Principal Engineer - Process Engineering, PEALD

ASM International reported record third-quarter 2026 revenue of €1.16 billion, up 44% year on year at constant currencies and 14% from the previous quarter. Equipment revenue rose 48%, led by demand for atomic layer deposition tools. Operating margin was 33.4%, and free cash flow was €313 million. The company ended the quarter with €1.3 billion in cash and announced a new share buyback of up to €300 million. ASM expects 2027 revenue to exceed €5.7 billion at constant currencies, reaching its 2030 target three years early. Growth is expected to come from advanced logic foundry and memory. Management flagged tight supply chains and possible export control changes as risks. Revenue in China is expected to be flat in 2027.

ASM International raises 2027 sales target three years ahead of schedule. ASM International posted record quarterly revenue of €1.16 billion and authorized a €300 million buyback, even as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs pulled back exposure on a $5 billion AI infrastructure loan to Volta Holdings. A sales target ASM International once pinned to 2030 is now its 2027 goal. The company told investors its AI-driven equipment boom isn't cooling off, days after chip stocks clawed back from a trillion-dollar selloff. Three years. That's how far ASM International pulled forward a target it had originally set for 2030, according to GlobeNewswire's release of the company's earnings. The Dutch chipmaking equipment supplier reported record third-quarter revenue of €1.16 billion on Tuesday, up 45% from a year earlier. It used the results to set its 2027 revenue outlook at more than €5.7 billion, reaching three years early the target originally set for 2030. Adjusted net earnings came in at €315.4 million for the quarter, with gross margin at 52% and adjusted operating margin at 33.4%. The company also authorized a new share buyback program of up to €300 million. For the fourth quarter, ASM guided to revenue of €1.23 billion, plus or minus 5%, which would put full-year 2026 growth at around 35% at constant currencies. ASM makes the deposition and epitaxy tools that chipmakers need to build the most advanced logic and memory chips, selling to customers like TSMC, Samsung and Intel. When demand for AI chips rises, ASM's order book is usually one of the first places it shows up, well before a finished Nvidia GPU ever reaches a data center. That makes Tuesday's guidance less a story about ASM alone and more a read on whether the AI infrastructure buildout still has real legs heading into 2027. The specific driver, according to commentary tied to the earnings and prior ASM disclosures, is the ramp of advanced nodes: 2-nanometer and 1.4-nanometer gate-all-around transistors in logic and foundry work, plus next-generation DRAM for high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators. Both require more atomic layer deposition and epitaxy steps per wafer than older nodes did, which means more tool sales for ASM even if unit chip volumes stayed flat. They haven't stayed flat. Customer activity around the still-newer 1.4-nanometer node has reportedly been running ahead of where 2-nanometer was at a similar stage, a sign that the pace of node transitions, not just AI chip volume, is pulling equipment orders forward. Lam Research raised its quarterly dividend 27% to $0.33 a share after record fiscal Q4 earnings, and a wave of analyst price-target increases suggests the AI capex boom is reaching deep into the chip-equipment supply chain. Wall Street targets on the stock now cluster between $365 and $425. - Lam Research dividend increase 2024 analyst stock outlook - AI chip manufacturing equipment company dividend raised significantly That single-wafer ALD market is projected to grow to somewhere between $5.1 billion and $6.1 billion by 2030, with epitaxy tools climbing to $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion over the same stretch, based on estimates tied to ASM's own market sizing. ASM is trying to grow its share of both. This news lands at an interesting moment for chip stocks generally. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index spent much of mid-October in a six-session losing streak that erased roughly $1.6 trillion in market value, as Bloomberg reported, dragged down by Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Intel and Micron on fears that AI infrastructure spending had outrun both earnings and the cost of financing it. The index has since rebounded from its recent low. It sat near 11,460 on Tuesday, up more than 3% on the day. The debt question ASM's numbers don't answer. Here's the tension underneath all of it. Just weeks ago, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs pulled back their own exposure on a $5 billion loan tied to AI infrastructure firm Volta Infrastructure Holdings, underwriting only $1.3 billion of a term loan themselves and declining to underwrite a separate $3.7 billion chip-backed loan, according to Bloomberg Government's reporting. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has warned that one troubled credit can signal more problems elsewhere in the market. So you've got two signals pointing in opposite directions at once. The equipment maker that sits closest to actual fab construction says demand for 2027 is strong enough to pull a 2030 target forward by three years. The banks financing the AI buildout are getting more careful about which loans they're willing to hold on their own books. Both things can be true. A capex cycle can be structurally real, built on actual wafer orders and actual tool shipments, while still being financed in ways that worry the people writing the checks. Frankly, ASM's numbers are the harder kind of evidence to wave away. A bank's caution about a specific loan structure is a view on risk pricing. A record quarter plus a raised multi-year revenue target, backed by a buyback the company didn't need to announce, is a view on demand it's already seeing in its order book. The AI capex story isn't dead. The question markets are still fighting over is who ends up holding the bill if any part of this slows down before the fabs ASM is equipping actually ship finished chips. Join the discussion. No replies yet. Start the discussion. Dave Barr is a professional Marketing Strategist With Over 6 Years Of Experience in PR. His primary area of expertise is public relations and social branding. Dave has been associated with various content projects from across the world on a regular basis. He has also had associations with big and reputed news networks. Dave contributes to Startup Fortune in the Business, Marketing and Technology sections.