(April 15): ASML Holding NV raised its full-year sales forecast as a surge in global artificial intelligence spending fuels greater demand for its advanced chipmaking machines.
Net sales will be between €36 billion and €40 billion this year, the Dutch company said in a statement Wednesday. That compares to a previous range of €34 billion to €39 billion.
ASML, Europe’s most valuable company, is the only maker of advanced lithography machines that can print intricate patterns of transistors on silicon wafers in order to make cutting-edge semiconductors. Its machinery is crucial for producing the Nvidia Corp chips that are the backbone for training and running AI models in data centres.
“The semiconductor industry’s growth outlook continues to solidify, driven by ongoing AI-related infrastructure investments,” CEO Christophe Fouquet said in the statement. “Our customers are accelerating their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond, supported by long-term agreements with their customers.”
ASML’s shares have risen 39% this year as some of the world’s biggest companies, including Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc, and startups like OpenAI and Anthropic PBC plan to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure to support AI software.
To accommodate the boom, ASML customers like chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics Co are investing in production. TSMC in January announced capital spending of as much as US$56 billion for this year. South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc outlined plans to spend about US$8 billion on ASML’s cutting-edge tools in a deal that runs through 2027.
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ASML faces geopolitical headwinds in China, its largest market last year. US lawmakers this month proposed legislation that would curb sales of all of ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion lithography, or immersion DUV, tools to China and includes banning engineers from servicing tools at certain facilities there.
ASML has never been able to sell its most-advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, tools to China due to US restrictions aimed at curtailing Beijing’s technology advances. The Dutch government imposed export controls on some DUV machines to the country in 2024.
The company has previously said it expects China’s contribution to total revenue to fall to about 20%. China accounted for 36% of net system sales in the fourth quarter.
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ASML reported net sales of €8.77 billion in the first quarter, meeting analyst estimates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Wednesday’s report didn’t include orders, a widely scrutinised metric that was seen as a key indicator of customer demand. ASML said in early 2025 it would drop the metric this year, arguing that it was volatile and didn’t accurately reflect business momentum.
ASML in January announced plans to cut about 1,700 jobs, mainly in its technology and IT units. Fouquet said at the time the company needed to be more "agile".
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