Few companies’ products are as critical to the modern world’s technological infrastructure as those made by ASML (ASML 3.75%). Without the chipmaking equipment the Netherlands-based manufacturer provides, much of the world’s most innovative technology wouldn’t be possible. That makes it one of the most important companies in the world, even if many people have never heard of it.

Over the long term, ASML has been a profitable investment, but the stock has struggled recently — it’s down by more than 30% from the all-time high it touched in July 2024. I believe this pullback presents an excellent opportunity to buy shares of this key supporting player for the AI sector and other advanced technologies.  

ASML has been a victim of government policies around the globe

ASML makes lithography machines, which trace out the incredibly fine patterns of the circuits on silicon chips. Its top-of-the-line extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines are the only ones capable of printing the newest, most powerful, and most feature-dense chips. No other companies have been able to make EUV machines thus far. They are also highly regulated, as Western nations don’t want this technology going to China, so the Dutch and U.S. governments have put strict restrictions on the types of machines ASML can export to China or its allies. In fact, even tighter new regulations were put in place last year that prevented ASML from servicing some machines that it previously was allowed to sell to Chinese companies.

As a result of these export bans, ASML’s sales to one of the world’s largest economies have been curtailed. This led to investors bidding the stock down in 2024 — a drop it still hasn’t recovered from.

2025 has been a relatively strong year for ASML’s business, but tariffs have made it challenging to forecast where matters are headed. Management has been cautious with its guidance for the year as it is unsure of how tariffs will affect the business. In its Q2 report, management stated that tariffs had had a less significant impact in the quarter than initially projected. As a result, ASML generated 7.7 billion euros in sales, which was at the high end of its 7.2 billion to 7.7 billion euro guidance range. For Q3, the company says it expects sales of between 7.4 billion and 7.9 billion euros, but if tariffs have a significantly negative impact on the economic picture, it could come up short.

Given all the planned spending on new chip production capacity to meet AI-related demand, investors would be wise to assume that ASML will benefit. However, the company is staying conservative in its guidance even as it prepares for growth. This conservative stance has caused the market to remain fairly bearish on ASML’s outlook even as all signs point toward a strong 2026.

This makes ASML a buying opportunity at its current stock price.

ASML’s valuation hasn’t been this low since 2023

Compared to the last five years, ASML trades at a historically low price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio and a forward P/E ratio.

ASML PE Ratio data by YCharts.

With expectations for ASML at low levels, investors shouldn’t be surprised if its valuation rises sometime over the next year, particularly if management’s commentary becomes more bullish as demand increases in line with chipmakers’ efforts to expand their production capacity.

This could lift ASML back into its more normal valuation range in the mid-30s, which is perfectly acceptable given its growth level, considering that it has no direct competition.

ASML is a great stock to buy now and hold for several years or longer, allowing you to reap the benefits of chipmakers increasing their production capacity. Just because the market isn’t that bullish on ASML now, that doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future. This rare moment offers an ideal opportunity to load up on shares of a stock that I believe is one of the best values in the market right now.

When the chief executive of the Financial Times suggested at a media conference this summer that rival publishers might consider a “Nato for news” alliance to strengthen negotiations with artificial intelligence companies there was a ripple of chuckles from attendees.

Yet Jon Slade’s revelation that his website had seen a “pretty sudden and sustained” decline of 25% to 30% in traffic to its articles from readers arriving via internet search engines quickly made clear the serious nature of the threat the AI revolution poses.

Queries typed into sites such as Google, which accounts for more than 90% of the search market, have been central to online journalism since its inception, with news providers optimising headlines and content to ensure a top ranking and revenue-raising clicks.

But now Google’s AI Overviews, which sit at the top of the results page and summarise responses and often negate the need to follow links to content, as well as its recently launched AI Mode tab that answers queries in a chatbot format, have prompted fears of a “Google zero” future where traffic referrals dry up.

“This is the single biggest change to search I have seen in decades,” says one senior editorial tech executive. “Google has always felt like it would always be there for publishers. Now the one constant in digital publishing is undergoing a transformation that may completely change the landscape.”

Last week, the owner of the Daily Mail revealed in its submission to the Competition and Markets Authority’s consultation on Google’s search services that AI Overviews have fuelled a drop in click-through traffic to its sites by as much as 89%.

DMG Media and other leading news organisations, including Guardian Media Group and the magazine trade body the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), have urged the competition watchdog to make Google more transparent and provide traffic statistics from AI Overview and AI Mode to publishers as part of its investigation into the tech firm’s search dominance.

Publishers – already under financial pressure from soaring costs, falling advertising revenues, the decline of print and the wider trend of readers turning away from news – argue that they are effectively being forced by Google to either accept deals, including on how content is used in AI Overview and AI Mode, or “drop out of all search results”, according to several sources.

On top of the threat to funding, there are concerns about AI’s impact on accuracy. While Google has improved the quality of its overviews since earlier iterations advised users to eat rocks and add glue to pizza, problems with “hallucinations” – where AI presents incorrect or fabricated information as fact – remain, as do issues with in-built bias, when a computer rather than a human decides how to summarise sources.

In January, Apple promised to update an AI feature that issued untrue summaries of BBC news alerts, stamped with the corporation’s logo, on its latest iPhones; alerts incorrectly claimed that the man accused of killing a US insurance boss had shot himself and that tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

In a blogpost last month, Liz Reid, Google’s head of search, said the introduction of AI in search was “driving more queries and quality clicks”.

“This data is in contrast to third-party reports that inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in aggregate traffic,” she said. “[These reports] are often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the rollout of AI features in search.”

However, she also said that while overall traffic to all websites is “relatively stable” she admitted that the “vast” web means that user trends are shifting traffic to different sites “resulting in decreased traffic to some sites and increased traffic to others”.

In recent years, Google Discover, which feeds users articles and videos tailored to them based on their past online activity, has replaced search as the main source of click-throughs to content.

However, David Buttle, founder of the consultancy DJB Strategies, says the service, which is also tied to publishers’ overall search deals, does not deliver the quality traffic that most publishers need to drive their long-term strategies.

“Google Discover is of zero product importance to Google at all,” he says. “It allows Google to funnel more traffic to publishers as traffic from search declines … Publishers have no choice but to agree or lose their organic search. It also tends to reward clickbaity type content. It pulls in the opposite direction to the kind of relationship publishers want.”

Meanwhile, publishers are fighting a wider battle with AI companies seeking to plunder their content to train their large language models.

The creative industry is intensively lobbying the government to ensure that proposed legislation does not allow AI firms to use copyright-protected work without permission, a move that would stop the “value being scraped” out of the £125bn sector.

Some publishers have struck bilateral licensing deals with AI companies – such as the FT, the German media group Axel Springer, the Guardian and the Nordic publisher Schibsted with the ChatGPT maker OpenAI – while others such as the BBC have taken action against AI companies alleging copyright theft.

“It is a two-pronged attack on publishers, a sort of pincer movement,” says Chris Duncan, a former News UK and Bauer Media senior executive who now runs a media consultancy, Seedelta. “Content is disappearing into AI products without serious remuneration, while AI summaries are being integrated into products so there is no need to click through, effectively taking money from both ends. It is an existential crisis.”

While publishers are pursuing action on multiple fronts – from dealmaking and legal action to regulatory lobbying – they are also implementing AI tools into newsrooms and creating their own query-answering tools. The Washington Post and the FT have launched their own AI-powered chatbots, Climate Answers and Ask FT, that source results only from their own content.

Christoph Zimmer, chief product officer at Germany’s Der Spiegel, says that while its traffic is currently stable he expects referrals from all platforms to decline.

“This is a continuation of a longstanding trend,” he says. “However, this affects brands that have not focused on building direct relationships and subscriptions in recent years even more strongly. Instead, they have relied on reach on platforms and sometimes generic content.

“What has always been true remains true – a focus on quality and distinct content, and having a human in charge rather than just in the loop.”

One publishing industry executive says the battle to strike deals to help train AI models to aggregate and summarise stories is rapidly being superseded by advances that are seeing models interpret live news.

“The first focus has been on licensing deals for training AI, to ‘speak English’, but that is becoming less important over time,” says the executive. “It is becoming about delivering the news, and for that you need accurate live sources. That is a potentially really lucrative market which publishers are thinking about negotiating next.”

Saj Merali, chief executive of the PPA, says a fair balance needs to be struck between a tech-driven change in consumers’ digital habits and the fair value of trusted news.

“What doesn’t seem to be at the heart of this is what consumers need,” she says. “AI needs trustworthy content. There is a shift in how consumers want to see information, but they have to have faith in what they are reading.

“The industry has been very resilient through quite major digital and technological changes, but it is really important we make sure there is a route to sustain models. At the moment the AI and tech community are showing no signs of supporting publisher revenue.”

DULUTH, Minn. (Northern News Now) – A panel gathered at UMD’s Weber Music Hall Friday to discuss the future of higher education.

The conversation touched on heavy topics like artificial intelligence, rising tuition costs, and how to provide the best education possible for students.

Almost 100 people listened to conversations on the current climate of college campuses, including UMD Associate Dean of the Swenson College of Engineering and Science Erin Sheets.

“We’re in a unique and challenging time, with respect to the federal landscape and state landscape,” said Sheets.

The three panelists addressed current national changes, including rising tuition costs and budget cuts.

“That is going to be a structural shift we really are going to have to pay attention to, if we want to continue to commit for all students to have the opportunity to attend college,” said panelist and Managing Director of Waverly Foundation Lande Ajose.

Last year alone, the University of Minnesota system was hit with a 3% budget cut on top of a loss of $22 million in federal grants. This resulted in a 6.5% tuition increase for students.

Even with changing resources, the panel emphasized helping students prepare for the future, which they said includes the integration of AI.

“As students graduate, if they are not AI fluent, they are not competitive for jobs,” said panelist and University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham.

Research shows that the use of AI in the workplace has doubled in the last two years to 40%.

While AI continues to grow every day, both students and faculty are learning to use it and integrate it into their curriculum.

“These are tools, they are not a substitute for a human being. You still need the critical thinking, you need the ethical guidelines, even more so,” said Sheets.

Following the panel, UMD hosted a campus-wide celebration to mark the inauguration of Chancellor Charles Nies.

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