Written by Toby Sterling and Nathan Vifflin
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – ASML, the largest supplier of equipment to computer chip makers, on Wednesday reported lower-than-expected first-quarter new orders, but strong sales to China despite U.S.-led export restrictions. was. .
Europe's largest technology company expects 2024 sales to be flat at 27.6 billion euros ($29.3 billion) from 2023 levels, although it is gearing up for strong growth in 2025. , the company has left its full-year earnings forecast unchanged.
Net profit for the first quarter was 1.22 billion euros, down from 2.05 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2023, but slightly higher than expected, according to LSEG data. Sales were 5.29 billion euros, down from 7.24 billion euros.
ASML's sales of lithography systems to Chinese customers accounted for a record 49% of total sales in the first quarter, or about 2 billion euros, the company said in an investor presentation accompanying the results.
New bookings totaled 3.6 billion euros, well below the 5.4 billion euros expected by analysts polled by Reuters.
“Our outlook for 2024 remains unchanged and we expect the second half of the year to be stronger than the first half as the industry continues to recover from the downturn,” outgoing CEO Peter Wennink said in a statement. “It is expected,” he said, referring to 2024. as a “year of transition”.
Christophe Fouquet, a Frenchman, is scheduled to take over from Wennink at the company's annual general meeting on April 24.
ASML dominates the market for lithography systems. Lithography systems, which use beams of light to create microscopic circuits, can cost hundreds of millions of euros each.
It will benefit from new chip factories planned with support from governments in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China and the United States.
Industry group SEMI predicts that China will add the most semiconductor manufacturing capacity in 2024, followed by Taiwan and South Korea.
U.S.-led export restrictions aimed at undermining China's ability to manufacture advanced chips on its own will force Chinese chipmakers to focus on manufacturing older generations of chips using equipment that does not fall under export control policies. It became so.
(1 dollar = 0.9414 euro)
(1 dollar = 0.9427 euro)
(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Tom Hogue, Jamie Freed and Sonali Paul)
