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ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

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Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#71

Post by hef19898 »

andsoitis wrote: post #69
grenoire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I sold at the peak. Don't hold on to your winners for too long, the stock price is not entirely a function of the company's financial success. A lot of it is just on whims and cycles.

> Don't hold on to your winners for too long, the stock price is not entirely a function of the company's financial success In the long term you don’t think the stock price is a function of a company’s success? Surely while a a company does very well financially and the financial outlook is very good, the stock price would be higher than when the fortunes change?

Sure, but there is no guarantee long term stock price is above what you paid for it. Also, the market can be unreasonable, in both directions, for quite a while. Dividends are what you epupd be looking for in long term stock investments.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#72

Post by DJHenk »

konschubert wrote: post #41
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in NL for a while, few years, changed few companies, it's a place where processes are more important than actual code quality, where people stay in the same job for 10-15 years and everything below that is seen as a bad thing, people is hired for the culture primarily, having awareness of software principles is really worthless. I ran away as the last company I interviewed with, after solving a coding puzz…

I thought that the dutch would be more ... modern?

> I thought that the dutch would be more ... modern?

As a Dutchman: no, we are not when it comes to businesses software. Dutch companies are very conservative and always choose the safe option. They are modern in that they updated the slogan 'Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM' to the current century.

It is the main reason that I have only worked at companies with a healthy mix of different nationalities for the last ten years. Doing software in a Dutch monoculture is suffocating.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#73

Post by hommelix »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #31
gabagaul wrote: post #21

Time to spread some liberty and freedom in the Netherlands.

The US is not far from doing that. See the Hague Invasion Act. Also I've been wondering why our Prime Minister has been so enthusiastically following US foreign policy lately. Turns out he's eyeing the NATO boss seat, and the US has the most important vote.

Remember de avondshow met lubach over "America first, Thr Netherlands second" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ELD2AwFN9Nc

There is some truth in parody ;-)

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#74

Post by FooBarWidget »

Scarblac wrote: post #38
FooBarWidget wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not far from doing that. See the Hague Invasion Act. Also I've been wondering why our Prime Minister has been so enthusiastically following US foreign policy lately. Turns out he's eyeing the NATO boss seat, and the US has the most important vote.

Also that's what we do since WW2. We are a close ally of the US, use US weapons, usually follow them in foreign policy. So not very surprising imo.

Well there are various degrees of enthusiasm. Netherlands also claims to be a fighter for human rights, yet it immediately dropped UNRWA funding after unproven allegations about a handful of people (out of thousands) and thus letting civilians starve to death...

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#75

Post by konschubert »

1123581321 wrote: post #51
konschubert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange that they are making so few machines. The price would probably drop slightly if they made 10x more machines, but they would still end up earning more. And the world would be a better place, too. So I am left wondering ... what is capping their output? What is the bottleneck?

My understanding is that production and installation do not scale since the machines are essentially replications of a successful physics experiment environment. Manufacture is a long, multi-step process requiring technical expertise (which is limited). Then, machines are re-assembled at the customer site--again, carefully and with a large technical staff. To commit engineering to achieving 10x manufacture rate would…

You might be right.

On the absolute forefront, it has to be artisanal.

But we can learn to scale making the machines that were cutting edge two years ago.

Maybe ASML just doesn’t do this because they leave it to other companies? Either way, somebody should be the one that’s always two years behind but makes 2000 machines a year.

And of course, when you remove a bottleneck, you find another. But that other bottleneck will be wider.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#76

Post by brnt »

konschubert wrote: post #75
1123581321 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that production and installation do not scale since the machines are essentially replications of a successful physics experiment environment. Manufacture is a long, multi-step process requiring technical expertise (which is limited). Then, machines are re-assembled at the customer site--again, carefully and with a large technical staff. To commit engineering to achieving 10x manufacture rate would…

You might be right. On the absolute forefront, it has to be artisanal. But we can learn to scale making the machines that were cutting edge two years ago. Maybe ASML just doesn’t do this because they leave it to other companies? Either way, somebody should be the one that’s always two years behind but makes 2000 machines a year. And of course, when you remove a bottleneck, you find another. But that other bottleneck…

Asml does this, learning how to scale the cutting edge of two years ago. This is what scaling cutting edge physics looks like. Academic groups sometimes take the better part of a decade (or more) to replicate a setup by another group. There are few components you can buy off the shelf in this space: you'll have to understand, design and make them all yourself. Market's way too small to suppory competing suppliers. Takes longer than two years to farm all of that out and create a market of sufficient size. Plus, buyers tend to not want (or pay) for one or two decade old stuff, so that market (for part suppliers) may never quite materialise.

And then, these machine are indeed more like physics experiments than a device. If you compare it with that, ASML is actually quite fast.

And the market knows all of this, hence their valuation.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#77

Post by iancmceachern »

roenxi wrote: post #58
micwag wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zeiss and ASML currently have no competitors in the EUV lithography space as everyone else dropped out. (There was a big switch from lenses to mirrors) I won't rule out a direct competitor, but they have a substantial moat. They face some pressure from indirect competition like Canon Nanoimprint though.

Another way of framing your opening is "a bunch of other companies are on the verge of figuring this out, but the market isn't big enough". EUV hasn't even been the done thing for all that long, I gather it is only the tech of choice for about a decade. There are a bunch of thin bottlenecks and oligopolies in global supply chains. It is a big and complex world. But that leads to a situation where three things are tru…

No way. The others are a decade out. That eulv machine is crazy, you should learn about it.

There are several companies in this space that are truly irreplaceable. Zeiss is definitely one.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#78

Post by jorticka »

mrtksn wrote: post #70
ericmay wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn’t the AI also design the systems? ;-)

Haha right, but maybe you still want to have some control over it - just to be sure that it fits you first. Calibration and quality control if you will. At some level High enough the thing becomes art because you have the have empathy which is something that machines can only pretend since they are operating differently than humans. A bit like us designing cat toys: Although we can design some successful ones by obse…

You couldn't sell a package as a cat toy.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#79

Post by konschubert »

brnt wrote: post #76
konschubert wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right. On the absolute forefront, it has to be artisanal. But we can learn to scale making the machines that were cutting edge two years ago. Maybe ASML just doesn’t do this because they leave it to other companies? Either way, somebody should be the one that’s always two years behind but makes 2000 machines a year. And of course, when you remove a bottleneck, you find another. But that other bottleneck…

Asml does this, learning how to scale the cutting edge of two years ago. This is what scaling cutting edge physics looks like. Academic groups sometimes take the better part of a decade (or more) to replicate a setup by another group. There are few components you can buy off the shelf in this space: you'll have to understand, design and make them all yourself. Market's way too small to suppory competing suppliers. Ta…

I think you might be misunderstanding me. I meant “somebody should scale making those machines that ASML could make two years ago”.

And maybe not two years, but 5, but you catch my vibe here.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#80

Post by yau8edq12i »

nn3 wrote: post #3

Relevant HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 Apparently their software development processes are terrible.

I love these threads. Everyone will chime in about how they know better how to run the company, with suggestions on the processes that they don't know and so on. Meanwhile the story is "business is #1 and booming". Elegant software stacks aren't always the most important part of the business.
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