ASML reports €11.8 billion sales and €2.6 billion net income in 2019

CEO statement and outlook

"Our fourth-quarter sales came in at €4.0 billion, bringing the total net sales for the year to €11.8 billion. We shipped eight EUV systems in the fourth quarter and we received orders for nine EUV systems. For ASML, 2019 was another growth year, mainly due to strong Logic demand for both DUV and EUV. We recorded an order intake for EUV of €6.2 billion during the year and saw the adoption of EUV in high-volume manufacturing.

"We expect that 2020 will be another growth year, both in sales and in profitability, driven by EUV demand and our Installed Base business. The Logic market is expected to remain strong in 2020, due to investments in 5G and high-performance compute applications. In the Memory market, our customers are starting to see the first signs of recovery," said ASML President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink.

For the first quarter of 2020, ASML expects net sales of between €3.1 billion and €3.3 billion, and a gross margin between 46% and 47%. ASML also expects R&D costs of around €550 million and SG&A costs of around €140 million. Our expected effective annualized tax rate is around 13% for 2020.

Final dividend proposal and new share buyback program

Supported by its long-term business plan, ASML will submit a proposal at the 2020 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (AGM) to declare a total dividend for 2019 of €2.40 per ordinary share. Recognizing the interim dividend of €1.05 paid in November 2019, this leads to a final dividend of €1.35 to be paid in the second quarter. This is a 14% increase compared to the 2018 dividend.

The total amount repurchased under the share buyback 2018–2019 program, which was closed in December 2019, was €1.6 billion, for which ASML purchased 9.0 million shares. The share buyback program of 2018–2019 was not completed for the full amount.

As part of ASML's financial policy to return excess cash to its shareholders through growing annualized dividends and regularly-timed share buybacks, ASML also announces a new three-year share buyback program, to be executed within the 2020–2022 time frame. As part of this program, ASML intends to purchase shares up to €6 billion, which includes a total of up to 0.4 million shares to cover employee share plans. ASML intends to cancel the remainder of the shares repurchased. This share buyback program will start on January 23, 2020.

The share buyback program will be executed within the limitations of the existing authority granted by the AGM on April 24, 2019 and of the authority to be granted by future AGMs. The share buyback program may be suspended, modified or discontinued at any time. All transactions under this program will be published on ASML's website (www.asml.com/investors) on a weekly basis.

Quarterly video interview, press conference, investor and media conference call

With this press release, ASML has published a video interview in which CEO Peter Wennink discusses the 2019 Q4 and full-year results and outlook for 2020. This can be viewed on www.asml.com.

CEO Peter Wennink and CFO Roger Dassen will host a press conference in Veldhoven on January 22, 2020, at 11:00 Central European Time, which will be accessible via live webcast on www.asml.com.

A conference call for investors and media will be hosted by CEO Peter Wennink and CFO Roger Dassen on January 22, 2020 at 15:00 Central European Time / 09:00 US Eastern Time. Details can be found in our website.