Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday said it would expand its 12-inch wafer capacity by more than 30 percent next year to meet customer demand.
To support that capacity expansion, TSMC is increasing next year’s capital spending to more than this year’s US$5.9 billion, which would represent a record-high investment on new equipment, TSMC chairman and chief executive Morris Chang (張忠謀) said yesterday.
HUGE DEMAND
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The “surge [in demand] was so strong that despite our utmost efforts in spending and ramping up manpower, we could not completely meet customer demand this year,”Chang said in a speech at the annual supply chain management forum organized by TSMC in Hsinchu.
Chang said emerging economies, such as China, have been a very important source of growth and recent news from developed economies, which have recovered at a slower pace, was encouraging.
US PICKING UP
Next year, the US economy is forecast to grow at an annual rate of 3 percent to 4 percent, returning to a normal growth range for the world’s biggest economy, he said, citing an unspecified projection from US economists.
That could explain why Chang has recently raised his outlook for TSMC’s first-quarter revenues.
Chang said on Wednesday that TSMC would have a better than seasonal first quarter, during which its revenues would be flat, or down 5 percent quarterly, compared with the fourth quarter.
TSMC shares yesterday jumped to a two-and-a-half year high at NT$68.30, the highest since May 2008.
TSMC’s 12-inch capacity would grow 37 percent this year and it would expand its capacity by more than 30 percent next year, Chang said.
GlobalFoundries Inc, which is funded by Abu Dhabi, has a more aggressive plan.
The chipmaker said earlier this year that it planned to double its 12-inch capacity within two years and triple it in four years.
CAPACITY RISE
TSMC estimated that its 12-inch capacity would rise to 2.52 million wafers after boosting operations with a new factory, dubbed Fab14, and the start of operations in another new plant, Fab 15, next year.
Last year, the chipmaker had a capacity of 1.84 million 12-inch wafers.
TSMC’s capacity expansion is based on its forecast for the contract chip manufacturing -industry, which is expected to grow 14 percent year-on-year next year in revenue, Chang said. TSMC would outgrow its peers, Chang added.
Overall, semiconductor industry revenues would grow 5 percent year-on-year next year, Chang said.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS