Manufacturers of semiconductors are quickly expanding manufacturing capacity and purchasing new equipment as chip sales are estimated to reach 427.7 billion units this year. The demand for lithography tools is so high that ASML, the world’s largest scanner manufacturer, has issued a warning that just 60% of orders for deep ultraviolet (DUV) litho machines will be satisfied.
“Although the current macroeconomic environment creates uncertainty, we believe the fundamental growth drivers remain intact,” said Peter Wennink, chief executive of ASML, at the company’s quarterly conference call with analysts and investors, per SeekingAlpha. “We continue to see unprecedented customer demand across all market segments, from both advanced and mature nodes. We are running at maximum capacity and expect demand to exceed supply well into next year.”
This year, ASML aims to export 55 extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scanners and about 240 DUV scanners (approximately 14 EUV and 60 DUV machines per quarter). Meanwhile, it has a DUV scanner backlog of over 500 units, implying a two-year product order lead time for a new DUV scanner (used to produce semiconductors employing both mature and leading-edge nodes). Meanwhile, ASML emphasises that product order lead time is meaningless for the time being because the company need additional capacity and time to construct it to make more tools.
Here’s what ASML had to say about its Supply problem
“We can probably only ship at this moment in time, this year only 60% of the DUV demand,” said Wennink. “So, anything that comes on that is driven by our maximum capacity. And anything beyond that, indeed, is a matter of capacity lead time, not the [product order] lead time.”
By 2025, ASML plans to grow its capacity to 90 EUV 0.33 NA systems and 600 DUV systems (both immersion and dry). In the medium term, it also plans to obtain a capacity of roughly 20 EUV High-NA (0.55 NA) systems.
Chipmakers will continue to undersupply for several quarters due to a lack of lithography scanners. ASML reported €3.5 billion in net sales and €695 million in net profitability in the first quarter of 2022.
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