Semiconductors have led industrial advancements and aided key applications such as personal computing, data centers, and cloud computing. As per PwC, Memory ICs were the fastest-growing semiconductor category over the previous 2 decades, with DRAM and HBM standing out. The broader DRAM market is supported by cost and scale, while HBM, because of its advanced technological requirements, reflects a high-barrier, closed-loop ecosystem.
Global Semiconductor Sales Rose 20.7% YoY in November 2024
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced that global semiconductor sales touched $57.8 billion during November 2024 month, demonstrating 20.7% growth as compared to November 2023 total of $47.9 billion and 1.6% growth as compared to the October 2024 total of $56.9 billion. As per the report published by SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International), the semiconductor industry is expected to begin 18 new fab construction projects in 2025. These new projects will include three 200mm and fifteen 300mm facilities. Notably, the majority will begin operations from 2026 – 2027.
In 2025, the Americas and Japan will be the leading regions with 4 projects each. Next, China and Europe & Middle East regions have 3 planned construction projects. Finally, Taiwan has 2 planned projects, with Korea and Southeast Asia having 1 project each for this year. As per SEMI’s President and CEO, investments have been fueling leading-edge and mainstream technologies to cater to dynamic global demands. Gen-AI and high-performance computing continue to fuel advancements in the leading-edge logic and memory segments. However, mainstream nodes have supported crucial automotive, IoT, and power electronics applications.
SEMI projects semiconductor capacity to accelerate further, with a 6.6% yearly growth rate to a total of 33.6 million wafers per month (wpm) for 2025. This expansion is expected to primarily stem from leading-edge logic technologies in high-performance computing (HPC) applications and higher penetration of generative AI in edge devices. Overall, the broader semiconductor industry continues to focus on building advanced computing capabilities, and responding to the increased computational demands of LLMs.
Moving forward, foundry suppliers are expected to be the leaders in purchases of semiconductor equipment. The Foundry segment can increase capacity by 10.9% YoY, increasing from 11.3 million wpm in 2024 to 12.6 million wpm in 2025.
Our Methodology
To list the 10 High Growth Semiconductor Stocks That Are Profitable Heading into 2025, we conducted extensive research and scanned through several online rankings to shortlist companies having ~10% revenue growth over the previous 5 years and TTM net income of at least $400 million. We also mentioned the hedge fund sentiments around each stock, as of Q3 2024. Finally, the stocks were ranked in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiments.
At Insider Monkey we are obsessed with 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).
Is ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) High Growth Semiconductor Stock That Is Profitable Heading into 2025?
A technician in a clean room working on a semiconductor device, illuminated by the machines.
ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) is engaged in developing, producing, marketing, selling, and servicing advanced semiconductor equipment systems for chipmakers. The semiconductor industry continues to experience a period of significant transformation, courtesy of healthy demand for AI capabilities and the push towards more advanced manufacturing nodes. The company is expected to benefit from these trends, mainly via the growing demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) used in AI chips. This is primarily because manufacturing HBM chips needs leading-edge processes, often at smaller nodes, which require advanced lithography equipment like ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML)’s machines.
Wells Fargo & Company increased the target price on the company’s shares from $790.00 to $860.00, giving an “Overweight” rating on 13th January. ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML)’s strong position in EUV lithography, together with continued investment in R&D, offers healthy potential for market expansion. Its work on high-NA EUV technology reflects the next frontier in semiconductor manufacturing, which assures even finer resolution and improved chip performance. As this technology matures and sees adoption by renowned chipmakers, ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) is expected to see a new wave of high-value system sales.
Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its Q3 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“During the period, we added to our ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) position in the face of recent volatility across the semiconductor sector broadly. As readers may recall, we trimmed the position in 4Q 2023 as we expected stagnating business trends to set in during 2024. Stagnation did occur, as did Al hysteria. We now foresee robust growth and believe ASML will see a significant ramp in business trends in 2025 and beyond. ASML’s business backlog and its customers’ persistent development of leading-edge chip sizes drive our expectation of rapid growth for the company in the coming years. In our view, shares trade at a very reasonable valuation for one of the world’s most competitively advantaged growth companies, particularly considering the accelerated growth we expect.”
Overall, ASML ranks 6th on our list of high growth semiconductor stocks that are profitable heading into 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of ASML as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued 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.
