Goldman Sachs' Top Five Findings After Researching ASML: EUV Deliveries to Exceed 80 Units by 2027

Goldman Sachs' analyst team, after visiting ASML headquarters and holding in-depth discussions with management, believes that demand for AI has not peaked, and ASML is at the core of a new round of capital expenditure expansion.

The team, led by Alexander Duval from Goldman Sachs, noted in their report that market evidence indicates that investment in AI infrastructure remains in an expansionary path, and the semiconductor capital expenditure cycle has significant upside potential. This year, the scale of AI capital expenditure in the United States has reached 800 billion US dollars. Goldman Sachs maintains an "Accumulate" rating for ASML, with a 12-month target price of 1,600 euros, corresponding to a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 37 times for the year 2027.

The signals from research are highly positive: shipments of EUV lithography machines continue to increase, memory customers are accelerating orders and making advance payments, CPU demand has emerged as a new AI-driven force, Chinese market demand remains resilient, and the pace of High NA technology deployment is faster than previously expected.

Capacity ramp-up is progressing as planned, with high visibility extending to 2027

ASML management clearly stated that the expansion of EUV capacity is moving forward steadily. The company will deliver more than 60 EUV systems this year and has a clear path towards more than 80 systems by 2027. Management emphasized that this ramp-up cycle is smoother than any historical cycle, with extremely high visibility in recent deliveries.

Factors supporting this judgment include: continuous optimization of the production cycle, enhanced execution capabilities in core supply chains such as optical components, and a more refined delivery management framework.

ASML also believes that current large-scale AI infrastructure plans are emerging, and the actual investment scale in the future may far exceed current market expectations, with AI-driven demand having the potential for further growth.

CPU has become a demand engine comparable to GPU, with a more balanced customer structure

Goldman Sachs analysts pointed out that CPUs have become an important source of demand growth, with their demand intensity even surpassing GPUs in some aspects, due to their irreplaceable role in supporting complex AI workloads.

At the same time, ASML's customer structure, covering foundry and logic chips, continues to improve. Customers such as Samsung Foundry are actively seizing opportunities in the integration of logic and memory fields, leading to a more diversified customer distribution.

Goldman Sachs believes that this diversification of demand across customers and computing architectures means that ASML's growth foundation is more balanced, rather than relying on a single customer or application scenario.

Storage demand visibility has significantly increased; High NA penetration pace exceeds expectations

Both logic and storage customer groups show characteristics of Longer lead times for orders and stronger willingness to make advance payments, providing ASML with demand certainty beyond a one-year horizon. Goldman Sachs believes that this has reduced the execution risk of capacity expansion to some extent and provided more constructive support for the prospects of 2027 to 2028.

On the path of technology penetration, High NA EUV has a relatively lower threshold for adoption in the storage field, with customers able to directly replace existing photomasks without additional stitching processes, likely to be introduced earlier than logical chips. Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2030, the number of EUV layers in storage applications will increase from about 5 layers currently to double digits.

Chinese market remains stable, DUV demand structurally supports gross margin

ASML management indicated that the impact of current export controls on short-term business increments is relatively limited, with scenarios included in the 2026 performance guidance. Due to the inability to purchase EUV equipment, Chinese customers are generally turning to DUV multi-layer stacking processes, forming a dependence on equipment-intensive manufacturing paths and continuously driving demand for DUV systems. Goldman Sachs believes that this demand structure helps to support the gross margin levels of ASML's related product lines.

Goldman Sachs' core judgment is that the continuous evolution of cutting-edge AI models requires more GPUs, CPUs, HBM, and advanced logic chips, all of which require more EUV and DUV lithography machines. ASML's high visibility for 2027 to 2028 confirms that the semiconductor capital expenditure cycle has not yet peaked.