I reiterate my "Buy" rating on ASML stock due to its monopoly in EUV lithography and strong growth prospects driven by AI demand. ASML's Q4 results exceeded expectations, with €9.3 billion in sales and a €36 billion order backlog, indicating strong future revenue growth. Despite cyclical risks and geopolitical uncertainties, ASML's valuation is attractive at a 28% discount to its 10-year average EV/EBITDA.
With the recent market sell-off, there are a number of attractive tech stocks that investors can look to add to their portfolios. For investors with some cash on the sidelines, here are three top tech stocks to consider.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up terrific growth opportunities for companies in several industries. That's not surprising given the rapid adoption of AI in hopes of capturing long-term productivity gains.
ASML is the only supplier of EUV lithography machines in the world today. The company also dominates in DUV lithography, with market shares of ~90%. Lithography machines typically represent between 20% and 25% of a new foundry's construction costs, and their useful lives are generally measured in decades. The ongoing remodelling of the semiconductor supply chain could act as a tailwind for ASML. The construction of new foundries translates into demand for new lithography machines.
ASML Holding is a stock worth retaining as it is poised to benefit from the next wave of semiconductor innovation, driving sustained growth and value creation.
ASML is uniquely positioned to benefit from surging demand driven by reasoning AI models, as these models require significantly more inference compute, fueling potentially limitless demand. Efficiency improvements in AI, drastically reducing the cost of inference, paradoxically create even greater overall demand by enabling widespread use-cases and new applications. ASML holds a strategic monopoly on advanced lithography machines crucial for manufacturing cutting-edge AI chips, guaranteeing substantial long-term growth in revenue, backlog, and margins.
In the closing of the recent trading day, ASML (ASML) stood at $734.91, denoting a +0.52% change from the preceding trading day.
The latest trading day saw ASML (ASML) settling at $731.11, representing a +0.11% change from its previous close.
Despite the market sell-off centered around tech stocks, investors need to keep their focus on the long term. We're still in the early innings of the AI investment wave.
The market sell-off focusing on technology stocks has hit several of my top stocks fairly hard. However, I don't think that this is the time to panic; instead, investors should look at this sell-off as a buying opportunity.
ASML (ASML) has been one of the stocks most watched by Zacks.com users lately. So, it is worth exploring what lies ahead for the stock.
ASML dominates the semiconductor lithography market, especially in EUV technology, which is crucial for advanced chip manufacturing in mobile devices, automation, and AI. ASML's revenue share of the semiconductor market is expected to grow from 2-3% to 4-6% by 2030, driven by EUV adoption. Despite its monopoly, ASML's pricing power is limited by fab economics, but its gross margins are projected to reach 58% by 2030.