ASML's Rally Gets a Second Wind as Wall Street Circles Back
Published on 08/04/2026 at 22:40 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The tug-of-war over ASML's share price is tilting decisively in favor of the bulls once more. Europe's most valuable technology company climbed as much as 3.82 percent to €1,484.60 in Tuesday's session, extending a weekly advance that now stands at 7.07 percent. The bounce follows a bruising stretch that had left the stock roughly 15 percent below its June 30 record of €1,748 — a reminder that even the semiconductor equipment giant's most loyal backers have had to sit through some serious turbulence.
What flipped the mood? Two heavyweight Wall Street houses stepped up within days of each other, each carrying a similar message: ASML's moat is intact, and the market has been too hasty in discounting it.
Goldman and Bernstein Put Their Names Behind the Stock
Goldman Sachs added ASML to its European Conviction List on August 3, with analyst Alex Duval pointing to improved visibility on planned capacity expansions. The demand drivers, he argued, are coming from logic chips and DRAM memory — the two segments where ASML's lithography systems are most deeply embedded. The bank also added Sika and Puig to the list while dropping Schneider Electric and Knorr-Bremse.
Bernstein went a step further, naming ASML one of its top ideas for the third quarter of 2026 with an "Outperform" rating and a price target of €2,500 — implying substantial upside from current levels. The firm also pushed back on a nagging worry that has weighed on the stock: the idea that Chinese manufacturers could close the gap in DUV lithography. Bernstein's analysts see Chinese systems as years behind technologically, noting that China contributed just 16 percent of ASML's revenue in the first half of 2026 — evidence, in their view, that the China risk is more narrative than numbers.
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The Numbers Are Doing the Talking
The renewed analyst enthusiasm isn't happening in a vacuum. ASML's second-quarter results beat its own guidance, with net sales of €9.3 billion and net income of €2.9 billion. Management responded by lifting its full-year 2026 revenue forecast to a range of €43 billion to €45 billion — the second upward revision this year. The catalyst is the same force driving the entire sector: an AI-fueled surge in demand for chip fabrication equipment. TSMC, ASML's most important customer, reported a 68 percent jump in June revenue, a sign that fab utilization remains high and orders for new machines will keep flowing.
Institutional investors are also putting money behind the story. Among the asset managers tracked, 22 hold the stock, with 14 adding to their positions and only 10 trimming. The consensus among the 32 analysts covering ASML is a "Moderate Buy," with 21 buy ratings and four strong-buy recommendations against just four holds and three sells. The average price target sits at $1,970.33, with Wells Fargo recently upgrading to "Overweight" at a $2,500 target and DZ Bank moving to "Strong Buy" in July. Goldman, JPMorgan, Bernstein, Barclays and Bank of America have all reaffirmed buy ratings with targets ranging from roughly $2,300 to $2,600.
Not everyone is paying full freight. One valuation model puts ASML's fair value about 38 percent below the current share price, suggesting buyers are paying a meaningful premium for future growth. And the stock's recent history argues for caution: it remains 7 percent lower on a 30-day basis, and at €1,484.60 it still sits 4.55 percent below its 50-day average of €1,538.66. With annualized volatility at 55.52 percent, ASML remains a barometer for sentiment around AI capital spending — for better and worse.
The China Question, Revisited
The competitive picture is more nuanced than the recent sell-off suggests. ASML's dominance in immersion DUV tools stands at 98.7 percent, and no Chinese company has yet produced a working competitor in the far more demanding EUV segment. The company coordinates roughly 5,100 suppliers from its base in Veldhoven, with Zeiss — the sole provider of EUV mirror optics — expanding its manufacturing by 25,000 square meters to supply ASML through 2040. The latest High-NA EUV system carries a price tag of around €350 million.
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Still, China is making moves. State-owned Shanghai Aishengna is expected to produce five of its own immersion DUV machines this year and around twenty in 2027, with SMIC, Hua Hong and CXMT as prospective buyers. Those machines currently reach 28-nanometer resolutions in single-exposure mode, with finer geometries requiring laborious multi-patterning. The spectacular debut of memory maker CXMT on the Shanghai exchange — shares surged 470 percent — underscores the capital and political will behind China's push for a self-sufficient chip supply chain. It's a development ASML investors will be watching closely, even if the immediate threat to the company's technological lead appears limited.
For now, the market is choosing to focus on what ASML has going for it: a near-monopoly in a product with no substitute, a guidance trajectory pointing up, and two of Wall Street's most influential banks publicly reaffirming their conviction. The stock also carries a quarterly dividend of $2.1507 per share, with the ex-date having passed on July 28 and payment scheduled for Wednesday. Whether the rally has legs depends on whether the AI investment cycle holds — but for a stock that has been whipsawed between record highs and double-digit drawdowns, a little Wall Street validation goes a long way.
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