Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday posted its first revenue decline in five months, reporting NT$72.28 billion (US$2.31 billion) for last month amid customers’ inventory correction.
Sales contracted by 10.48 percent from October’s NT$80.74 billion. However, compared with the same period last year, revenue soared 63 percent from NT$44.33 billion.
The contraction was not a surprise, as TSMC co-chief executive Mark Liu (劉德音) had said in October that “cautious inventory adjustment actions taken by some of our customers will bring slower fourth-quarter demand.”
The company could still post record revenue for the current quarter, thanks to strong demand for 4G smartphones in China and increased orders for TSMC’s advanced 20-nanometer (20nm) chips, Liu said.
TSMC, which supplies processors for Apple Inc’s iPhone 6 series, has estimated that revenue for this quarter could grow by between 4 and 5 percent sequentially to between NT$217 billion and NT$220 billion, raising its total revenue this year by 27 percent to a record NT$757.29 billion.
TSMC forecast that revenue for next year would grow by 15 to 20 percent from this year, thanks to strong demand for its 20nm chips, new 16nm FinFET chips and 28nm chips, as well as less-advanced chips from its 8-inch factories.
Barclays Capital Securities Taiwan Ltd is also optimistic that TSMC’s growth momentum would carry into next year, adding that the company’s current growth forecast is much higher than its previous forecast of 10 percent annual expansion.
Moreover, the Hsinchu-based company might increase its capital spending for next year to more than US$12 billion, compared with an initial estimate of US$10 billion made in October, Barclays Capital analyst Andrew Lu (陸行之) said in a report released yesterday.
This year, TSMC plans to spend US$9.6 billion on new equipment mostly to boost its 20nm capacity.
The brokerage downplayed the impact of TSMC’s potential market share loss to rivals in the 16nm FinFET chip market next year and in 2016, and raised its share price target for TSMC to NT$180 from NT$170.
The upgrade has factored in the seasonal weakness next quarter after Apple ends ramp-up of its iPhone 6 series, Lu said.
Barclays’ 12-month target price implies 32.35 percent upside from TSMC’s closing price of NT$136 yesterday, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
The brokerage also revised upward its earnings forecast for TSMC by 10 percent for next year and 11 percent for 2016, citing stronger revenue and margins.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
AUSPICIOUS TIMING: Ostensibly looking to spike the guns of domestic rivals, ByteDance launched the upgrade to coincide with the Lunar New Year China’s ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country’s most widely used artificial-intelligence (AI) app, the company announced on Saturday. ByteDance is one of several Chinese firms hoping to generate overseas and domestic buzz around its new AI models during the Lunar New Year holiday, which began yesterday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese partake in family gatherings in their hometowns. The company, like rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), was caught off-guard by DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise to global fame during last year’s Spring Festival, when Silicon Valley and investors worldwide were
RSS