Oxford Instruments (OXINF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Oxford Instruments half year results presentation. Thanks for joining us today. We provided an initial overview of the shape of the first half of the year in our trading update a few weeks ago. Today I'm going to begin with the key highlights of the period and then I'll hand over to Paul for the financial review before returning to the detail on our strategic progress with some pointers into the second half and beyond. There'll also be an opportunity for questions at the end, both in the room and online. Since we last met in June, we have made another six months of good progress on our strategy to simplify the group, improve commercial execution and realign our regional presence, laying the foundations for future growth and margin expansion. At the same time, the team have had to contend with more significant disruption than anticipated in the trading environment as a result of the global tariff and trade volatility, coupled with funding challenges in academia. As the results show, the first few months of the year were challenging in our higher margin imaging and analysis division, while we are working with our customers to align on a new trading landscape. By contrast, in advanced technologies, we've made great progress with 25% order growth coming from our compound semiconductor business, attracting increasing numbers of commercial customers focused on R&D and production. Across the group, our market leading technology and expertise continues to position us for good growth in structural growth markets. So despite the disruption in Q1, we ended the half with positive orders and book to bill, and the Q2 order momentum back to that of prior year. We're into the second half with a full order book to support another year of good ...