Photolithography giant ASML reports Q1 sales of €1.65bn

16 Apr 2015

Sales and 47% margin both “in line with guidance”; similar figures forecast for Q2, 2015.

Netherlands-headquartered ASML, the world’s largest supplier of photolithography systems for the semiconductor industry, has reported its first-quarter of 2015 financial results. The company announced that Q1 net sales “were in line with guidance" at €1.65 bn, with a gross margin 47.2%.

Furthermore, ASML forecast that its Q2 2015 performance would be rather similar with expected net sales of around €1.6 billion and a likely gross margin of around 45%.

Peter Wennink, ASML’s President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Our first-quarter net sales came in as guided at €1.65bn, driven by continued strong DRAM memory segment sales in combination with higher foundry segment sales. Our gross margin rose to 47.2%, a reflection of product mix as well as better utilization of our production facilities, which was partly offset by unfavorable foreign exchange effects.

'H1 2015 will beat H2 2014'

”Our Q2 guidance of around €1.6bn of net sales confirms our earlier expectation that the first half of 2015 will be stronger than the second half of 2014. In memory, our Q1 sales and order book suggest that sales to the DRAM segment will stay healthy in 2015, although more weighted to the first half of the year.

"In logic, we expect stable sales throughout 2015. Our service and field options sales will likely increase over coming quarters as we benefit from increased adoption of our Holistic Lithography products and the purchase of system node enhancement packages supporting customer node migrations."

"Regarding our EUV program, our focus for 2015 is to continue the recent encouraging progress on source power and productivity, to increase stability and availability of the systems as well as to ship our fourth-generation EUV system, the NXE:3350B."

Highlights

The ASML Q1 2015 financial statement identified the following highlights:

• Exposed more than 1000 wafers in a 24-hour period on a NXE:3300B
• ASML’s EUV source power upgrade is being rolled out to multiple customer sites
• The company’s “Overlay and Focus Package” for the Twinscan NXT:1970Ci system, which improves focus uniformity by up to 30% and matched machine overlay by more than 30%, experienced good sales.
• First orders received for next-generation Twinscn NXT:1980Ci immersion tool, aimed at production of critical layers for logic nodes.

As part of ASML's policy to return excess cash to shareholders through dividend and regularly timed share buybacks, the company announced its intention to purchase up to €750 million of shares, which it intends to cancel upon repurchase. ASML also announced its intention to purchase up to 3.3 million shares to cover employee stock and stock option plans (ESOPs).

The company reported that through 29 March 2015, it had acquired 1.4 million shares under this program for €129m.These shares have been purchased to cover ESOPs: “The share buyback program will be executed within the limitations of the existing authority granted by the AGM on April 23, 2014 and of the authority granted at future AGMs.“

About the Author

Matthew Peach is a contributing editor to optics.org.