TSMC, the world’s leading contract chipmaker, beat estimates on Thursday to post a sixth consecutive quarter of record profits amid relentless spending by customers on AI infrastructure. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company said third-quarter net profit rose almost 69 per cent year on year to NT$763.1bn ($23.6bn), while revenue jumped 51 per cent to NT$1.5tn. The group is at the centre of the semiconductor industry’s upcycle, producing more than 90 per cent of the world’s most leading-edge chips. TSMC is a key supplier to companies including Nvidia and Apple and has widened its lead in advanced manufacturing over rivals Samsung and Intel.
Finance chief Wendell Huang said on an analyst call that annual capital expenditure would remain at $60bn to $64bn. However, spending from 2026 to 2028 would be “significantly higher” owing to “continued, robust multiyear demand” from customers. In response to questions about capacity and future profitability, chief executive CC Wei said TSMC was “doing everything we can, whenever we can, as fast as we can to maximise the support to our customers.” “We have no intention to leave food on the table for others — we want to capture every piece of business possible,” Wei said. TSMC shares fell about 2 per cent on Thursday ahead of the results amid a wider AI sell-off on Asian markets. However, the stock has risen by nearly two-thirds over the past 12 months, making it Asia’s most valuable company and worth almost twice as much as Samsung at almost $2tn.
The results come after ASML, the only supplier of the sophisticated machines that make the world’s most powerful semiconductors, raised its fourth-quarter sales guidance on Wednesday. Europe’s most valuable company now expects total net sales of €14.2bn to €15.2bn, compared with consensus forecasts of about €14.3bn. TSMC revealed that its cutting-edge 2-nanometre process technology accounted for 8 per cent of its wafer revenue in the third quarter, a significant increase from the first quarter. It posted revenue guidance of $52.3bn to $54.3bn for the fourth quarter, with an operating profit margin of 56.5 per cent to 58.5 per cent. TSMC is increasing production capacity in a bid to meet demand. As well as its $265bn plan to build a new facility in Arizona, the company is now evaluating an additional US site in Texas. TSMC has also held talks with Elon Musk’s Terafab, a planned Tesla-Space X chip factory, to determine whether TSMC could utilise its “extra capacity”.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing