ASML Raises Outlook as Chipmakers Rush to Lock In AI-Driven Equipment Through 2030

ASML, the Dutch company that makes the machines required to manufacture the world's most advanced computer chips, raised its full-year sales outlook on Wednesday and said customers are now trying to place equipment orders for 2029 and 2030, as the artificial-intelligence buildout strains the chip industry's ability to add capacity fast enough.

The company reported third-quarter net sales of €11.7 billion, up sharply from €9.3 billion in the second quarter, with net income of €5.0 billion, according to its earnings filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both figures beat the company's own guidance, and gross margin came in at 57.5%. ASML now expects full-year 2026 sales of €44 billion to €45 billion, up from a July forecast of €43 billion to €45 billion, and projects fourth-quarter sales as high as €15.2 billion.

Customers Lining Up Years in Advance

Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet said customers are raising their short- and medium-term demand forecasts, "driven primarily by their views on the size and duration of AI-related investments," and that order-book momentum is building quarter over quarter. Some chipmakers, he said, are now asking to place orders for systems to be delivered in 2029 and 2030 — an unusually long planning horizon in an industry where machines often take more than a year to build and install. ASML's extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography systems are the only tools capable of printing the smallest transistor patterns used in chips from Nvidia, AMD and other AI-chip designers, giving the company an effective monopoly on the most advanced tier of chipmaking equipment.

The company said supply already planned for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet customer demand, and that it is examining ways to expand 2028 capacity beyond a previously announced 30% increase. That disclosure underscores a theme that has run through this year's technology earnings: demand for AI computing capacity is outstripping even the most optimistic capacity-expansion plans across the chip-manufacturing supply chain, from lithography tools to memory chips to data-center power.

Cash Returned to Shareholders

ASML bought back roughly €4.1 billion of its own shares during the quarter under a 2026-2028 repurchase program and declared an interim dividend of €1.88 per share, payable in early November. The company's installed-base servicing business, which maintains machines already in the field, generated €3.3 billion in revenue, underscoring how a growing fleet of lithography systems at chipmakers worldwide now generates recurring income alongside new-equipment sales.

ASML holds a near-total grip on the EUV lithography market, the product of more than a decade of research and development, which leaves semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC, Samsung and Intel with no practical alternative supplier for their most advanced production nodes. That position has made the company a bellwether for the broader AI investment cycle: when ASML raises its outlook, it is effectively confirming that chipmakers further down the supply chain are themselves betting on sustained, multi-year growth in demand for AI processors, rather than a short-lived spending spike.

The results come as governments and chipmakers continue to navigate export restrictions on advanced lithography tools to China, though ASML's release Wednesday did not break out China-specific sales or address any new restrictions, focusing instead on the breadth of demand from its largest customers elsewhere.