Christoph Fouquet, CEO of Dutch semiconductor manufacturing equipment manufacturer ASML Holding, said on the 16th that the semiconductor market will continue to recover slowly “well into 2025.” The July-September (third quarter) financial results announced the day before were below market expectations, leading to a sharp decline in semiconductor-related stocks overall.
In a conference call with investors, CEO Fouquet explained that due to the slow recovery in demand, “customers were cautious about investing, and some investments were cancelled.” ASML lowered its earnings forecast for next year due to the prospect of demand, although the CEO said the boom in artificial intelligence (AI), energy transition and electrification were still strong tails.
Fouquet, who only became CEO in April, is facing one of the most turbulent times since the company was founded. The company lost more than 60 billion euros (about 9.8 trillion yen) in market capitalization after it revealed on the 15th that orders for the July-September period were less than half of analysts’ average forecasts.
ASML is considered a benchmark for the semiconductor industry as a whole, so the weak financial results reinforced concerns that the AI boom has yet to ease the industry’s overall slowdown in demand. ASML is responsible for most of the manufacturing equipment that supports Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), which produces modern chips for Apple smartphones and Nvidia’s AI accelerators.
“If it wasn’t for AI, the current market would be bad. I don’t think the market will recover as I expected.”
According to him, demand for AI-related servers is strong, but the recovery in demand for cars, mobile devices and computers is particularly slow. In response to this market, ASML plans to curtail its short-term investment plans.
To postpone an order
Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen said on a conference call that some orders scheduled for next year have been pushed back to 2026.
ASML lowered its earnings forecast for next year, and its stock fell 16% on the Amsterdam market on the 15th, the steepest decline since June 12, 1998. The stock continued to fall 5.8% on the 16th, losing its position as Europe’s largest technology company by market capitalization to German software developer SAP. ASML has lost almost a quarter of its market capitalization since Fouquet took over.
The fact that the financial results were mistakenly announced one day earlier than scheduled also disappointed the market. The company explained this as a “technical error.” Fouquet apologized for the unexpected early announcement during a conference call, saying it was “extremely disappointing”.
Original title:ASML CEO Sees Chip Tumor Recovery Extending ‘Well into 2025’ (2)(excerpt)