To fully leverage our growth potential, we are continuously strengthening our operating model to become a higher-performing and more scalable organization. This enables us not only to enhance profitability but also to adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and respond with greater flexibility across future semiconductor cycles.

Comet remains committed to executing its strategy with a focus on three core thrusts: accelerating growth, enhancing efficiency, and strengthening culture. Through this disciplined approach, we aim to create lasting value for customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders, positioning Comet for sustainable success in an increasingly digital and technology-driven world.

A strong regional presence is essential to complement Comet’s technology leadership. Penang in Malaysia serves as our gateway to Asia, placing us at the center of one of the world’s fastest-growing semiconductor ecosystems. Once primarily an electronics assembly location, Penang has evolved into a fully integrated semiconductor hub spanning design, advanced packaging, testing, and equipment manufacturing, now hosting more than 50 global industry leaders. As Malaysia has emerged as a “Silicon Valley of the East,” we are strategically positioned at its core.

Penang represents our flagship expansion project and a key pillar of our global footprint. The new facility will more than double current production capacity and add over 15,000 square meters of manufacturing space. This investment strengthens our scalable, cost-competitive, and future-ready production platform while enhancing proximity to regional customers.

Following land acquisition in 2023, we are advancing toward full operations in late 2026, with a phased transition of selected production activities and shared services to ensure business continuity. The site is expected to become our Asian hub by 2027 at the latest. This expansion supports long-term efficiency and scalability, reinforces a balanced and resilient global manufacturing network, delivers cost and scale advantages, and underpins sustainable growth alongside continued investments in future products and services.

While Asia represents an important growth market for us, with Japan emerging as a new opportunity, we maintain a balanced global perspective. Japan’s renewed investments across logic, memory and advanced packaging underscore its rising strategic relevance. At the same time, we evaluate opportunities in all regions and invest in projects that offer the greatest strategic value. Our capital allocation is guided by customer proximity, scalability, and supply chain resilience, with the clear objective of supporting customer growth and strengthening our diversified global footprint.

Accelerating complexity and innovation, rapid technology convergence, and nanometer-scale miniaturization are reshaping our industry. Success now depends on delivering solutions with speed, relevance, and scalability – and on remaining resilient in any economic environment. We move with speed to stay ahead where delay means decline; with relevance in a world where multimodal solutions win over singular technologies and one-trick ponies; and with scalability to support ever-smaller, denser, and increasingly three-dimensional architectures. These imperatives define our strategy and enable us to help customers navigate growing complexity and compete at the leading edge, while building a company that performs in all market conditions. To tackle those challenges, Comet in its updated strategy has defined three key elements to ensure long-term technological leadership:

Leverage core competencies: Build on our strengths in RF power and x-ray technologies, system design, mechatronics, and Dragonfly/Synertia control platforms to deliver differentiated, high-performance solutions at scale.

Expand into complementary domains: Diversify into adjacent technologies and services to create integrated, process-centric solutions that increase customer value and accelerate growth.

Broaden value chain relevance: Enter attractive new markets where we can apply our capabilities through both organic expansion and targeted acquisitions, reinforcing our position across the value chain.

Within this strategic framework, we continue to expand our product and service portfolio across critical semiconductor process steps, from advanced packaging and inspection to plasma control and RF power delivery, strengthening our position in high-growth segments such as AI and high-performance computing. Innovation in x-ray inspection, AI-enabled software, and RF platforms helps customers manage rising complexity while accelerating time to market – a decisive advantage in a rapidly evolving industry.

Efficiency and resilience are central to Comet’s strategy and form critical levers for sustainable margin expansion across cycles. We are continuously strengthening process and structural efficiency across the organization, from engineering and new product introduction to production and support functions.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, we initiated a restructuring program at IXS in Hamburg to realign organizational structures and operating models in support of our strategic pivot into the semiconductor equipment market. In 2026, we will introduce a comprehensive zero-based budgeting process across the Group to increase overall transparency in costs and processes, identify additional cost levers, and systematically right-size the company to further improve cost efficiency.

This includes increased standardization, broader use of digital tools, automation, and the growing application of AI across workflows. AI-enabled engineering, manufacturing, and service processes are helping us accelerate development cycles, improve yield and quality, and significantly increase output with the same number of staff, enhancing productivity and scalability across the Group.

Another core element of our best-cost footprint is Penang, Malaysia, which plays a pivotal role in transforming our cost base. The new site will host both manufacturing and engineering activities, enabling the gradual shift of production from higher-cost locations while building a meaningful regional white-collar presence. Penang serves as our benchmark hub, guiding decisions on where future roles and functions are best located to optimize efficiency and proximity to customers.

At the same time, we are preparing for operating leverage. Current utilization remains below normalized levels, yet capacity is in place to support a rapid ramp-up when volumes recover. This positions Comet to capture strong operating leverage within the existing footprint as demand returns.

In parallel, we are systematically reviewing product line profitability, identifying targeted turnaround opportunities and selectively streamlining the portfolio where offerings are no longer strategic. These focused actions, rather than large structural exits, are designed to enhance profitability and sharpen strategic focus.

Together, these initiatives underpin Comet’s ability to improve margins over the next cycle while reinforcing a resilient, scalable operating platform.

Throughout our strategy refinement process, we repeatedly arrived at the same conclusion: a shared vision, mission, and values form the foundation of a strong corporate culture – and that culture is essential to enabling sustainable growth.

As we accelerate our strategic pivot into the semiconductor equipment market with our x-ray technologies, we are deliberately realigning organizational structures, capabilities, and operating models to support this growth trajectory. While our investment in Penang strengthens our operational backbone and global capacity, people remain at the heart of our long-term success. At Comet, growth is not only about scaling production and product platforms; it is about developing talent and technology side by side.

Our approach is simple yet powerful: Technology improves daily life, and education improves technology. This virtuous cycle drives continuous innovation. We actively strengthen it through apprenticeships and training programs, as well as collaborations with leading universities worldwide. We are also proud to contribute to the European Chips Diversity Alliance, co-funded by the European Union, which promotes inclusion and skills development across the semiconductor industry.

Together, these initiatives form an integrated framework aligned with Comet’s strategy to 2030, ensuring that organizational capabilities evolve in step with strategic ambitions. Key achievements in 2025 are summarized in the "Social topics" section of our sustainability report.