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ASML bounces back on strong bookings

03 Feb 2025

Confidence in AI boom remains solid as company delivers record revenues in latest quarter, and for 2024 overall.

The stock price of semiconductor lithography giant ASML has recovered from the impact of last week’s DeepSeek AI revelations, after the firm posted record-breaking sales revenues and CEO Christophe Fouquet gave an upbeat outlook for 2025.

At €28.3 billion, full-year sales for 2024 were up on the prior year’s record total of €27.6 billion. For the closing quarter of the year, sales of €9.3 billion rose strongly from the figure of €7.2 billion posted a year ago.

That momentum is set to continue this year, thanks in part to strong bookings in the latest quarter. Fouquet and his colleagues expect that will translate to annual sales ending up somewhere between €30 billion and €35 billion.

“If AI demand continues to be strong and customers are successful in bringing on additional capacity online to support that demand, there is potential opportunity towards the upper end of our range,” the CEO told an investor conference call.

“On the other hand, there are also risks related to customers and geopolitics that could drive results towards the lower end of the range.”

EUV evolution
This year will see further development in the evolution of the company’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment, as chipmakers get to upgrade throughput with their current equipment, and the latest high numerical aperture (high-NA) generation of the technology moves towards mass production.

“We are very, very happy with our achievement on high NA,” said Fouquet. “Last year, we got the first two customer acceptances, which after so many years of development has been a major milestone.

“Feedback on the imaging performance from our DRAM customers and logic customers continues to be very, very positive. They like what they see. The key discussion now is really when, how, and in which volume, to insert this tool into volume manufacturing. That's a discussion we're going to have with our customers.”

Regarding low-NA EUV tools, the CEO added: “We have achieved a very important milestone [in the] last quarter. Which is to demonstrate the full capability of the tool’s final specification here at ASML.

“We are continuing to mature the platform with our customers, so that the tool can be ready this year to really support high volume manufacturing.”

That low-NA milestone relates to achieving full system specification in ASML’s own factory at a throughput of 220 wafers per hour, alongside record overlay.

“We are on track to deliver new systems at full specification and start upgrades for the systems already at our customers during the first half of 2025,” Fouquet said, adding his view that demand from AI will remain solid.

"Consistent with our view from the last quarter, the growth in AI is the key driver for growth in our industry,” he told investors, suggesting that the proliferation of generative AI would open up “endless” opportunities and boost global GDP by trillions of dollars across all manner of applications.

AI competition welcomed
Referencing the sudden emergence of a new competitor in the form of DeepSeek, which knocked trillions of dollars off of the stock value of AI-related technology companies just before ASML's latest update, Fouquet said:

“I think we have to get used to that, because this is such an opportunity that there will be more and more players [trying] to grab it. And for AI to succeed, cost has to go down and energy efficiency has to [improve].

“This will only come with innovation. And I can promise you that in our industry any innovation that has ever reduced cost has always created more volume, and more opportunity.”

The CEO said he continued to expect that global sales of semiconductors would rise to the trillion-dollar level by 2030, thanks in large part to AI - even if it was not yet clear exactly how that would play out in terms of the specific sectors and applications driving the more widespread adoption of AI chips beyond the current consumption of high-end devices effectively being deployed in hyperscale data centers for AI research activity.

“AI success has two main challenges going forward: cost; and power consumption. In order for AI to be everywhere, we need to see major progress [on those],” Fouquet added in a press conference where he was asked about the impact of DeepSeek.

“I don’t know exactly what DeepSeek can or cannot do, but anything that will drive costs down is good news for ASML in the long term.”

• Following the firm’s January 29 update, ASML’s stock price regained most of the value lost in the immediate aftermath of the DeepSeek news. It is now trading at around $740 on the Nasdaq market, down from the all-time high of just over $1000 it reached last summer.

LASEROPTIK GmbHBerkeley Nucleonics CorporationAlluxaHamamatsu Photonics Europe GmbHOmicron-Laserage Laserprodukte GmbHHÜBNER PhotonicsChangchun Jiu Tian  Optoelectric Co.,Ltd.
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