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ASML CEO: “We’ve structurally underestimated growth in the industry”
Reading time: 4 minutes
As chipmakers race to add capacity, orders are pouring in at ASML. Part of the demand stems from the current chip shortage, but underneath there are long-term growth trends that the equipment maker didn’t acknowledge before. Preparations to expand manufacturing capacity in Veldhoven are underway.
Taking in 8.3 billion euros in orders in the second quarter, ASML nearly doubled its backlog to 17.3 billion euros. It’s the highest quarterly order intake the company has ever seen, prompting it to work “extremely hard” to produce the machines that customers “crave,” says CEO Peter Wennink. As a result, ASML has raised its full-year revenue growth guidance to 35 percent, up 5 percentage points from its estimate in Q1.
The current high demand is partly due to a catch-up effect from the Covid year, which will stretch into 2022, Wennink predicts. Things won’t slow down any time soon, though: artificial intelligence and high-power compute keep driving demand for leading-edge chips. But on top of that, there’s an explosion of demand from manufacturers of mature semiconductors, which has caught ASML off guard. “The very strong demand from the non-leading-edge customers across the globe really surprised us,” Wennink admitted to analysts.
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