Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC reported a strong third quarter with sales up 36% year-on-year due to strong demand from chip companies for smartphone and AI-related silicon.
The world’s largest semiconductor contract manufacturer reported profit of $23.5 billion in the third quarter ending September 30, 2024, an increase of 36% year-on-year and 12% quarter-on-quarter in USD terms. announced.
TSMC stock rose 6% in early pre-market trading and is now up 80% since the beginning of the year.
Wendell Hwang, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, was unequivocal about the factors driving this revenue jump, saying, “Our business in the third quarter was driven by strong demand for smartphones against industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies. This was supported by strong demand related to AI.
Huang expects this situation to continue into the fourth quarter, he added.
By process technology, these advanced 3 nm and 5 nm process nodes now account for more than half of the company’s revenue, as chipmakers such as NVIDIA seek these process nodes for their latest products. . Even though TSMC is still ramping up mass production, 5nm accounts for 32% of this and 3nm accounts for 20% of revenue.
From a platform perspective, high performance computing (HPC) accounts for 51 percent of Silicon Supremo’s revenue, while smartphone-related manufacturing accounts for 34 percent. Although IoT chips account for just 7% of revenue, they are the fastest growing segment, increasing 35% sequentially. Meanwhile, DCE (digital consumer electronics) decreased by 19%.
Also during the quarter, TSMC broke ground on its first European manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany, and partnered with U.S. semiconductor assembly and test company Amkor Technology on an advanced packaging facility in Peoria, Arizona. Signed a contract.
TSMC expects revenue to rise again to $26.1 billion to $26.9 billion toward the end of the current fourth quarter. This is undoubtedly driven by the continued demand for GPUs to power model training as long as the AI wave continues. In other words. ®
