Chipmaking supplier ASML says Trump tariff impact ‘less negative’ than expected

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Chipmaking equipment supplier ASML said the impact of US tariffs was “a bit less negative than we anticipated”, as artificial intelligence drove strong orders for its lithography machines.

Sales in the Netherlands-based company’s second quarter rose 23 per cent to €7.7bn, just ahead of analysts’ forecasts. Net bookings, a closely watched metric that includes orders for chipmaking gear placed by customers but not yet delivered, were €5.5bn, better than the €4.4bn analysts had expected, according to Visible Alpha, a research company.

Surging orders for AI chips from Nvidia have driven strong growth at ASML’s biggest customer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, over the past two years.

However, ASML’s guidance for the third-quarter sales of €7.4bn-€7.9bn was less than the €8.2bn expected by analysts, and chief executive Christophe Fouquet said he “cannot confirm” whether the business — one of Europe’s largest technology companies by market cap — would grow overall next year.

“The level of uncertainty is increasing, mostly due to macroeconomic and geopolitical considerations. And that includes, of course, tariffs,” Fouquet said. “Therefore, while we still prepare for growth in 2026, we cannot confirm it at this stage.”

Analysts had previously expected ASML’s revenues to grow by about 7 per cent in 2026 to €34.7bn, according to Visible Alpha estimates.

Yet despite surging orders, shares in ASML have lost more than a fifth of their value over the past year, as cutbacks to capital spending among chipmakers including Intel and Samsung added to investor worries about the effect of the Trump administration’s tariffs on its business.

But the stock jumped on Tuesday after Nvidia and rival AMD said the US would allow them to resume selling AI processors to customers in China. ASML said China would account for about a quarter of its revenue this year.

The company said tariffs could affect it in a number of ways, including sending completed chipmaking machines or their components to the US, as well as parts it brought from the US to Europe.

But for the latest quarter, finance chief Roger Dassen said: “Actually, the tariffs panned out to be a bit less negative than we anticipated.” That contributed to a better than expected performance, alongside one-off cost benefits and extra revenue from upgrading some customers’ existing machines.