ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Christophe Fouquet: Yes. And perhaps speaking from experience over the last 25-years, we’re a transparent company. So it also means that we will build inventory or work to prepare because our lead times are just so long. And we inform you as our shareholders on this. And, of course, customers hear this and then we’re in the midst of negotiations on final orders and let’s say on a commercial basis, which of course, if you put the two things together, it might be that those orders take a little bit longer, which is quite normal. So I think this is what we’ve seen before and we’ve seen it again. But again, as Roger said earlier, if you believe 2025 and you know that if you want to buy an EUV tool, there’s only one phone number that you can actually dial, then this will happen.

But this is just where we are in terms of our customers knowing that we’re building because we want to make sure that we can ship to them and we have long lead times and their commercial efforts on the POS that will come.

Joe Quatrochi: Thanks for that. That’s helpful color. As a follow-up, just on the memory orders that you’re seeing. Just curious is that still more predicated on HBM building out capacity or have you may be seen some green shoots for call it more the conventional DRAM demand?

Roger Dassen: No, I think the lion’s share of the orders that we saw in memory in the last quarter really are still technology related, right? So it’s DDR5, it’s APM, that’s what most of the orders that we saw are related to that.

Joe Quatrochi: Perfect. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. We will now go to the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Francois Bouvignies from UBS. Please go ahead.

Francois Bouvignies: Thank you very much. I mean, first of all, Peter, thank you a lot. You will be missed definitely in the investor community and thank you for the dialogue. That was very helpful. And I look forward to work as well more with Christophe. So the first question I had is a bit on the lead times. So you mentioned that the buildup of inventory doesn’t impact so much the lead times if I tried to read correctly. And when you said last quarter, you said that you have 12-months or more than 12-months lead time on EUV. Now, when you look at 2025 targets or ranges, you need to have like 70 more EUV tools to get to this mid to high end? And according to my calculation, I have like around 30 EUV tools in the backlog for next year, so — which means that you would need more than 40 EUV tools still to satisfy your revenues for 2025.

So I’m just surprised the amount of EUV tools you need. And with the 12-months more lead times, I would think it’s a very dangerous game for your customers to wait until the last moment. So can you maybe help us clarify the fact that you probably need orders significantly in a short period of time and reconcile with the fact that you said in the next three quarters you need more than EUR4 billion, but I mean it’s going to be too late if it’s Q3 or Q4 for EUV to get delivery in ’25, if you see what I mean?

Christophe Fouquet: Yeah, first of all, it’s a slightly different question, but essentially the question that we were just looking at, right. It’s the same question that Joe was raising to a large extent. And I can just reiterate what I said there. Of course, with customers, we have an ongoing dialogue on what they need. And then Peter said it, then there is a bureaucratic process and there is some negotiation going on that will ultimately lead to the order being made and being translated into a PO that, as you also know these days, comes with the obligation to pay money. And that’s probably part of the reason why customers — why some customers are postponing the placement of the order a little bit as well. But the reality is that we know quite well what customers want and customers know it as well.

So it’s just a matter of those two worlds coming together and then ultimately leading to a PO. Is it a dangerous game on their side? Is it a dangerous game on our side? I don’t think so. I mean, as long as we have a very open dialogue with one another, I’m pretty sure that in the foreseeable future, you will see the translation of what we know is firm demand into orders. I’m quite confident in that.

Peter Wennink: And if you believe the 2025 number, which we do, then it’s a very high level of mutual dependency here. So that is — so that’s why the game is not that dangerous. We also need each other.

Francois Bouvignies: Makes sense. Thank you. And maybe my follow-up is on High NA. I mean, you see — we saw a couple of milestones in the last few quarters. Christophe, you talked about the productivity, I mean, the density improvements. When we think about the lead times for High NA, what is it today? And if we assume mass production in, let’s say, ’26, ’27, should we expect some uptick in terms of orders for this maybe in the next few quarters? And what’s the cumulus tone you are still waiting for from a product point of view, technical point of view, to drive more adoption?

Peter Wennink: Well, so I think a few key milestones. So the first one I think we’ve been talking about it for a few quarter is the fact that customer have been committing to EUV High NA with double-digit basically units in our backlog and they have done that without even seeing one image from the tour. So I think this shows a bit the level of commitment and trust they have in our ability to bring new technology. Now, I mentioned the first image, 10 nanometer — less than 10 nanometer resolution image. This is a huge milestone for both our customer and SML, because this single image proved that the technology we have been developing for many, many years is working. And you cannot imagine how welcome that milestone was by both our customer and ourselves, that’s very, very important.