ASML Holding NV, a key supplier of equipment to companies that make computer chips, said Wednesday that its sales and profit for the third quarter were better than expected, and that it had a record number of new orders. It also said it didn’t think U.S. sanctions against China would have a big effect.
CEO Peter Wennink said in a statement, “The market is uncertain because of a number of global macro-economic worries, such as inflation, consumer confidence, and the risk of a recession.”
Even though the market for memory chips has been weak, “overall, there is still a lot of interest in our systems as a whole. This led to a third-quarter record of around 8.9 billion euros in sales, “he said.
ASML is the biggest technology company in Europe. It makes lithography systems, which are big machines that can cost up to $160 million each and are used by chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor (TMSC), Samsung (KS:005930), and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) to make the circuitry of computer chips.
It can’t keep up with the demand from these companies, which want to build new factories, and ASML’s backlog is now more than 30 billion euros, so the company wants to increase its own production capacity by 2025.
ASML made a net profit of 1.7 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in the third quarter on sales of 5.8 billion euros. This was more than the 1.42 billion euros analysts expected to make on sales of 5.41 billion euros.
In comparison, ASML made 1.70 billion euros from sales of 5.78 billion euros in the second quarter of 2022.
The US put a lot of new limits on sending semiconductors to China at the beginning of this month.
Because of U.S. diplomatic pressure, the Dutch government hasn’t let ASML ship its best machines to China since 2019. But it still sells machines that are a little bit older in China, where 16% of its sales were in 2021.
ASML said that the new U.S. rules don’t seem to have much of an effect on them because they are a European company and use few U.S. parts in their machines.
“We can still send non-EUV lithography tools from Europe to China,” the company said. “These tools are not as advanced as EUV tools.”
The company said that Chinese customers may have trouble getting other parts they need. ASML said that it can’t keep up with orders right now, so if orders for tools from China slow down, it could sell the tools somewhere else.
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