TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC posted a 9% rise in first-quarter net profit on Thursday, above market expectations, as it rides a wave of demand for semiconductors used in artificial intelligence applications.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to Apple Inc and Nvidia, has benefited from a push toward AI that has helped it resisting the decline in demand for electronics caused by the pandemic and pushed TSMC stock to a record high.
TSMC saw its January-March net profit reach 225.5 billion DF ($6.98 billion), compared to 206.9 billion DF a year earlier.
The profit beat the LSEG SmartEstimate of $218.1 billion, weighted by more precise analyst forecasts.
TSMC, Asia’s most valuable listed company, said its first-quarter revenue rose 13% year-on-year to $18.87 billion, better than the company’s previous forecast, which were 18 to 18.8 billion dollars. The company reported first-quarter revenue in Taiwan dollars last week of NT$592.64 billion.
Capital spending in the first quarter was $5.77 billion, TSMC said, compared to $5.24 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Taipei-listed TSMC shares have surged 36% so far this year. The stock was flat Thursday before the results were released, compared with a 0.4% gain for the benchmark index.
The company will provide updates on its outlook for the current quarter and the rest of the year on an earnings conference call starting at 0600 GMT, including capital spending it had previously guided as being between $28 and $32 billion this year, compared to last year’s $30.45 billion.
On Wednesday, ASML, the largest supplier of equipment to computer chipmakers like TSMC, reported lower-than-expected new orders in the first quarter, although sales to China held up despite U.S. restrictions. United.
($1 = 32.3190 Taiwan dollars)
(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Faith Hung; additional reporting by Ben Blanchard; editing by Jamie Freed and Shri Navaratnam)
News Source : finance.yahoo.com
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