The chief financial officer of ASML has told Bloombergthat the lithography giant is well prepared for China's export controls regime on rare earth elements and technologies for their mining and refining. The company has long lead times for its advanced tools, so it has plenty of raw materials in stock to support short-term demand from its clients. What happens after the company's reserves deplete is something unclear, though.
"We have long lead times, and therefore, also in our supply chain, we make sure that we have the materials in that we that we need for the next couple of months," said Roger Dassen, CFO of ASML, in a conversation with Bloomberg.
Under the new export control rules China imposed last week, companies have to get an export license to ship such rare earth materials as holmium, thulium, or ytterbium, or products based on these materials, from China's Ministry of Commerce. Furthermore, China imposed its export controls beyond its own borders on products containing rare earth materials originating from China if their value content within that product is more than 0.1% starting December 1, 2025.
This decision of the Chinese government could essentially stop all the supplies of all rare earth materials and products containing them across the world, something that could harm ASML, which uses a number of them inside its DUV and EUV lithography systems, metrology tools, and inspection tools.
However, Dassen downplayed the possibility of halting production after December 1, saying that the company's supply planning and long production cycles give it enough flexibility to absorb temporary disruptions. Meanwhile, the company now has over a month to buy rare earth materials or components containing them before the new export controls regime is enacted.
Speaking of China, ASML re-emphasized that it expects demand from its customers in the People's Republic to drop in 2026 due to the revocation of fast-track VEU license exemptions for Micron, Samsung, SK hynix, and TSMC, as well as softening demand from local chipmakers.
"When we look at China, we believe that the demand of our Chinese customers is going to be significantly lower in 2026 than it has been in 2024 and 2025 when we had very strong business there," said Christophe Fouquet, chief executive of ASML, during the company's earnings call with investors and analysts.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
