We recently published a list of 10 Best Stocks to Buy and Hold For The Next Decade. In this article, we are going to take a look at where ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) stands against the other best stocks to buy and hold for the next decade.
Is Nuclear Energy Making a Comeback?
Nuclear plants continue to re-open, but the question stands, will the global supply be able to meet the ever-growing demand for clean energy? On October 1, Aniket Shah, Jefferies’ global head of sustainability and transition strategy, appeared in an interview on Yahoo Finance to discuss his stance on nuclear energy making a comeback amid the AI boom.
Shah shares that the nuclear energy boom is not surprising. Looking back, the United States signed significant partnerships to boost the supply of nuclear energy years ago, indicating that the value this sector holds is not unknown or recent.
He adds that the big tech companies are going to be primary catalysts and will influence the entire market. These companies will invest millions and billions in nuclear energy, making the transition easier for other companies to follow. According to Shah, some key investment areas would be small modular reactors and nuclear fusion.
Shah also acknowledged that the United States held a bipartisan view of the nuclear boom, explaining why regulations and acts in favor of nuclear energy are being passed at notoriously high speeds. While the building blocks of nuclear energy are coming together, Shah remains concerned over the execution. He highlights that the United States does not have enough skilled labor and resources to make the nuclear energy boom a reality and must work extremely hard to make it happen.
Nuclear Energy is Poised for Growth Amid AI Boom
One of the most opportunistic investment themes in 2024 is AI, the other is electrification, and both require a lot of power. The surge in power demand is in turn driving utility stocks. On October 4, Durgesh Chopra, Evercore ISI managing director, appeared in an interview on Yahoo Finance to discuss how utilities could benefit from AI-driven power demand.
Chopra highlights the biggest catalyst for companies like Vistra and Constellation Energy is data centers’ needs for a 24/7 source of clean energy. Therefore, nuclear companies must grab the opportunity and enter into long-term contracts to lock in future growth as soon as possible.
There are multiple projects in the pipeline in the United States, that add up to roughly 1.5 gigawatts of energy, positioning nuclear plants as the next big thing in energy. On the flip side, balancing supply and demand will be a key challenge for companies.
Despite the challenges, he believes that the market is well-positioned for growth in utilities. Utilities have not seen demand growth in the past decade, but things are finally changing for the sector. Overall, with inflation going down, the sector may experience significant tailwinds. Chopra also emphasized that growth in this sector will yield results in five to seven years.
Our Methodology
To come up with the 10 best stocks to buy and hold for the next decade, we sifted through multiple similar rankings and compiled an initial list of 20 stocks. We then ranked the top 10 based on their hedge fund sentiment at the end of Q2 2024.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A technician in a clean room working on a semiconductor device, illuminated by the machines.
ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 81
ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) is a semiconductor equipment company headquartered in the Netherlands. Companies use ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines to develop AI chips. EUV bookings for ASML increased by 56% year-over-year and total bookings increased by 24% year-over-year.
In the second quarter of 2024, ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) logged $6.91 (EUR 6.2 billion) in revenue and expects net sales to grow to somewhere between $7.47 billion (EUR 6.7 billion) and $8.14 billion (EUR 7.3 billion) in Q3 2024.
ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) believes 2024 is a transition year and will continue to invest in increasing its capacity and improving its technology to meet the surging demand in 2025. In June, the company partnered with Imec, a leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, to launch a new High NA EUV lithography lab in Veldhoven, built to develop equipment for developers of edge logic and chips from across the globe.
For its 2030 guidance, ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) projected between EUR 44 billion and EUR 60 billion in revenue, in its investor day meeting in November 2022. The company has an 83% market share in lithography, explaining why 81 hedge funds were long on the stock at the end of Q2 2024. Of those, Fisher Asset Management was the largest shareholder with a position worth $3.23 billion. Analysts’ median price target has an upside of 28% from its current level.
Polen Capital Polen International Growth Strategy stated the following regarding ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Netherlands-based ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) and Japan-based Lasertec play dominant roles within different segments of the global semiconductor industry. In both cases, shares rallied significantly in the fourth quarter of 2023, prompting our positions to grow as a percentage of the overall portfolio. We believe both companies will see demand for their products as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and soon high-numerical aperture lithography must be utilized to manufacture the world’s smallest chips. However, in our estimation, 2024 could deliver a year of less exciting growth for the semiconductor industry, which prompted us to trim these positions back.”
Overall, ASML ranks 9th among the 10 stocks to buy and hold for the next decade. While we acknowledge the potential of ASML as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ASML but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
