ASML (ASML 2.24%). The name sounds like a forgotten Soviet space program. They make the machines that make the chips. Ninety percent up in the last year, they say. A perfectly respectable climb, if you don’t think about the sheer, terrifying speed of everything these days. So it goes.
These aren’t just any chips, mind you. They’re the little rectangles that dream up artificial intelligence. All the rage. And ASML, it turns out, is the only outfit making the really fancy machines needed to etch those dreams onto silicon. Extreme ultraviolet lithography, they call it. Sounds expensive. And it is.
TSMC (TSM 1.25%), Samsung, Intel (INTC 2.59%) – the usual suspects – they all need ASML. And Nvidia (NVDA 0.64?), the company that sells us the illusion of thinking machines? They’re completely dependent. It’s a neat little arrangement, really. A single point of failure in the entire digital universe. A comforting thought, if you’re the pessimistic type.
They predict 44 to 60 billion euros in revenue by 2030. Numbers. Just numbers. It’s enough to make you long for a simpler time, like when we only worried about the bomb. A ten percent growth rate. That’s what they’re saying. Earnings per share, they expect a 24% jump. It all sounds so…efficient. So inevitable.
Forty-one times earnings. The stock isn’t cheap. But then, what is? Everything has a price, of course. And in this case, it’s the price of progress. The price of letting machines do our thinking for us. It’s a bargain, really, if you believe in bargains. So it goes.
They say this will drive the stock higher. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. It’s all just a gamble, isn’t it? A very expensive, very complicated gamble. But what else is there to do? Buy the stock, or watch the world change without you. It’s a choice we all have to make. And frankly, it doesn’t much matter either way.
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2026-02-12 19:43