Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, yesterday said it would stick to its first-quarter outlook after posting a 7.6 percent revenue drop for last month from January.
Revenues decreased to NT$32.69 billion (US$1.11 billion) last month from NT$35.37 billion in January. However, the figure represented an 8.8 percent increase from a year earlier, TSMC said in a statement.
“TSMC’s first-quarter guidance as announced on Jan. 27 remains unchanged,” TSMC chief financial officer Lora Ho (何麗梅) said in the statement.
At that time, TSMC said revenues would be between NT$105 billion and NT$107 billion, a quarterly decline of between 2.85 percent and 4.67 percent from the fourth quarter of last year.
TSMC chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) said in January that customers were still lining up for the company’s chips made on advanced 28 nanometer and 65 nanometer technologies.
Citigroup analyst Roland Shu (徐振志) said TSMC’s revenues for last month fell short of his expectations, but he believed the company would hit the lower end of its revenue target.
However, Shu cut TSMC’s -earnings and revenues forecast for the second quarter by 5 percent owing to weaker-than-expected white-box handset demand.
Citigroup now expects TSMC’s revenues to grow by 13 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$118.8 billion for the April-June period and for it to increase its net income by 17 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$40.65 billion. The brokerage retained its “buy” rating on TSMC, with a target price of NT$86.
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