The value of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) American depositary receipts (ADRs) reached a historic high on Friday, after the leading contract chipmaker’s Taipei-listed shares continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
TSMC’s ADRs surged 5.17 percent to US$319.61, valuing the company at US$1.657 trillion as of the close of the first trading day in New York this year, which propelled its market capitalization to the sixth-largest globally, surpassing tech giants such as Meta Platforms Inc and Broadcom Inc, data released by CompaniesMarketCap showed.
The jump, driven by strong AI demand and the company’s advanced manufacturing capabilities — such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate packaging — placed TSMC as the second-largest semiconductor company after Nvidia Corp.
Photo: Bloomberg
Nvidia remained the world’s largest stock, with a market cap of US$4.597 trillion on Friday, ahead of Apple Inc at US$4.021 trillion.
Alphabet Inc ranked third with a market value of US$3.806 trillion, followed by Microsoft Corp at US$3.515 trillion and Amazon.com Inc at US$2.421 trillion, CompaniesMarketCap’s data showed.
TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares hit a new high of NT$1,585 on Friday, lifting its market value to NT$41.1 trillion (US$1.31) last week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data indicated.
Ahead of TSMC’s earnings conference on Thursday next week, investment advisory firm Aletheia Capital (Hong Kong) Ltd in a note raised its revenue and earnings projections for TSMC for this year and next year.
“Regardless of CSPs [cloud service providers] prioritizing in-house ASICs [application-specific integrated circuit], AMD [Advanced Micro Devices Inc] gaining share, or Nvidia’s continual rapid rise, [they] all heavily rely on TSMC’s foundry services,” Aletheia Capital analysts Stefan Chang (張玄志) and Warren Lau (劉華仁) wrote.
TSMC’s revenue and earnings could more than double and triple from 2024 to next year, with the growth being driven by “capacity expansion, a richer product mix, a higher utilization rate and ongoing price hikes,” the analysts said.
Aletheia Capital also raised price targets for TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares from NT$2,100 to NT$2,400 and its ADRs from US$450 to US$500, the note said.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS