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Luke Kawa & David Crowther

ASML rises on revenue beat and rosy top-line outlook, outweighing slightly softer margins

Dutch semi equipment giant ASML’s strong start to the year looks set to continue after the company’s solid revenue beat, rosy 2026 guidance, and strong order book outweighed softer margins in the final quarter of last year. For Q4, the company reported:

  • Net sales: €9.718 billion (estimate: €9.57 billion). A 1.6% beat.

  • Adjusted earnings per share: €7.34 (estimate: €7.56). A 3% miss.

The guidance told a similar story, with a stronger top-line and marginally softer margin outlook.

For the full year in 2026, ASML management expects total net sales to be between €34 billion and €39 billion, with a gross margin between 51% and 53%. The analyst consensus estimate, as of 4 a.m. ET this morning, was expecting €35.1 billion, with an anticipated gross margin of 52.9%. At the midpoints of those ranges, the guidance is solidly above on revenue and a bit below on margin.

For the current quarter, ASML said sales would range from €8.2 billion to €8.9 billion, with the same gross margin profile as the full year (between 51% and 53%). Even the low end of that revenue guidance is above the Street’s forecasts, with Q1 consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg showing €8.1 billion in revenue.

The strength of demand for the company’s highly sought-after extreme ultraviolet lithography machines was underscored in its bookings, one of the most closely watched figures in the industry, which came in at €13.2 billion in Q4 — a blowout compared to the €6.8 billion analysts were expecting.

The company also announced that it would be cutting about 1,700 jobs in the Netherlands and the US, representing about a 4% reduction to its workforce, per Bloomberg.

ADRs of Europe’s largest publicly traded company pushed higher immediately after the print, though they have since pared some of those gains, currently up around 4.4% as of 4:25 a.m. That upward jolt adds to a strong start to 2026, with the stock up 36% heading into this report. The longevity and magnitude of the AI boom is spurring massive capital expenditure not just by hyperscalers, but also from the chip companies that supply the brains behind this build-out.

ASML and other semicap companies offer equipment that enables chip companies to make more chips. The Dutch company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography occupies a particularly important choke point in chip development by etching designs onto tiny wafers.

Back in July, ASML rattled investors by warning that growth in 2026 couldn’t be guaranteed. These results, backlog, and guidance suggest that those fears won’t come to pass, to put it mildly.

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Matt Phillips
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Palantir is a cash-spewing monster, but traders seem bored by it

Cash flow for days. Fast-growing profits. An increasingly rational valuation. Where’s the fun in that?

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Max Knoblauch

Hertz climbs on announcement it’s expanding its car sales to eBay

Rental car giant Hertz is up more than 4% on Tuesday morning, following an announcement that it will list more than 8,000 vehicles for sale on eBay (soon, possibly, to be Ryan Cohen’s GameStop’s eBay).

Hertz, which operates dozens of physical car sales locations across the US, partnered with Amazon last year to sell its used vehicles on the Amazon Autos platform.

Hertz Car Sales Continues Retail Expansion with Digital Showroom on eBay

Hertz, which operates dozens of physical car sales locations across the US, partnered with Amazon last year to sell its used vehicles on the Amazon Autos platform.

markets
Luke Kawa

Sterling Infrastructure spikes as management hikes profit guidance by 42% on data center building boom

Sterling Infrastructure is going parabolic on Tuesday after delivering blowout Q1 results that prompted management to significantly revise up its full-year view.

Q1 sales beat estimates by nearly 40%, with adjusted EBITDA exceeding the consensus call by almost 50%.

As such, the firm boosted the midpoint of its full-year guidance for sales by 20% and its adjusted EBITDA by 42%.

The construction company’s E-Infrastructure Solutions business is on fire thanks to the data center boom, posting revenue growth of 174% with its signed backlog also up 123% versus the same quarter a year ago.

“We’re in the early innings, but the projects are extremely big, they’re coming out extremely quickly,” CEO Joseph Cutillo said on the conference call. “And we see not only this year, next year, but what our core customers and key customers are talking about starting ’28, ’29.”

markets
Helena Cheng

PayPal tumbles as management warns of weak 2026 trends, says turnaround plan will take “a few months” to define

PayPal reported Q1 results that were modestly ahead of analyst estimates, but shares sank after management warned of seeing trends at the “low end” of its full-year guidance.

Key numbers:

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $1.34 (compared to analyst estimates of $1.27).

  • Revenue of $8.4 billion (estimate: $8.1 billion).

Management plans to cut costs and jobs, with new CEO Enrique Lores aiming to engineer a turnaround for the payments company, whose stock was down double digits this year heading into the report.

PayPal is seeking to accelerate its adoption of AI to cut costs and generate at least $1.5 billion in savings over the next two to three years, according to a statement on Tuesday. Per Bloomberg, PayPal is targeting a workforce reduction of about 20%.

“We need to recommit to the fundamentals. That includes becoming a technology company again,” Lores said during the conference call, adding that it “will take a few months to completely define our new plan.”

markets
J. Edward Moreno

Coinbase CEO: Company cutting 14% of employees

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company is cutting 14% of its workforce, citing volatile crypto markets and artificial intelligence, saying he is “rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it.”

The cuts will impact about 700 employees and will be “substantially complete in the second quarter of 2026,” the company said in a regulatory filing. The restructuring will cost up to $60 million.

Armstrong said Coinbase will have fewer layers of management and lean heavily on AI. He said that engineers and nontechnical workers at Coinbase have been able to enhance their work with AI already.

The move comes as the company is scheduled to report earnings results on Thursday. The crypto bear market has been a headwind for the company in recent quarters, with analysts expecting the company’s Q1 profits to decline by 58% year over year.

Shares rose as much as 8% in premarket trading after the announcement. The company is down over 14% since the start of the year through yesterday’s close.

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