By Nathan Vifflin and Toby Sterling
Oct 14 (Reuters) - ASML said on Wednesday that AI-driven demand for its chip-printing tools is so strong that it will not be able to fully meet customer demand in 2027 or 2028 and that it is looking at ways to expand capacity as it raised its full-year sales outlook.
The world's biggest supplier of chipmaking equipment said customers were already discussing orders after 2027, with some expressing interest in placing orders in 2029 and 2030.
The Dutch group forecast
sales for the fourth quarter of 2026 of €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion ($15.9 billion to $17.0 billion), above analyst expectations, with a gross margin of around 57%. That boosted its full-year sales forecast slightly to €44 billion to €45 billion.
Analysts polled by LSEG had expected fourth-quarter sales of €14.19 billion at ASML, Europe's largest company by market capitalisation.
"A lot of our discussions with our customers now are shifting in fact beyond 2027," CEO Christophe Fouquet said in a statement.
ASML's customers include TSMC, which manufactures chips for Nvidia, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Intel and newcomer Elon Musk and his Terafab, all of whom have expansion plans.
In July ASML said it would increase capacity in 2027 by 30% and again by 30% in 2028, but Fouquet said it was clear that would not be enough.
Fouquet said the company was now seeing "a lot of order intake for 2028. But also some strong interest to already place orders for 2029 and sometimes even 2030."
Germany-based order book manager Tradegate forecast the shares to open down by 0.6%.
RACING TO EXPAND CAPACITY
ASML broke ground last month on a major expansion in Eindhoven, Netherlands, but it will need to look at other ways to address capacity before the first phase is completed in 2029.
In a company Q&A published with the results, CFO Roger Dassen said ASML will also address the shortage by upgrading existing tools, and selling new versions of its machines with higher throughput.
Taken together, these measures would provide "a significant enhancement to our customers' capacity", he said.
ING analyst Marc Hesselink said the earnings beat expectations and he expected consensus earnings forecasts to be revised upward through 2028.
"Management's commentary on demand visibility and capacity ... was again very constructive," he said.
For the third quarter, ASML reported net profit of €4.96 billion on net sales of €11.7 billion, above the €4.05 billion and in line with the expectations of analysts polled by LSEG.
($1=0.8924 euros)
(Reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam, Nathan Vifflin in Gdansk, Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak, Stephen Coates and Louise Heavens)
