Bolstered by solid demand for smartphones, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday reported that revenue topped NT$100 billion (US$3.32 billion) for a sixth straight month last month.
Consolidated sales last month rose 0.4 percent from a month earlier to NT$103.68 billion, the company said in a statement.
The increase was driven by rising global demand for high-end smartphones, allowing it to post growth in a slow season, analysts said.
On a year-on-year basis, last month’s sales rose 32.8 percent, showing that the reduced number of working days because of the Lunar New Year holiday had little effect on the foundry company’s revenue, analysts said.
The increase in revenue also suggested that TSMC has yet to see negative effects from the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, and has led to lockdowns of many Chinese cities.
TSMC said its fabs in Nanjing and in Shanghai’s Songjiang District were fully back at work yesterday as scheduled after the Lunar New Year holiday, and that it was complying with epidemic regulations set by the Chinese government.
The chipmaker had been running its 12-inch fab in Nanjing and 8-inch fab in Songjiang 24 hours a day during the holiday, but non-manufacturing employees returned to work yesterday, it said.
TSMC said it would prioritize epidemic prevention at the two plants in the coming weeks and continue to follow developments closely.
The company last week said it was sticking to its first-quarter revenue forecast of between US$10.2 billion and US$10.3 billion in view of what it saw as the minimal impact of the outbreak.
The forecast was based mainly on strong demand for 5G smartphones as the world enters the 5G era, triggering waves of replacements, which should offset the effects of the typically slow season in the chip industry, TSMC told an investors’ conference last month.
Separately, handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) reported consolidated sales of NT$19.82 billion for last month, down 10.28 percent from NT$22.09 billion in the previous month.
On an annual basis, sales grew 22.02 percent from NT$16.24 billion, it said in a regulatory filing.
Last month's figure was the lowest in eight months and Taishin Securities Investment Advisory Co (台新投顧) said the coronavirus outbreak would impact MediaTek's business in the first half of the year.
MediaTek's sales this quarter is predicted to fall 13.9 percent from last quarter, as the epidemic would negatively affect market sentiment and downstream companies' factory reopening as well as brand vendors' new handset launch and mass production plans, Taishin said in a note.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
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