艾司摩爾 (ASML) 2011 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.

Welcome to the ASML 2011 fourth quarter and annual results conference call, on January 18, 2012.

Throughout today's introduction, all participants will be in a listen-only mode.

After ASML's introduction, there will be an opportunity to ask questions.

(Operator Instructions).

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr.

Craig DeYoung.

Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Peter.

And good afternoon, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

This is Craig DeYoung, Vice President of Investor Relations here at ASML.

I'd like to welcome you to our investor call and webcast.

As the operator mentioned, the subject of today's call is ASML's 2011 fourth quarter and annual results.

Co-hosting today's call here from our headquarters in Veldhoven, the Netherlands is Mr.

Eric Meurice, ASML's CEO; and Mr.

Peter Wennink, ASML's CFO.

At this time, I'd like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement, contained today's in press release, and in our fourth quarter and annual results presentations, both of which can be found on our website at asml.com.

This safe harbor statement will apply to this call, and to all associated presentation materials.

The length of the call will be 60 minutes.

And now, I'd like to turn it over to Eric, for a brief introduction.

Yes.

Thank you, Craig.

Good afternoon, good morning.

Thank you for attending our fourth quarter, and annual results conference call.

Before we begin the Q&A session, Peter and I, as usual, would like to give you an overview on the fourth quarter, and provide a view forward, as much as we can.

As usual, Peter will start with a review of the financial performance; and I'd comment on the short-term outlook.

We'll complete the introduction with some commentary on our immersion and EUV product strategy, and the status.

So please, Peter.

Thank you, Eric.

And welcome to everyone.

Firstly, I would like to take this moment to recognize our record sales and profit year, in 2011, where we posted close to EUR5.7 billion of sales; a net income of 26% of that sales number.

Clearly, a very good year.

Our fourth quarter sales came in at EUR1.2 billion.

While the third quarter sales were evenly distributed across industry sectors, the fourth quarter sales were skewed significantly towards the foundry sector, with 55%; with the balance spread rather equally across the memory sectors, NAND 22%, and DRAM 19%.

Although units shipped favored ArF immersion, non-critical KrF unit shipments were still significant, which indicates capacity additions in some industry segments.

We recognized 23 immersion systems in the quarter, leading to a total of 101 immersion systems sold throughout the year; of which, 78 were our most advanced TWINSCAN XT 1950 immersion tools.

The average selling price of all systems shipped in the fourth quarter was EUR24.2 million; which is an increase of EUR1 million per unit versus the third quarter.

Service and field option sales for the quarter came in at a record EUR218 million, but that was driven by a significant adoption of performance enhancing field options.

We also recognized the sale of one EUV system, for a total amount of EUR39 million.

So, at the end of the year, earnings per share was -- for 2011, EUR3.45; which represents a 47% increases, the EUR2.35 in 2010.

Updating our previously announced share buyback program, as of December 31, 2011, ASML had repurchased 25.7 million shares, for a total amount of EUR700 million, giving an average buyback price of EUR27.

Of the shares repurchased, 13.2 million have already been cancelled in 2011; with the remainder to be cancelled in 2012.

At the end of the fourth quarter, we had EUR2.7 billion in cash.

Regarding further cash returns, it's our intention pending shareholder approval to increase our annual dividend by 15%, to EUR0.46 per share; and to increase the size of the current buyback program to EUR1,130 million, to take advantage of the maximum amounts, which are available for dividend withholding tax exempt share buybacks in 2012.

This increase, together with the shares we will buy back, to cover our employee share plans, allows us to buy back a total amount of EUR500 million; which, in addition to the dividend announcement, adds up to EUR700 million of potential returns to our shareholders.

On top of this amount, the Company still has a capacity of more than EUR1 billion, with which we can do a synthetic share buyback, similar in style to the one we did in 2007.

Q4 net bookings came in at 37 systems, valued at EUR710 million.

Booked ASPs declined from EUR22 million in Q3, to EUR19 million in Q4.

But that was due to a product mix shift.

Our fourth quarter bookings profile changed significantly, with Foundry increasing to 71% of total; followed by NAND Flash at 23%, and IDMs at 15%.

DRAM actually had negative bookings, as we de-booked two systems for EUR64 million in total.

One system was cancelled, and one was re-booked to NAND.

Our order backlog, exiting the year, was EUR1.7 billion; totaling 71 systems, with an average selling price of EUR24.4 million.

The backlog profile, at year end, changed significantly, as the combined memory continued on a downward trend, to only 27% of the backlog, versus 41% at the end of the third quarter.

As to the outlook, we feel comfortable guiding our sales level, as far as we have reasonable visibility.

That is why at this time last year, we guided with a 12-month view.

Currently, that view is six months.

And, based on this, we expect the sales level for the first half of 2012 to be EUR2.4 billion.

Together with our year-end backlog, we expect orders in the first half to adequately cover this sales expectation.

System demand is currently strongly driven by logic manufacturers, needed to shrink beyond the 30-nanometer node, for enhanced product performance; while building critical mass capacity, at those nodes, in a growing competitive environment.

As to the NAND segment, the forecasted bit growth for 2012 fuels our expectation that the NAND sector will be able to continue their aggressive shrink, while adding required waiver capacity during 2012.

The DRAM market is currently experiencing a very difficult environment, as evidenced by the share of DRAM customers in our backlog.

However, if the current forecasted demand for bit growth in 2013 comes through, lithography demand will very likely follow; which could, potentially, happen towards the end of this year, in preparation for that demand.

Sales for the first quarter are expected to come in at around EUR1.2 billion.

The gross margin these revenues will have will be about 43%.

R&D expenses in Q1 will moderate a bit, to EUR145 million, as we drive greater efficiency; while giving complete and continued support to our dual product leadership strategy.

Efficiency gains will also decrease SG&A to about 45 -- sorry, EUR54 million in the quarter.

And with that, I would like to turn it back over to you, Eric.

Thank you, Peter.

As Peter mentioned, 2011 was a record year for ASML.

And 2012 opens with a fairly solid first half.

This success confirms the robustness of the fundamentals of the Lithography business, and the value of technology leadership, to sustain this robustness.

As articulated during our last quarter results call, two technologies will be enabling the next generation of semiconductor technologies; multiple patterning, using immersion, on one hand; and EUV, on the other.

Both technologies will cohabit for a while, as the transition to EUV will be gradual.

At some point, which, last call, we described as being beyond 15-nanometer, to 20-nanometer in the DRAM business; beyond 10-nanonmeter to 15-nanometer in NAND and Logic.

And so at this point the immersion technologies will have a hard stock for use on critical layers.

Until then, multiple patterning and EUV will co-exist indeed, with a mix depending on every critical layer's complexity and the respective manufacturing cost.

Most customers are, therefore, proceeding with parallel process developments, preparing some layers to be either processed with immersion technology or with EUV.

Thus having the security of known technology as a backup, and having full use of their install base while preserving the enabling capability and cost effectiveness of EUV.

ASML will support this gradual EUV ramp with an aggressive dual-product strategy, continuous innovation on our immersion platform concurrent with the development of the EUV platform itself.

Regarding immersion, we have completed the qualification of our second generation NXT which will set a new throughput and overlay benchmark of, respectively, 200 wafers per hour plus and 4 nanometer on product overlay.

We are also strengthening our suite of holistic lithography software and hardware products to enable process windows enlargement, process drift management and machine matching.

We are planning the introduction of our third generation NXT at the end of 2012 with the next level of performance, throughput and overlay.

Regarding EUV, as you know we've shipped six EUV pre-production NXE3100 systems.

And integration has begun on the 3300 production too, [slated] for delivery starting in H2, 2012.

We can claim today two significant accomplishments in EUV.

First, we have stabilized the throughput of the current NXE3100s in the field to about five to seven wafers per hour, thus enabling the customer recipe development in infrastructure qualification, particularly in mask making.

More than 5,000 wafers have now been processed, and customers have imaged down to 16 nanometer with a single exposure capability, accumulating therefore valuable experience in a number of cycles of learning.

The second achievement in [this space] we have made progress on the different work packages, advancing the development of the source, and have been able to address and fix the number of technology limiters.

We confirm our roadmap therefore to achieve proof of stable throughput of 60 wafers per hour in the field in the summer of 2012, and 125 wafers per hour, which is our target, one year later.

We have started the process of order taking of the [match] -- next batch of system, a process that we hope to close by June.

The systems of this next new batch of orders will add to the 11 systems that we have already booked.

As also mentioned a number of times, ASML revenues opportunity in selling EUV technology, or the alternative multiple patterning immersion technology, or a mixture of both technologies for different layers, as we mentioned, will be similar during the transition period.

And, therefore, we put equal emphasis on both technologies, allowing our customers to choose the most appropriate technology for the respective lithography layers.

In summary, we are encouraged by the insight that we have gained on the first half of 2012, and allow us to sustain a large quarterly R&D investment, which in turn will support our secular growth well into the future.

With this, Peter and I will be pleased to take your questions.

Thank you, Eric and Peter.

Ladies and gentlemen, the operator will instruct you momentarily on the protocol for the Q&A session.

But beforehand I'd like to ask you to kindly limit yourself to one question with one short follow up if necessary.

This will allow us to get to as many callers as possible.

Now operator, if we could have your instructions and then the first question please.

(Operator Instructions).

Gunnar Plagge, Citigroup.

I was just wondering whether you guys could give us a little bit more color on 2012.

Fundamental demand seems pretty strong; 12 months ago, although I admit in a different macro context, we were talking about EUR5.5 billion sales maybe this year.

We have very aggressive order behavior, and we have EUV shipments kicking in, in the second half, so I was just wondering to what extent could H2 be flat or maybe even slight up on H1, if you could comment on that?

I think there is, of course, a reason why we stick to the six months, because we have visibility to the six months.

And the reason is that -- basically what we do here, we have a top-down simulation based on forecasted growth numbers from some of the analysts -- companies like iSuppli -- and then we do a simulation which is top down.

And we corroborate that with the bottom-up that customers are giving us.

And when that is within a reasonable of each other then we feel comfortable enough to go out and to give you guidance.

This is what we did last year, so that -- actually customers gave us 12 months so we could corroborate this, and gave you 12 months.

Now what we are doing, of course, the market is a bit more uncertain; I talk about the macroeconomics, so customers give us six months so we can corroborate six months.

And this is what we do, so not more color in that sense.

The only thing is, and that is what I repeat what I said in my introductory statements, is that when we look at the order backlog it is more skewed towards Logic, which actually means that Logic will be an important element for us to ship in the first six months; and NAND still for 2012 shows good bit growth numbers which actually needs to be supported.

We know [the] shrink roadmaps.

And you could say the [outlier] is a bit DRAM market today, because it's not good.

But, clearly, we have then had 2011 and '12 as not very good DRAM years, and what we are currently seeing in terms of expectation of bit growth in 2013 for DRAM is actually significantly up.

That needs to be supported, so I would say that is an opportunity.

I think that is -- but that opportunity is clearly not for the first six months.

I think that is kind of the color which I would like to give you, and stay with that, because we simply don't know more.

Okay, thanks.

And maybe as a follow-up, I think your main competitor recently extended their modern wafer stage handling system from cutting edge to capacity tools.

And I was just wondering to what extent you would expect an impact on your capacity tool opportunities going forward, and to what extent this reflects also a more mature handling system from your competitor compared maybe to your TWINSCAN system.

Thank you.

Yes, I understand that our competitor has made improvements.

In fact one of the competitors is working on I-Line area and the other competitor is looking on trying to improve a bit on the ArF dry area, and I wonder if they will try to use some of that into the KrF arena.

But we still believe that our products have a number of advantages still on paper.

And in reality the issue of what we call a machine-matching become even much more of a problem.

So if you have a leading technology machine in your factory, and then you have to process multiple layers, and you use a KrF, or an ArF immersion, or an ArF dry, you would prefer these machines to be matching your state of the art machinery.

And it is usually better, or easier, to use it -- to use the same supplier to do so.

So, indeed, we are not worried.

Thanks.

Simon Schafer, Goldman Sachs & Co.

I was wondering, Eric, on your (inaudible) as it were, in terms of supply and demand in the foundry industry.

I guess the premise of the question is, it seems like both the Intel and the ARM eco-systems are spending aggressively at the same time and pace.

So I just wondered what you felt may be the risks and balances are surrounding foundry spend as you go into the second half, just because there seems to be a lot of spending going on at the same time from both eco-systems.

At this moment, the foundry huge investment that we are seeing is mainly due to growth in 30 nanometer -- build up faster than expected of 28 nanometer, and preparation of the R&D of 20 nanometer.

On the preparation of R&D for 20 nanometer; this is irrelevant -- your question is irrelevant in that case.

There is a critical mass of investment that they have to do no matter what so that they are present in the business.

In the 28 nanometer, what's happening at this moment is even if you would consider an aggressive build, this aggressive build is still very small to a full [load].

It's just a ramp, so it's good for us; in fact, it sustains nicely H1, but the numbers are nowhere near huge.

To the fight of -- at this moment would be on capacity; do they build too much capacity on the 30 nanometer?

And I would say at this point on that one, Intel is not present in that segment; Intel plans to be present in the future segment.

So in others terms your question would be probably valid at the next big batch of orders we may receive from Logic.

At this point there could be a question of a, quote on quote, double-booking.

Got it; that's clear, thank you.

And my second question would be, just in terms of this potential for reverse stock splits that you've outlined.

In the past I think the parameter that you've always put forward is to talk about some sort of desirable net cash level I guess, including some of the prepayments and so on for the EUV ramp.

I just wondered what that range was, so just to get -- we get a sense as to when you may, in reality, start getting more aggressive in a potential redistribution to shareholders.

Thank you.

Yes, you are correct.

We need a certain level of minimum cash.

We used to -- a couple of years ago, we used to say it was EUR1 billion.

Now we're a bigger company so that is, indeed, a bit higher.

But where we are today, the EUR2.7 billion -- and actually, also having used part of those prepayments, so that prepayment balance is actually going down; and the fact that, clearly, we will be profitable -- very nicely profitable, means that we will generate also cash throughout 2012.

That means that, like I said earlier, under the maximum we can distribute under the withholding tax rules, there's about EUR500 million; EUR200 million dividend, so EUR700 million we can easily distribute.

On top of that, we have that capability -- starting from this EUR2.7 billion the fact that we will generate cash, that the balance of the prepayments of the EUV is shrinking, because we're using that money to build up working capital, means that we will have, indeed, enough cash opportunity taking into account a minimum cash level, which will be above the EUR1 billion level.

But it will be still lower than EUR2 billion.

So there will be enough capability if you do all your math, to say that there is still an opportunity for us to do something substantial.

Okay, great, Peter; thanks so much.

Gareth Jenkins.

It's UBS.

Just a quick one on, you've previously talked about very strong layer growth in 2011.

I just wonder what you saw the layer growth at and what you think that would be in 2012.

And I guess the follow-up is a related one; just the percentage of ordering that you see in Q4 and Q1 that's related to shrink versus capacity.

Thank you.

We would have -- on the former, I cannot really be too quantitative, but we should follow up on the question.

But qualitatively, NAND will see, 2011/2012, no layer growth.

It's stable on that sense.

So we are shipping and we expect to ship more in NAND, because the business is booming, but not because the technology is overcomplicated.

In the Logic arena, however, and in the DRAM arena, this still continues with one or two layers more on average, if I'm not mistaken, which would make it 15-ish-% -- no, sorry, it's more than that.

In DRAM that's correct, so 10%/15% more layers.

And in Logic, the numbers of critical layers are much larger, and I would prefer not to quote you myself, because I may be wrong, so we will follow that on you.

So the big layer driver in 2012 is, indeed, Logic, followed closely by DRAM and NAND not so much, which is good, by the way.

That means in 2013, we expect the next NAND problem, if you know what I mean, an opportunity; that the critical layers in NAND will become a problem, requires more lithography.

Yes, there was another question of you asked, Gareth, you asked the question of the percentage ordering shrink versus capacity.

At this moment, so -- that's usually a complicated question, because we have -- you've seen, indeed, some capacity due to -- because we are shipping KrF; you've seen this in the order book.

So there is indeed capacity but, surprisingly, this capacity is for the big node, for the new node.

So we've got -- two years ago, when we had the capacity surge, if you remember, we had a good news for six months/nine months about 65 nanometers.

That was a huge capacity business due to China at the time, if you remember.

This is not happening today.

In fact, if you want to see in a crystal ball, I think this will be an engine of growth for us in 2013 or 2014.

So we're going to have, in 2013/2014 a number of, I would say, call it, traditional designs like automotive designs.

We will shrink from 90 nanometers to something like 40 nanometers or something.

And there is a question in the industry whether this 90 nanometers -- or 65 nanometers/90 nanometers will shrink to 30 nanometers/40 nanometers or something like this.

That is, in other terms, a way of saying in Logic, there will be a wave of capacity entries into -- by transfer of the traditional IDMs, like ST and XP, Freescales, Infineon, etc., into the Foundry.

So you will have that.

This is not happening today.

This will be happening in the future and that's good news.

This is an engine of growth of the future.

The capacity that you have today is because, for the first time in our history, the customers, in particular Foundry, are building up their early node, the new node faster than usual.

I don't remember the exact historical curve, but when you ramp at 28 nanometers, you would expect to ramp say 2% of your capacity for one year.

And you go 5%, 5%, then you go 10%, then you go 15%, 20%; so it takes forever to get to this.

At this moment, and this was the question related to the competition between the architectures, this new node, 28 nanometers, which [would be fundamental], is being built at the same time, with more capacity, than I would say we would have expected from a historical standard.

So we were concerned about that.

But when you ask the question to our customers, you have a list of design wins and a list of hungry customers in the areas of portables in general; smartphones, tablets, etc., and all these devices, which create a need to ramp these early nodes faster than ever in history.

And, indeed, there is a question about whether that's too much.

But as I say, it's so much at the start that it's not yet going to be a problem.

Very helpful, thank you, Eric.

Andrew Gardiner.

(Technical difficulty) development process on EUV, you've highlighted, briefly again, the process you've made in terms of imaging and with the light source.

I'm just wondering how the conversations are going with your customers and how you see them planning for the use of EUV over the next few years in terms of the critical layers that they will deploy that with.

And are you still expecting that orders should start to increase over the next few quarters for 2013 as a result of that?

Okay, yes.

The whole EUV question, numbers of facts; nobody would expect EUV to be in huge volume in production before 2014.

That is not changed.

I think -- I hope I have mentioned it before.

So we would build EUV into our structure between 2012/2013 by shipping, as we said, about -- could be one a month or something of this nature, but these are not really production; [it's production is] 2014.

So the real issue for us is to achieve the performance necessary for 2014, which we said is going to between 60 wafer powers or 125 wafer powers.

If we do 60 wafer powers, we have not so many EUV and a lot of immersion.

And if we have 125 wafer power, we'll have a lot of EUV and less immersion.

So that's basically the status.

We are well within this timeframe.

The problem, however, and the reason why our customers are not happy with us and we are not happy with ourselves, is we still have not enough data to prove this.

As much as we're happy to have identified a lot of, I would say, sub-projects to make [effort], we haven't been able yet to integrate all those sub-projects together so that you can immediately see the 60 wafer power.

We are able to show 105 watts.

We are able to show debris control.

We are able to show cleaning up capability of the collectors, etc.

But we have not yet enough experience; we haven't put everything together in the same machine to be sure.

So we still have an uncertainty point.

So we still think -- we are basically having a bunch of unhappy customers saying, guys, it is now time that you give us certainty.

We think that we can give them certainty.

It was my point at the beginning, in the summer, with proof of the pudding, proof of the 60 wafer power, which would allow them then to say, obviously, it's a go and then they would accelerate their own recipe development and they will get us under pressure for delivery.

So from now on until the summer, there is going to be question mark as to the credibility of our development.

And for us, the complication here is because we can't integrate all the equipment at the same time.

We have to go through hugely technical discussions with our customers to explain the progress of every one of the legs until we converge some time in the summer.

So that's the situation.

However, the progress is visible.

It's tangible, enough that, in fact, they continue having pressure -- significant pressure.

Tangible, first, because the customers, although unhappy with our 5 to 7 wafer per hour or so, they are able to do cycle of learning.

And that is fundamental.

So if you now talk to them and discuss about their mask shop, their activities to build up some wafers, the running in the process, issues that you'll definitely be -- always see in process development, and the magnificent photographs that you can get at 60 nanometers, which is also true, you get some excitement and you get some actions.

And you get some development on the six, or, in fact, the five machines; the sixth one is just, I think, ramping the first wafers.

So that's positive; that puts credibility into the project.

And that makes the customers develop.

The second part of the equation is that we have enough facts in our joint work with source providers that the customers are ready to potentially put more orders.

And this is what I announced in the discussion at the beginning; let's say, we're starting now to put the official letters out that say dear customers, this is the facts.

We are now ready to take more orders.

And we are offering [early] phases, which is three or six months or so.

And we offer a phase today, where we say, dear customers, we'd like to get now the next commitment.

And that will be commitment for delivery with a lead time of about two years.

So anything we take now will be delivered at early 2014.

Difficult to give you colors at this moment; the numbers of orders will depend, in some ways, with the level of data that we are going to provide the market.

I can tell you happily that today I think I've got an order in the pocket.

But we have refused to take the paperwork, because we want also ourselves to be sure.

So we will wait.

But we do have, indeed, a huge interest, which also confirms what I said before is whatever you -- we all say and be concerned about, there is a hard stop to immersion in due time.

So we are condemned to success at some point.

And, indeed, we can survive a period of time with a double approach, with multiple patterning, etc.

But the whole industry knows that we cannot go and continue [sleeping] the project.

And as I said, at this point, we feel still comfortable that by the summer, we'll be able to say, unfortunately, we now have to ramp with the hard work that it takes to ramp a new technology.

Thanks very much for the additional detail.

Mr.

Gardiner, we could not hear your Company name but it's Barclays Capital isn't it?

That's correct.

Okay, thank you very much.

Krish Sankar.

It's Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I had a near-term and a longer-term question.

In the near term, it seems like you're guiding flat sales into Q2.

And I'm just trying to think, how do we think about OpEx?

Is it fair to assume SG&A goes down in Q2, because you don't have the [buffer churning] impact?

And how do we think about R&D into Q2?

And I have a follow-up.

Yes, the near term is, yes, I think, the R&D is about flat to what we guide in Q1.

And the SG&A is on a downward trend.

Got it, thank you.

And then question for Eric, longer term, from an industry perspective, do you think we need to get EUV right before we move into 450 millimeter wafer size?

Or do you think those two can be done in parallel?

I'm just talking from an industry perspective.

I think the industry, everybody would tell you, and if not, get them drunk so that they will tell you, obviously, everybody expects EUV to be right before 450 millimeter gets in.

You are not going to call any customers or anything, but it seems now to be the obvious truth and for two reasons.

One, 450 millimeter does not offer you the cost savings, nor the performance capability of the chip, nor the power reduction requirements of EUV.

So 450 millimeter is palliative to the need to manage a cost structure of some sort.

So in other terms, 450 millimeter helps a company who says I've got a big fab and I'd like to use the square meters more effectively, to be honest.

And, of course, there is a cost of square meters and the cost of infrastructure in general.

But this is nothing to do with the 30% to 50% shrink factors of chips, which then allow you performance, cost and power.

So there is no debate at all in the industry that EUV is a fundamental, much more than 450 is.

The second thing that is of use to everybody -- as far as EUV is a priority obviously, the second thing is that you cannot do a transitions of the level of 450, which requires a complete change of the whole insides of the fab, with every equipment supplier aligned, in two years.

You can dream this, but it's usually impossible.

So what you do is you create noise and activities, and media, blah blah, (technical difficulty).

So you make noise etc.

to make the 450 process being developed.

So there is going to be activities for people to do some 450 prototyping etc.

But, in any event, such a process takes time.

And if even EUV would not exist, the 450 best insertion in would be 2016/2018 anyway.

So we've made that clear to all of our customers, which we said look this is the obvious, what do you think?

And I understand that we heard from everybody that the obvious is, in fact, proper.

We do EUV, this is a fundamental.

We will make it happen by 2013/2014.

Then, after that, we have the whole industry to plan to a 450 transition.

And a 450 transition will be done in a cost effective way, which takes some times.

So there is not going to be 450 before 2016/2018.

Thanks, Eric.

Sandeep Deshpande.

JPMorgan.

Just a quick question on what you're hearing from your customers, particularly from the Chief Executive Officers of your customers; that are they more comfortable, at this point, despite the uncertain economic environment to be investing in this?

That this is the start of a new cycle and not just a short-term blip in terms of orders?

And I have one follow-up.

At that level I would -- if I stigmatize a bit, there is no issues with the economic situation that are big enough to change the strategic investment plans of those large accounts.

Indeed, in Logic, as we said at the beginning, you're not impacted by the fear factor of the euro or whatever.

In the NAND arena, you are clearly not considering this as an issue, because you just want to have the capacity to do the new products like the SSDs and the [SIM] PCs etc., which are going to cover for your demand, your investments.

So that's not a problem.

In the DRAM business what you have is a recovery from the bad news of last year.

If you remember, last year, the DRAM vendors were basically telling us, and every one of us, that they were reasonable people, and they would build up just a minimum capacity.

And that's what they did at the beginning of 2011.

The bad news, however, tablet came in for the DRAM people.

So the tablet, basically, cannibalized the PC business somehow.

So the capacity installed in the DRAM business became too big for the product capability for the -- they were basically planned for a higher level of PC.

So today the DRAM people are waiting for the PC curve to get back, in order to recover the, I would say, trend, which makes then the installed based in DRAM cost effective, or proper.

And this is what Peter was saying by saying, well, we don't think that is happening in the first six months.

And there is a high chance that it does happen in the second half.

And, at that point, we would expect the DRAM industry to kick in.

But, indeed, the numbers of PCs being sold, which is the only, in fact, piece of macroeconomic that I probably brought to the call, is an uncertainty.

And, therefore, we do not want to call H2 on that uncertainty.

Thanks, Eric, one follow-up question on, in terms of what you've said in the past that the next peak in your revenues will be around EUR7 billion.

You've not put this on paper, but this is something we have talked about.

Do you think this is a 2014 phenomenon, when you start shipping EUV in clear volume, or is this 2015, 2016?

It's difficult too, because I promised the market to come back with the famous target size of the business.

If you remember in 2010 I said EUR5 billion in 2015.

And we did -- sorry, 2005 for 2010.

I said EUR5 billion for 2010, so we are at that level.

So now I'm ready to set up a number and you did quote something interesting on the phone.

But I would prefer not to mention it at this very moment.

I am waiting clarification of this EUV curve versus double patterning, because, for me, at this moment, for two years or so, there is no difference between double patterning and EUV in terms of economics.

The revenue will be about the same.

But beyond that, EUV has a huge opportunity of growth.

And I want to clarify that one with us achieving some technical results before I come to the market and say I am going to make another visionary statement.

The size of the Company will get to the next level.

So give me another week or two -- sorry, month or two, maybe until June or something hopefully where you would ask the same question.

Thanks a lot, Eric.

Satya Kumar.

Credit Suisse.

Just wanted to ask a quick question on inventories, I notice that inventory days and receivable days have increased.

I was wondering if you could add some color around that, and how you plan to [move] the 3300, and manage your working capital around that.

The receivable days, there's nothing going on there, only that the shipments were skewed most towards the quarter end.

So that they were simply not in there, that's a due day payment yet.

So that's no issue.

On the inventories we are building up 3300 inventories, you are right.

And that will only lead to sales in the course of this year.

So we will have to have, over the next couple of quarters, a build-up in inventory which is going to be relatively short term, because, like we say, we're going to start shipping those tools in the second half of the year.

But the work in process which is basically related to those sales, we will see this quarter and next quarter in the inventory balance.

But, like I said, it's going to be short term, so within 12 months.

All the other inventory elements actually like inventory days, on our regular inventory, on work in process, on NXT, and our immersion tools there's nothing really special there.

It is really 3300 build-up.

Okay, and then a question on the 3300 shipment profile.

I think, in the past, you might have said that your capability is to ship about one a month in the back half of this year and then you shipped [five of the 10 and back] -- 10 orders that you have this year, and maybe the remainder next year.

And I think, Eric, you mentioned that new orders will only be shipped in 2014.

So are you expecting -- how should we think about the 3300 unit shipments this year and next year?

You are a tough negotiator.

So, on paper, it is too early time.

But what I said is correct.

One a month-ish is the capacity.

We have 11 orders.

We will start shipping in the summer.

And if we get the orders, etc., you could see one a month.

But, on the other hand, being hugely cautious, these are highly complicated machines.

There is a difference between capacity and whether you can use the capacity and have no failures.

So if you do an Excel spreadsheet on 2013 you may not want to put 12.

You may want to put a factor of 12, so eight/10, whatever.

By the way, I don't know at this moment.

We are --

It could be 12.

It could be 12.

Yes, the capability is 12, and we have to be sure that we can execute them.

To be honest, I am not concerned about the market limitation.

And the 3300s will -- revenue upon shipment?

So, the -- yes.

(Laughter)

All right, that's simple.

Thanks a lot.

Mehdi Hosseini.

Susquehanna International.

I want to go back to EUV.

There's obviously an incremental confidence that is coming through the call.

Can you elaborate more?

Is this because your license vendors have been able to ship the 50-watt product; any other details that you can share with us as to what has caused this confidence?

Well, two factors, one is just a management factor, which says the reason why we got delayed (inaudible) by -- of 1.5 years or something is we faced a huge complexity on an area we didn't think there was as much complexity.

And this is a misjudgment that we made jointly with our suppliers of sources.

So when that was understood last year, in Q4 of 2011 -- in fact, 2010, we jointly worked with our suppliers on a restaffing.

And we multiplied the staffing by a large factor.

And then from there we cut programs into pieces.

So we have now much more visibility and understanding at the management level of each of the piece.

And in this business, on the one hand I'm going to say it's usually complicated; on the one hand I'm going to say it's very simple.

Every work packages when they are small enough you go through a process of checking.

And it's complicated so you can't really design it, but you check it.

So you make a prototype.

You check it.

And then you discover something.

And the discovery usually gets you a solution.

We are rarely, and at this moment, this is why I'm saying I'm not worried at all about 2014, is we are in situations where we think we have a bunch of small little things which do not work, but we can simulate them, emulate them, check them and discover problems.

So the good news is we have the staff and we have the work packages and we now have an estimate that there is no science.

That's the good news.

The bad news is, because it's a trial and error situation of multiple work package in parallel, we are not 100% sure of the timing of the whole convergence, which is what I said at the beginning.

So for instance, what we knew for sure is that at the moment, you raise the power into any chamber, you will create numbers of physical impact; whether your coating will react chemically to something else, weather etc.

So when that happens, you have to -- if you are lucky, nothing happens.

If you are not lucky, everything happens.

So you have to change the coating, chemistry; you have to change the weather.

And this is what the learning is.

So on one hand we are very comfortable that we have cut the thing in pieces.

On the other hand, we are annoyed by the fact that we're still in the learning phase and we cannot tell our customers there is another 10 works -- 10 months, or three months or so we have to do.

So yes, the body language is good, because EUV is not a monster that we don't understand.

And no, the body language is not so good, because I am also announcing that we are doing immersion and EUV at the same time, because we don't know enough to be sure that we will be able to have 100% of the layers on EUV on time.

Sure.

But has the upgraded light source been shipped to the customer site?

I imagine that 3100 was based on a 20 watt.

Has that been -- is in the process of being replaced by a 40 watt/50 watt?

Well, everything is done in parallel.

So you have a project on 105 watt; you have a project on 20 watt; you have a project on 14 watt; you have a project etc.

So all of these things have been demonstrated and, to be honest, all of these things are showing problems, and the problems are being worked on.

As I said, there is one which is stupid.

We put a coating and the coating is being destroyed, and we wondered why we had the coating, and we don't need the coating.

So now we are rebuilding a chamber without the coating, etc.

takes time, but we know for sure it's going to work.

So you cannot -- unfortunately, we cannot give you data which are serial like what you would want; do we have a 20 watt fully working in the full conditions with debris mitigation, with the transmission coating being in place with etc.

No, unfortunately we don't have that.

We have work packages, multiple people working on solving their own side of the problem.

Sure.

And just one quick follow-up, could we see a situation by summertime where, as EUV bookings start to be recognized, especially for 3300, that the ASP difference would enable ASML maybe for the first time to do better than the industry?

If this year's CapEx is similar to last year, front-loaded, could EUV make a significant difference for ASML when compared to the rest of the industry?

There is -- yes, the EUV build-up at the moment, we are -- we would give a complete green light with no clouds, and would see a huge booking profile and a huge billing profile within 18 months to two years from these bookings.

Indeed, that's one of the scenarios.

You also have a scenario that says we will voluntarily, with customers, focus on only one or two layers, and then the impact will be there, but not as large.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Jagadish Iyer.

Piper Jaffray; two questions.

First, I think, Eric, you made a comment in your prepared commentary; you mentioned about an updated NXT tool.

Can you walk us through the rationale for this please?

Okay, this is not a prepared script.

I do this on the cuff.

I am astonished that you thought that it was prepared.

I just wanted to know about the -- is it just a stopgap before the EUV or [more important]?

Yes, I'm going to answer your question.

So no, it has always been our strength to always cannibalize ourself, if you want.

We always put R&D into every project that we think has an opportunity.

And the reason we do that is for risk management.

So, for instance, today, it's a fundamental that all of you as investors understand that if for some strange reason we are delaying EUV by a major factor, we are still capable of delivering the same revenues for the next two to three years anyway.

So there is a fundamental in the Company when you are a single product company that you do not do stupid things that puts you into a situation of catastrophe of that sense.

Also, at the customer level, we are now, as you know, a fundamental supplier of lithography machines, so we have to have a solution to the need, no matter what situation could happen.

So we do have to cannibalize.

Therefore, even if I were certain that EUV would work, I would still have somebody doing an NXT version 2, or version 3 in that case.

Second point is be cautious; also, immersion is not dead.

When EUV happens, and imagine you put yourself, you transfer, you get yourself and this is good to answer Sandeep's question, what's the size of the Company in 2017/'18, we are going to have a huge number of EUV layers and you are going to have a huge number of immersion layers at the same time.

So the exciting bit here is that today I'm talking about either/or, and in 2018 I'm going to talk with, additionally.

We're talking about huge complexity that, with the two technologies, will be required.

Therefore, the NXT3 is designed so that it addresses the layers of immersion also of the future, of 2017/'18.

So in order to get there, you need to have a machine that runs towards 300 wafers per hour.

Don't quote me, I didn't say the NXT3 will do 300 immediately, but we have to start thinking about -- or get extra that can do that.

It has to be fully modular, because a machine that runs at 300 wafers per hour cannot fail, if you know what I mean; the impact on the factory would be so huge.

So we have to create machines which are 100% in action all the time.

And if they don't, we can save the day within 10 minutes; we can restart them.

So it's a huge concept.

And the third huge concept is -- and, by the way when the nanometers in 2017/'18 will be sub 10 nanometer for the resolution, you have to have an overlay, which will be potentially in the areas of 2-ish or whatever which now doesn't make too many nanometers.

We'll have to invent the picometers or something.

So it's a huge thing that we anyway have to do.

So what we do here is we do it a bit earlier than necessary, as a backup to EUV.

But this R&D will be useful for the next generation EUV until immersion to 2020/2022.

And in addition to that, you have to remember that double or triple patterning is not easy; it's highly complex and especially with the resolution going down.

So it means that the focus on the system enhancement products, which is the holistic litho product portfolio, becomes ever increasing important to us and to our customers.

So you could even argue that next generation double patterning without a good suite of those holistic lithography products is even not possible.

So that is good for the Company also, and adds significantly to the ASP and to, I would say, the margin profile.

Okay.

Just a quick follow-up on this one; memory customers were supposed to be the early adopters of EUV.

Given the weakening DRAM situation and somewhat of a cautious behavior of capacity addition by spending by NAND customers, how much of latitude would these guys have in terms of pushing out EUV until they find that they have to have a certain specification before they commit to it?

Well, first of all, I think we may have miscommunicated a bit; the two drivers segment are DRAM and Logic.

The weaker driver is NAND.

NAND is a simpler design.

So they are alternative to EUV to the longer.

So you have priority; it's DRAM then Logic.

If there is even a then, by the way, but okay, and then NAND.

The DRAM nightmare is, indeed, affordability, but look at the current structure of the market; you have numbers of leaders who do not have this affordability problem, but they do have the need to shrink.

So we think that the DRAM leaders would be usually happy that the market remains a bit difficult in terms of affordability, and that EUV would be available.

There could be a differentiator here for that segment.

And in particular, the DRAM node is the worst one to do beyond 20-ish nanometer or even at 20-ish nanometer.

This is not pleasant for the DRAM vendor at this moment.

Logic, you have a huge value creation with EUV, because if you do not do EUV, you have design restrictions.

If you have a design restriction then and are a foundry, you go to a customer and say, dear customer, I can do anything you want, but these are the rules now; you cannot do that, you cannot do that, you cannot do that, you cannot do that, you cannot do that.

And your shrink factor is 10% worse than the normal shrink.

That's usually not very pleasant.

So EUV will be driven.

NAND, they will do everything possible to do simple sales until they have to do EUV; that [we knew with this].

And we will force EUV in with a cost effective solution.

And at that point, we have a switch.

So the good news with NAND for us, until 15 nanometer is -- we can modulate our entry the way we want.

If we price EUV low, we get in; if we price EUV high, we sell more immersion.

So it's a nice opportunity.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to jump in before the last question and tell you that if you didn't get your question asked, that the Investor Relations departments are open for business afterwards, so feel free to give us a call and we'll try to help you out.

But we've -- so I'll advise you of that now.

We've run out of time so I'd like to, on behalf of ASML's Board of Management, thank you for joining us today.

And Operator, if you'd formally close the call, I would appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr.

DeYoung.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the ASML 2011 fourth quarter and annual results conference call.

Thank you for participating.

You may now disconnect.