As of 2025, the Average Social Security Retirement Benefit Check is $1,976. Could ASML Help Boost Your Retirement?

Key Points

• Future retirees should aim to maximize the return on their savings, but also minimize the risks.

• While no company is immune to competitive threats and obsolescence, ASML arguably comes close.

• Investors should remember that its business is highly cyclical, and that these cycles can last for years.

• 10 stocks we like better than ASML ›

There's good news and bad news for future Social Security beneficiaries. The good news is, when your time comes, you'll be receiving something. The bad news is, it probably won't be much.

As of this year the average monthly Social Security payment is a mere $1,976, or $23,712 on an annualized basis. That's much less than the $60,000 the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average 65-and-up U.S. household spends every year these days, even if the majority of those households are home to two (or more) beneficiaries or income earners.

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Then again, Social Security was never meant to make up the entirety of your income in retirement. It was only meant to be a part of it, ensuring everyone has at least a little something to live on. The program itself reports that Social Security income currently only accounts for between one-third and two-thirds of most recipients' retirement income. The rest has been and remains the net result of individuals' own savings. Obviously the more you can save and grow your nest egg while you're working, the better.

To this end, what's one stock that can help you achieve better-than-average growth of your personal retirement savings without imposing greater-than-average risk? Technology giant ASML Holding (NASDAQ: ASML). Not every in-the-know investor will agree with the call, pointing out that ASML shares are down roughly 20% since last July's peak while most other stocks are up.

Critics will add that this ticker hasn't made any net progress since this point in the year of 2021. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this weakness, however, that's about expire.

What's ASML?

It might be one of the most important companies you've never heard of; it's certainly one of the biggest. In simplest terms, Netherlands-based ASML manufactures the machinery that's needed to make computer chips.

Specifically, it makes extreme ultraviolet (or EUV) lithography equipment that utilizes intense light to "spray" layer a chip into existence. This ultra-precise process allows for the fabrication of tiny circuitry, which of course are also more power-efficient. And to say it dominates this sliver of the semiconductor foundry business would still be a considerable understatement.

Credible estimates of its share of the EUV lithography market put it between 90% and up to 100%, with any of this share that it doesn't claim as its own likely coming from competitors illegally using at least some of its intellectual property; ASML has thousands and thousands of patents protecting its technology.

The only problem? Its high-performance machinery comes with a high-performance machinery price tag. Its legacy equipment can sell for up to nearly $100 million apiece, while its previous-generation machines go for something in the ballpark of $200 million. And its newest top-of-the-line "high-NA" (NA meaning numerical aperture) EXE:5200B machine capable of creating 1.4 nanometer chips in meaningful quantities? It sells for around $400 million each.

In an economic environment that feels at least a little bit fragile, an industry that already has chipmaking tools that are good enough may balk at that steep price. And it is balking -- for now.

A business boom is brewing

That's the case for market-leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) anyway, along with Samsung (OTC: SSNL.F). Both could purchase ASML's newest foundry equipment, allowing at least the former company to remain the leading name in high-performance silicon production. But they're not buying. Taiwan Semiconductor's senior vice president Kevin Zhang recently confirmed that -- for the time being anyway -- his company will be sticking with its 0.33-NA EUV equipment, which is still proving adequate for most needs right now.

The only semiconductor name willing to make the pricy purchase of ASML's newest EXE:5200B device? Struggling chipmaker Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), which has been attempting to build a contract manufacturing business of its own. In Intel's case, however, the company may have felt it had little choice but to make such an expensive commitment if it was to have any hope of maintaining its status and stature within the industry; this purchase may be a Hail Mary pass.

The thing is, Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor, and the rest of the semiconductor business may also have little choice but to make sizable investments in these next-generation EUV lithography tools sooner or later, and likely sooner.

Image source: Getty Images.

Blame (or credit) the advent of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, mostly. For all the strides AI's electricity-hungry data centers have made on the power-efficiency front, it's still not good enough. Deloitte believes the growing number of artificial intelligence data centers in the United States alone will multiply the industry's electricity consumption by a factor of 30 between now and 2035.

As minuscule as the difference might seem between a 1.4 nanometer (nm) chip made by ASML's high-NA devices and the 3nm to 7nm chips that more commonly used equipment can currently manufacture, it matters. It matters enough to lead Standard & Poor's to believe the numbers of high-NA EUV machines ASML will make and deliver will swell from less than about five this year to roughly 20 in 2030.

Of course, the company will continue to sell more and more of its ordinary EUV lithography equipment during this time as well, as the need for less intense computing solutions also escalates from here. That's still just the beginning though. The world will forever need newer and better chipmaking solutions. ASML has a long history of delivering them.

Get in and buckle up

Now, ASML isn't always an easy stock to own -- clearly. Most technology industries are somewhat cyclical, but the semiconductor business is reliably a feast-or-famine affair. Don't be surprised to see more long stretches of subpar performance from ASML like the current one, when foundries like Taiwan Semiconductor or Intel always second-guess the purchase of any next-generation lithography device due to their increasingly steep costs.

Just don't worry about any of these ebbs and flows too much. Eventually, some outfit will buy the newest EUV tech in an effort to set itself apart its competition (like Intel just did), forcing that player's rivals to do the same if they want to remain competitive. ASML always eventually wins simply because its lithography machines are so well patented that it's easier and cheaper to purchase its chipmaking equipment than it is for a semiconductor company to create its own from scratch.

Of course, you probably don't need anyone to point out that the technology sector also tends to drive more long-term capital gains than any other sector simply because technology is the source of so many of the world's sociocultural advancements.

Should you invest $1,000 in ASML right now?

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James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends ASML, Intel, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short November 2025 $21 puts on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.