Investors betting on the recovery of the smartphone market and sustained demand for artificial intelligence chips have finally welcomed a positive signal: TSMC's revenue in August increased by 33% year-on-year.
In a press release on Tuesday, September 10th, TSMC's sales in August reached NT $250.9 billion (US $7.8 billion), an increase of 33% compared to the same period last year; However, compared to July, sales decreased by 2.4% month on month, and the year-on-year growth rate also slowed down from 45% in July.
In addition, the revenue of the first eight platforms of TSMC this year reached NT $1.77 trillion (approximately USD 55.1 billion), an increase of 30.8% compared to the same period last year.
Analysts predict that TSMC's revenue in the third quarter will increase by 37% year-on-year, continuing the recovery momentum since last year.
Although this report only reflects the situation for one month, this result will to some extent alleviate people's concerns about the demand for artificial intelligence. At the beginning of this month, due to artificial intelligence giant Nvidia's quarterly earnings not meeting its highest expectations, its market value fell by about $279 billion, setting a record for the largest single day market value decline in US stock history. This has also raised increasing questions, such as whether the market has overestimated the sustainability of demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure. TSMC's monthly report provides investors with a "reassurance pill".
TSMC is now both a chip manufacturer for Nvidia and a major manufacturer of Apple's iPhone main processors. More than half of its revenue comes from its high-performance computing business, which is mainly driven by the demand for artificial intelligence.
It is worth mentioning that Apple just released the iPhone 16 on Monday (September 9th), and the biggest selling point of this phone is its artificial intelligence function. BI analyst Charles Shum pointed out that Apple's adoption of Wi Fi 7 technology on iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro should boost demand for TSMC N6 (7nm) and N4 (5nm) nodes; In addition, the performance improvement of Apple A18 and A18 Pro processors meets our expectations, strengthening the positive outlook for TSMC N3E node sales growth.
Previously, TSMC made an optimistic assessment of its business and prospects in its previous financial report. In July of this year, TSMC raised its full year growth forecast to over 25%, exceeding the upper limit of its previous guidance.
With the improvement of the market, TSMC CEO Wei Zhe Jia is leading a major global expansion plan. The company has made initial progress on a project in Arizona and is considering establishing a third wafer fab in Japan; A few weeks ago, its 10 billion euro German factory broke ground.