ASML Lures Engineers With €20,000 Bonus as Revenue Guidance Hits €45 Billion Ceiling
Published on 07/21/2026 at 14:31 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The race for semiconductor talent has entered a new phase of intensity. ASML, the Dutch lithography giant, is dangling a conditional stock award worth €20,000 before select employees who commit to staying from 2027 through 2030. The grant vests in full on 1 January 2030, effectively handcuffing valued staff during a period when the company’s production capacity is already stretched thin. With roughly 44,500 people on the payroll — more than half in the Netherlands and 8,500 in the US — ASML is betting that golden handcuffs, not just pay raises, will secure the engineering firepower needed to meet surging demand.
The move comes as Deloitte projects the semiconductor industry will need over a million additional skilled workers by 2030. Competitors are throwing around even larger sums: Samsung is reportedly offering bonuses worth about $370,000, SK Hynix is going as high as $477,000, and TSMC has expanded its profit-sharing schemes. For ASML, the struggle is compounded by the fact that its own factories are running flat out. The company plans to boost EUV lithography system production capacity by 30% in 2027, and it says it is nearly sold out of EUV machines for that year.
That capacity constraint is driven by an order book that, as of the latest quarter, stood at roughly $45 billion. ASML remains the sole supplier of EUV and High-NA lithography systems worldwide, a monopoly that underpins its pricing power and long-term visibility. The company expects to deliver 60 EUV machines in 2026 and 80 in 2027, with a theoretical annual ceiling of about 90 without further expansion. JPMorgan analysts, however, see room for as many as 110 machines a year. Each High-NA unit costs roughly $400 million and takes about a year to build, relying on critical optics from Zeiss and laser modules from Trumpf.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Asml?
Financially, ASML is riding a wave of demand tied to AI infrastructure buildout. In the second quarter of 2026 — which ended on 28 June — the company posted revenue of €9.326 billion, up 21% year on year, and net profit of €2.918 billion, a 27% increase. Gross margin came in at 54%. Those numbers helped lift management’s full-year 2026 revenue forecast to a range of €43 billion to €45 billion, up from an earlier, lower band. CEO Christophe Fouquet attributed the strength to sustained investment in AI computing power. Looking further ahead, ASML has set a 2030 revenue target of €44 billion to €60 billion with gross margins between 56% and 60%.
Notably, the regional mix is shifting. Revenue from China fell to 14% of total sales in the second quarter from 19% in the first, as customers in other regions — especially those building out AI capacity — take a bigger share. That decline, however, masks a lingering geopolitical risk. In the first quarter of 2026, ASML beat revenue consensus of €8.5 billion with actual sales of €8.8 billion and net profit of €2.8 billion, yet the stock tumbled 6% after management slashed its expected China share of 2026 revenue from more than 40% to around 20%. Further headwinds could come from the MATCH Act, which Reuters reports may tighten US restrictions on ASML’s Chinese business.
The drama on the China front has not stopped the shares from staging a powerful rally. Since the start of the year, ASML stock is up 71.09%, trading at €1,576.60 on the day of the last earnings release — a 3.21% gain from the previous close. That price remains about 9.81% below its 52-week high of €1,748.00 reached in late June. An earlier trading session, captured in a separate report, put the stock at €1,554.80 with a 1.78% intraday advance, highlighting the volatility that has accompanied the shifting narrative.
Analyst views on valuation are split sharply. The stock trades at roughly 45 times expected earnings and 54.9 times trailing earnings, compared with a sector average of 45.8 and a peer group multiple of 66.3. Some models suggest a fair price-to-earnings ratio of 71.1, implying the stock is undervalued by about 17%. Others contend it is as much as 52% overvalued. Nonetheless, several influential houses have set ambitious targets: Bernstein eyes $2,623, Barclays sees €2,400, and Susquehanna has a €2,350 price target. Debate also swirls around whether ASML could become Europe’s first trillion-dollar company, with Elon Musk’s proposed Terafab in Texas being cited as a potential future demand source. Whether that milestone is reached will depend heavily on how the China puzzle and overall chipmaker investment trends unfold over the next few quarters.
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