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ASML reported Q3 2026 results on October 14 and the stock's reaction tells a different story from the calm that preceded the print: the shares dropped 4.2% on the day and are now down 7.7% on the week to EUR 1,509.60, a sharper move than the muted earnings history suggested and one that lands in the context of a brutal few days across semiconductor equipment.
The peer group makes the scale of the sector pressure plain. ASM International fell 13.3% on the week and 6.3% on the day alone. AMAT lost 12.5% over five sessions. PDFS dropped 12.5%. shed 16%. was off nearly 10%. Against that backdrop, ASML's 7.7% weekly decline looks like relative containment rather than a company-specific verdict, though it is still a meaningful retracement from the levels described in pre-results notes. The prior week's thesis, that ASML's EUV monopoly was insulating it from cyclical peer pressure, has held partially but not completely.
The lending market has not changed its view. Availability remains effectively uncapped, with over 154 million shares available to borrow and no meaningful demand for them. Cost to borrow has actually eased further to 0.57%, down 14% on the week and 62% over the past month, confirming that bearish conviction in the borrow market is as close to zero as it gets. The ORTEX short score of 25.6 ranks in the bottom quarter of the universe and has barely moved in the past two weeks. Short interest as a share of the free float is negligible. Nothing in the lending picture suggests shorts are building into the weakness.
The valuation picture has shifted with the price. The trailing PE has compressed to 30.4x from 33x a week ago, and EV/EBITDA has pulled back to 23.8x, down more than 2 points over 30 days. Price-to-book is at 17.2x. These remain premium multiples for a semi-equipment name, but the compression is directionally consistent with what the sector is repricing across the board. The ORTEX factor scores continue to reflect ASML's structural quality: the dividend score ranks in the 97th percentile and the short score rank sits at the 96th, both reflecting the stock's status as a low-short-interest, high-quality compounder. The sector score at the 50th percentile is the one flag, suggesting ASML is no longer pulling away from the sector on a relative momentum basis.
Institutional holders have been adding modestly. FMR added 502,000 shares in the quarter to September 30, Capital Research added 674,000 and Invesco brought in 237,000. BlackRock, the largest holder at 7.2% of shares, added a further 82,000. Norges Bank and T. Rowe Price also bought. The direction of flow from large institutions has been consistent: net adding, not trimming, which contrasts with the price action this week. On the insider side, the most recent open-market purchase was a small supervisory board buy in July at EUR 1,556, above today's price but modest in scale.
With the Q3 results now in the market and the next earnings event not scheduled until late January 2027, attention shifts to whether the sector-wide repricing stabilises or deepens. The gap between ASML's still-premium valuation and the direction its peers are being marked is the number to watch.
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Open ASML on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data and reviewed by the ORTEX team. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
