The Order BacklogNarrow moat

ASML sells against an order backlog that is the envy of the industrial world¹: around €38.8 billion at the end of 2025, with committed orders stretching through 2027. Because its machines take many months to build and customers must reserve their place in the queue years ahead — planning fab investments over long horizons — ASML enjoys demand visibility that most companies can only dream of. The backlog is real money committed in advance by customers who know they cannot build leading-edge chips without these machines.

This backlog is a genuine competitive and financial asset. It smooths the notorious cyclicality of semiconductor equipment by carrying committed demand across quarters and years; it lets ASML plan production and investment with unusual confidence; and it signals the strength and durability of demand better than any single quarter's sales. When the AI build-out sent demand surging, the backlog swelled and orders reached further into the future, underpinning the guidance raises. The one caveat is that ASML has recently stopped reporting quarterly bookings, so the backlog is now a less frequently updated window into demand — investors must read the cycle through shipments, revenue guidance, and the installed base instead. But a multi-billion-euro, multi-year order book remains one of the clearest evidences that ASML's demand is not a quarter-to-quarter guess but a committed, visible pipeline of the world's most essential machines.