ASML Holding N.V. ASML

The business

ASML sells the lithography machines that print circuit patterns onto silicon. The buyers are the few chipmakers still on the leading edge, TSMC, Samsung and Intel above all, plus memory makers and Chinese fabs buying older deep-ultraviolet (DUV) tools. EUV is the engine: €11.6B of FY2025 system sales, 47% of the €24.5B system total and 36% of group revenue, and management guided EUV net system sales to grow more than 45% in 2026 on the Q2 call. Servicing and upgrading the thousands of machines already installed in fabs added roughly €8.2B more, 25% of FY2025 revenue, recurring and high-margin. ASML is the sole source for EUV; at the leading edge there is no second vendor to call.

What the statements do not show is where the capacity cycle sits. The last two quarters moved the math twice: the FY2026 sales guide went from €34-39B in January to €36-40B in April to €43-45B in July, with gross margin lifted to 54-56%, as AI-driven fab buildouts pulled orders forward. Per the Q2 call, 2027 EUV capacity is close to fully ordered, the company is adding about 30% EUV capacity for 2027 and studying another 30% for 2028, and High-NA EUV has moved into production use at Intel. China is projected at 20% of 2026 sales, concentrated in DUV.