According to a report by cnyes, ASML (艾司摩爾) expects China to supply about 20% of 2025 net sales, even as U.S. lawmakers push to expand export curbs on its DUV tools, per the same report.
How dependent is ASML on the Chinese market?
China remains one of ASML (艾司摩爾)'s largest single markets. According to a report by cnyes, ASML Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen said China is expected to account for roughly 20% of the company's full-year net sales in 2025 [E1]. That forecast is grounded in actual first-half results: the same cnyes report shows ASML generated €2.9 billion in revenue from China in the first half of 2025, representing about 16% of total revenue — a share that ranked behind only Taiwan and South Korea, and ahead of the United States [E2].
What real limits do Dutch and U.S. export controls place on ASML's China sales?
The revenue China does contribute comes with a hard ceiling. Per cnyes, Dutch government export controls currently prevent ASML from shipping its most advanced Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) systems to China, though the company can still sell certain Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography tools for mature-node and some more advanced-node production [E3]. Pressure to close even that remaining channel is building in Washington: cnyes reports that U.S. lawmakers sent a letter earlier this year to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urging tighter export controls on Chinese-bound semiconductor equipment [E5]. Separately, Congress has introduced the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware Act (MATCH Act), which seeks a unified export-control regime among allied nations — and if passed, could bring ASML's DUV equipment, currently still permitted for China, within the scope of restrictions [E6].
Is Chinese semiconductor investment growth enough to sustain ASML's China business?
Even with EUV access blocked, demand for the DUV tools ASML can still legally ship appears durable. Bernstein senior analyst David Dai forecasts that Chinese semiconductor equipment spending will keep growing at roughly 10% per year over the next 24 months, according to cnyes [E4]. That trajectory helps explain why China's contribution held at 16% of ASML's actual H1 2025 revenue [E2] and why the CFO is comfortable projecting a rise to around 20% for the full year [E1] — growth in the segment ASML is still allowed to serve appears to be offsetting the parts of the China market that are now off-limits.
How is ASML addressing the retention risk created by supply-chain political pressure?
Against this backdrop of tightening export rules, ASML has moved to lock in its global workforce. Per a Liberty Times Net (ec.ltn.com.tw) report, ASML stated in an email announcement on Friday, July 17, that it plans to grant a one-time stock award of €20,000 (roughly NT$740,000) to employees worldwide, effective January 1, 2027 [E7]. Crucially, the award does not vest immediately: it takes effect in early 2030 and applies only to employees who remain with the company through that period [E8], functioning as a multi-year retention lock tied to a workforce of roughly 45,000 employees globally, at a time when ASML is also running a restructuring program aimed at streamlining management layers and bureaucracy [E9]. For comparison, the same report notes that TSMC (台積電) announced in May that its average employee profit-sharing payout for 2025 would rise by more than 30% [E10] — a different mechanism (annual profit-sharing vs. a single deferred stock grant) aimed at a similar goal of retaining semiconductor talent.
Key figures at a glance
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|
| China share of ASML's projected 2025 full-year net sales | ~20% | E1 |
| China revenue, H1 2025 | €2.9bn (~16% of total) | E2 |
| Bernstein forecast: China semiconductor equipment spending growth (next 24 months) | ~10%/year | E4 |
| ASML global employee stock award (vesting 2030) | €20,000 (~NT$740,000) | E7 |
| ASML global headcount | ~45,000 | E9 |
| TSMC 2025 average employee profit-sharing increase | >30% | E10 |
What this means
The evidence lays out a company squeezed from two directions at once. China already supplies about a fifth of ASML's projected 2025 sales [E1], built on H1 revenue that ranked above the U.S. market [E2], and Bernstein's 10%-a-year growth forecast for Chinese equipment spending suggests that demand base isn't shrinking [E4]. Yet the tools ASML can still sell into that market — the DUV systems left untouched by the EUV export ban [E3] — are precisely what U.S. lawmakers and the proposed MATCH Act are now targeting [E5][E6]. At the same time, ASML is asking its roughly 45,000 employees to stay through a four-year vesting period for a €20,000 award [E7][E8][E9], a retention structure it is deploying even as a rival chipmaker, TSMC, chose a different lever — a same-year profit-sharing bump of over 30% — to keep its own workforce in place [E10].