Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC,
But the result marked a decline of 10.7 percent from a year earlier, the company said.
Sales in the first six months of the year fell 6.7 percent to NT$114.17 billion from NT$122.38 billion previously, it said.
"Due to continued demand recovery from our customers, wafer shipments for June 2005 increased over May 2005. As a result, net sales for June 2005 increased by 3.1 percent compared to May," Lora Ho (何麗梅), TSMC's vice president and chief financial officer said in the statement.
In a further breakdown, sales in the second quarter rose to NT$58.52 billion from NT$55.65 billion registered in the first quarter.
When TSMC reported sales for May last month, it also raised its guidance for the second quarter, originally given in April.
"[We now expect that] wafer shipments will increase by a low double-digit percentage point. The overall utilization rate will be about 84 percent," Ho was cited as saying at that time in a company statement.
She said that "[second-quarter] gross margin will be about 40 percent, which is at the high end of our original guidance."
At an investor conference on April 26, TSMC had said it expected a mid-to-high single-digit percentage point, or 4-9 percent, sequential increase in wafer shipments in the second quarter, after an 8.8 percent drop in the first quarter.
The overall utilization rate for the second quarter had been estimated at about 80 percent, while gross margins were seen at 38-40 percent.
Separately, rival United Microelectronics Corp (UMC,
Sales in the first six months of the year fell 27.11 percent to NT$39.73 billion from NT$54.50 billion a year earlier, the world's second-largest maker of made-to-order semiconductor chips said.
Sales in the second quarter fell to NT$19.44 billion from NT$20.29 billion in the first; the first-quarter tally represented a 28.1 percent sequential decline.
At an April 27 investor conference, UMC said it expected its wafer shipments in the second quarter to June to rise by a low single-digit percentage point from the previous quarter.
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