Thin layers paved the way for ASM’s success

ASM has grown spectacularly. At the beginning of this century, the equipment maker – then based in Bilthoven, now in Almere – was worth less than a billion euros. After a growth spurt in recent years, it’s now nearly 14 billion. A year ago, before tech stocks fell into disrepute, the company’s market capitalization even ticked up to 24 billion. In the same period, sales grew from half a billion euros to an expected 2.5 billion this year.

This makes ASM Europe’s second-largest supplier of semiconductor equipment. And at least as important to the industry as number one, ASML. We sometimes forget in the Netherlands, but the global deposition market is about the same size as the lithography market – it’s just a lot more crowded. Moreover, deposition has grown faster than lithography over the past decade.