After semiconductor lithography equipment manufacturers ASML and Canon recently lowered their annual financial forecast targets, another lithography equipment manufacturer Nikon also announced recently that it would lower its annual financial forecast targets.
On October 31, Nikon announced that although sales of its imaging business unit, such as digital cameras, were roughly in line with expectations, sales of semiconductor lithography equipment were lower than expected due to the slow recovery in demand in the semiconductor equipment market. Therefore, the company's consolidated revenue target for this year (April 2024-March 2025) was revised down from the 750 billion yen estimated in August this year to 725 billion yen (still maintaining a year-on-year growth of 1%), and the consolidated operating profit target was significantly reduced from 35 billion yen to 22 billion yen (a year-on-year decrease of 45%), and the consolidated net profit target was also significantly reduced from 30 billion yen to 16 billion yen (a year-on-year decrease of 51%).
According to Nikkei, Nikon's revised net profit estimate is far below the market's expectation of 29.7 billion yen. Iwai Cosmo Securities analyst Kazuyoshi Saito said, "The sluggish sales of semiconductor lithography equipment are largely affected by the deterioration of the performance of its main customer Intel and the reduction of equipment investment."
It is worth noting that ASML, a major lithography machine manufacturer, announced its third-quarter financial report on October 15. Although the sales and gross profit margins for the quarter were in line with expectations, new orders fell 53% month-on-month, less than half of market expectations. At the same time, the sales target for 2025 was lowered from the originally expected 30 billion to 40 billion euros to between 30 billion and 35 billion euros. ASML believes that in addition to strong demand in the field of artificial intelligence, demand in other markets has recovered more slowly than expected, and some wafer fabs have postponed demand for lithography systems, especially EUV systems.
Canon's third-quarter 2024 (July-September) financial report released on October 24th hit a record high in revenue, but it lowered its full-year performance forecast for 2024. Among them, revenue was revised down from the original estimate of 4.6 trillion yen to 4.54 trillion yen, and consolidated operating profit was also revised down from the original estimate of 465 billion yen to 455.5 billion yen; the consolidated net profit target was revised down from 335 billion yen to 325 billion yen. As for the reason for the downward revision of the financial forecast, Canon said it was due to the appreciation of the yen exchange rate compared with previous expectations. However, Canon also lowered its sales target for semiconductor lithography machines this year from the original estimate of 244 units to 239 units.