Shares of semiconductor equipment giant ASML Holdings (ASML +4.97%) rallied 10.7% in June, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
A report came out early in the month that a key customer would be buying ASML's most advanced, and most expensive, extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machine at the end of this year -- ahead of what analysts had projected.
NASDAQ: ASML
Key Data Points
TSMC will take high-NA this year after all
Early in the month, ASML CFO Richard Dassen held a call with analysts. While the talk was not in public, some information gleaned on the call was reported by Bloomberg.
Dassen apparently told analysts that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing would be acquiring one of ASML's high-NA EUV machines this year.
Why is this significant? Because TSMC executives had said in recent months it did not believe high-NA would be necessary for a few years. Some analysts had pegged TSMC's A14 node, due out in 2028, as when high-NA would be needed. In fact, as recently as May, a TSMC executive said that the company wouldn't need the expensive high-NA machines on its A16 node chips due out in 2026.
High-NA machines cost about $380 million a pop, which is why TSMC was thought to have been waiting until its capabilities were absolutely necessary. High-NA machines are capable of printing transistors at 8 nanometer resolution, relative to the 13.5 nanometers that today's current low-NA EUV machines can print.
However, it appears TSMC will take possession of at least one machine this year. Whether it's for research purposes, or if management has changed its tune in light of rivals taking possession of the new technology this year is unclear.
Either way, ASML will benefit from shipping the machine earlier than investors may have thought.
ASML projects high end of 2025 guidance
Also on the call with analysts, Dassen affirmed that ASML's results next year were likely to be at the high end of ASML's guidance range, which the company gave at its Analyst Day back in late 2022. That guidance was for between 30 billion and 40 billion euros in revenue, relative to the 28.4 billion euros estimated for this year by analysts.
So while June was a relatively quiet month for ASML, this analyst call appeared to have sparked more optimism. We'll find out more when the company reports second-quarter earnings on July 17.
