On January 24, 2024, Dutch lithography giant ASML released its financial reports for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. Official data shows that ASML's net sales in the fourth quarter of 2023 were 7.2 billion euros, with a gross profit margin of 51.4% and a net profit of 2 billion euros. The new order amount for the fourth quarter of 2023 was 9.2 billion euros, of which 5.6 billion euros were orders for EUV lithography machines.
In terms of annual data, ASML's net sales reached 27.6 billion euros in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 23.2%, with a gross profit margin of 51.3%, a year-on-year increase of 0.8 percentage points, and a net profit of 7.8 billion euros, a year-on-year increase of 28.3%. The total amount of undelivered orders reached 39 billion euros.
ASML President and CEO Peter Wennink described the Q4 2023 performance as "net sales and gross profit margin, both slightly higher than expected."
Regarding the reasons for the performance changes, ASML CFO Roger Dassen analyzed at the Q4 and full year performance briefing in 2023 that this was mainly due to the unexpected growth of the installation management business, and the increase in sales was a joint result of the increase in service revenue and upgrade revenue. At the same time, the growth of installation management business has also driven the gross profit margin to exceed expectations, reaching 51.4%.
Mature process orders in the Chinese market remain stable
The Chinese market, as one of the important closing points of ASML, has always received attention from multiple parties.
Roger Dassen said on the 24th, "After the relevant policies take effect, the impact on the Chinese market this year is 10% -15% (based on sales in China in 2023). However, we can still see strong demand in the mature process market in the terminal market."
After checking customs data, the reporter from First Financial News found that the total import value of semiconductor manufacturing equipment (commodity code: 84862039) from the Netherlands in 2023 was about 6 billion US dollars, accounting for about 20% of ASML's net sales for the whole year of 2023.
In recent months, the number and import value of lithography machines imported by China from ASML in the Netherlands have surged. According to the summary data released by China Sea on January 22, the amount of lithography equipment imported from the Netherlands by China in December 2023 reached 1.1 billion US dollars, an increase of nearly 1000% year-on-year and 44.2% month on month.
The reporter found that in November 2023, China imported 42 lithography equipment with a total value of 816.8 million US dollars. Among them, 16 lithography machines are ASML from the Netherlands, with a total value of 762.7 million US dollars.
Roger Dassen pointed out at the performance briefing that currently, ASML's equipment shipped to China is mainly aimed at mature process customers. The market demand for this part is very stable, stable in 2023, and future demand will continue to remain stable.
Record breaking order amount in the fourth quarter
As the most upstream industry in the semiconductor market, lithography machines can best reflect the current situation of the entire industry chain in terms of market trends.
In terms of new orders, ASML's performance in the fourth quarter did give the market a lot of confidence. Roger Dassen revealed at the fourth quarter and full year performance briefing of 2023 that ASML received a record high order amount of 9.2 billion euros in the fourth quarter. From the composition of orders, logic chip manufacturers and storage chip manufacturers each account for half, with approximately 5.6 billion euros coming from EUV lithography systems.
Roger Dassen stated that ASML has observed some positive signals in the market. "Firstly, the inventory level in the end market has significantly improved. Secondly, from the perspective of the utilization rate of lithography systems, although it has not reached normal levels, there has been a significant increase, and we believe it will continue to improve this year. Thirdly, in the fourth quarter, we received a record of 9.2 billion euros in new orders, which I believe is also a sign of improvement," he said.
Based on this, Roger Dassen predicts that the storage chip market will experience growth in 2024, mainly due to the transformation of process nodes to meet the growing demand for advanced storage. The logic chip market will experience a slight decline in 2024, as this year will mainly absorb the new production capacity in 2023 rather than continuing to increase production capacity.
In addition, globally, ASML expects its net sales in 2024 to remain largely unchanged from 2023, with an estimated net sales of approximately 5 billion to 5.5 billion euros and a gross profit margin of approximately 48% to 49% in the first quarter of 2024.