Companies
18/07/2024

TSMC Rejects A US Joint Venture While Riding The Need For AI To Boost Revenue Forecasts




The world's largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan's TSMC, rejected the concept of a joint venture facility in the United States and increased its full-year revenue prediction on Thursday in light of the soaring demand for chips used in artificial intelligence.
 
An important supplier to Apple Inc. and Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd., has profited from the global AI growth, which has helped it weather the slowdown in pandemic-related demand for electronics.
 
Earlier on Thursday, the semiconductor industry's watchdog revealed net earnings that exceeded market projections. Compared to a prior estimate of an increase in the low to mid-20% range, it increased its revenue forecast for 2024 to growth of slightly beyond the mid-20% range in U.S. dollars.
 
"AI is so hot; right now everybody, all my customers, want to put AI functionality into their devices," Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei told analysts and reporters at an earnings conference.
 
After the announcement, pre-market trading saw a 3.3% increase in the company's U.S.-listed shares.
 
However, prior to the results release, its Taiwan-listed shares fell 2.4%, continuing a decline that began this week when Republican presidential candidate for the United States Donald Trump said that Taiwan "did take about 100% of our chip business" and should reimburse the United States for its defence.
 
With partner investors, TSMC is investing $65 billion on three plants located in the U.S. state of Arizona. The company also has further new factories under construction or in the planning stages in Japan and Germany.
 
Wei responded negatively when asked if TSMC would take into consideration a joint venture in the US in light of Trump's remarks.
 
"So far we did not change any of our original plans of expansion of our overseas fabs. We continue to expand in Arizona, in Kumamoto, and maybe in future in Europe. No change in our strategy. We continue in our current practice," he added.
 
He described the situation as "very, very tight" when asked if TSMC had adequate capacity to meet the demand for chips.
 
"We are working very, very hard to get enough capacity to support my customers from now all the way to next year, to 2026."
 
Supply for cutting edge nodes, particularly its 3nm and 5nm, would be extremely limited in 2019, according to CFO Wendell Huang.
 
TSMC predicted a 34% rise in sales for the current quarter, or between $22.4 billion and $23.2 billion.
 
The business revised its capital expenditure estimates for this year from a previous estimate of $28 billion to $32 billion to between $30 billion and $32 billion.
 
From T$181.8 billion in April to T$247.8 billion ($7.60 billion) in June of last year, TSMC's net profit increased.
 
An LSEG SmartEstimate derived from 21 analysts showed that the earnings for the quarter ended June 30 exceeded a T$238.8 billion projection. Forecasts from analysts with higher consistency of accuracy are given more weighting by SmartEstimates.
 
"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," Huang stated.
 
The most valuable publicly traded firm in Asia, TSMC, reported better-than-expected second-quarter sales of $20.8 billion, up from $19.6 billion to $20.4 billion.
 
(Source:www.theprint.in)

Christopher J. Mitchell
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