Litho equipment vendor ASML trims sales forecast on fab push-outs

Lithography equipment supplier ASML has trimmed its forecast for sales in 2025 because of cautiousness among some chip makers and “specific competitive issues in the foundry business.”

ASML Holding NV (Veldhoven, The Netherlands) is the dominant supplier of lithography equipment for making chips and had forecast sales in 2025 of between €30 billion and €40 billion. In the latest announcement the company said it has narrowed its forecast to between €30 billion and €35 billion.

“For some customers there is a slower ramp of new nodes and that leads to some fab push-outs and obviously also leads to a change and a delay in litho demand timing,” said CFO Roger Dassen in a video interview set up to discuss the 3Q24 financial results.

This could be a reference to the roll out of 3nm manufacturing at Samsung and a postponement of plans to install EUV lithography at a wafer fab in Taylor, Texas.

The company said that while demand for AI chips is strong and likely to be sustained other markets are taking longer to recover than it had anticipated and this leading to some customer cautiousness. ASML has also previously enjoyed strong sales into China but is told that larger parts of its portfolio may not receive licenses for export there.

For its 3Q24 ASML announced net sales of €7.47 billion for the 3Q24 up 11.9 percent on 3Q24 and a net income of €2.08 billion.

The company had quarterly net bookings of €2.6 billion in 3Q24, of which €1.4 billion is EUV-related. ASML expects Q4 2024 total net sales between €8.8 billion and €9.2 billion, which would result in total net sales in 2024 of around €28 billion.