ASML Holding N.V. ($ASML)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ASML 2026 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call on April 15, 2026. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference call over to Mr. Jim Kavanagh. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone. This is Jim Kavanagh, Head of Investor Relations at ASML. Joining me today on the call are ASML's CEO, Christophe Fouquet; and our CFO, Roger Dassen. The subject of today's call is ASML's 2026 1st quarter results. The length of the call will be 60 minutes, and questions will be taken in the order in which they are received. This call is also being broadcast live over the Internet at www.asml.com. A transcript of management's opening remarks and a replay of the call will be available on our website shortly following the conclusion of this call. . Before we begin, I would like to caution listeners that comments made by management during this conference call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve material risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of risk factors, I encourage you to review the safe harbor statement contained in today's press release and the presentation found on our website at www.asml.com, and in ASML's annual report on Form 20-F and other documents as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Christophe Fouquet for a brief introduction.

Thank you, Jim. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 results conference call. Before we begin the Q&A session, Roger and I would like to provide an overview and some commentaries on the first quarter 2026 results as well as provide some additional comments on the current business environment and on our future business plans. Roger?

Thank you, Christophe, and welcome, everyone. I will first review the first quarter 2026 financial accomplishments and then provide guidance on the second quarter of 2026. Let me start with our first quarter accomplishments. In the first quarter of 2026, total net sales were EUR 8.8 billion, which is within our guidance. Net system sales were EUR 6.3 billion, which includes over EUR 4.1 billion from EUV system sales, including sales from 2 High NA systems and over EUR 2.1 billion from non-EUV system sales. Net system sales were almost equally split between logic at 49% and memory at 51%. Installed Base Management sales for the quarter came in at EUR 2.5 billion, slightly above our guidance. Gross margin for the quarter was at the high end of our guidance at 53%, primarily due to the contribution of very high-margin components within our installed base business. On operating expenses, we came in as guidance. R&D expenses were rounded at EUR 1.2 billion and SG&A expenses came in at EUR 0.3 billion. The effective tax rate for Q1 was 17.1%. For the full year 2026, the expected annualized effective tax rate is around 17%. Net income in Q1 was EUR 2.8 billion, representing 31.4% of total net sales, resulting in earnings per share of EUR 7.15. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the first quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at a level of EUR 8.4 billion. Our Q1 free cash flow was negative EUR 2.6 billion, largely driven by the timing of down payments. With that, I would like to turn to our expectations for the second quarter of 2026. We expect Q2 total net sales to be between EUR 8.4 billion and EUR 9 billion. We expect our Q2 installed base management sales to be around EUR 2.5 billion. Gross margin for Q2 is expected to be between 51% and 52%. The expected R&D expenses for Q2 are around EUR 1.2 billion, and SG&A is expected to be around EUR 0.3 billion. Moving to our cash return to our shareholders. In Q1, ASML paid the third interim dividend over 2025 of EUR 1.60 per ordinary share. ASML intends to declare a total dividend for the year 2025 of EUR 7.50 per ordinary share, which is a 17% increase compared to 2024. Recognizing the 3 interim dividends of EUR 1.60 per ordinary share paid in '25 and '26, this leads to a final dividend proposal to the Annual General Meeting of EUR 2.70 per ordinary share. In Q1 2026, we purchased shares for a total amount of around EUR 1.1 billion. And with that, I would like to turn the call back over to Christophe.

Thank you, Roger. As Roger highlighted, we finished the first quarter with good financial results. Looking ahead with respect to the market, the growth outlook for the semiconductor industry continues to solidify, driven primarily by AI-related infrastructure investment. These investments are increasing demand for advanced logic and memory chips in many areas. And for the foreseeable future, demand will continue to outpace supply. This creates constraints across end markets from AI to mobile and PCs, which is driving our customers to aggressively add capacity. In the Memory business, many customers have commented that they are sold out for the remainder of the year and that they expect the supply limitation to persist beyond 2026, despite their plans to add significant capacity. In the Logic business, our customers are adding capacity across multiple advanced nodes to support demand while continuing to ramp the 2-nanometer node in support of next-generation HPC and mobile application. We also expect supply limitation across those advanced nodes beyond 2026. Both our Memory and Logic customers are responding to this unprecedented demand by increasing capital expenditures and accelerating capacity expansion plans this year and beyond. Those investments are supported by long-term agreements with their own customers. In addition to expanding capacity, both advanced DRAM and Logic customers continue to further adopt EUV and emerge on deep UV on new process nodes, which further increases their demand for lithography. As a result, ASML's order intake continues to be very strong, and we stay closely aligned with our customers to support their needs. At the same time, we offer customers productivity upgrade for their installed base to increase their short-term output requirements. Turning to our capacity expansion plan for 2026, we are executing on an output plan of at least 60 low-NA EUV system. And despite a slow start, as discussed last quarter, driving output of our emergent system close to that in 2025. Based on these developments in demand and order intake, we are quarter-by-quarter increasing the move rates for our HPM products, raising low-NA EUV capacity to at least 80 systems next year and scaling Deep UV and application products in alignment. We continue to see a strong year ahead and expect ASML to grow in 2026. We are, therefore, updating our 2026 guidance, both narrowing and increasing the expected revenue range to between EUR 36 billion and EUR 40 billion while maintaining our expectation of a gross margin between 51% and 53%, with revenue weighted to the second half of the year. As we said last quarter, EUV revenue is expected to raise significantly this year, driven by the dynamics in advanced logic and DRAM markets mentioned earlier. For non-EUV revenue, we previously expected this to be similar to last year, but given continued demand momentum, we now expect growth as a result of customers adding more deep UV lithography to support their expansion plans. We also expect installed base management revenue to grow significantly this year, driven by service revenue from our expanding EUV installed base and customer demand for performance upgrades to support their increasing capacity requirements. We expect that the bandwidth in our 2026 guidance accommodates potential outcomes of ongoing discussions around export control. Turning to technology, we continue to make very good progress on this front with several developments recently highlighted at the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning Conference this February in San Jose. At the conference, we presented an updated Low NA EUV product road map that reflects improvement to both our short-term and long-term plans for these products. This includes the ability to reach at least 330 wafer per hours on low NA EUV at the start of the next decade, enabled in large part by our continued source power improvement as evidenced by our recent 1,000 watt source demonstration. In the short term, all NXE:3800E System can benefit from an upgrade that provides an increase of 10 wafers per hour with 230 wafer per hours available immediately to all customers. For our NXE:3800F System, we have raised the wafer per hour specification from 250 wafers to 260 wafers per hours. We plan to start shipping that system in 2027 with full volume slated for 2028. We also shared that the High-NA platform has now processed over 0.5 million wafers and achieved over 80% availability. Also at the conference, we saw customers presenting several strong papers highlighting their progress with High-NA. These presentations demonstrated use cases in both logic and in DRAM in which a single high-NA exposure can replace complex multi-patterning processes that today require 3 or 4 low-NA exposures. For some critical layers, High-NA can reduce the number of process steps by a factor of 10. The progress being made throughout the ecosystem, especially with Resist, allow us to target line and pitches of 18-nanometer for logic and contact pitches below 28-nanometer for DRAM. This means that High-NA can support single expose for at least 3 nodes in logic and DRAM. We continue to work to further mature the platform alongside our customers as they start to test the technology on product wafers and move closer to bringing High-NA into high-volume manufacturing. Looking more broadly, what we have seen over the past few months has further confirmed our view on the positive impact of AI on customer demand for our advanced product and especially for our EUV system in both advanced memory and logic. We see the end market dynamics supporting a shift in product mix towards more demand for our advanced lithography product and an increase in litho intensity. Our strong productivity road map on low-NA in combination with the introduction of High-NA supports further cost of technology reduction for our customers. In summary, demand remains strong for the entire product portfolio. With that, we will be happy to take your questions.

Thank you, Roger, and thank you, Christophe. The operator will instruct you momentarily on the protocol for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Now operator, could we have your final instructions and then the first question, please?

[Operator Instructions] And your first question today comes from the line of Joe Quatrochi from Wells Fargo.

Maybe I'll just start with the updated 2026 revenue guide. You talked about taking up your immersion outlook and your deep UV outlook. How much of that is coming from China versus non-China? And did the EUV outlook change at all?

Joe, it's Roger. This is primarily non-China when it comes to immersion. China remains at the midpoint around 20%. That's the expectation that we have for the China business. So that view has not changed. What has changed here is, as we mentioned last -- on the last call, we were looking at immersion and said, given the supply chain situation in immersion, we said we doubt whether we can get immersion to the level that we had last year. We've been working extremely hard. And right now, we're at the point where we believe we can get immersion close to the levels that we had last year. And that would primarily flow to the non-Chinese customers. So that's where it's at. So that's a major driver of the uptick. And also in EUV, we believe there is a bit more that can be done. So it's in that combination. And as you can see from our achievements and also our expectation for the installed base business, that one is strong as well. So I would say it's actually a combination, but clearly, immersion is an important part of the uptick of the guidance.

That's helpful. And then just as a follow-up, on the gross margin, just the range not changing, but clearly, immersion increasing. I know that's a bit higher gross margin. Just any puts and takes there of why the gross margin guide stays the same for '26?

Yes, you're right. I mean, for the entire year, the gross margin remains in spite of a bit more immersion. But it's also clear that we're increasing the move rate quite a bit. Of course, increasing the move rate means that you're hiring people, hiring people, training people that also costs a bit of money. So every ramp, you always have a little bit of cost before you have the benefit of that. So that's the other side of the equation. So that's why we believe that the guidance range as we have it, taking into consideration all the puts and takes, we believe keeping it as we articulated a quarter ago is the right way to go.

Your next question comes from the line of Krish Sankar from TD Cowen.

I have 2 of them. First one, Roger or Christophe, I'm kind of curious, what is the visibility you're getting from your customers? Does that extend into 2028? And based on that, how to think about ASML's growth profile in '27 and '28, either qualitatively or quantitatively?

Well, I think 2028 is still quite far away. And I think a lot of the discussion we have with our customers today are still a bit about 2026. As Roger mentioned, we're still working hard even for 2026 with our customer to make sure we deliver what they need. And of course, a lot of discussion now moving to 2027, which is also why we are also there working very hard to increase the capacity. But 2028 is a bit too far away.

Is that a way to think about '27 at this moment, Christophe?

Well, I think you -- we mentioned already that we are growing our move rate every quarter. So I think we are still in a dynamic where we believe that we have to create more space for our customer. I think we've explained in our introduction that we are preparing to build at least 80 low-NA EUV system next year. So I think these are the signs if you need any that, of course, the discussion we have about 2027 are currently around making sure that we have enough capacity for our customers.

Got it. And then as a quick follow-up, I think you mentioned how you are undershipping demand today. If you start looking at '27 at 80 unit capacity for low-NA, are you meeting demand? Are you still undershipping demand at 80 units next year?

Well, I think all those discussions, and I think the number we shared today are, I will say, the results of very close discussion with our customers. We talked about at least 80 because those discussions are still ongoing. I think you have seen, of course, the dynamic in the last couple of quarters. So I think we said that also last quarter, we were working every day very closely with our customer to make sure basically that we stay in line with what they need. I think we have, of course, a very strong mission to meet their demand. So that's what those number reflects. I think that's the result of where our discussions are today.

Your next question comes from the line of C.J. Muse from Cantor Fitzgerald.

I guess first question going back to gross margins. And if we isolate March versus June, March, you revenue to High-NA, 0, I think, embedded in June. And so I get kind of the upgrades as a real positive for March, but I would have thought the higher low-NA EUV and immersion would have led to higher gross margins. I understand you're adding headcount, but that still seems pretty severe. So wondering if there's anything else in that mix that's driving that change.

No, there's nothing in the mix really, C.J. It really is down to the elements that you just referred to. So a few puts and takes, but the primary ones being the very high-margin elements in the upgrade business that we had in Q1. We're not counting on such a strong pattern in the upgrade business in Q2. So that's an important element. And then indeed, to the point that I made earlier on, the increase in headcount that we're going through to prepare for upticks in -- for upgrades in the move rate. So it's really those elements as a result of which we're now narrowing the bandwidth for this particular quarter to 51% and 52%. Of course, you would see that the second half of the year, that volume is more skewed towards the second half of the year, right, if you take -- if you look at our guidance. So it's also appropriate to see more of the benefits of the increase of the ramp that we're doing in that -- in the second half of the year. As a result of that, we maintain the guidance for the full year at 51% to 53%.

Perfect. Makes sense. And I guess as a follow-up, Christophe, to try to talk about the supply side, obviously, undershipping end demand today. Curious how you're working internally at ASML outside of headcount? What kind of things are you doing to help drive productivity and extra supply? And also with your supply chain, particularly around the optics and mirror front, what is necessary there? And if you are considering 80-plus EUV, what does that mean from an immersion unit perspective in '27?

Yes. So I think we are working on many, many fronts, I would say. And you mentioned the supply chain. I think we have been mostly explaining in the last few years that we were preparing the supply chain basically to be able to go to a capability of 90 on low NA and to a capability of 600 for deep UV, total deep UV. And I think what we see in these ramps is that a lot of the preparation is paying off. So I think that, of course, you always have challenge with the supply chain. But I will say, so far, our supply chain has been able to support our move rate increase quarter-by-quarter. And that includes, by the way, ZS to name them, that include the optic, where I think we had major challenges a few years ago in the previous ramps. I think we are in a much better shape there. I think that's also true with what we have prepared in terms of capacity here in ASML. So I'm talking about the space we need to build the tools, both CV and deep UV. And this And this allow us, Roger mentioned that to basically now add the people we will need to meet the move rate that is required. The other element I'd like to stress, we also talked a lot about the 3800E in the last few years. As you have noticed, the maturity of the tool is in a much better place than it was a year ago, which also allow us to make great progress on cycle time in our factory and of course, shorter cycle time give us opportunity for more tools. So we have many, many parameters that we drive, I will say, all at the same time, very aggressively basically to get more outputs. That's true for EUV. That's true for deep UV. '27 is a bit far for deep UV. So I think that the expectation, as I mentioned before, is that the number of deep UV tool, the number of immersion tools, the demand there will scale pretty much with what we see on.

I think, it's also important to recognize, C.J., that -- and Christophe said it, we are working with customers to understand what the capacity requirements are that they have. And you're very much focusing on unit numbers. I would say there's a lot more that we're doing to give customers their productivity. First off, and Christophe said it, the maturity of the tool is going up, but also the productivity of the tool is going up, right? So the fact that we're now looking at a tool from 220 to 230 wafers per hour. As you know, in 2027, we're going to introduce the F model that gets you to 160 wafers per hour. So you have the unit numbers that everyone is very much focused on, but then you should also look at the progress that we're making in terms of productivity. And if you take that into consideration, last year, we had 44 tools. if you are just looking at 80 tools, we say at least 80, but if you just look at 80 tools, those 80 tools give you double the wafer per hour capacity that we would have shipped in 2025. And on top of that, we're helping customers upgrade their installed base. So as Christophe said, we're really working hand in glove with the customers to look at what is your capacity need, what's the easiest way and also the most economical way for you to get to the productivity that you need. And we're executing on all fronts on availability, on productivity, on unit numbers, capacity and then upgrading the installed base.

Yes. And the last point I would make because Roger make a very good point also on those productivity upgrades, which you heard in the introduction, we have accelerated. I think our customers are extremely happy with that because this allow them to get capacity right away. When you buy a new system, you have to wait a bit. in this case, and I think this is reflected in the strength of the installed base sales. This is something we can provide immediately most of the time, by the way, with the software switch and some qualification. So I think Roger is right. I think in our case, capacity is a lot more than one pony trick. And we feel quite blessed that we have all of this because we have many, many tools we can use to basically make sure we deliver what our customer needs.

Your next question comes from the line of Sandeep Deshpande from JPMorgan.

My first question is regarding your deep UV capacity. I mean when you look at it, Christophe, I mean, in the last up cycle, you sold a lot more deep UV outside China than you are selling in the last few years. As you go into the next build cycle, don't you think that you will need to add more deep UV capacity if China remains at these sort of levels that you're seeing?

I'm not sure, Sandeep, what you mean by the next build cycle. What are you referring to?

So what I mean is into '27, when you look into '27, where you're seeing these 8V tools at the minimum that you're going to ship, if you see the number of deep UV tools you sold for the whatever number of EUV tools you sold between -- in the last big capacity build cycle because there's not been a lot of massive capacity building that you're now going to see in the industry over the next 2, 3 years. Would you say that you would need more deep UV capacity? Because you have about 600 tool capacity at this point. Is that enough for you in terms of deep UV?

Well, I think 600 is for total deep UV. And I think that when we look at the total, I think we still feel pretty good about that. And a bit like EUV, we have other means to play with that number if needed. When it comes to immersion, I think -- well, we believe that for non-Chinese customer, the demand on immersion will scale with the demand for EUV because, as you know, there is a pretty clear relationship between the 2. And if you had EUV capacity, you would be also adding some immersion capacity. So I would say we pay for sure, the same amount of attention to our deep UV ramp, our immersion ramp that we do on EUV because the 2 are, of course, extremely linked, especially when it comes to non-China.

And I mean maybe, Roger, I would like to go back to this question of mix and ASP. I mean you have indicated for this year that you've got more 3,600, there are some 3,600 shipping this year versus next year, there should not be any 3600. There should also be this next generation of E and then the F, which starts shipping next year. How should we be looking at the mix on the mix of EUV tools that you ship next year and how that will drive your revenue growth into EUV next year?

So this year, as you say, the lion's share is still Es, right? So there is a bit of these in there, but the lion's share is clearly still Es. And I would say about 20% maybe is Es and the rest is E. For next year, I think hardly, if any, Ds. And I would say the lion's share of it is Es. There will, of course, be Fs. We will introduce the F, but just the way customers are planning to ramp their nodes, I believe that the lion's share of the tools by for 2027 will still be. So there will be Es at that point with the high throughput that we just talked about, the 230, that will go ex-factory at that level. And there will be a number of apps, but that will be a clear [indiscernible].

So would you say that your ASPs will grow next year because of how the mix is shifting from this year to next year?

Yes. Yes, yes, clearly. So the mix next year is more favorable than this year. No Ds and a bunch of Fs. So clearly, the ASP next year will improve over this year.

Your next question comes from the line of Francois Bouvignies from UBS.

My first question is on High-NA. I mean, a bit beyond '27, there is obviously a very high demand in advanced logic and memory. And I was wondering if High-NA could play a role in that tight market as High-NA could save low-NA capacity. I mean, Christophe, you referred 3 mask, I mean, 1 instead of 3 mask with High-NA. So if we go into '27, '28, '29, 2030, could that tightness help adoption of High-NA saying I'm not going to build 90, 100 tools of low-NA necessarily if High-NA can actually replace with the mask. So I was just wondering if it could help adoption in other words, High-NA with the tightness of the market.

Yes. I think, Francois, I think it's a bit too early to answer the question. I think what we see today is that several of our customers are going to test High-NA on real product wafer. So it means basically they demonstrate for themselves the ability to use this tool on real product. We see that with some logic customer. We see that with some DRAM customers. That's a discussion that is ongoing pretty strongly right now. So they continue to make step basically to have this option if they want. And of course, if the maturity of the tool allow that to use the tool, I would say, whenever they want. And especially when it comes to DRAM, I will say the threshold to start using High-NA on existing product is pretty low. So I think that's a possibility. I think that as things evolve in the next few months, a combination of, again, capacity requirement that continue to be strong plus progress on High-NA. I will not exclude that. I think it's just a bit too early to respond to the question by the affirmative today.

And maybe, Roger, it's a follow-up on this F model and maybe the ISP. So Actually, Christophe, you talked about 260 wafer per hour, which is a nice increase from the 250 originally, which is roughly 15% higher, 15 higher than the E model. So is it the right ASP increase we should expect 15% higher throughput and 15% higher ASP? Or it could be more because you also increase or improve availability and overlay like you suggested. So how should we think about the ASP of the F versus the E?

Yes. All of that is true, but you also know that we typically share the benefits between the customers and ourselves. But you're right that historically, the correlation between throughput and ASP is very, very strong. So we're not negotiating in this call with our customers, but I think the proxy approach that you just followed doesn't lead you to a very bad outcome.

Your next question today comes from the line of Didier Scemama, Bank of America.

I just wanted to sort of get your thoughts maybe on the numbers you've given at the CMD November '24. You said 160,000 wafer start per month capacity addition in DRAM per year, '25 to 2030, and I think 200,000 in advanced logic. How do you feel about those numbers? Were we in the right ballpark '25? And how are we looking at '26 and beyond? And I've got a follow-up.

Well, I think that we will all agree that things have changed a bit with AI in the last couple of years. So I think we have to go back and mostly look at those numbers again. I think we are going to most probably share the results for analysis next year in the Capital Market Day. I would say most probably the place where we see the biggest change is DRAM. I think we have talked about that for a few quarters. I think DRAM is very strong right now. Most probably the added capacity per year is above the number we have discussed at least this year. And we have to try to understand exactly how this will really play on the longer term. So I think too early to say a lot have changed in the last a few quarters. If you remember 2 quarters ago, we were having a bit of a different discussion on the market. So give us a bit of time. I think we are most probably going to come back to all of you with our latest view on the long-term market next year at the Capital Market Day. So give us a bit of time to really digest everything that is happening and try to translate that into a bit of a long-term view of the market.

I mean what I'm hearing is that you're tracking towards the upper end of your guidance for 2030, but not going to put words in your mouth. Maybe a follow-up on that, maybe for Roger. I think you said 56% to 60% on EUR 44 billion to EUR 60 billion of revenue. So let's take a wild guess, let's say, you are above EUR 60 billion. Do you think your gross margins can be above that range? Or are they constrained by other elements that we have to take into account?

I think the same applies to what Christophe was just saying. It's very difficult to take out one element. I've given the moving parts in the past, the moving parts on the gross margin. A lot of it is an EUV, and it's on the one hand, us improving the productivity of the tool, and you see how well we're executing on that front. And that, to the earlier question, comes with a commensurate increase in the ASP and leads to gross margin improvement. So that's an important element. A second important element is High-NA volume. And DJ, that is very critical, right, because the number of tools that we have at that stage and the number of tools that can absorb the fixed cost associated with High-NA, obviously, is very critical in determining what your gross margin is on that front. then we see continued improvement possibility in the installed base, and we have some ideas on deep UV. It's really in that quarter that things need to be addressed. But as Christophe said, let's wait for the -- for next year where we have our Capital Markets Day and can revisit all of these assumptions.

Your next question today comes from the line of Alexander Duval from Goldman Sachs.

Yes. A year ago, I think there was some discussion in the market about a market structure for customers where ASML had essentially one very significant customer in the foundry side and 2 others lagging significantly. Since then, some have seen progress from 2 of the players on foundry relative to where we were in the past. So curious to what extent you're baking in a contribution from those foundry players in the coming year. And to the extent that those players are ultimately successful, how beneficial could this be in terms of market inefficiency? Secondly, as a quick follow-up. There have been news articles talking about how ASML is looking to do more to help the hybrid bonding process. I wondered if you could help us understand to what extent you see hybrid bonding is important and how you think about the ways that ASML could contribute to customer efforts related to this?

Maybe I will start with the second one. I think we explained a few months ago. In fact, we started a Capital Market Day that we thought that 3D integration will become an important part of the tools our customers have basically to deliver density either for logic or for DRAM. And as a result, we started to create all kind of activities in ASML in order to support our customers there. You talked about hybrid bonding. I'd like to mention that one of the things we see happening today first is wafer-to-wafer bonding. -- which is going to be used by DRAM biologic and where we think that our holistic lithography product, meaning the combination of metrology and process control our tool can help enormously our customer basically to adopt this new technology and deliver basically the performance they need on their wafer. I think we also announced that we were entering advanced packaging with the XT260. So this has been an important tool. We continue to see good traction there. And on top of that, we are looking again at a few more things. Some of them have to do with lithography in advanced packaging. And for process such as hybrid bonding, I think we are continuing to look at the opportunity to support our customer in their activity, and that can be done in many different forms. I think right now, we're looking still at a limited amount of use practically of hybrid bonding, especially in front end. So not too much activity with our customer, but I will say some discussion for the future on how maybe we could help there. So that's the first part.

Yes. Back to the question you had on the foundry business and the potential for Samsung and Intel. It's pretty clear that the demand in the foundry business is huge and is outweighing the supply, right? So that leaves a bit of room for others than the market leader. And I think that's room that the other players are trying to enter into. We all know about the plans of Samsung and Taylor. So that's real. And of course, that also requires shipment for us, which is happening. the U.S. player in this business already has quite some capacity, I would say. So we've said it before that for this year, we're not counting on a huge number of shipments in that regard because they already have quite a bit of capacity. Then you ask about the longer term. Of course, the market that is characterized by multiple players at least will sort of guarantee innovation. And that, I think, is what is important. I think the market leader has been tremendously innovative. So you cannot say that even in the market that was dominated by one player, you would still see a lot of innovation. I think that's what we've seen in the past couple of years. But having 3 players in there will probably guarantee even more innovation. And I ultimately think that, that is good for the ecosystem.

Our next question today comes from the line of Chris Caso from Wolfe Research.

Much has been discussed on the call about your own actions to increase your capacity to supply. Could you speak about your customers' capacity constraints, specifically the clean room constraints as well? And I guess this is perhaps a better question for next year, perhaps. But to what extent is your ability to ship constrained by your own ability to produce tools, your customers' clean room space? Or is demand going to be the constraint? Is it going to be a supply-constrained environment or a demand-constrained environment?

Well, I think we talked quite a bit about that last quarter where I think we saw a lot of demand coming in. So this was a bit coming very, very fast. I think we mentioned that the clean room capacity was one of the factor, if not the key factor on what we could do this year. I think you have seen us increasing our range for 2026, which means that we have progress there. We have even increased the upper part of the range. So I think that we see that the plan for 2026 are really solidifying, getting more and more clarity about the number of pedestal that will be available when. So that's clear. And when it comes to 2027, I think that Well, there is supply limitation right now. I think I mentioned before, we see our customers having a lot less hesitation to really accelerate their capital expenditure. I think you, of course, have noticed that our DRAM customers are doing extremely well, thanks to the price of memory right now. And I think Roger just mentioned for logic also that the capacity limitation is quite high. So I would say there is no hesitation whatsoever in the mind of our customer at this point of time, not only to invest also because sometimes they even get guarantee from their own customer on the investment, but also as a result to move as quickly as possible. So that's the dynamic we are in. And I think that's why we see our outlook improving this year, and we continue to have, I would say, very, very active discussion with our customers to prepare next year. But I would say right now, everyone is really moving towards the more, the faster, the better.

Right. That's clear. As a follow-up to that, given what's happening in DRAM now, could you speak to what that means for litho intensity? And we've seen one of the remedies for the tight supply is migrating to some of the new nodes. How does that affect litho intensity? And does it have any effect on High-NA adoption at your DRAM customers in an effort to address some of the supply constraints?

Well, I think first, for DRAM, I think DRAM has been a bit the perfect storm for ASML because, of course, we have this capacity buildup. But as we mentioned a few times, we have seen a major adoption of EUV in DRAM in 2025. And you may have noticed that our, I will say, U.S. DRAM customer also made this announcement that they were shifting also pretty strongly on EUV. And the reason for that is, of course, performance, but it's also capacity because if you are going to use more EUV layers, you are going to need less multi-patterning and multi-patterning takes a lot of space also in the fab. So I think this is also definitely another argument in favor of EUV. I think this was mentioned, by the way, by this U.S. customer in their call. So I would say the first results of that is, first, more adoption of low-NA EUV, which I think is also translated into the number Roger was mentioning before with, I would say, a very high point on our memory business this year. That's also true for EUV. Now of course, what's true for low-NA today, I think we expect to be true for high-NA in the future. So it's, again, not prime time for high-NA today. But I can only say that more low-NA EUV adoption today can only help for more high-NA adoption in the future because the logic of high-NA is the same. It's going to single expose, simplifying the process, getting more space, et cetera, et cetera. So I think DRAM has been really a good story when it comes to litho intensity in '25. And I think it's translating very strongly into EUV demand this year and most probably in the years to come.

Your next question today comes from the line of Tammy Qiu from Berenberg.

So firstly, on the DRAM sector or memory sector in general. So we have learned that the memory sector has been all signing those 3 to 5 years agreement. So with your customers' visibility higher on their own end market, do you see any behavioral change from your side, i.e., they are more willing to give you more visibility of order for your tools going forward? And also at the same time, because of they are currently desperate for capacity, do you see any room for charge more or upgrade more, i.e., DRAM business or memory business will be more profitable for you and higher visibility than it was previously?

Yes. So in terms of visibility and behavioral change, the visibility to us, customers are very, very open. By the way, that's also the case on the logic side. But very -- customers are very open to us, and they're very openly discussing with us also their expansion plans for this year, but also beyond. It's also clear that if you look at the scale of the fabs that they're building, it's pretty significant, right? So if you look at the more recent fabs that are being built by our customers, it's pretty clear that they allow for quite some expansion. So if you talk about behavioral change, I think that's probably the #1 behavioral change out there. Vis-a-vis us, they're just very, very open in terms of how they see the market and how they see their further capacity expansion. Now in our model of pricing, as you know, our model of pricing is not based on the squeeze that our customers find ourselves in. That's not the way we do business. The way we do business is that we look at the value that we provide to our customers, generation on generation, tool on tool, and we take our fair share in that. And you might say in the current climate, can't you squeeze out a little bit more? I understand that. But it's also true that when the market goes down a little bit and the customers are going through more difficult times that it also pays these fees. So fundamentally, we believe that the model that we have is a fair model. It's also a model that is fair to all the players because I would find it difficult to explain why we're charging more in, let's say, the memory environment versus the logic environment. That's just not the way we do business. So we're very, very happy with the business model we have, which is based on the value of our tools, and we would gladly continue with that approach.

Okay. And next one is on your 80 at least 80 capacity for 2027. So at least, if I understand correctly, is the 80 is based on what customers have told you for the time being. And is that at least based on customer is limited by clean room space so that they don't know and don't want to commit further or something else? What's driving that at least?

That at least is the alignment that we currently have with customers, which takes on board their gauge of the market situation, their gauge of the progress that they're having in fab building and our gauge of the ability to -- what's the right way to give them capacity. I told you unit numbers is one way to provide capacity, but there is more. So this really is the alignment that we currently have based on the signals that they're providing us and what we think is the appropriate way to give them that capacity.

Your next question today comes from the line of Lee Simpson from Morgan Stanley.

Maybe just a quick clarification question on the installed base management. I'm just trying to understand, well, I assume at least that most all of the outperformance in Q1 margin came from that. And that's largely because I think you said earlier, there was a high incidence of upgrade business that quarter and that most, if not all, of the rest of the year will be more of the maintenance type of business.

No, that would not be fair. So we expect upgrade business to continue throughout the year. But even in the upgrade business, you have different margin profiles of the upgrade services that you provide. And it just happens to be that the business -- the installed base business that we had in Q1 just happened to be the kind of business that is associated with very, very high gross margins. No, no, we definitely expect the installed base business and the upgrade business in that installed base business to continue. That's also what you would expect in an environment like this where, as we said before, customers are really asking for upgrades. But even within the upgrade business, you have the ones primarily software-based, which come with very high gross margins and then ones with maybe a little bit lesser gross margins. That's the mix effect within the installed base that we were calling out.

Maybe just on that mix effect, it does look still more and more the sort of warranty-like business that you have now with the installed base and EUVs coming through. So -- how much of a gap are we seeing closure between what is traditional maintenance and what is traditional upgrade cycle? Are we talking about less than 10 percentage points gap between those 2 elements now?

When you say 10 percentage points, you mean in terms of gross margin or what?

In terms of gross margin, yes.

In terms of gross margin. I cannot say that, Lee. It's too diverse. As I just mentioned, the margin profile is very, very diverse. So it's very much dependent on what kind of upgrade business. I mean on the service front, we've given you updates in previous years on the progress that we're making on EUV service gross margin. So 4, 5 years ago, we were bleeding money. We actually have negative gross margins and gradually, we were able to improve that. And we're now at a gross margin that is no longer -- it's very much apart from, I would say, the corporate gross margin. So we've gotten that, I think, to a level which I think is business-wise the right level for us to aspire to. On the upgrade business, it very much depends on what it is. So the profile is so different that it would not be appropriate for me to give you a number there.

That makes sense. I mean maybe if we take a step back and look again at the capacity as a multiyear proposition here because clearly, we are going into a massive up cycle with AI. And now we've got Agentic AI and driving to a different whole discussion on what the ROI could be. in and around AI. So our sense here is that EUV is becoming a bottleneck as other tools are in the system. And if we look at your own clean room build-out, it did look as though you took maybe -- and correct me if I'm wrong, it took maybe 2 or 3 years to get this set up, which was sensible given the pity of demand at the time. But could we see this accelerating? Could we see a concrete pour shell build 1 year and then the next year fit out happening consecutively, whereby you could have 2 or 3 clean room projects at the same time, which I guess is me asking how much land bank can we secure in the immediate vicinity?

Well, I think the first thing I'd like to say is that we do not want EUV to be the bottleneck. So I think I'd like to say that very, very strongly. And as we discussed a bit before, we have many, many different ways to drive capacity up being, of course, the number of tool we manufacture, which also depend on our cycle time, the speed at which we manufacture them, productivity, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, adding more footprint is another one. And I will say that we will use whatever is needed in the future to meet our customer demand. And we are reviewing this very carefully on a monthly basis with some, as you know, long-term visibility because of the lead time of our tools. And today, I think we are not in such a situation. And we have the ability again to use any of the tool we just discussed to make sure we continue. And that's something we'll continue to do. So I would just say, again, very strongly, we do not want to be the bottleneck for our customer. And so far, we have been using all the tools we have at hand to make sure we don't get there, and we'll continue to do that.

And the key thing that we've done, Lee, on that front is, as Christophe said, to get the long lead time items in place. That's what we've done. That gives us many degrees of freedom, including you talked about the land bank, including making sure that we have sufficient room to expand. We have worked on that extremely hard in this region to get that accomplished, and we were recently able to get that done. So we have a lot of degrees of freedom on a go-forward basis with long lead time items in place. And that gives us the kind of flexibility that Christophe is talking about to give customers what we think they need.

Yes. And maybe to illustrate that, if you compare a bit what we did in '25, which is what we could do in basically '27 with the at least 80 system, we more than double basically the total EUV capacity we can ship to our customer. This is down basically in about 2 years. And we do that, I would say, without blinking too much. So we're still, I would say, on top of our game there. And I think, again, the combination of all the remarks we gave you is really putting us in a good position to continue to grow and also to continue to do that because this has been sometimes your concern when the market was not so good. without spending too much money. I think that's also important. So I know the question of bottleneck comes back very often. I think we don't feel at all that we are the bottleneck today. We're very closely working with our customer. And again, we have many, many, many tools in our hands to make sure we keep it this way.

Okay. I'm afraid that is all the time we have for today. So on behalf of ASML, I would like to thank you all for joining us today. Operator, if you could formally conclude the call, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes the ASML 2026 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call.