ASML Holding NV, a Dutch manufacturer of advanced chipmaking machines that are critical to global supply chains, yesterday reaffirmed its long-term revenue outlook as it bets on an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven boom in semiconductor demand.
The Dutch firm projected that sales in 2030 would range from 44 billion euros to 60 billion euros (US$46 billion to US$63 billion), in line with its previous forecast, according to a statement issued as part of the company’s investor day.
The outlook is meant to reassure investors after the company’s order intake significantly missed analysts’ estimates in the third quarter, sparking a selloff in its shares and those of other chip-related businesses. Chipmakers such as Nvidia Corp have enjoyed a boom in demand for their AI chips. However, sales to other key buyers, including automakers, and mobile phone and PC manufacturers, have remained mired in a prolonged slump.
Photo: Bloomberg
ASML expects growing AI demand would help boost global chip sales to over US$1 trillion by 2030, which it said represents an annual growth rate in the semiconductor market of about 9 percent.
ASML is the only company in the world that makes the kind of lithography machines that help semiconductor companies in turn produce the advanced chips powering everything from Apple Inc’s smartphones to Nvidia’s AI accelerators.
Manufacturing more cutting-edge AI chips would mean more of ASML’s advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines would be needed by semiconductor makers. The company foresees double-digit growth in EUV spending annually through 2030 for both advanced logic and DRAM.
The company forecast a gross margin of between approximately 56 percent and 60 percent in 2030.
While ASML last month cut its sales outlook for next year, it said yesterday it would maintain its spending priorities.
However, weighing on ASML’s prospects is the US government’s ongoing effort to limit China’s rise in the semiconductor sector, through repeated rounds of export controls that have targeted the sale of advanced AI chips and chipmaking equipment. The Dutch government has struggled to find a middle ground between its US ally and ASML’s biggest market.
Due to US pressure, ASML has never been able to sell its EUV machines to China and was restricted from shipping its second most-advanced tools from this year.
China accounted for 2.79 billion euros of sales in the third quarter, nearly half of ASML’s total. The company expects China sales to account for about 20 percent of total revenue next year.
US pressure on ASML to further restrict sales of semiconductor technology to Beijing would likely grow, ASML chief executive officer Christophe Fouquet said in an interview with Bloomberg last month.
Fouquet, who took the helm at ASML in April, told investors last month that he expects a slow chip market recovery to extend “well into 2025.”
Still, next year and 2026 would be growth years for the industry and ASML overall, he said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RSS