ASML air freight containers in Tainan, May 2025 Credit: 4300streetcar ASML says its supply plans mean it cannot fully meet demand in 2027 or 2028, and some customers want to place orders for 2029 and 2030. It raised the low end of its 2026 sales guidance and its shares rose 2.8%. ASML says it will not be able to meet demand for its machines in 2027 or 2028. It is looking for ways to build more.
The Dutch company raised the low end of its 2026 sales guidance, taking the range to between €44B and €45B, Bloomberg reported, and its shares rose 2.8% to €1,551.60 in Amsterdam. In July it said it would add 30% more capacity for 2027 and was studying a further 30% for 2028. Chief executive Christophe Fouquet now says it is investigating going beyond that. Customers are asking every single day for more tools, Fouquet said.
Some are expressing an interest in placing orders for 2029 and even 2030. That is an awkward week to say it. Chip stocks sold off after Broadcom’s chief executive compared investor sentiment to a casino, and Seoul fell 7% intraday. ASML is the hardest evidence in that argument.
Its most advanced tools take more than a year between order and delivery, so its book is a record of what chipmakers have already committed to rather than what they say. The financial warnings are about something else. The IMF called the sector’s circular financing wrong-way risk this week, because the investment sours when the promised revenue does. An order for a lithography machine is not a revenue promise.
It is a purchase of a physical object from the only company that makes it. That monopoly has made ASML Europe’s most valuable company. Its shares are up 64% this year, and it was about $300B short of a trillion in July. Most of the rise came early.
The stock was up about 60% by mid-July, so it has been close to flat through the autumn. It also remains an exception at home. Europe’s best earnings quarter in three years was an energy story, not an AI one. Pricing has moved too.
ASML has completed price conversations with key customers, with the effect visible partly through 2027 and fully from 2028, and China remains about a fifth of this year’s revenue. A second Dutch campus is under construction, with the first phase due in 2029. That is the horizon customers are now asking it to quote for. Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
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