Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue rose to a record in the first quarter on demand for chips used in smartphones, computers and vehicles, while a prolonged shortage helped to boost prices.
Revenue jumped 36 percent to NT$491.1 billion (US$17 billion) in the first quarter, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Analysts estimated NT$469.4 billion on average.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, Bloomberg
Demand for mobile phones, smart televisions and other gadgets from makers such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co remains robust even as consumers in major markets in Europe and the US exit COVID-19 pandemic-era lockdowns and work-from-home arrangements.
Meanwhile, a chip shortage is yet to ease — the wait times for semiconductor delivery grew again last month due to China’s COVID-19 lockdowns and an earthquake in Japan that hit production, research by Susquehanna Financial Group said.
TSMC has kept production running in China, even as many other factories suspended operations to cope with the local pandemic policy. The chip assembler said at the end of last month that it would rearrange production priorities to deal with a shift in demand caused by COVID-19 restrictions in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
TSMC was not planning to revise down its sales and capital spending forecasts for this year, chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) said at the time.
Shares of TSMC have lost about 8 percent this year, hurt by a broader decline in global technology stocks and China’s lockdowns, which have weighed on consumer demand and affected supply chains. The stock advanced 0.2 percent yesterday ahead of the company’s report.
Separately, contract chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday said revenue soared 34.66 percent last quarter to a new record high of NT$63.42 billion, compared with NT$47.1 billion in the same period last year.
On a quarterly basis, revenue expanded 7.31 percent, slightly better than the chipmaker’s expectations.
UMC expected revenue to rise about 5 percent sequentially, primarily due to price hikes, citing strong chip demand from makers of vehicles, Internet-of-Things devices and display drivers.
UMC forecast that revenue growth this year would outstrip the foundry’s sector projected growth of 20 percent in a best-case scenario.
Additional reporting by Lisa Wang
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
RSS