Sales, profits falling at ASML, but outlook steady

ASML Holding NV (Veldhoven, The Netherlands), the world's leading supplier of lithography equipment, made a net profit of 292 million euro (about $360 million) on sales revenue of 1,228 million euros (about $1.51 billion) in the second quarter of 2012.

The financial results were disclosed soon after ASML announced a strategic investment deal with Intel Corp. that will help it with R&D expenditure.

The profit was up sequentially although the sales revenue declined from 1,252 million euro (about $1.54 billion) in the first quarter. On a year-on-year basis revenue was down 19.7 percent from 1,529 million euro (about $1.89 billion). Net profit declined by a third from 432.1 million euro (about $530 million), on the same basis.

For the third quarter 2012, ASML expects net sales of about 1.2 billion euro (about $1.5 billion).

"We executed H1 2012 as planned and expect sales to remain steady in the second half," said Eric Meurice, president and CEO of ASML, in a statement. "The second half revenue level is expected to be between 2.2 billion euro and 2.4 billion euro and looks sustained by an increase of NAND memory critical layer systems shipments, stability of DRAM memory systems sales, and slower 28/32 nm logic in the second half compared with the first half. The exact level of sales achieved in the second half will depend on the strength of NAND pick up, itself fueled by new ultrabook PCs and new smartphone ramps. On the technology front, we expect to ship the first of the NXE:3300, our production-capable extreme ultraviolet system, by the end of this year or early next year and the rest of our 11 unit order in 2013. These tools will be used for process development. We are furthermore making progress in preparing EUV lithography for 2014 device production, evidenced by customer commitment to purchase four additional production systems for delivery in 2014. This commitment is enabled by the data gathered on source power increase and by steady performance of the six units already in the field," Meurice said.


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