Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its sales fell more than 18 percent last month from January, with market analysts attributing the decline to continued inventory adjustments in the global IC industry.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said that its consolidated sales last month fell 18.4 percent from a month earlier to NT$163.17 billion (US$5.29 billion), the lowest since February last year, when the chipmaker posted revenue of NT$146.93 billion.
However, on an annual basis, consolidated sales rose 11.1 percent and were the highest-ever for February.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, Bloomberg
Cumulative consolidated revenue in the first two months of this year totaled NT$362.23 billion, up 13.8 percent from a year earlier.
At an investors’ conference in the middle of January, TSMC forecast that consolidated sales would range between US$16.7 billion and US$17.5 billion this quarter, with the median figure of US$17.1 billion representing a 14.2 percent drop from the fourth quarter of last year, citing weakening global demand.
TSMC made the estimate based on a US dollar exchange rate of NT$30.7.
Its consolidated sales for this month would be NT$149.4 billion to NT$174.0 billion, according to the January estimate.
TSMC’s five top clients — Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Nvidia Corp, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), Qualcomm Inc and Intel Corp — have scaled back their orders as the impact from inventory adjustments appeared more serious than previously anticipated, foreign media reported.
Under such unfavorable circumstances, TSMC could this quarter see a sequential fall in consolidated sales of more 17 percent, one media report said.
However, TSMC has left its guidance unchanged.
In January, TSMC also said that sales in the first half of this year would fall by 4 to 9 percent from a year earlier, but with inventories declining in the second half, demand is expected to recover.
Sales next year would grow slightly in US dollar terms from a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Chinese-language media yesterday reported that TSMC had slowed the timeline for setting up a plant in Europe and shifted its attention to the possibility of building a 12-inch fab in Singapore, after the city-state expressed its willingness to provide more tax incentives and subsidies on water and power consumption than European governments.
The reports said the EU and Germany, Europe’s largest economy, had encountered bottlenecks in their budgets, sparking uncertainty whether TSMC’s needs, including tax incentives, can be met.
In response, TSMC said that setting up a fab in Europe to produce chips used in automotive electronics and specialty processes remained under consideration.
It added that it would decide where to set up production sites based on clients’ needs and support by local governments.
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