ASML predicts increase in sales
After record sales last year that have stoked a big expansion at its Wilton plant, ASML predicted accelerating sales in the second half of 2019 after replacement inventory arrives that was destroyed in a December fire at a key supplier.
ASML makes big machines that imprint circuitry on semiconductors and flat-panel displays for Intel, Samsung and many other chip foundries, with ASML shipping more than
200 machines last year for an increase of 34 units from 2017.
The company is based in the Netherlands and employs more than 1,600 people in Wilton, with ASML building a new parking garage there to accommodate its swelling workforce. ASML’s global job count topped
20,000 positions last year as calculated on a full-time equivalent basis, a gain of more than
3,800 jobs not including an extra 200 temporary positions the company has filled for about
3,200 in all.
ASML earnings have more than kept pace with its payroll additions, shooting up 25 percent last year to just short of $3 billion, with orders boosting revenue 22 percent to $12.5 billion. U.S. sales accounted for nearly a third of ASML’s $3.6 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, helping to nudge the fullyear total to 16 percent of global sales last year, up from 13 percent in 2017.
Profits were dented after ASML and Carl Zeiss agreed to pay Nikon $170 million to settle a dispute over patent rights to lithography inventions used to create circuitry on chips — ASML reported a $149 million impact on its own gross earnings as a result of the settlement, which was reached after it had countersued Nikon last
year asserting its rights.
On Wednesday, ASML CEO Peter Wennink said his company is still awaiting replacement supplies for those destroyed Dec. 1 in a fire at a headquarters warehouse of Prodrive outside Eindhoven in the Netherlands,
with nobody injured in the early morning blaze.
ASML predicted the fire will delay recording some $340 million in revenue it had expected in the current first quarter.
Only days before the fire, Prodrive had scotched plans to establish a 300,000-square-foot U.S. headquarters in South Weymouth, Mass., initially eyeing a workforce of 300 people, according to the Patriot Ledger.
“That fire had an impact on the upgrades that we were planning to do in the first half of this year,” Wennink said Wednesday. “Some of the field upgrades that we lost as a result of Prodrive, ... we expect some of that to be recouped in the second half.”