Lithography giant ASML expands EUV and DUV equipment

Lithography giant ASML announced plans to expand production of EUV and DUV and even next-generation EUV equipment. The industry expects that from the perspective of customer applications, the foundry demand is the strongest, especially since the investment in advanced process technology is not easy to reduce, which will continue to drive the long-term growth of ASML.

According to ASML, although the current overall environment presents short-term uncertainties, there is still a healthy growth in wafer demand and production capacity in the long term. ASML mentioned that strong growth in various markets, continuous innovation, competition from more wafer foundries, and technological sovereignty competition drive the market's demand for advanced and mature processes, thus requiring more wafer capacity.

Production expansion: ASML plans to increase its annual production capacity to 90 EUV and 600 DUV systems (2025-2026), and 20 High-NA EUV systems (2027-2028).

At present, most of the first-tier semiconductor manufacturers have pre-ordered High-NA EUV equipment. ASML has successively received orders from major customers from the end of last year to the first half of this year. Among them, it received the first order for the latest High-NA EUV "EXE:5200" from Intel in early 2022. Intel aims to enter mass production of this device in 2025. The industry speculates that TSMC and Samsung respectively ordered EXE:5000 devices last year.

The financial report shows that in the third quarter of 2022, ASML achieved net sales of 5.8 billion euros (about 42.572 billion yuan), a gross profit margin of 51.8%, and a net profit of 1.7 billion euros (about 12.478 billion yuan). The number of new orders in the third quarter of this year hit a record high, reaching 8.9 billion euros (about 65.326 billion yuan).

ASML expects net sales in the fourth quarter of 2022 to be approximately 6.1 billion to 6.6 billion euros, with a gross profit margin of approximately 49%. Based on the median forecast for the fourth quarter, revenue in 2022 is expected to be approximately 21.1 billion euros. The revenue deferred to 2023 due to the fast delivery process in 2022 is expected to be approximately 2.2 billion euros.

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