Dutch firm says it expects strong growth in 2026, countering fears of an investment bubble.<\/p>\n
Tech giant ASML has reported a quarterly record in orders of its chip-making equipment, boosting hopes for the sustainability of the artificial intelligence boom and countering fears of an investment bubble.<\/p>\n
The Dutch firm said on Wednesday that it booked orders worth 13.2 billion euros ($15.8bn) in the final quarter of 2025, more than half of which were for its most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
ASML logged orders worth 7 million euros during the same period the previous year.<\/p>\n
Net sales came to 9.7 billion euros in the October-December period, ASML said, taking sales for all of 2025 to 32.7 billion euros.<\/p>\n
Net profit for the year was\u00a09.6 billion euros, up from 7.6 billion euros in 2024.<\/p>\n
The Veldhoven-based company forecast net sales of between 34 billion euros and 39 billion euros in 2026.<\/p>\n
ASML Chief Executive Officer Christophe Fouquet said the company\u2019s chip-making customers had conveyed a \u201cnotably more positive assessment\u201d of the market situation in the medium term based on expectations of strong AI-related demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is reflected in a marked step-up in their medium-term capacity plans and in our record order intake,\u201d Fouquet said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, we expect 2026 to be another growth year for ASML\u2019s business, largely driven by a significant increase in EUV sales and growth in our installed base business sales.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fouquet also said the company would cut about 1,700 jobs, most of them at the leadership level, amid concerns work processes had become \u201cless agile\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngineers in particular have expressed their desire to focus their time on engineering, without being hampered by slow process flows, and restore the fast-moving culture that has made us so successful,\u201d Fouquet said.<\/p>\n
The proposed cuts, which would affect positions in the Netherlands and the United States, represent about 4 percent of ASML\u2019s 44,000-strong global workforce.<\/p>\n
ASML holds an effective monopoly on the production of machinery used by TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and Intel to make the most advanced AI chips.<\/p>\n
The company sells only about 50 of its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines each year, with each unit costing about 250 million euros.<\/p>\n
ASML\u2019s share price surged on Wednesday, with its stock up nearly 6 percent as of 9.30am local time.<\/p>\n
\u201cASML\u2019s latest results suggest the AI boom is still in full swing, with strong orders and a bullish outlook,\u201d said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, job cuts in the business would suggest it is not getting carried away with the strength of current trading.\u201d<\/p>\n
ASML\u2019s restructuring \u201clooks like a sharper focus on efficiencies and different ways of working, rather than saying there isn\u2019t enough work for existing staff to do,\u201d Mould added.<\/p>\n
\u201cNonetheless,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a sign that the AI craze might be trying to catch its breath.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tech giants such as Meta, OpenAI,\u00a0Nvidia\u00a0and Oracle have poured billions of dollars into AI\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0expectation that\u00a0the technology will deliver\u00a0dramatic\u00a0changes to how people work and live.<\/p>\n
Global AI-related spending is forecast to hit $2.53 trillion in 2026 and $3.33 trillion in 2027, according to projections by technology insights firm Gartner.<\/p>\n
The investment boom has propelled the US stock market to record highs, stoking concerns about the sustainability of huge spending on a technology whose promise remains largely unrealised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dutch firm says it expects strong growth in 2026, countering fears of an investment bubble. Tech giant ASML…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,184,63,85,46,12512,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-261871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-netherlands","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}