ASML — Q2 2026 Earnings

For reference — Q1 2026 (reported April 2026): net sales €8.8B (+13% YoY), gross margin 53.0%, net profit €2.8B (+17%), and a full-year guidance raise to €36–40B from the prior range. Q2's beat and second raise confirm the acceleration first flagged in Q1 has continued rather than plateaued.

• ASML expects to ship ~65 Low-NA EUV systems in 2026, supporting roughly 45% EUV business growth for the year
• High-NA EUV reached a commercialization milestone: Intel confirmed it is using High-NA in production on its advanced "Panther Lake" chips — the first customer to do so
• ASML plans to ship around 10 High-NA scanners in 2026, with SK Hynix expected to take units for memory applications
• Capacity plan: +30% low-NA EUV capacity for 2027 vs. 2026, with a further 30% under review for 2028
• CEO Fouquet: ASML is "close to receiving all the orders it needs" for 2027 capacity, and has already booked a large volume of 2028 EUV orders

• DUV immersion output has reaccelerated — ~130 systems expected in 2026, roughly matching last year's level, with a further 30% capacity increase planned for 2027
• DUV dry shipments are expected to rise "quite a bit" in 2026
• Combined DUV, metrology and inspection revenue is guided to grow ~25% in 2026 as advanced nodes demand more process control
• Installed Base Management (service/field option) sales of €2.8B were the primary driver of the Q2 sales beat versus Q1
• Memory is emerging as a genuine second demand pillar alongside leading-edge logic, with SK Hynix and Samsung both expanding EUV orders for HBM and advanced DRAM

• China represented approximately 20% of Q2 total net sales — a smaller share than in 2025, but applied to a larger overall revenue base
• South Korea has been running around 45% of quarterly revenue in recent periods, driven by SK Hynix and Samsung memory investment
• Export-control exposure remains concentrated in the lower-margin DUV product line — EUV systems have never shipped to China

• Shares jumped more than 7% on the print — Europe's most valuable listed company extending a year in which the stock is up roughly 65% year-to-date despite the recent pullback
• Bernstein raised its price target to €2,300 from €1,700 post-earnings, arguing High-NA cost concerns were overstated — particularly for memory applications
• Bank of America had already raised its target to $2,345 (Buy) ahead of the print, calling the EUV order trajectory sustainable
• Options markets had priced an 8.36% swing into the release — more than double ASML's typical ~4% post-earnings move — reflecting how binary the AI-capex debate had become
• TSMC's own Q2 2026 results, due one day later on July 16, are the next read-through for whether the capex cycle ASML is describing is being matched by its largest customer

ASML's position at the top of the semiconductor equipment stack means this print is less a company-specific earnings beat and more a direct readout on the AI infrastructure buildout itself — and the readout was unambiguous. A second full-year guidance raise, margin coming in above the top of its own range, and Intel's confirmed High-NA production use all point the same direction: leading-edge capacity investment is still accelerating, not plateauing, deep into 2026. The China and export-control questions are real and worth tracking, but they sit concentrated in the lower-margin DUV line rather than the EUV franchise that drives the bulk of ASML's economics and its entire monopoly moat. The stock's 11% pre-earnings pullback shows the market had started pricing in an AI-capex-sustainability scare; the 7%+ post-earnings rally shows that scare was, for this quarter at least, not borne out by the numbers. At a premium multiple to peers, ASML's valuation case rests on guidance raises continuing — Q3's €11–12B guide, comfortably above the prior consensus, buys management more room before that thesis is tested again.