Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday said revenue for last quarter met its earlier forecast.
The company’s third-quarter revenue reached NT$212.5 billion (US$6.47 billion), up 3.44 percent from the second quarter and matching the firm’s forecast of between NT$211 billion and NT$213 billion, partially thanks to the weakness of the New Taiwan dollar against its US counterpart.
Last month alone, revenue fell 3.8 percent to NT$64.51 billion from August and 13.8 percent less than a year earlier, according to a company’s statement.
Last month, the Hsinchu-based firm forecast lower revenue for this quarter, predicting the number to fall to between NT$198 billion and NT$204 billion. At the time, the company blamed the fall on weakening demand amid customers’ inventory adjustments.
However, TSMC said the inventory correction issue should be resolved this quarter, paving the way for a recovery next quarter.
Daiwa Capital Markets analyst Rick Hsu (徐稦成) said in a note on Thursday that TSMC may receive some extra A9 processor orders from Apple Inc this quarter as preliminary sell-through of the new iPhones looks promising.
In the first nine months, TSMC amassed NT$639.98 billion in revenue, up 18.5 percent from NT$540.29 billion in the same period last year. The firm expects full-year revenue this year to grow by a double-digit percentage from last year.
Smaller rival United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday said that last quarter’s revenue fell by 7.08 percent to NT$35.32 billion from the second quarter.
The contraction largely matches UMC’s expectation as it predicted that shipments and average selling prices would fall by 5 percent and 3 percent respectively from the previous quarter, due to the weak macroeconomy and customer’s high stockpiles.
Daiwa forecast UMC to follow the typical seasonality this quarter, with revenue contracting by low single digits from last quarter due to the prolonged inventory correction, Hsu said in the note.
In the first nine months, UMC said aggregate revenue totaled NT$110.98 billion, up 7.98 percent from a year ago.
Meanwhile, Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進), which makes controller chips for LCD panels, yesterday said revenue rebounded 4 percent last month to NT$1.77 billion last month from a 29-month low of NT$1.69 billion in August.
Vanguard spokesman Tseng Dong-liang (曾棟樑) attributed the increase to the favorable foreign exchange rate and a slight increase in shipments.
Cumulative revenue in the first nine months grew 1.85 percent to NT$17.84 billion, the company said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day