Key insights
- ASML's Q1 beat was overshadowed by a sharp decline in China sales, dropping from 36% to 19% of system sales. The market is concerned about the potential impact of the MATCH Act, which could further restrict exports to China. To offset this, non-China revenue needs to grow significantly, driven primarily by memory customers and the HBM buildout for AI. ASML also stopped reporting quarterly bookings, raising some concerns about future visibility.
So ASML reported Q1 today. Beat on revenue (€8.8B vs €8.5B expected), beat on profit (€2.8B vs €2.5B), raised full year guidance from €34-39B to €36-40B. Gross margin hit 53%. By every normal measure, great quarter.
Stock went red.
I dug into the slides and I think the market is pricing something way more important than the quarter itself.
China fell off a cliff. China went from 36% of system sales in Q4 to 19% in Q1. That’s nearly cut in half in one quarter. And here’s the thing — this happened before the MATCH Act, which is a new bipartisan bill that would ban DUV exports to China too. EUV is already banned. DUV immersion is the last thing ASML can still sell there. If that bill passes, China revenue could go to basically zero.
But here’s what caught my attention when I ran the math:
2025 full year revenue: €32.7B, China ~33% = ~€10.8B from China
2026 guidance midpoint: €38B, China ~20% = ~€7.6B from China
Non-China revenue needs to go from ~€21.9B to ~€30.4B
That’s roughly +39% growth from non-China customers alone
So the rest of the world has to grow almost 40% to fill the China-shaped hole. That’s… a lot.
What’s actually driving it is pretty interesting though. Memory customers went from 30% of new system sales in Q4 to 51% in Q1. First time memory has been the majority. The HBM buildout for AI is real — SK Hynix and Samsung are scrambling to add EUV capacity. South Korea went from 22% to 45% of ASML’s sales in a single quarter. Management said memory customers are “sold out for the remaining of the year.”
The backlog is €38.8B which is basically a full year of revenue at the new guidance, so near-term visibility is there. But longer term its really about whether AI demand stays hot enough to replace what China was buying.
One other thing nobody seems to be talking about — ASML quietly stopped reporting quarterly bookings this quarter. Said it caused too much volatility. Which, fair enough, last quarter bookings came in at €13.2B (2x estimates) and the stock surged 7% then gave it all back. But removing a key data point during a period of rising geopolitical uncertainty is… a choice imo.
Valuation wise its trading around 34x forward earnings. Not cheap for 16% guided revenue growth, but not insane either if the growth path to their 2030 targets (€44-60B, 56-60% gross margins) stays intact. The MATCH Act is the wildcard that could seriously change the math.
Tbh I think ASML is one of the most interesting stocks to watch right now because its basically a real-time test of whether AI demand can fully replace geopolitical losses. The Q1 numbers say yes so far.
Source: https://www.asml.com/en/investors/financial-results/q1-2026