They reportedly can’t meet demand and the current backlog for new machines is at 2+ years. Surely a company in a sector with such massive capital expenditures has better use of this money? For example scaling production or R&D?
So, it's really hard to scale that process for building new machines.
They've got money burning in their pockets and no better place to spend it, so what do they do? Stock buybacks.
Disclaimer: I did a six month contract working for them several years ago, when they were towards the start of developing their EUV process. It was a real eye opener to have the tour of the facility and have everything explained to me.
Veldhoven :)
I agree with you that the need maybe will not be there exactly when they have built out.
Also note that TSMC, Intel and a whole bunch of others are currently starting to build, or plan to build, new fabs (partly due to the new Chip Act). And they will need stuff from ASML.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL9Q435KU_Y
I don't think they are "completely disassembled" before shipping.
My point is that the size of the container tells something about the size of the components. "Completely disassembled" would mean every nut and bolt would be taken apart, which I don't think is the case given the size of the container.
And you're missing the fact that the outside of the box isn't a clean room, and it has to mate with the clean room at the customer facilities. A bajillion baggies of parts is a non starter if the outside of those baggies isn't a clean room env.
Specifically my guess (and I'm no expert) is a plasma wakefield accelerator feeding a free electron laser to get tunable wavelength EUV light far cheaper and simpler than what they've got now. Tons of work to do to get there, but that's always been the case in thier business. Also, if they don't do it someone else might and then they'd be dead.
There are other R&D areas to be handled too. One might ask why not spend more on the R&D, but they are probably at some kind of practical limit there too.
Don't you think they'll also be using a retro encabulator, with the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive directance being used to generate the EUV light?
(I've also just realized at least 10 companies have probably re-shot this internally with their own equipment. Argh.)
Wish I could upvote tenfold to further increase your customer focus on operator excellence.
You can use a big accelerator as a EUV light source. The SLAC beamline was once used to test the concept. Medium sized (160m circumference) synchrotrons have been suggested.[2] One appears to be under construction in China.
A plasma wakefield accelerator is a proposed way to shrink a powerful accelerator down to a more manageable size. Maybe. There's a project underway to use about a third of the 2-mile long SLAC beamline in this mode.
ASML made zapping a droplet of molten tin with lasers work as an EUV source. That's a nightmare. This approach may or may not be better. It involves zapping a high-pressure gas with lasers.
All the known ways to do this are insanely expensive and look more like physics experiments than production equipment.
A clean light source, where you put electricity in and get EUV out, would be easier to work with. There was talk of "table top synchrotrons" a few years back. One startup built one, although it was more like garage-sized.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/high-power-laser-sci...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35228673/
[3] https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2020-10-12-slac-starts-n...
Can recommend [1] as the title say about the light source. Very interesting even for a non professional (and [2] as on high level overview of the machine and [3] as longer documentation inside ASML).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw "The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source"
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI "The Extreme Physics Pushing Moore’s Law to the Next Level"
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQu_TMgHO98 "ASML's Secret: An exclusive view from inside the global semiconductor giant"
Is this named after the town, a person, or just 'wake' and 'field'?
Please be the town. If Wakefield can get in on the plasma accelerator sexyness, there's hope for all boring northern towns.
Dewsbury fusion here we come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration#Wakefield_...
In the Netherlands, appreciation is immediately taxable for individuals, but not for corporations.
I presume you don't send a cheque off for €1.36 at the end of the day, (or receive a cheque back after 8 months)
Of course this state of affairs relies on companies not all jumping to stock buybacks, or else the treasury will find some new way of getting their pound of flesh
Stock buybacks manipulate the stock price. That's not an equivalent purpose. It even used to be illegal.
Nobody else can get the job done. So, as they say, it is what it is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_SMT
15 years ago, when I was there, Zeiss SMT also did the light sources (discussed elsewhere in the thread), btw, not just supplying the lenses. Don't know if that's still the case. I don't know exactly what the lens/mirror systems for EUV look like, but the "old" 193nm ones were something to behold.
>Peter Wennink made €4,820,000 in total compensation as Co-President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Management at ASML Holding in 2021. €1,020,000 was received as Total Cash, €3,537,000 was received as Equity and €263,000 was received as Pension and other forms of compensation.
The term for this is a positive feedback loop.
>Positive feedback in amplifier If the feedback signal is in the phase with the input signal, the effective input to the circuit is increased and this type of feedback is called positive, regenerative or direct feedback. It provides increased gain but it also increases distortion and leads to poor stability of gain.
The annual report states that they don't grant stock options since 2017 and there is no word about stock based compensation in the balance sheet.