ASML raises sales guidance as EUV advances continue

ASML, the world’s dominant provider of advanced lithography equipment for chip manufacturing, has increased its sales expectations for this year.

Against the backdrop of the conflict in Iran and ongoing geopolitical turmoil, the Netherlands-headquartered company said it now expected to post sales of between €36 billion and €40 billion - up from the prior range of €34 billion to €39 billion.

CEO Christophe Fouquet pointed to “very strong” order intake as the basis for that confidence, adding:

“The semiconductor industry's growth outlook continues to solidify, driven by ongoing AI-related infrastructure investments. Demand for chips is outpacing supply. In response, our customers are accelerating their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond, supported by long-term agreements with their customers.”

That updated guidance range also takes into account any impact from export controls imposed on ASML, which have previously been the subject of tense negotiations between the US and Netherlands governments and where discussions are currently ongoing.

EUV advances

Discussing the latest trading conditions in an in-house interview ahead of the latest quarterly investor conference call, Fouquet pointed out that chip supply would still lag demand for the foreseeable future, saying:

“If we look at memory, what our customers tell us is that they are sold out for 2026. And their supply constraints will last beyond 2026. For advanced logic, we see our customers building capacity for several nodes, while they also continue to ramp [the] 2 nm [node] in order to address the AI products.”

That is translating to increased adoption of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) tools as well as immersion deep-ultraviolet (DUV) systems. ASML expects to ship at least 60 of its low-numerical aperture (low-NA) EUV systems this year, and that total should rise to around 80 units next year.

Fouquet also highlighted recent advances in the development of EUV equipment that should deliver returns for both ASML and its chipmaking customers over the coming years.

“Every year, we use the SPIE [Advanced Lithography] conference to give a bit of an update to the entire world about what we have achieved,” said the CEO, noting advances in EUV source power and a raft of high-NA developments that were reported at the event in February.

1kW EUV source

ASML reported a 1 kilowatt EUV source during the SPIE event, with Fouquet saying: “This is very important because it means that we can secure the extensibility of low-NA EUV for many, many years. It means in fact that [by] 2031 we will be able to run this tool at 330 wafers per hour, which is a major step up from what we have today.”

According to the paper's abstract, the power level represents a significant increase from the commercial laser-driven systems currently offering a maximum 600 W EUV output, and was partly achieved through the adoption of a "pre-pulse" laser emitting at a wavelength of 1 micron.

Fouquet also highlighted the number of papers detailing advances across the high-NA ecosystem from key collaborators including Samsung, saying: “What was good about SPIE is that our customers started to talk about high-NA. The first thing is of course the fact that high-NA can allow them to reduce the number of masks significantly. DRAM and logic customers were talking about going from three [masks] to one mask for EUV using high-NA.

“They also mentioned that this can reduce the number of process steps from one hundred to ten, which is of course significant - that's the reason why we have high-NA.”