By Toby Sterling and Nathan Vifflin

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Computer chip equipment maker ASML reported third-quarter results on Tuesday that surprised markets with weak bookings and lower-than-expected sales forecasts for 2025, sending the company's shares to their biggest one-day decline since 1998.

The company said that despite a boom in AI-related chips, other parts of the semiconductor market remained weak for longer than expected, causing companies that make logic chips to delay orders and customers that make memory chips to add only “limited” new capacity .

ASML, Europe's largest technology company, is the largest supplier of chip manufacturing equipment. Top customers include the AI ​​chip manufacturer TSMC from Taiwan as well as Intel, Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix.

Quarterly earnings figures were mistakenly posted on the company's website a day earlier than expected.

“We expect our total net sales to rise to a range of between 30 and 35 billion euros in 2025, which is the lower half of the range we provided at our 2022 investor day,” Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet said in a statement.

Trading in the shares was halted several times in Amsterdam and was down 16% at 668.10 euros at 1542 GMT.

The company's profit showed net income of 2.1 billion euros on sales of 7.5 billion euros ($8.2 billion), slightly above analyst estimates.

However, the company's incoming orders amounted to 2.6 billion euros, well below forecasts, which were between 4 and 6 billion euros.

ASML said that while demand for AI-related chips was strong, other market segments “took longer to recover.”

“This is expected to continue in 2025, which will lead to customer reluctance.”

A spokesman for the company said it was working on a full explanation of the results and an early publication.

($1 = 0.9172 euros)

($1 = 0.9173 euros)

(Reporting by Toby Sterling, Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)