⚠ Service Margins and Pricing Draw ScrutinyLow threat

High-margin, captive service revenue is wonderful for ASML, but its very nature — customers with no alternative paying the world's only EUV maker¹ for the upkeep of machines they cannot service themselves — is the kind of arrangement that can, over time, draw pushback. Customers dependent on ASML for the entire service life of hundred-million-euro machines have an incentive to resist price increases, negotiate harder, and press for more favorable terms, and in a downturn they may scrutinize every service euro. The stickiness that makes the annuity valuable also makes customers occasionally resentful of their captivity.

There is a mild regulatory dimension as well: sole-supplier service monopolies on essential equipment are, in some jurisdictions and industries, an area competition authorities watch, and a company earning monopoly economics on both the razors and the blades presents a broad target. Neither customer pushback nor regulatory attention has meaningfully dented ASML's service business — the value it delivers (keeping irreplaceable machines running) far outweighs the friction — but the annuity's dependence on a captive customer base means its pricing power, while real, is not entirely unconstrained. The blades are lucrative precisely because the customer has no choice, and that same fact sets a quiet, relationship-and-reputation limit on how hard ASML can press.