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Investing.com - Shares of U.S. and European chipmakers ticked higher on Wednesday after ASML posted better-than-expected quarterly net bookings but unveiled a tepid financial forecast.
In early European trading, ASML had gained 3.3%, pushing up regional peers like Germany’s Infineon and Siltronic, as well as STMicro in France. Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom were also in the green in U.S. premarket trading.
ASML warned of a significant decline in sales from China, threatening to dampen sentiment around quarterly earnings from the semiconductor giant that were otherwise powered by an ongoing wave of enthusiasm around artificial intelligence.
The Dutch firm recently became Europe’s largest listed company thanks in large part to heavy demand for its lithography tools, which play a central role in the production of the chips underpinning the AI boom.
CEO Christophe Fouquet said that it was seeing “positive momentum” in investments into AI. A stream of agreements between AI firms and chipmakers have been unveiled in September and October, simultaneously adding to the euphoria around the nascent technology and sparking fears of a bubble reminiscent of the dotcom craze in the late 1990s.
Net bookings, ASML’s most closely monitored financial metric, in the third quarter came in at 5.40 billion euros, topping estimates of 5.36 billion euros, according to Visible Alpha data cited by Reuters. Net income, meanwhile, stood at 2.12 billion euros, versus expectations of 2.11 billion euros.
But the group warned of a downturn in sales next year in China, which accounted for almost a third of new tool sales over the first nine months of 2025. This contributed to a guidance for flat or higher sales in 2026 -- a lukewarm projection for a business anticipated to benefit heavily from AI.
Analysts at Jefferies argued that the results and outlook do not "give too much ammunition to either bulls or bears," but, following a more than 26% spike in ASML shares this year, a "lack of confidence in growth in 2026" could be "insufficient" to drive the stock higher "much further."