Macquarie Capital Ltd has raised its 12-month target price for shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) by 10 percent to NT$385, up from NT$350, on the back of a positive long-term outlook for the chipmaker.
The new target price implies a 13.6 percent upside from the stock’s closing price of NT$339 in Taipei trading on Friday. TSMC shares have surged 50.33 percent this year.
The Australian brokerage said that TSMC is expected to report strong revenue in the first quarter of next year, driven by rising demand for chips made using its 7-nanometer (nm) process for Apple Inc’s iPhone 11 series and the iPhone SE 2.
The second quarter of next year would likely be a transition period to the next-generation iPhone — for which application processor shipments would start in the third quarter — becoming a potential low point for TSMC, Macquarie said in a research note on Friday.
However, the demand for application processors made using TSMC’s 5nm process technology for Apple’s next-generation iPhones and Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) new Mate-series models is poised to serve as a new growth driver for the chipmaker in the second half of next year, it said.
“We expect TSMC’s revenue to grow 16 percent year-on-year in full-year 2020. TSMC’s 4Q20 revenue will likely be the peak again next year, following the normal pattern,” Macquarie analysts led by Patrick Liao (廖光河) wrote in the note.
TSMC last week reported that cumulative revenue for the first 11 months of this year rose 2.7 percent year-on-year to NT$966.67 billion (US$31.9 billion), which analysts attributed to solid demand for smartphone chips and high-performance computing chips.
Industry associations WSTS Inc and SEMI have predicted a recovery in the semiconductor market next year after a steep drop this year, while International Data Corp expects the consumer semiconductor segment to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.4 percent from last year to 2023 on rising demand for consumer Internet of Things devices and home-automation products.
As the 5G infrastructure development worldwide is progressing faster than expected, semiconductor companies are generally expected to benefit from increased semiconductor content value in high-end handsets, it said.
There is little doubt that TSMC’s advanced 5nm manufacturing process slated for next year will help it further secure its industry leadership and expand its market share, industry watchers have said.
“We estimate Apple will occupy from 85 to 90 percent of [TSMC’s] total 5nm capacity, and the rest will be assigned to new Huawei Mate models,” Macquarie analysts said.
For the second half of next year, TSMC’s revenue is forecast to increase 8 percent from the first half and 6 percent from a year earlier, mainly driven by Apple’s new iPhone models; Huawei’s 5G smartphones and 5G base station applications; MediaTek Inc’s (聯發科) 5G smartphone system-on-chip products; and Qualcomm Inc’s high-end 5G smartphones chips, they 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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained