Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is planning to boost this year’s capital expenditure budget by about 46 percent to exceed US$44 billion, citing strong customer demand for advanced technologies used in high-performance computing (HPC) and 5G-related applications, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said yesterday.
The plan marks a record spending for TSMC after the chipmaker budgeted US$30 billion for capacity expansions at home and overseas fabs last year.
TSMC is planning to allocate about 80 percent of this year’s capital spending for advanced chip capacity expansion including 2-nanometer, 3-nanometer, 5-nanometer and 7-nanometer technologies.
Photo: I-Hwa Cheng, Bloomberg
The chipmaker reiterated that it is on track to ramp up 3-nanometer production in the second half of this year, dismissing speculation about a delay.
The chipmaker is seeing more customer interest in semiconductors using 3-nanometer technology than 5-nanometer chips, the most advanced chips available currently.
“We expect 2022 to be another strong growth” period, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told a quarterly investors’ teleconference yesterday.
“We are confident we can outperform foundry [sector] growth,” he said, setting a growth target of 25 to 29 percent.
The chipmaker would this year benefit from “a structural increase in demand fueled by HPC, accelerated digitalization and short-term chip supply imbalance because of COVID-19 and geopolitical tensions,” Wei said.
The revenue forecast factored in that one of its customers, an integrated device manufacturer linked to Intel Corp, is “insourcing” production after re-entering the foundry sector, TSMC said.
The chipmaker expects its capacity to remain tight through this year, given the increased use of chips in vehicles, PCs, servers, networking devices and smartphones.
Forecasting robust growth momentum, the chipmaker expects customer prepayment to pick up this year, after it last year received prepayments totaling US$6.7 billion.
TSMC expects the growth momentum to extend into the next few years, with revenue to expand at an annual compound growth rate of 15 to 20 percent.
HPC applications would grow at the fastest pace with robust demand for CPU, GPU and artificial intelligence accelerators, the chipmaker said.
TSMC raised its forecast for gross margin over the next few years to above 53 percent from 50 percent forecast earlier.
This quarter, gross margin would improve to 53 to 55 percent from 52.7 percent last quarter, it said.
Revenue is to expand more than 7 percent to US$16.6 billion to US$17.2 billion from the previous quarter, beating Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s forecast of a quarterly growth of 3.7 percent.
“Moving into the first quarter of 2022, we expect our business to be supported by HPC-related demand, continued recovery in the automotive segment and a milder smartphone seasonality than in recent years,” TSMC chief financial officer Wendell Huang (黃仁昭) said.
For the final quarter of last year, the chipmaker posted a profit increase of 16.4 percent to a record NT$166.23 billion (US$6.01 billion), compared with NT$142.77 billion a year earlier.
On a quarterly basis, net profit increased 6.4 percent from NT$156.26 billion, it said.
For the whole of last year, TSMC’s net profit rose about 15 percent to NT$596.54 billion from NT$517.89 billion in 2020.
Earnings per share were NT$23.01, up from NT$19.97 the previous year, it said.
Poland is betting on a flood of investments and technology transfers from Taiwanese companies to reengineer its US$1 trillion economy. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday that Poland will no longer be “just an assembly hub” as it pursues further investments from the likes of Foxconn Technology Group (富士康). The firm, whose full name is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), last month agreed to build electric vehicles (EVs) in the European Union nation and now could be a partner in a semiconductor venture, he said. The government’s aim is to boost manufacturing and the country’s high-tech chops in an era
Taiwan remained the sixth-largest net creditor nation in the world last year, despite a fall of more than 10 percent in its net international investment position (NIIP) over the year, the central bank said yesterday. The NIIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and its external financial liabilities. Taiwan’s external financial assets hit US$3.27 trillion at the end of last year, up US$275.75 billion or 9.2 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said in its annual NIIP report. The growth largely reflected an increase in holdings of overseas marketable securities by residents in Taiwan, as well as a
BAD FAITH LITIGATION? The two companies, owned by a California-based private equity firm, could be seeking licensing fees or a settlement payout with the suit Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) Director-General Liao Cheng-wei (廖承威) said yesterday he suspected that two firms suing contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for patent infringement are “patent trolls.” A patent troll refers to a company that buys patents not for manufacturing products, but to sue other companies for compensation, accusing them of using its patents. Patent trolls, formally called Non-Practicing Entities or Patent Assertion Entities, were responsible for more than 50 percent of lawsuits in the US last year, costing targeted businesses tens of billions of US dollars a year, according to the US-based LegalCharity Web site. Asked whether
RESTRICTION BREACH: ASML said that it denies ‘unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China,’ and enforces controls strictly US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in a series of recent meetings outlined concerns to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML Holding NV’s senior leaders that one of its top-of-the-line machines might have made its way into China, in violation of US-led export restrictions. In the meetings, Lutnick expressed concern to ASML executives over the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, people familiar with the talks said. EUV systems are used by firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to manufacture processors for the likes of Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc. ASML has never been allowed to ship them to China because of curbs
RSS