality in that area. And that's really, you know, helped with our engagements there. You know, it's a relatively small area for us today, but it's an area where we have, you know, very good engagements. And, you know, it's really a – it shows the differentiation that we have in these core technologies, you know, across the company that, you know, allow us to, you know, to insert in those roadmaps. Because as you know, you know, those roadmaps, you need the combination of very, very good and high performance technology at the front edge. But you also have to have the quality and the ability to produce these things in volume for, you know, every unit has to be the same. So it's been a, it's a very good mark for us to see.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our next question comes from Scott Graham with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my follow-up here. I was wondering, you know, you talk freely about micromachining and additive manufacturing. Can you just maybe remind us what is in those areas where, you know, the applications or the end markets or both to just provide a little more clarity there?

Sure. Let me start with additive, Scott. So additive manufacturing, just to remind you, that's sintering of powdered metal. So the laser actually creates where a printer would create a dot or a pixel. Here you create what's called a voxel. So it's a volume element that's created, and then you build up the part. And so that's important for a number of reasons. you can actually produce things that can't be machined with traditional methods. So that's important. And some of the materials are also important. And I have to say that this is an area where we're highly differentiated. We have a key piece of that market because the lasers have to be single mode. They have to have very high performance and they have to have low noise and they have to have very high reliability. And these are all pieces that are important there. And we work together with these companies on the roadmaps, and we have key next-generation products that also allow them to go significantly faster. And so from a market side, these are actually covering now – it's an area that's been growing, and it's covering areas that go from aerospace all the way to, you know, consumer-type devices where they're able to, you know, make parts, again, that would be very difficult to machine, and they're making parts in, you know, a wide range of materials from titanium to, you know, to things like copper. So, you know, our lasers play across each of those. And, again, the market drivers are relatively broad, and we've seen that area growing, And we've had, you know, good growth in that area of, you know, throughout 2025. And, you know, again, indicators are good now. And then you asked about micromachining. When we talk about micromachining, that's really talking about very, very precision cutting, drilling, material removal. That plays a lot into areas like microelectronics, where being able to make small changes in the materials are important in displays, in things like multilayer circuits, being able to interconnect from layer to layer. You know, these are areas that are important areas like solar cells where you need to make interconnection from layer to layer or, you know, machine away small windows that improve the performance of the cell. So think about, you know, very small on the micron level, you know, holes or ablation, material removal, cutting, very micro welding. Those are all areas that we would classify in the range of micromachining.

Thanks very much.

We have reached the end of the question and answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Eugene Federoff for closing comments.

Thank you for joining us this morning and your continued interest in IPG. We will be participating in several industrial events this quarter and are looking forward to speaking with you again soon.

Have a great day, everyone.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.