TAIWAN’S TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, forecast on Thursday (Jul 18) its revenue in the current quarter will increase by as much as 34 per cent, driven by robust demand for semiconductors used in artificial intelligence.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), a major Apple and Nvidia supplier, also posted a second-quarter profit that beat market expectations.
The bellwether for the chip industry has benefited from a surge in adoption of AI that has helped it weather the tapering off of pandemic-led electronics demand.
TSMC’s April-to-June net profit climbed to NT$247.8 billion (S$10.2 billion) from NT$181.8 billion a year earlier.
The profit beat a NT$238.8 billion estimate for the quarter ended Jun 30, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 21 analysts. SmartEstimates give greater weighting to forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.
“Moving into the third quarter of 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies,” CFO Wendell Huang told an earnings conference.
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Second-quarter revenue at TSMC, Asia’s most valuable publicly listed company, rose by 33 per cent to US$20.8 billion, better than the company’s previous forecast of US$19.6 billion to US$20.4 billion.
For the current quarter, revenue is expected to be US$22.4 billion to US$23.2 billion compared with US$17.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, TSMC said at the conference.
Capital expenditure in the second quarter was US$6.36 billion, TSMC said, compared with US$5.77 billion in the first quarter.
TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares have been battered for the past two days after comments by the Republican candidate for the US presidency, Donald Trump, that Taiwan “did take about 100 per cent of our chip business” and should pay the US for its defence.
Asked at the earnings conference if TSMC would consider a joint venture following Trump’s comments, chairman and CEO CC Wei said “no”.
The company’s shares closed down 2.4 per cent on Thursday. REUTERS
