ASML shares rise on CFO Dassen’s comments on orders

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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – ASML shares rose on Wednesday after a Jefferies analyst report cited comments from CFO Roger Dassen which suggested he was positive about the possibility of orders coming through from top customer TSMC in the coming quarters.

An ASML spokesperson confirmed the CFO had spoken at a Jefferies-hosted call with investors.

ASML’s shares rose 6.3% to 927.10 euros ($1,008.78) by 1314 GMT.

ASML, the world’s biggest semiconductor equipment maker, makes lithography tools, which use beams of light to help create the minute circuitry of computer chips, while TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of advanced chips.

The Jefferies report said Dassen “sounded optimistic” that commercial talks with TSMC were nearing conclusion, with “significant” 2 nm-related orders coming through, starting in Q2 or Q3.

ASML has previously said it targets 2025 sales in the 30-40 billion euro range, helped by booming demand for cutting-edge logic chips used in smartphones and for AI.

The Jefferies report said the company sees demand continuing to be strong into 2026, helped by government-subsidised factories being built around the world.

The report said TSMC expects to receive one of ASML’s new High NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines, which cost more than 350 million euros each, sometime this year.

Intel was the first to purchase one of the machines, with the other installed in an ASML-Imec laboratory that opened this week.

ASML has orders for more than a dozen of the High NA tools from all the customers who use its current EUV line, which includes: Intel, TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.

The Jefferies report also said ASML does not believe it will face competition in EUV technology from either Chinese lithography company SMEE or Huawei “in the foreseeable future due to the complexity of the technology itself as well as the ecosystem.”

($1 = 0.9190 euros)

(Reporting by Toby Sterling. Editing by Jane Merriman)