Earnings Call Transcript - IPGP Q3 FY2025

Operator

Good morning and welcome to IPG Photonics' third 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 Fedorov, IPG Senior Director, Investor Relations, for introductions. Please go ahead with your conference.

Mark Gitin, CEO

Thank you and good morning, everyone.

Eugene Fedotoff, Head of Investor Relations

With me today is IPG Photonics CEO, Dr. Mark Gidin, and Senior Vice President, CFO Tim Momin. On today's call, Mark will provide a summary with a quick look at our third quarter results and the overall demand environment, 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 during this call that discuss our expectations or predictions 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 material from this. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in our Form 10-K for the period and the December 31st, 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, November 4, 2025 only. And the company assumes no obligations 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 of such measures to the most directly comparable gap measures, as well as additional details on our reported results, please refer to the earnings press release, earnings call presentation, and the financial data workbook posted on our Investor Relations website. We also post these prepared remarks on our website after this call. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mark.

Mark Gitin, CEO

Thanks, Eugene. Good morning, everyone. Third quarter revenue was at the top end of our expectations. flat sequentially and up 11% year-over-year, excluding divestitures. There were a number of positive factors that drove the results this quarter. Stronger demand in battery production, driven by e-mobility and stationary storage, supported higher sales in welding. With our adjustable mode beam laser, weld monitoring, and beam delivery solutions, we continued to win orders with some of the largest battery and automotive manufacturers across multiple regions. General industrial demand was stable compared with the prior quarter, and our cutting revenue was essentially flat and consistent with the past several quarters. We began shipping the new generation of our high-power rack-integrated lasers to cutting OEM customers globally. These next-generation lasers use our new higher-powered diodes, have a smaller footprint, and lower manufacturing costs. Demand in additive manufacturing applications was very strong, and we won new business with our single-mode lasers tailored for that application. Cleaning continued to grow, supported by the clean laser acquisition. Outside of industrial applications, we delivered year-over-year growth and built momentum towards longer-term value creation through new product introductions and new business wins. One exciting example of this is the growing interest in our crossbow-directed energy solution, which I'll touch on shortly. We share that we've received FDA clearance for the next generation of our Thulium medical laser systems. This is an important step for the business, and we expect shipments to start by the end of the fourth quarter. I'll provide more detail on this milestone later in the call. Our financial results improved in the quarter as we increased gross margin, managed operating expenses, and delivered adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share at the top end of our expectations. Order activity remained healthy with book-to-bill of approximately one. While uncertainly in the demand environment persists, PMIs continue to show improvements and we remain cautiously optimistic going into the year. Now I'd like to take a step back and offer some broader perspective on the longer-term trajectory of our business and the progress we're making on our strategic initiatives. Over the last 17 months, I've been methodically working to transform the organization, creating a disciplined, high-performance culture that is fully prepared to take on the opportunities that lie ahead of us. This transformation involves moving IPG from a founder-led approach to a team-led operating model that can support further growth. Last quarter, I highlighted some of the additions I have made to strengthen our executive leadership team. This top talent has brought deep expertise and fresh perspective, and they are already having a significant impact on our efforts. The results we're delivering today show that the strategy we outlined earlier this year is taking hold and is beginning to drive meaningful improvement across our businesses. Our progress reflects disciplined execution, sharper focus, and a stronger alignment around our growth priorities. The steps we've taken to streamline operations, strengthen decision-making, and accelerate product development are translating into better performance and greater consistency across the business. Our focus remains on sustaining this momentum, balancing operational discipline with investment and innovation to position IPG for long-term profitable growth. The powerful combination of innovation and execution is driving progress across our key growth initiatives. Our fundamental strategy is based on converting incumbent processes and applications to our differentiated laser-based solutions. This enables 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 large opportunities with the potential to significantly expand our addressable market. We continue to strengthen our position in core industrial applications such as welding and cutting by focusing where differentiation matters most and where our technology delivers a clear performance or cost advantage. This is evidenced by our business wins and positions us to outpace the market as industrial production. We're also moving up the value chain with our world-class laser applications capability that enables us to integrate our fiber lasers into differentiated subsystems and systems to solve our customers' most challenging problems. This approach allows us to capture a greater share of customer spend and deepen long-term partnerships. We have already demonstrated these benefits in welding, which has become our largest application. Our unique solutions enable safer and more reliable welding processes for thin foils and alloys used in advanced batteries for EV and stationary storage applications. Accelerating the adoption of lasers and other large industrial applications, displacing incumbent technology. Finding our laser technology with deep applications expertise, we are solving complex challenges for our customers where precision and efficiency matters most. Laser cleaning is a great example of this approach. Customers convert to laser cleaning from conventional abrasive or chemical methods because our laser solution offers greater speed and control, is easy to automate, and provides a safer and environmentally superior. Continue to be adopted, driven by these advantages, and we are leading the change, accelerating broader implementation across the industry. Finally, we're penetrating new non-industrial applications and markets where laser-based solutions also offer clear cost benefits and superior outcomes relative to incumbent approaches. We are focused on medical, micromachining, and directed energy verticals where our innovative laser-based solutions provide strong competitive advantages. I'm pleased to report that we're making meaningful progress across each of these opportunities. In medical, we've been making strategic investments in urology applications. Our thulium lasers provide a superior solution for eliminating kidney stones and have demonstrated improved results versus legacy laser processes. On previous calls, I discussed a new customer who won earlier this year that has helped to drive strong revenue growth in the business in 2025. I'm happy to report another major milestone on today's call, FDA clearance, and the upcoming launch of our next-generation urology system. This new system incorporates our proprietary stone sense and advanced pulse modulation technologies, which deliver improved precision and control, continuing to enhance results in kidney stone removal procedures. Shipments are expected to begin in the fourth quarter. This marks another important step in expanding our medical portfolio and demonstrates how our innovations continue to advance patient care and broaden our reach beyond industrial applications. We're executing against a clear roadmap that we believe will drive significant revenue growth, including recurring consumables revenue over the next two to three years. Last quarter, we discussed Crossbow, a scalable and cost-effective laser defense system that can neutralize the threat of smaller Group 1 and Group 2 drones. Crossbow is a disruptive turnkey directed energy system enabled by our single-mode lasers, systems expertise, and our high-volume manufacturing capabilities. Crossbow can operate as a standalone system or can be integrated into layered defense architectures. This system was showcased during two recent defense shows, DESCI in London and AUSA in Washington, D.C. Interest was high from both defense and commercial customers for protection of critical military and civilian assets. We are working on converting leads into orders and are having conversations with multiple potential customers. We're proud to announce the opening of our new IPG Defense Customer Center and Production Facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which is dedicated to supporting the crossboat process. Over the last few months, there have been multiple examples of large international airports that were forced to shut down all flights due to the incursion of drones. We are optimistic that our solution can become a standard approach across many situations and scenarios to deal with these ever-increasing threats. We believe this growth strategy best aligns our differentiating laser technology, market leadership, and deep applications expertise to solve the most challenging problems and enables us to deliver a compelling value proposition that makes IPG a trusted partner. I will now turn the call over to Tim.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

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 will start with revenue trends by application on slide four. Revenue from materials processing increased 6% year over year, driven by higher sales and welding, additive manufacturing applications, cleaning and micromachining, partially offset by lower sales in marketing, marking, and divestitures, while cutting revenue remained

Mark Gitin, CEO

nearly flat. Revenue from applications were higher sales in medical and advanced.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

Our emerging growth products performed well in the quarter, increasing on a year-over-year basis, but declining slightly sequentially and accounting for 52% of sales in the third quarter, down from our record high of 54% in the prior quarter. Moving to the revenue performance by region on slide five, sales in North America decreased by 16% sequentially, but were up 8% year over year. Sequentially, sales declined due to the timing of some large orders in welding and advanced applications, while year-over-year growth was driven by higher revenue in advanced applications and medical, as well as improved cutting and cleaning sales. Sales in Europe increased 11% sequentially and 4% year-over-year, excluding $7 million in divestitures. The sequential increase was driven by higher sales in welding, cutting, and additive manufacturing, while the year-over-year improvement was driven by the acquisition of clean laser as well as higher sales in cutting and additive manufacturing. Revenue in Asia increased 5% sequentially and 15% year-over-year, driven by higher welding sales in China, Japan, and Korea as a result of stronger demand and business wins in battery applications. Our differentiated solution, including the combination of our AMB laser, weld process monitoring, and beam delivery, is improving yields and battery safety and driving adoption by major battery manufacturers in the region. Moving to the financial performance review on slide six, revenue came in at the top of our expectations at $251 million. dollars, flat sequentially, and up 8% on a year-over-year basis, or 11% excluding divestitures. Foreign currency increased revenue by approximately $3 million, or 1% this quarter. Gap gross margin was 39.5%, and adjusted gross margin was 39.8%, above our guidance, and was driven by improved manufacturing cost absorption and a decrease in inventory provisions, partially offset by higher cost of products sold and increased shipping costs on a year-over-year basis. The impact of tariffs was 140 basis points in line with our expectations. We continued to work on mitigating tariffs, but the impact will likely continue in the fourth quarter. Operating expenses were flat sequentially, but above last year's level, primarily due to the investments we are making to support our strategy and strengthen our organization, which Mark highlighted earlier on this call. Gap operating income was $8 million, and our adjusted EBITDA was $37 million, slightly above the top end of our guidance. Gap net income was $7 million, or $0.18 per diluted share. Adjusted earnings per diluted share was $0.35 in the third quarter, at the top end of our guidance. Moving to a summary of our balance sheet and cash flow on slide 7, we ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments of $870 million, $30 million in long-term investments, and no debt. During the quarter, we spent $21 million on capital expenditures and $16 million on repurchasing IPG shares, supporting our balanced capital allocation framework of investing in growth and returning cash to shareholders. As expected, operating cash flow started to improve significantly in the second half of the year, more than offsetting CapEx and driving positive free cash flow in the quarter. Looking ahead, we will likely come in well below $100 million in CapEx this year due to the timing of expenditures for our major investment in Germany. We still expect CAPEX to decrease to about 5% of revenue and free cash flow to improve once the project is complete, but the timing of this project may keep next year's CAPEX at approximately the same level as in 2025. Moving to our outlook on slide eight, for the fourth quarter of 2025, we expect revenue of $230 million to $260 million and adjusted gross margin between 36% and 39%, including a potential impact of tariffs of about 140 basis points. With investments in the growth of our business and strengthening the organization, including leadership, we expect our operating expenses to remain elevated between $90 million and $92 million in the fourth quarter. We anticipate delivering adjusted earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.05 to $0.35, with approximately 42.5 million diluted common shares outstanding. Our adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $21 million and $38 million. In summary, we are pleased to see further signs of continuing revenue stabilization coupled with margin improvement while investing in our strategic initiatives. We continue to believe we have significant operating leverage in our model. Our strong balance sheet gives us a significant advantage given the near-term uncertainty in the operating environment. I will now turn the call back to Mark.

Mark Gitin, CEO

Thanks, Tim. In closing, we are encouraged by the progress we've made and energized by the scale of the longer-term opportunity ahead. We believe we have strong growth opportunities driven by our differentiated solutions that have been successfully winning business even in a subdued industrial environment. As general industrial activity recovers, this positions us well to outgrow the market. Our market leadership, applications expertise, and complete solutions enables us to drive adoption of lasers, replacing incumbent technologies, and expanding the addressable market. We are excited that our 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, we continue to transform the company to create value for our customers and shareholders for the longer term. With that, we will be happy to take your questions.

Operator

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 2. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Reuben Roy with Stiefel. Please proceed with your question.

Reuben Roy, Analyst — Stifel

Thank you. Hi, Mark and Tim. Mark, I'd like to start with maybe just a little more detail on how you're thinking about the outlook for Q4. It's nice to see the progress, you know, coming out of Q3 and the book-to-bill and some of the, you know, sort of new areas that you're focused on, you know, continuing to contribute. So maybe you can walk us through. I know you've used the term cautiously optimistic going into year-end here, but with PMIs improving, et cetera, and where the bookings are, it's a wide range of guidance. again, you know, what are some of the puts and takes, you know, to get to the lower end of that

Mark Gitin, CEO

guided range or the higher end? Yeah, sure. Nice to talk to you, Ruben. See, first of all, you know, we're quite happy with the performance around the world. As I mentioned, the book to build continues to be about one globally at this elevated revenue. And, you know, it's showing continued strength in each of the regions, actually, in Asia, including Japan, Korea, and China. You know, Europe is stabilizing, and, you know, we've been seeing some upside in North America. And we're, you know, really encouraged with, you know, these early signs of industrial expansion, as you mentioned, too. PMIs are tracking, you know, a little bit higher now. So with the U.S. about 52 and a half, the Eurozone, you know, now stabilizing at about 50, China a bit over 50 as well. So, you know, those are positive pieces. And, you know, even in what has been a muted industrial market, we're really seeing the benefits of our differentiation, right? The technology, the product quality, reliability, and the applications expertise that we've got, you know, and tie into that the global support infrastructure that we have. Those things are starting to really, you know, give us some benefit. And we've seen that in the cutting revenue, for example. That's been essentially flat now and consistent the past several quarters. And I've talked about this before, but our OEM inventories and cutting our OEMs, their inventories are really normalized. Happy that we've got our rack-integrated platform out. So, you know, this helps to contribute to how we guide the new product is out now, and it's been qualified by most of our OEM customers. And, again, that's the system that has the new diode lasers that's higher power, smaller form factor, lower cost structure. And then, you know, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we're continuing to get share gains and welding and additive manufacturing. That's going well to cleaning. So, you know, I really feel good about that, you know, that we're positioned to outgrow the market as the industrial output starts to improve. And then, of course, as I mentioned, we're also focused on the key areas that we're investing in the non-industrial areas, right? So we've focused on the areas of medical, micromachining, and the defense area, the advanced area with our crossbow system. And we're seeing some pickups there in each of those areas as well. New customer that we've talked about in medical, new product coming out in Q4 where we're starting to get some shipments. So, you know, all of those are contributing as well. So, you know, overall, I'll, you know, say again, cautiously optimistic and, you know, certainly feel better about the business now than we did, you know, a year ago at this time.

Reuben Roy, Analyst — Stifel

Great. Thanks. Thanks a lot for all that detail, Mark. I just had a quick follow up on that and a quick one for Tim. Just a follow up. It was nice to hear the e-mobility related welding revenue strengthen a bit. Was that geo-specific or was that, you know, something that you saw more broad-based?

Mark Gitin, CEO

So actually, we're getting share gains globally. The, you know, if you look at Asia, we've had strength in Japan and Korea and continued share gains also in China. And then we've also had uptick in Europe. And we've had some wins also in the U.S., although the U.S. is a little slower. And one thing I would point out is that it's really about battery. It's not just EV. There's quite a lot of work going on now in stationary storage as well. So in China, which has the largest growth in – has about a third of it is due to stationary storage with two-thirds about EV. And overall, just to point out, too, the EV market is continuing to grow. It's year-to-date has grown about 25% year-over-year.

Reuben Roy, Analyst — Stifel

Yep, got it. Okay, a quick one for Tim on the gross margin. Tim, just thinking about the outlook, it sounds like, unless I missed this, the tariff impact is about the same as you saw in Q3. Revenue at the midpoint is a little bit lower, but you've got a downtick in the gross margin. So maybe some moving parts there and how you're thinking about the margins as you get out of this year. And, you know, what's the expectations for tariff impact, if any, as you get into 26?

Timothy Mammen, CFO

I think, first of all, gross margin, both actually on a gap and adjusted basis, was strong in Q3. I was actually very pleased with it. Some of the positives on that were that we started to see some improvement in product gross margin, which we'd mentioned has been a bit weaker in the second quarter. So that's really good because that shows that some of the cost reduction initiatives that we've got, Mark mentioned that around the RI laser. We're also trying to roll out the higher power diodes across the platform more broadly, for example. There are other applications where we've introduced lower cost lasers. So that was really pleasing to see that develop during the quarter for me. The other benefit on gross margin, a couple of other ones, inventory provisions were lower. So I'd said that we expected to see those come down in the second half of this year, given the work we've done around managing inventory. And then the final benefit was really an improvement in underabsorbed costs. So the overall absorption was pretty good in Q3. That, though, did result from growing inventory a bit. If you look at the balance sheet, inventory is up about $20 million. That is an intentional investment in inventory, really, to reduce lead times to customers and support the business at this point in time. We're not expecting a much more moderate impact from inventory in the fourth quarter. So kind of the midpoint of my gross margin guide factors that in. It's not factoring in any other significant increase in tariffs. We're trying to mitigate some of the effective tariffs. As I said fairly clearly, I don't think companies are going to get rid of the cost of tariffs, given how pervasive they are. But, you know, we're looking at where we can increase pricing a little bit. We're looking at other programs internally in terms of manufacturing drawbacks of tariffs and things like that. They do take time to put in place. There's a huge amount of data, analytics and approvals that you need to go through to get those in place. But they should start to see some of that tariff impact potentially ameliorate a bit going into next year.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

Great. Thanks again for all the detail.

Operator

Our next question comes from James Rusciuti with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

James Rusciuti, Analyst — Needham & Company

All right. Thank you. Good morning. I had a couple of questions. First on Crossbow, I'm wondering, Mark, how we might think about the opportunity looking to 2026. Sounds like you've got the interest at the recent shows that you've participated in. Are you working with any other partners at the moment besides Lockheed Martin?

Mark Gitin, CEO

Hi, Jim. Let me just step back for a minute. So, yes, we're quite excited with Crossbow, and just to remind everybody, that's directed at the smaller class of drones, the Group 1 and Group 2, and we have really a unique position because it uses our high-power single-mode lasers plus the surrounding photonics that we make and systems, and we do this at scale at large-volume manufacturing. So we're able to deliver that and provide, you know, kind of a unique solution. And we demonstrated that or showed that at the two big shows, the DESEI, which is in London, and also at the AUSA just a couple weeks ago in Washington, D.C. And, Jim, what I would say is that we had, you know, quite a lot of interest, quite a lot of leads for that. And that was both in the military space, but also in, you know, in the civilian airspace. That's been a, you know, a recent, you know, just in the last six weeks or so, we saw drone incursions shut down major airports in Europe, Oslo, Copenhagen, Munich all had long shutdowns. So there's interest also in that civilian space. So quite a lot of leads that we're working through. We have obviously the link with Lockheed, but it's not only Lockheed, and we have conversations going on with quite a few other potential customers in both the defense and civilian airspace areas and globally.

James Rusciuti, Analyst — Needham & Company

So if we think about the opportunity, looking out to next year, it sounds like you've got a few iron, you know, more than a few irons in the fire and that this, I guess, how do we think about it in terms of material revenue, so I guess where I'm going with this?

Mark Gitin, CEO

Yeah, sure. I understand, Jim. So what I would tell you is that, you know, we're qualifying leads. This does take some time to go through. So, you know, we do expect to get some revenue in 2026. But, you know, it takes, you know, it takes some months certainly to qualify and turn leads into orders.

James Rusciuti, Analyst — Needham & Company

Got it. But just with respect to the new urology system, which I guess you're skipping this quarter, again, similar questions looking out to next year. How significant a product launches this for you in terms of adding additional momentum in the market here?

Mark Gitin, CEO

Yeah, thanks, Jim. I'll tell you, you're a little bit garbled in your voice, but I think I understood the question, and that was around the launch of our new urology product here in Q4. So just to reiterate for a moment, we have received FDA clearance, and we are launching this. This is a new product in urology. It's a Thulium-based system, next generation, that has a couple of really key features. One is called StoneSense, and the other is really a unique way that we're able to modulate the pulse output. And both of those are for basically precision and safety. The StoneSense actually can tell the difference between hitting a stone and tissue and therefore have additional safety in the process. So we're launching that product. That's the first of a roadmap of new products in urology. and I've been talking about this for several quarters now, and just to point out, I had said several quarters ago that we were targeting a Q4 launch, so that's on track, and the entire roadmap with this being the first product, you know, will give a substantial revenue growth, and I also want to point out, too, that earlier in the year, I had announced that we had a second major customer that's a leader also in the urology space. Remember, we've talked about Olympus before as one. We can't name the other, but it's another large player in the marketplace. And just to remind you also that as we bring out new product in the system side and gain share, that also brings with it recurring revenue because we also make the disposable fibers that go with each of the treatments. So, you know, what I'd say is we're starting to ship the new product in Q4. We're excited about the product. We think it will gain us more share in that market. But I also want to say that it's the first of a number of new advancements that we'll be bringing out over the next couple of years. And we're expecting in, you know, in urology, which is a $2 billion TAM, we're expecting to significantly grow that, and so it'll be a key part of our growth going forward.

James Rusciuti, Analyst — Needham & Company

In terms of 2026, if you were to rank this among some of the other opportunities that you're focused on, where would you place this, say, among the top three or four?

Mark Gitin, CEO

Yeah, so Jim, it is one of the top ones for us. So, you know, when we think about the urology roadmap. You know, we look at that as growing our urology revenue kind of two to three X in the next two to three years. So, I can give you some sense of how to consider that. It is one of the larger ones we're looking at if we talk about the investments in the three key areas, you know, based upon our differentiation. We've talked about the urology, the micromachining space, And then, of course, the area of the advanced area, which includes the crossbow, you know, that together, what I've said is that that's addressing about a $5 billion TAM, and that over the next several years, we're expecting to grow, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in those spaces.

Mark Gitin, CEO

Thank you. Congrats on the quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Next question is from Scott Graham with Seaport Research. Please proceed with your question.

Scott Graham, Analyst — Seaport Research

Hey, good morning, and congrats on the quarter as well. Could you just remind us, when you talk about tariffs to minus 140 basis points, that's a net number, right, versus your countermeasures?

Timothy Mammen, CFO

Yeah, that's the impact on the quarter relative to a normalized run rate, saying Q1 or Q2, the second half of last year.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

So it's net of some countermeasures at the moment that we've implemented. But, for example, if you're trying to change pricing, Scott, you've got to go through adjusting pricing, you've got to adjust quotes, you've got to ship the existing backlog, you've got to wait for orders from customers. So you don't see the benefit from something like a change in pricing for quite a significant period of time. And then I mentioned that we're looking at different types of strategies to draw back some duties when you're re-exporting product or bringing product back into the U.S. that has U.S. content. But again, those take a lot of time to put in place because they're quite complex to do.

Mark Gitin, CEO

And just to remind you, Scott, too, as we've talked about, for the tariffs, we have actually done quite a lot in terms of mitigation. If you recall, we have a flexible manufacturing footprint and we actually moved product manufacturing for a number of product lines from the U.S. to Europe, for example. We also flexed our supply chain and we adjusted where some of the supply was coming from. So we have done quite a bit to mitigate and get us to where we are as well.

Scott Graham, Analyst — Seaport Research

Understood. Thank you. Just my follow-up question is, you know, the fourth quarter operating expenses number looks like about the same as the third quarter. And, you know, last year, I believe that number was lower, although, you know, your earnings were maybe under more pressure. Could you explain why, you know, maybe fourth quarter operating expenses aren't maybe a little bit lower? Then what your guidance is, I guess that one surprised me a little bit.

Mark Gitin, CEO

Absolutely, Scott. So as I've been talking about for the last few quarters, we're making some key investments, and that's what you're seeing in the OPEX. The first is really around these key programs that I've been talking about in medical, in the urology, in the micromachining, in the advanced space. The crossbow is a great example. So we're investing in those key areas. That's a significant piece of it. And then also we've made some investments really in the organization. I talked about last quarter, you know, some very top talent that we've recruited into the organization to help us lead the company into continued growth. So that's what you're seeing. And I expect, you know, we expect that to, you know, stay at about that level going forward.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

That's very helpful.

Operator

Our next question comes from Keith Housam with North Coast Research. Please proceed with your question.

Keith Housam, Analyst — Northcoast Research

Good morning, guys. I appreciate it. Good quarter. Just reminding me here historically, has there ever been an opportunity for budget flushes in the fourth quarter in any potential benefit from the one big, beautiful bill that we saw passed earlier this year?

Timothy Mammen, CFO

Seasonality in the fourth quarter, sometimes Q4 can be a bit weaker than the third quarter. Depends upon the geographies is the issue, Keith. I mean, you can have slightly lower revenue, for example, in China, where China can be stronger in Q2 or Q3. But then you can get some pull through in other geographies that may or may not offset that. So it's not a particularly meaningful seasonality, I'd say.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

And it can, you know, be a little bit variable from period to period.

Timothy Mammen, CFO

And then the One Big Beautiful Bill. No, I mean, the way that One Big Beautiful Bill is very complicated in what it does. There are different ways you have to strategize about that. The way that we've looked at it in terms of preserving some of our permanent deductions, that if you accelerate, for example, depreciation, you lose those. We don't see a meaningful change in the effective tax rate going forward related to OB3. You can see some benefit on cash taxes, but not really to the

Keith Housam, Analyst — Northcoast Research

effective tax rate overall. Okay. I appreciate it. Helpful. And then, Mark, you briefly mentioned a new facility in Huntsville, Alabama, regarding your cross-bill opportunity there. Can you expand a little bit more about what you're going to be going down there? Is that going to be

Mark Gitin, CEO

manufacturing? Is it just a sales location? Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, so our Huntsville location, so it's a small lease facility, and it's really in the heart, let's say, of that type of technology, and it brings us closer to some key people that we need in that business. But it also has, near it, cleared airspace for doing drone-type testing. So it all pulls together, and that's why we have that. And we're able to do a customer test there, validation there, and we'll do some of the manufacturing there as well.

Operator

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. One moment while we poll for questions. Our next question comes from Mark Miller with the Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Miller, Analyst — The Benchmark Company

Thank you for the question. I'm just wondering if you can give us some thoughts about margins for defense-related opportunities. Are they similar to corporate margins or would they be above or below?

Mark Gitin, CEO

Yeah, thanks very much for the question. So this is, you know, the area, for example, crossbow is, you know, again, in one of the highly differentiated areas. So that's where we're investing in these areas in medical micromachining and this crossbow area, this defense area. So very high differentiation and therefore margins above what you would see in corporate.

Mark Miller, Analyst — The Benchmark Company

it. Okay. With chip sales booming and shortages in pricing going through the roof, what's your thoughts about business from semiconductors next year?

Mark Gitin, CEO

Yeah. So I can tell you, we're actually excited about that area. That's an area that we've been concentrating in. So that also falls within what we call the advanced segment, which has the crossbow in it as well. So the area of, you know, semiconductor, capex, you know, this WFE piece, again, it's where we have significant differentiation. We're working with key suppliers that are in that market, largely in the metrology inspection lithography space. And, you know, we've gotten some design wins in that area recently from, you know, from that work with very differentiated products. I really like those, that semiconductor area, because when you win there, it's really an annuity that lasts for many years. As those start to roll out, and we've seen some of that happening, that's why you saw our advanced up a bit this quarter was because of some of the semiconductor pull through. Thank you. We have reached the end of the question

Operator

and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Eugene Federov for closing comments.

Eugene Fedotoff, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you for joining us this morning and your continued interest in IPG. We will be participating in several investor events this quarter and are looking forward to speaking with you again soon. Have a great day, everyone.

Operator

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