The Dutch manufacturer ASML confirms the developments of the past few weeks: “Demand for chips exceeds supply. In response, our customers are pushing forward their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond.”
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However, ASML is now hiding the effects: the annual report no longer contains the bookings for new lithography systems for the exposure of silicon wafers. Previously, the booking value was largely responsible for fluctuations in ASML shares on the stock market.
Instead, ASML now prefers to focus on technical progress. New in our own presentation is a roadmap with upcoming devices that, for example, shorten the exposure time or increase the alignment accuracy.
ASML’s roadmap for the next few years. WPH, i.e. wafer per hour or wafer per hour, is one of the most important parameters in lithography systems.
(Image: ASML)
Sales have traditionally declined
In the first quarter of 2026, ASML had sales of almost 8.8 billion euros. The approximately 10 percent decline compared to the fourth quarter of 2025 is a tradition; ASML always records the most lithography systems sold at the end of the year. In the past quarter, ASML sold 67 new and 12 remanufactured systems for 6.3 billion euros. Two thirds of sales come from modern lithography systems with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light sources.
2.5 billion euros come from maintaining customers’ systems and from upgrades, for example to increase wafer throughput. The bottom line is that almost 2.8 billion net profit remains.
South Korea is currently the largest buyer country with a sales share of 45 percent. The two memory manufacturers Samsung and SK Hynix are located there. The distribution of end use is also not surprising: half of the revenue comes from memory manufacturers, the other half from logic chip manufacturers (such as processors and AI accelerators).
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ASML now only provides insights into past sales. There are no longer similar graphics for new bookings.
(Image: ASML)
Up to 40 billion euros in annual sales
In the current quarter, ASML expects sales of 8.4 billion to 9.0 billion euros. Annual sales are expected to be between 36 billion and 40 billion euros. In 2025 it was still 32.7 billion. ASML’s growth is limited because the company can only gradually increase production of lithography systems. For this, ASML is significantly dependent on suppliers such as Zeiss and Trumpf.
The ASML share has fallen by around four percent since the annual report was published, but is still up around 25 percent since the beginning of the year.
(mma)
