EUV profitability moving towards DUV level

It doesn’t take an accountant to spot a bit of an oddity in ASML’s 2019 results. The company’s sales grew from 10.9 billion euros in 2018 to 11.8 billion in 2019, yet the net income was the same – 2.6 billion. What gives? The main culprit, it turns out, is EUV. The share of the next-gen lithographic technique in ASML’s sales is growing, but EUV is not yet as profitable as the other activities.

ASML sold 18 EUV scanners in 2018 and 26 in 2019. As a share of system sales, revenue from EUV increased from 23 to 31 percent, and ASML now derives almost a quarter of its total revenue from EUV systems (apart from selling systems, ASML also gains revenue from what it calls ‘Installed base management’). The technology everybody had to wait so long for has finally blossomed into a ‘regular’ business.