ASML Stock: The Best Pick-and-Shovel Semiconductor Stock?

Last year, we did a series of articles to find the best semiconductor stocks not named NVIDIA (NVDA). Our search led us to five interesting semiconductors stocks, though we did not feel compelled to invest in any of them, especially since our Nanalyze Disruptive Tech Portfolio is already overweight in that category. That’s largely because generative AI hype has propelled NVIDIA into one of the handful of $1 trillion companies by market cap. Speaking of artificial intelligence: We also looked at ways last year to invest in AI with semiconductor stocks. Two companies, Synopsis and Cadence, are among the leaders that develop software for designing chips. We favored the former as an intriguing pick-and-shovel play on the semiconductor theme, while also scratching the AI itch to boot.

Yet our paying subscribers want more coverage on semiconductor stocks and have been urging us to cover ASML (ASML), a Dutch company that manufactures lithography machines, which are used to produce advanced computer chips at scale. A pick-and-shovel semiconductor stock, ASML has been posting significant revenue growth and solid gross margins – despite being a massive hardware company with a market cap of nearly $280 billion. It’s a complex business that comes with some regulatory risk, particularly thanks to a U.S. export ban on certain chip technologies to China (more on that later). But as one subscriber told us (by quoting us on gold-standard inv