ASML: A Rule Breaker Test of Lasting Leadership

In the early 2000s, ASML (NASDAQ:ASML) committed to a technology that much of the microchip industry doubted would ever work. Extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, prints chip circuits with light so fine it has to travel through a vacuum and bounce off some of the smoothest mirrors ever made.

If you get it wrong, you've spent billions on a machine nobody can use. ASML made the investment in the early 2000s, knowing full well it would take many years to pay off.

Martin van den Brink, an engineer who'd been there almost from the start, kept pushing. He's said the company came close to bankruptcy several times in its early years. The bet paid off, though, and today, nearly every leading-edge chip comes off an ASML machine.

Then, in 2024, van den Brink and CEO Peter Wennink both retired. The people who made the bet left the building. Every Rule Breaker investor eventually has to ask whether great leadership can outlive the people who built a company.

In his book Rule Breaker Investing, David Gardner reminds us that behind every business are "the people who conceived, birthed, and run it." The Leadership score in The Motley Fool's Rule Breakers Primary database leans the same way and favors founder-led companies. Yet of the four top scorers, only Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), with a score of 99, still has its founder in charge; Jensen Huang has run it since 1993. Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE:TSM) (TSMC) at 98, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) at 97, and ASML at 96 have all handed the keys to successors.

The EUV bet always had more than one backer. In 2012, ASML's biggest customers, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Samsung (OTC:SSNLF), and TSMC, agreed to fund EUV research and took stakes in the company. That's smart backing of a rare kind: The buyers paid to make sure the machine would exist.

Since Christophe Fouquet took over as CEO, ASML has raised its 2026 forecast twice and now expects 43 billion euros to 45 billion euros in sales. The midpoint of that range is roughly a third above last year's target.

This week puts that to the test. ASML reports its earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 14, before the market opens. The company stopped publishing quarterly order numbers after 2025, so Fouquet's words now carry information the numbers used to. TSMC follows on Thursday.

C.C. Wei now leads the company Morris Chang founded, and when Time named Wei to its 2026 list of the world's most influential people, his tribute was written by Jensen Huang.

Elsewhere, succession is in the news. Stryker (NYSE:SYK) said last week that a nearly 30-year company veteran will take over as CEO in January. But Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY) went the other way. In February, co-founder Aneel Bhusri came back to run it. When a handoff stumbles, boards often call the founder back.

So on Wednesday, listen to Fouquet. Does he describe the next decade with the same stubborn patience that got EUV built? To trust a post-founder Rule Breaker, you have to believe the founder's habits have become the company's habits. As David puts it, "Look at the humans." An earnings call is where you hear them.

The Rule Breakers Team has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends ASML, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Workday. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.