On July 17th, ASML, a Dutch lithography company, released its Q2 2024 financial report. Data shows that in the second quarter of 2024, ASML's net sales were 6.2 billion euros, an increase of 17.2% compared to the same period last year, which was 5.29 billion euros; The net profit was 1.6 billion euros, an increase of 30.7% compared to the same period last year, which was 1.224 billion euros.
From the sales data of lithography machines, EUV lithography machines have become the main driving force for ASML's revenue. In the second quarter of this year, ASML's new orders amounted to 5.6 billion euros, of which 2.5 billion euros were EUV lithography machine orders, accounting for nearly 50%. In the first quarter of this year, the order amount for EUV lithography machines was 656 million euros, accounting for only one sixth of the total new order amount.
In response, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet stated that "net sales and gross profit margin in the second quarter were both higher than expected, mainly due to increased sales of immersion systems." Regarding the 0.33 numerical aperture EUV lithography system, Fouquet stated that the company shipped a new batch of NXE: 3800 E systems to customers in the second quarter and is continuing to increase production capacity as planned. Due to the shift in customer demand this year, it is expected that the majority of equipment shipped in the second half of the year will be NXE: 3800E systems.
The reporter learned that on March 13th of this year, ASML announced that its first new NXE: 3800E lithography system had been installed at a certain company's wafer fab. According to the details announced on its official website, NXE: 3800E is expected to further improve its performance to 220wph (i.e. capable of producing 220 wafers per hour), compared to TSMC's current efficiency of 160wph using the previous generation NXE: 3600D lithography system.
Susquehanna International Group senior analyst Mehdi Hosseini stated that due to the need for multiple exposure technology in wafer manufacturing, based on cost considerations, it is expected that TSMC's 3nm process will not be able to truly scale up production until the NXE: 3800E with higher throughput is launched.
Although there is still some gap in performance between the NXE: 3800E and the EXE: 5200, which is expected to cost $300 million per unit, the NXE: 3800E is still priced at approximately $180 million per unit. It can be seen that these two types of products will become the main force driving ASML's revenue in the future. Fu Keli also stated that currently, the strong development of artificial intelligence is becoming a powerful driving force for the recovery and growth of the semiconductor industry, leading other segmented market areas. Based on discussions with clients and our large backlog of undelivered orders, it is expected that 2025 will be a strong year for performance.
Looking back at the semiconductor market in the first half of this year, Fu Keli stated that the overall inventory level of the semiconductor industry has continued to improve, and it is expected that revenue from the logic chip field will be slightly lower in 2024 than in 2023, as customers are still digesting the new production capacity in 2023; In the field of storage chips, revenue in 2024 is expected to be higher than last year, mainly driven by the transformation of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology process nodes to support advanced storage technologies such as fifth generation double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory (DDR5) and high bandwidth memory (HBM).
We see that the utilization rate of lithography equipment for current logic chip and storage chip customers is further increasing. Despite the uncertainty mainly caused by the macro environment, it is expected that the semiconductor industry will continue to recover in the second half of 2024, "he said. ASML expects third quarter sales to be between 6.7 billion euros and 7.3 billion euros, with a gross profit margin of 50% to 51%.
Due to the above figures being lower than market expectations, ASML has fallen over 4% on the Tradegate exchange as of press time.