Rising ASPs & Pricing PowerWide moat

The clearest financial expression of ASML's monopoly is its pricing power: the ability to charge more for each machine, generation after generation, and have customers pay without alternative. The average selling price of ASML's systems has risen relentlessly¹ as the technology has advanced — a next-generation High-NA EUV machine now exceeds €350 million, well above the previous generation's already-staggering price, and each step up the technology ladder commands a higher price still. This is not price gouging in the customer's eyes; it is the cost of access to the leading edge, and the customer pays because the alternative — being unable to make advanced chips — is unthinkable.

Rising average selling prices are the monopoly compounding its value. Even in years when the number of machines shipped grows only modestly, the rising price per machine drives revenue higher, and the mix shift toward the most advanced, most expensive systems lifts both revenue and margin. Because ASML is the sole source and its machines are essential, its pricing power is anchored not by competition (there is none) but by the enormous value the machines create for customers — a leading-edge lithography machine, however expensive, is a small fraction of the value of the chips it will print over its life. This lets ASML capture a growing share of the value it enables, machine after machine, in the purest demonstration of what a monopoly on an essential, rising-value technology can command. The prices only go up, and the customers, having no choice and enormous incentive, only keep paying.