Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) yesterday said each of its employees would receive NT$25,000 (US$806) as a special Sports Day bonus.
Speaking at the annual Sports Day event at Hsinchu County Stadium, TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) expressed his gratitude to employees for their contribution in helping the chipmaker smash records in sales and profit this year, saying that the company decided to hand out a “small gift” for their hard work.
This year’s Sports Day bonus was bigger than last year’s NT$20,000, Wei said, adding that unlike the previous bonus, which had been given only to Taiwan-based employees, overseas workers are eligible to receive the bonus this year.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
With 75,000 employees in Taiwan and abroad, TSMC is expected to issue about NT$1.875 billion in Sports Day special bonuses this year, compared with NT$1.2 billion last year.
That means workers at TSMC’s foundries in the US’ Arizona, Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture and Germany’s Dresden would also receive bonuses.
TSMC has been expanding globally after other countries encouraged and gave incentives for the company to set up semiconductor chip manufacturing facilities in their territories amid growing tensions between Taipei and Beijing, as well as geopolitical unease in the Taiwan Strait.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The chipmaker said that its global investments aim to cater to demand from its foreign clients.
The Sports Day event, which started in 1993, is something TSMC’s employees look forward to, because of the sizeable bonus that usually comes with it.
Sports Day was canceled from 2020 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but TSMC still gave employees special bonuses of NT$12,000 in 2020, and NT$16,000 in 2021 and 2022.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
It was Wei’s second year presiding over the annual event since he took the helm as TSMC’s chair in June last year.
Wei joked that he spent 26 years working to secure the post so that he could preside over Sports Day.
He also said he hoped to perform better, as practice makes perfect.
Wei also thanked family members of company employees, saying that without their support, TSMC personnel would have not been able to work so hard to boost the company’s performance.
In the first nine months of this year, TSMC posted NT$1.21 trillion in net profit, up 51.8 percent from a year earlier, with earnings per share at NT$46.75.
TSMC’s consolidated sales rose 36.4 percent from last year to NT$2.76 trillion on the back of strong global demand for high-end processors during the boom in artificial intelligence development.
In an investor conference last month, TSMC forecasted its sales this year to rise about 35 percent from a year earlier in US dollar terms, an upgrade from a 30 percent increase it had previously estimated.
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