By 2025, the production capacity of EUV systems at the world's largest supplier of these lithography systems for semiconductor production is to be expanded from 70 to at least 90 machines per year. As in the previous quarter, ASML's order intake amounted to around € 7 billion in the first three months, which is around 60% above market expectations, according to market analyst JPMorgan. This has driven the order backlog up to € 29 billion at the end of March, says ASML CFO Roger Dassen. In view of the sales of €17 billion planned for 2022, this shows how busy ASML already is for next year.
The Group also expects a 'healthy' order intake for the second quarter and points to the strong increase in orders for memory chip production equipment. Compared to the final quarter of 2021, these have risen by almost half to just under € 2.4 billion. Orders for lithography systems with extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) have almost maintained the high level of the fourth quarter of 2021.
By 2025, the production capacity of EUV systems is to be expanded from 70 to at least 90 machines per year, and for DUV (deep ultraviolet) machines from 375 to 600 systems. This puts ASML at the upper end of analysts' assumptions, writes Francois-Xavier Bouvignies from UBS. The Dutch company forecast sales of €5.1 billion to €5.3 billion for the current second quarter. Analysts, on the other hand, had estimated €6 billion. However, the forecast does not include around €800 million for machines still to be delivered, which will go to customers in an accelerated process, said Dassen. In this case, final acceptance by the customers will take place at a later date.
Investors fear that ASML will not be able to turn the high demand into profits as expected due to problems on the supplier side. With a market value of more than €230 billion, ASML Holding NV is one of the most valuable listed companies in the Eurozone: in the Eurostoxx 50, only the luxury goods group LVMH is valued higher at €320 billion. "We see that demand is still higher than our current production capacity," says ASML CEO Peter Wennink. The management left its sales forecast for the year as a whole at around 20 percent growth.
However, ASML announced a review of its medium-term growth prospects for 2025 and beyond, as it intends to invest heavily in building new capacity together with suppliers. In the medium term, 20 machines of advanced EUV (High-Numerical Aperture) device types are to be added.
This year will continue to be characterized by bottlenecks in the supply chain. This will also lead to increased freight costs, as routes will have to be rescheduled due to the war in Ukraine, among other things. With additional costs for securing raw materials and expanding the workforce, the gross margin is more likely to be around 52% than previously planned at 53%. As forecast, it was 49% and indicates how much of the sales price remains after production costs. In the second quarter, it is expected to be between 49 and 50 percent. On balance, ASML earned € 695 million in the first three months of the year. A year earlier, the figure was € 1.3 billion.
