ASML's order book stretches to 2030 as profit beats estimates
ASML is the toll booth every leading-edge AI chip has to pass through, and its third-quarter report says the queue in front of it is getting longer, not shorter.
ASML posted third-quarter net sales of €11.66 billion — a hair under the €11.72 billion analysts expected — but net profit of €4.96 billion against a €4.1 billion consensus, and told investors that customers have started asking about orders for 2029 and even 2030. Gross margin landed at 57.5% versus 56.1% expected. The company, still the world's only supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, raised the lower end of its 2026 revenue forecast to €44 billion–€45 billion from €43 billion–€44 billion, and guided the fourth quarter to €14.2 billion–€15.2 billion, above consensus at the top of the range.
The number that carries the story is not the revenue line, though — it is the capacity admission sitting underneath it. CEO Christophe Fouquet said the supply ASML has planned for 2027 and 2028 will not fully cover what customers want, and that the company is investigating ways to lift 2028 output beyond the 30% increase it had already forecast. "In light of their demand visibility, some customers are expressing an interest in placing orders with us for 2029 and even 2030," he said in the release.
That reframes the AI build-out. For two years the debate has been whether demand for accelerators, memory and data centers can keep running; ASML just said the constraint on the next wave of chips sits in one factory in Veldhoven that is already sold out a year or more ahead. Analysts have spent months arguing about whether capex is peaking. A company that ships roughly one product family, to a handful of customers, and still can't keep up is a hard data point against that thesis.
The quarter wasn't unblemished. Net sales came in marginally light, which is what happens when revenue is gated by when machines ship rather than when they are ordered, and China remains capped at about 20% of the business — ASML is barred from selling EUV and some DUV tools there, and a Chinese company reported to be building its own immersion DUV machine is the medium-term risk hanging over that line. High NA EUV, the next-generation tool that TSMC and Samsung have both committed to, is where the growth is meant to come from — we covered that commitment when it landed: TSMC and Samsung commit to ASML's $400 million High NA EUV machines.
What to watch: whether ASML puts a number on the 2028 capacity expansion at its November investor day, and whether the 2029–2030 order interest converts into booked backlog rather than stated intent.
If the world's most concentrated supplier says it cannot build fast enough, is the AI capex cycle closer to its ceiling or its middle? Tell us in the comments.
