ASML raised its sales forecast due to the AI boom. Why did the stock fall?

Dutch chip equipment maker ASML - Europe's most valuable company by market capitalization - has raised its sales forecast for the full year 2026 due to a sharp rise in spending worldwide on artificial intelligence, according to the company's first quarter 2026 report.

Shares of ASML in Amsterdam on April 15 initially rose 1.5%, but then went into negative territory and are losing about 4%, the company's depositary receipts on Nasdaq in turn falling 3.27%.

- ASML reported first-quarter 2026 net income of €2.76 billion ($3.25 billion; up 17% year-over-year) and earnings per share of €7.15, well above the €6.6 per share forecast by analysts, MarketWatch writes, citing FactSet data.

- The company's revenue for the first three months of the year grew by 13% year-on-year to €8.8 billion, which also exceeded the expectations of analysts who had hoped to see this figure at €8.7 billion. Such results, Jefferies analyst Janardan Menon noted after the publication of the ASML report, may lead to a "slight" increase in forecasts, MarketWatch points out.

On the back of a strong first quarter 2026 performance, ASML said it now expects:

- The company's net revenue this year will be between €36 billion and €40 billion ($42.4 billion to $40 billion) - previously ASML had forecast this figure for the full year in the range of €34 billion to €39 billion. If realized, the updated forecasts could exceed ASML's net revenue for last year by 22%, the Financial Times writes - previously analysts had forecast this figure for the company for 2026 at €37.9 billion, according to the consensus forecast of Visible Alpha.

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said the company's orders from customers including TSMC, Samsung and Intel are "very high". Overall, ASML expects growth across all business lines in 2026, the company said, emphasizing that the updated forecasts already take into account the possibility of restrictions on product exports to China. During its Q4 2025 results teleconference in January, ASML said it expects Chinese sales to account for 20% of total sales in 2026. However, a similar forecast was made for 2025, and China ended up accounting for about a third of the company's sales last year.

ASML holds a near-monopoly position in the market for the lithography equipment needed to produce the most advanced semiconductors, Barron's explained. "The growth outlook for the semiconductor industry continues to strengthen with ongoing investments in infrastructure related to artificial intelligence," Fouquet said in a release following the reporting period. "Demand for chips is outpacing supply," he added.

ASML's largest customers - chipmakers such as TSMC and Samsung Electronics - report that their capacity for 2026 is nearly sold out, and expect the supply shortage to continue into 2027.

Since the beginning of the year, ASML's depositary receipts in the U.S. have gained more than 41%, and over the past 12 months they have added more than 125%. In Amsterdam, the company's shares have a similar dynamic: in 2026, they are up almost 39%, and over the year they have jumped 111%. It is their "already high valuation" that Yahoo Finance cites among the possible reasons for the stock's April 15 drop, despite impressive quarterly results.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor