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Multiple Catalysts Prompted Artisan Value Fund to Add ASML (ASML) to Its Portfolio

Thu, Aug 21, 2025, 8:41 AM 3 min read

Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” second-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Equity markets faced significant volatility in the second quarter, fueled by the announcement and subsequent pause of the "Liberation Day" tariffs. Against this backdrop, the fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 5.99%, 5.96%, and 5.96%, respectively, in the second quarter compared to a 3.79% return for the Russell 1000® Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the strategy to know its best picks in 2025.

In its second-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks such as ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML). Headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) offers lithography solutions for the development and production of advanced semiconductor equipment systems. The one-month return of ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) was 2.09%, and its shares lost 18.45% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 20, 2025, ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) stock closed at $749.49 per share, with a market capitalization of $291.479 billion.

Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

"ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) is a Dutch manufacturer of advanced semiconductor equipment, with a near-monopoly in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography market. Every chip on every node on the planet is made with an ASML lithography machine. The world is consuming ever more chips, and the leading edge is moving to more complex architectures, driving capital intensity higher for manufacturing. ASML sells into this increasing demand with machines that allow innovation at the leading edge and ever-increasing efficiency in trailing nodes. EUV lithography systems are the only ones capable of producing advanced chips, with the smallest nanometer values. ASML’s high-NA EUV(high numerical aperture EUV) machine can cost over $400 million per unit and already has a decade-long roadmap with customers. With significant net cash on the balance sheet and a large backlog for arguably the most important machine in the world, we have little doubt ASML will exist on the other side of this trade war. When we took our position in April, ASML’s valuation was the cheapest in years, pricing in a slowdown from a recession and other turbulence."