"Crying children have milk to eat", the farce of the lithography machine giant ASML "fleeing the Netherlands" at the beginning of the year has finally settled recently.
According to foreign media disclosures, after getting the 2.5 billion euro "super red envelope", ASML seems to be a different person: CEO Wen Kening, who has complained about the "immigration policy" of the Tulip Kingdom on the front foot, was seized by the Frenchman Christophe Fouquet; ASML shook hands with the Netherlands and decided to build a new gigafactory with a capacity of 20,000 employees near its headquarters.
The outside world thinks that the "lithography machine overlord" Wen Kening is really a successful retirement, but the foreign media does not buy it, ASML's poor performance in the first quarter of this year has caused Samsung, TSMC and American shareholders to lose no less than 200 billion, how can Wen Kening "go away"?
According to the financial report data, ASML suffered a "triple kill" in the first quarter of this year: the amount of new orders was less than 3.7 billion euros, a plunge of 60%; Sales and net profit also suffered a bloodbath, reducing by more than 20%. Affected by this, ASML plummeted 11% in the U.S. stock market overnight, and the market value of about 200 billion yuan was wiped out.
However, under the coercion and temptation of Lao Mei, Wen Kening seems to be "a good woman who is difficult to cook without rice". As everyone knows, in March last year, after Wen Kening started his "China tour", he once ushered in the second spring of ASML's career. Official data shows that in 2023, the giant shipped 450 lithography machines to the mainland alone, and even reached an unprecedented 9.2 billion euros in the fourth quarter.
This move is regarded by the outside world as ASML having a low-profile version of the lithography machine to be stocked. But the reality is that the story begins with a prologue, but the prologue is not yet the climax.
After the success of destocking, Wen Kening, who was full of confidence, began a "riotous operation": announced that in cooperation with the United States, it would completely ban the export of lithography machines to China in 2024. As a result, "the sky will rain when the sky is mad, and the people will be crazy will be disaster", ASML not only failed to wait for a good start in 2024, but was poured cold by reality.
Despite the bloodbath in performance, ASML clearly has more thighs to hold. The latest news is that the lithography machine giant has received a "blood transfusion" from the United States, and Intel directly sent a large order of 12 billion, covering the initial inventory of all EUV lithography machines of ASML this year.
At the same time as mentioning Intel's big order, ASML was shocked by BYD in a cold sweat. It turned out that some netizens exposed a photo: at the gate of BYD's factory, ASML lithography machines were piled up outside like discarded garbage.
BYD's "righteous move", although it turned out to be a false alarm in the end, the prelude to ASML's extreme prosperity and decline seems to have quietly opened.