With a market cap of more than €265bn ($300bn), ASML has a good chance of being the biggest tech company you've never heard of. ASML is the world's leading supplier to the computer chip industry, growing into a $15bn+ a year giant since being founded in the Netherlands in the 1980s.
Tiny chips, big business
ASML makes various machines that allow chipmakers to make tiny computer chips. Most notable among ASML's products is its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machine, which ASML sells for more than $150m a pop and which allows manufacturers to build the kind of tiny integrated circuits that are commonly found in smartphones, cars and medical equipment.
Chip shortage
At the moment there is a global computer chip shortage which has hobbled supply chains for carmakers and consumer electronic companies. To put it mildly, that has put ASML in quite an advantageous position. Basically they sell the thing that makes the thing that everyone wants but no-one has — and ASML expects that demand to translate into more than $5bn in extra revenue this year.
