My 2025 ManagementPro article, Pawn or Pivotal Player (Dutch), has now accumulated 24 updates. Developments surrounding ASML, AI and geopolitics called for a second, integrated analysis. This follow-up reassesses the three scenarios, taking the latest quarterly results as its starting point. It also adds a strategic plan for each scenario: what can businesses, government, professionals and education providers do now to turn growth into lasting freedom to act?

The third-quarter results published on 14 October provide a compelling answer to the question of whether ASML can grow. The company reported revenue of €11.7 billion, net income of €5.0 billion and a gross margin of 57.5%. Its full-year revenue outlook for 2026 now stands at €44–45 billion.[1]

For the scenarios, the outlook matters even more. According to ASML, customers are raising their demand forecasts, primarily driven by AI investment. Some are expressing interest in orders for 2029 and 2030. The company expects its planned capacity for 2027 and 2028 to fall short of customer demand and is exploring further expansion.[1]

My interpretation: the commercial case for the growth scenario is strengthening. The strategic challenge is shifting towards the ability to deliver that growth while building influence and resilience.

An expression of interest is not yet an order; a forecast is not an achieved result. Nevertheless, the starting point of the 2025 analysis needs updating. At the time, uncertainty about recovery was central. We must now also consider the risk that growth could outpace the ecosystem’s ability to accommodate it.

A quarterly record also tells us little about the freedom to serve particular customers, the health of individual suppliers or the availability of housing and skilled people.

Growth and dependency can reinforce each other.

CONTEXT — What was the first article about?

On 18 July 2025, ManagementPro published Speelbal of Spil: Wat ASML’s Volgende Zet Betekent voor Brainport en de BV Nederland — Pawn or Pivotal Player: What ASML’s Next Move Means for Brainport and the Dutch Economy. Its starting points were uncertainty about recovery, supplier vulnerability and the tension between technological strength and geopolitical dependency.

Three scenarios explored developments towards 2030:

• Proactive: ASML, government, suppliers and education providers anticipate change together; Brainport capitalises on growth while retaining talent and knowledge.

• Adaptive: stakeholders adjust gradually; the ecosystem continues to function, but bottlenecks and dependencies limit its options.

• Reactive: late or forced responses lead to a loss of activities, expertise and regional cohesion.

The central question: will Brainport become a pivotal strategic player, or primarily a pawn in decisions made elsewhere? The article now contains 24 updates. This follow-up brings the signals together and adds an actionable strategy for each scenario.[2]

What the new figures change

The growth signals strengthen the commercial dimension of the proactive scenario. They do not, however, make the adaptive scenario redundant. A region can flourish economically while constantly having to adjust its direction to decisions made by customers, technology partners and governments elsewhere.

The reactive scenario also remains relevant as a stress test. Disruption does not have to begin with insufficient demand. It can arise when a company has plenty of customers but cannot supply or service them.

We therefore assess the scenarios across three dimensions: economic growth, execution capacity and strategic freedom to act. We do not assign probabilities that imply false precision. The figures support a direction; they do not determine an entire future.

The campus development illustrates this relationship. ASML began construction at BIC North on 8 September. Potential capacity for up to 20,000 workplaces is not a commitment to create that many additional jobs. The first phase, scheduled for 2029, will accommodate at least 3,000 employees, mainly teams relocating from existing sites.[3]

Meanwhile, the Dutch financial newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad describes how the proposed US MATCH legislation could further restrict deliveries and services to China and provoke Chinese countermeasures. This represents a potential escalation, rather than a comprehensive ban already in force.[4]

The strategic tension is clear: technological indispensability can provide bargaining power while also attracting political pressure. Revenue growth does not automatically resolve that tension.

Scenario 1 — Proactive: build strategic position and influence

In this scenario, ASML and its partners use the growth phase to build a stronger ecosystem. The assumption is that regional execution and European cooperation become sufficiently coordinated to manage critical dependencies.

The corresponding plan is a joint investment agenda. ASML and its suppliers connect capacity expansion with the retention of design expertise, systems integration capabilities and innovation. Governments link business development to demonstrable progress in energy supply, transport links, housing and quality of life. Education providers and employers establish multi-year learning pathways across vocational education, universities of applied sciences and research universities.

Within six months, regional partners should agree on a single agenda: what investment is needed, who is responsible, how will it be financed and which other decisions does it depend on? The Dutch government can work with European partners to align industrial policy, diplomacy and the development of European demand. That takes time and cannot readily replace existing global customers.

The trade-off is that joint preparation costs money before all demand is certain. Subsequent investments should therefore depend on customer commitments and the availability of essential infrastructure and services.

Early indicators: infrastructure delivered on time, retention of critical knowledge and suppliers able to invest without tying their entire future to one customer. If these conditions fall behind, expansion must be phased or adjusted.

For professionals, specialist expertise combined with an understanding of the wider system becomes more valuable. Education should help people understand how their discipline connects with production, quality, customers and international dependencies.

The decisive choice: are we using growth to strengthen the entire ecosystem?

Scenario 2 — Adaptive: preserve room to manoeuvre

In this scenario, trade remains possible, but its conditions change regularly. Businesses grow by continually adjusting production, services and investment. The region follows, sometimes quickly and sometimes through temporary fixes.

The strategic plan centres on flexible capacity and manageable dependencies. Within three months, management and procurement teams map vulnerabilities involving customers, countries, components and permits. For each critical dependency, they identify an accountable owner, a viable alternative and a threshold that triggers a decision.

Capacity is expanded in modular steps. Boards review investments and contracts against changing conditions every quarter. Financial buffers make it possible to absorb delays or changes of direction. Diversification also requires a commercial assessment: finding another customer adds little value if it undermines quality or specialised development capabilities.

Early indicators: repeated rescheduling, infrastructure and services failing to keep pace with growth, and suppliers taking on more risk without additional financial headroom. Also measure the time needed to switch to an alternative. If actual restrictions threaten essential activities, the continuity plan must be activated.

For employees, this means investing in transferable expertise: skills that remain valuable across different products, customers and sectors. Within a year, employers and education providers can establish concrete learning and career-transition pathways and assess how many people actually use them.

The decisive choice: which dependencies do we accept, and where do we develop an alternative?

Scenario 3 — Reactive: protect continuity and the capacity to recover

In this scenario, market access, services or critical supplies are actually interrupted. Alternatives are insufficiently available. Costs and uncertainty may then become concentrated among smaller businesses with limited reserves.

The plan must be ready in advance: protect essential activities, safeguard liquidity and retain critical knowledge. Operations and procurement teams determine which processes must continue and what fallback options are available. CFOs develop cash-flow scenarios; legal teams arrange rapid assessment and escalation when obligations conflict.

Customers and financiers can prepare arrangements to help viable suppliers through temporary disruption. HR and regional partners organise knowledge transfer, temporary assignments elsewhere and retraining. This helps prevent a temporary disruption from causing an irreversible loss of expertise.

The trade-off is that protective measures can tie up resources in activities with insufficient long-term prospects. Every temporary support measure therefore needs a review point and a threshold for restructuring.

Activation triggers: actual delivery or service restrictions, shortages of critical components and cash reserves that no longer cover the necessary bridging period. Success is reflected in limited downtime, retention of critical knowledge and the time required to scale up again.

The decisive choice: are we also protecting the ability to resume production after the disruption?

Three plans, one leadership responsibility

These plans may be needed simultaneously. ASML may display the commercial characteristics of the proactive scenario while European decision-making remains adaptive and an individual supplier is already under reactive pressure.

A practical approach for leadership is therefore to invest through the proactive plan, build flexibility through the adaptive plan and keep the reactive plan ready.

This requires a quarterly discussion that goes beyond revenue and vacancies. It should also address the feasibility of growth, concentrations of dependency, retention of expertise and availability of alternatives. Agree in advance who makes the decision when a threshold is reached. Otherwise, scenario planning remains a description of uncertainty with no consequences for action.

What other organisations can learn

The question behind ASML also applies to a manufacturing business, professional services firm, educational institution or public organisation: are we becoming stronger with AI, and are we retaining the ability to set our own direction?

Damies Future Intelligence offers an AI Reality Check for organisations in Brainport and beyond. It can begin with a focused strategic workshop informed by existing plans, practical examples and available data. We test assumptions about AI against what is actually changing in everyday work.

Three questions are central:

• Value: where does AI demonstrably improve quality, capacity or economic performance, taking account of the costs of checking and correcting its output?

• Dependency: what vulnerabilities arise around technology partners, data, contracts and changing rules? Can we switch providers or operate temporarily without the application?

• Human capability: what expertise, learning experience and decision-making authority must people retain to assess AI outputs and intervene when necessary?

The outcome can be an evidence-informed set of priorities: what to scale, what to adjust and what to test first. This includes accountable owners, indicators and decision thresholds. The depth of the assessment depends on the question and the available information; a workshop may also reveal where further investigation is needed.

In this way, an AI Reality Check connects technological ambition with strategy, everyday work and professional development.

What decision can we make today that will strengthen our position even if the rules change tomorrow?

English translation of the analysis updated on 14 October 2026, based on the published Q3 results. The investor call held at 15:00 CEST that day is not incorporated. The scenarios and proposed strategies represent the author’s analysis.

Willem E.A.J. Scheepers  Damies Future Intelligence

Sources

1. ASML, Q3 results and outlook, 14 October 2026.
2. Willem E.A.J. Scheepers, Speelbal of Spil, ManagementPro, 18 July 2025, with subsequent updates. In Dutch.
3. ASML, construction begins on the new Eindhoven campus, 8 September 2026.
4. Bert van Dijk, ASML dreigt klem te raken tussen de VS en China [ASML risks being caught between the US and China], Het Financieele Dagblad, user-supplied PDF; consulted on 14 October 2026. In Dutch.