TSMC Enjoys Record Quarterly Sales on Extended Global Chip Shortage

BEIJING, October 8 (TMTPOST)— One man’s meat is another man’s poison. While automobile and other industries are suffering from supply disruptions due to the global chip shortage, the world’s top two semiconductor makers--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) and Samsung are feasting on the shortage with record high sales in the past quarter.

TSMC disclosed on Friday that it had net revenue of NT$ 152.69 billion (US$5.45 billion) in September and revenue of the third quarter end in that month came to NT$414.67 billion (US$14.8 billion), setting monthly and quarterly records with year-over-year (YoY) increases of 19.7% and 16.3% respectively. Compared with the previous month, September saw an 11.1% growth and a total of NT$1.15 trillion in sales in the first nine months of the year 2021, up 17.5% from the same period last year.

The revenue, beating the average analyst estimates of NT$413 billion, was near the higher end of the third quarter guidance range between US$14.6 billion and US$14.9 billion that TSMC released in July, when it posted the previous record sales in the second quarter and rose the forecast sales growth for this year to above 20%.

A day before TSMC announced the latest sales performance, Samsung Electronics, whose foundry business is just behind TSMC by revenue, said the revenue for the third quarter ended on September 30 pegged at Won73 trillion (US$61.2 billion), the highest ever in a quarter with nearly 28% YoY growth, and the operating profit of the quarter hit Won15.8 trillion (US$13.2 billion), rising 28% from a year earlier.  

Samsung didn’t reveal the major driving force behind the results but the worldwide dearth of non-memory chips obviously resulted in a profit boost at its foundry business, which it announced in August plans to increase investments by one third to Won240 trillion (US$205 billion) over upcoming three years to pursue leading in semiconductors and many other technologies. It didn’t specify how much it will spend in each area but made sure some of the funds would go into a new factory in U.S. for contract chip manufacturing with the investment of US17 billion. Its old semiconductor rivalTSMC has already announced a three-year investment plan of US$100 billion to increase capacity and meet chip demand in late March.

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