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ASML has forecast bumper sales of its chip manufacturing equipment this year on the back of the AI boom, after orders in the final quarter of last year smashed analysts’ expectations.
The Netherlands-based group, whose dominance in the lithography equipment needed to produce cutting-edge chips has made it Europe’s most valuable company, said it expected a “significant increase” in sales of its Extreme Ultraviolet machines.
The industry powerhouse forecast total net sales of between €34bn and €39bn this year, up from €32.7bn in 2025.
Chief executive Christophe Fouquet said on Wednesday that customers had “a strong belief that the AI demand is real” and were starting to prepare for that with “a major addition of capacity” in the short term.
“This will start in 2026 and will last beyond that,” Fouquet added, driving a “huge appetite” for its latest technology.
It will include supplying equipment used in the manufacture of logic chips, such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which are made by TSMC, as well as storage and memory chips. The latter are produced by companies including Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung.
ASML’s sales forecast implies revenue growth of as much as 19 per cent this year. That is well ahead of analysts’ forecasts of around 8 per cent growth to €35.3bn, according to consensus estimates from S&P Capital IQ.
Net bookings — a closely watched measure of orders — more than doubled in the fourth quarter to €13.2bn. That was almost twice the €6.9bn forecast by analysts.
ASML’s shares have risen by more than 20 per cent this year after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, one of its largest customers, said that it planned to sharply increase its chipmaking capacity in response to the AI boom.
TSMC’s chief financial officer Wendell Huang said it would be investing “significantly more” over the next three years than the $101bn in capital investment between 2023 and 2025.
Jensen Huang, chief executive of AI chipmaker Nvidia, told attendees at the World Economic Forum last week that the AI boom has “started the largest infrastructure build-out in human history”.
“We are a few hundred billion dollars into it,” he said in Davos. “There are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that need to be built out.”
ASML’s strong outlook comes despite a drop in revenues from China, which are expected to fall from nearly 50 per cent of sales in 2025 to around 20 per cent this year.
The US and Dutch authorities have placed limits on sales of ASML’s most advanced equipment to China, part of an effort to constrain Beijing’s ability to develop homegrown AI systems.
ASML said on Wednesday that it planned to make organisational changes including “streamlining” its technology and IT units, to “strengthen its focus on engineering and innovation”.
The company also announced a 17 per cent increase in its dividend and a new €12bn share buyback programme.
