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ASML forecasts bumper sales of its chip manufacturing equipment this year on the back of an AI boom, blockbuster fourth-quarter manufacturing and a rally in the tech sector on Wednesday.
The Dutch group’s hold on the market for lithography equipment needed to produce cutting-edge chips has made it Europe’s most valuable company and a big winner from increased AI investments.
Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet said the group expects “significant growth” in sales of its extreme ultraviolet machines this year, after fourth-quarter orders beat analysts’ expectations.
The industry powerhouse estimates total net sales will be between €34bn and €39bn this year, up from €32.7bn in 2025.
ASML shares rose as much as 7 percent to a record high in Amsterdam, giving a gain of more than 20 percent for the year and taking the company’s market value to nearly €500 billion.
STMicroelectronics and Infineon were both up more than 6 percent, while futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose 0.8 percent.
Fouquet said customers had “a strong belief that the demand for AI is real” and were starting to prepare for it with a “big increase in capacity” in the short term.
“It will start in 2026 and run beyond that,” Fouquet said, creating a “huge appetite” for its latest technology.
This will include the supply of equipment used in the manufacturing of logic chips, such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which are made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., as well as storage and memory chips. The latter are produced by companies including Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung.
ASML’s sales forecast shows revenues will increase by 19 percent this year. That’s well ahead of analysts’ forecast of €35.3 billion by about 8 percent, according to a consensus estimate from S&P Capital IQ.
Net bookings, a closely watched measure of orders, more than doubled in the fourth quarter to €13.2 billion from the previous three-month period. This was almost double analysts’ €6.9bn forecast.
ASML shares got a boost earlier this month when TSMC, one of its biggest customers, said it planned to rapidly increase its chipmaking capacity in response to the AI boom.
TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang said it would invest “significantly more” over the next three years than the $101 billion in capital investment between 2023 and 2025.
Jensen Huang, chief executive of AI chip maker Nvidia, told attendees at the World Economic Forum last week that the AI boom has “triggered the largest infrastructure build-out in human history”.
“We’re looking at a few hundred billion dollars of investment in this,” he said in Davos. “There’s trillions of dollars of infrastructure that needs to be built.”
ASML’s strong outlook comes despite a decline in revenue from China, which is expected to account for about 50 percent of sales in 2025 to about 20 percent this year.
U.S. and Dutch officials have imposed limits on the sale of ASML’s most advanced equipment to China, part of an effort to hamper Beijing’s ability to develop domestic AI systems.
ASML on Wednesday said it planned to make organizational changes, including “streamlining” its technology and IT units to “strengthen its focus on engineering and innovation”. ASML said it could result in the loss of 1,700 jobs, or about 4 percent of its workforce.
The company also announced a 17 per cent increase in its dividend and a new €12bn share buyback programme.
