ASM International

Last edit: 2024-12-03

In the year 1964 a company was formed, which would become known as the founder of European semiconductor industry. This company being ASM international or ASMI. The main factor behind it’s creation was that around it founding the mass production of computer chips had become somewhat economically sustainable and it’s founders saw it as a opportune time to jump in.

Some people who have also heard about ASML might be wondering about it’s relation to ASMI and there is one. ASML is the result of a company branch that split off from ASMI. Both produce machinery for the creation of chips, but yet both create different parts. It’s all very technical, but an extremely simplified explanation would be a factory mass producing bread containing chocolate. ASMI is the one supplying the machines to make the dough and ASML supplies the machines to mix the chocolate into the dough at the perfect ratio.

On a more serious note though, ASMI develops and sells semiconductor wafer processing equipment for the fabrication of semiconductor devices. If that sounds exciting to you then you can look up the specifics elsewhere.

The image of ASMI is a bit like ASML, the average person doesn’t buy from them and doesn’t really know what they do, but they know it’s an important company. Other than that most people find out about it from documentaries about the company itself, or the industry it’s in. If you’re a starting investor from the Netherlands, then you might have learned about it simply by it being a key contributor to the AEX exchange.

Like ASML, the company operated in a very hard to break into industry. This doesn’t mean that other countries haven’t tried, but the technical complexity of it’s product are hard to copy and although this gives no guarantees for the future, right now the company is one of the top players in the industry.

The company does pay out a yearly dividend, which seems to be in a growing curve over the last few years, but compared to it’s price, the return of investment is somewhat lackluster. This is again something that is similar to ASML, which also has a small price to dividend ratio.