The chip machine manufacturer ASML, which is geopolitically caught between the chairs, urges a moderate export policy.

"We are business people, not politicians," said CEO Peter Wennink in a company interview, the text of which was available on the company website on Wednesday morning when the annual figures were presented in Veldhoven.

Export restrictions for high technology like those of ASML are a multinational issue, not an issue between several countries, and a balanced solution is needed - said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte after his talks with US President Joe Biden last week.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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ASML is the leading manufacturer of chip machines and supplies the major semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel and TSMC.

Business with China is increasingly at risk: last fall, the US government extended export restrictions for high-performance chips and equipment for the manufacture of semiconductors, which are also intended to affect non-American companies.

ASML had previously had to do with American restrictions: the machines of the latest generation – EUV machines;

the abbreviation stands for extreme ultraviolet light – are not allowed to go to China because the Dutch government has been refusing export permits for years under pressure from the United States.

ASML has a technical monopoly on these EUV machines.

Talks between Rutte and Biden

But now the established DUV devices have also come under scrutiny.

In November, the answer to a question in the Dutch parliament was unmistakable: The United States also wants to prevent the export of older ASML machines to China and would like the government in The Hague to impose a corresponding export ban.

Biden and Rutte apparently spoke about this last week – their conclusions are unclear so far.

The topic also concerns the German technology groups Trumpf and Carl Zeiss, for which ASML is an important customer.

Zeiss produces high-tech mirrors and lenses that are built into the machines, Trumpf Laser.

Wennink emphasized on Wednesday morning that nothing tangible had changed as a result of the tightened course taken by the USA in the fall.

"That means that we will not deliver EUVs to China, for example." On the other hand, DUVs and other machines can still be delivered.

CFO Roger Dassen also said in the quarterly figures in autumn that the company was busy with orders outside of China.

Sales are expected to increase by more than a quarter

In its pre-IPA business statement, ASML forecast sales for the current year to increase by more than a quarter compared to the 21.2 billion euros that flowed into the till last year.

In the first quarter alone it should be between 6.1 and 6.5 billion euros.

Net profit fell to 5.6 billion euros in 2022, after 5.9 billion euros the year before.

The gross margin, which has received much attention from analysts, was 50.5 percent.

ASML increases the dividend by 5.5 percent to 5.80 euros.

ASML is the IT pearl of the Netherlands, emerged from a former Philips division.

The company has a market capitalization of 250 billion euros, which is more than SAP and Siemens combined.

It is the most expensive company in the Amsterdam leading index AEX and the second most expensive in the leading index Eurostoxx 50 in the euro zone behind the French luxury group LVMH.

The company benefits from the fact that the world is becoming more and more digitized: Technical products such as cars are becoming more and more complex and even simple everyday products increasingly contain chips.

Their producers such as Intel and TSMC need the large machines from Veldhoven, and hardly any supplier can do without them anymore.