Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, became the world’s eighth biggest company in terms of market capitalization after a rally in its American depositary receipts (ADRs) on US markets on Monday.
TSMC’s ADRs rose 0.73 percent to close at NT$192.21, boosting the company’s market cap to US$996.8 billion, the eighth highest in the world, passing US-based investment firm Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s market value of US$992.4 billion. Berkshire Hathaway is owned by investment guru Warren Buffett.
TSMC’s ADRs hit an intraday high of US$194.25 on Monday in line with a robust showing by artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp, which rose 2.43 percent amid continued optimism toward AI development worldwide, dealers said.
Photo: An Rong Xu, Bloomberg
Yesterday, TSMC’s Taipei-lised shares rose 2.39 percent to close at NT$1,070, pushing up the benchmark TAIEX by 316.75 points, or 1.38 percent, to end at 23,292.04.
TSMC’s gains contributed about 200 points to the TAIEX’s rise and sent the electronics index and semiconductor sub-index higher by 1.89 percent and 2.09 percent, respectively.
“Many investors have embraced high hopes that TSMC will report good results for the third quarter and give impressive guidance for the fourth quarter and the whole of 2024 at an investor conference slated for Thursday, due to the AI boom,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said. “It is possible TSMC will soon test NT$1,080, a closing high seen on July 11.”
“After the TAIEX passed 23,000 points, I expect the main board to soon challenge the historical intraday high of 23,650 points seen on July 17 as TSMC keeps moving ahead,” Huang said. “However, investors should remain alert over possible volatility on Wednesday, when October futures contracts will be settled, as foreign institutional investors still own a large amount of short position contracts.”
Turnover totaled NT$410.35 billion (US$12.75 billion) yesterday on the main board, with foreign institutional investors buying a net NT$33.43 billion of shares, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS