shrink with EUV, statements with respect to ASML’s applications business, including statements with respect to expected results in 2018, expected growth of the applications business and expected drivers of growth, expected growth in margins, continued shrink and drivers, and expected accuracy, defect control and performance improvements, shrink being a key driver supporting innovation and providing long-term industry growth, lithography enabling affordable shrink and delivering value to customers, DUV, Holistic Lithography and EUV providing unique value drivers for ASML and its customers, expected industry innovation, the expected continuation of Moore’s law and that EUV will continue to enable Moore’s law and drive long term value for ASML beyond the next decade, intention to return excess cash to shareholders through stable or growing dividends and regularly timed share buybacks in line with ASML’s policy, statements with respect to the expectation to continue to return cash to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, and statements with respect to the expected impact of accounting standards. You can generally identify these statements by the use of words like “may”, “will”, “could”, “should”, “project”, “believe”, “anticipate”, “expect”, “plan”, “estimate”, “forecast”, “potential”, “intend”, “continue”, “targets”, “commits to secure” and variations of these words or comparable words. These statements are not historical facts, but rather are based on current expectations, estimates, assumptions and projections about the business and our future financial results and readers should not place undue reliance on them.
Forward-looking statements do not guarantee future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, economic conditions, product demand and semiconductor equipment industry capacity, worldwide demand and manufacturing capacity utilization for semiconductors, including the impact of general economic conditions on consumer confidence and demand for our customers’ products, competitive products and pricing, the impact of any manufacturing efficiencies and capacity constraints, performance of our systems, the continuing success of technology advances and the related pace of new product development and customer acceptance of and demand for new products including EUV and DUV, the number and timing of EUV and DUV systems shipped and recognized in revenue, timing of EUV orders and the risk of order cancellation or push out, EUV production capacity, delays in EUV systems production and development and volume production by customers, including meeting development requirements for volume production, demand for EUV systems being sufficient to result in utilization of EUV facilities in which ASML has made significant investments, potential inability to successfully integrate acquired businesses to create value for our customers, our ability to enforce patents and protect intellectual property rights, the outcome of intellectual property litigation, availability of raw materials, critical manufacturing equipment and qualified employees, trade environment, changes in exchange rates, changes in tax rates, available cash and liquidity, our ability to refinance our indebtedness, distributable reserves for dividend payments and share repurchases, results of the share repurchase plan and other risks indicated in the risk factors included in ASML’s Annual Report on Form20-F and other filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this document. We do not undertake to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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