TSMC raises guidance
- TSMC raised its revenue guidance even as many companies warned tariffs are adding new costs and delays. - The key specific is that guidance rose despite explicit warnings that tariffs are creating economic unpredictability. - Demand looks robust, but planners should treat component pricing and lead times as noisy dependencies now. (longyield.substack.com)
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. raised its near-term sales outlook on April 16, even as it warned U.S. tariffs are adding uncertainty to customer planning. (investor.tsmc.com) The company posted first-quarter revenue of $35.90 billion, above its prior guidance of $34.6 billion to $35.8 billion. For the second quarter, it forecast revenue of $39.0 billion to $40.2 billion, with gross margin of 65.5% to 67.5%. (investor.tsmc.com) First-quarter net income reached NT$572.48 billion, up from NT$361.56 billion a year earlier, and earnings per share rose to NT$22.08 from NT$13.94. Shipments climbed to 4.174 million 12-inch-equivalent wafers from 3.259 million a year earlier. (investor.tsmc.com) TSMC is the world’s largest contract chipmaker, which means companies such as Nvidia and Apple design chips and TSMC manufactures them. Its quarterly forecast is closely watched because it sits in the middle of the global electronics supply chain. (investor.tsmc.com) The tension in this report is that demand stayed strong while trade policy got harder to model. Reuters reported that TSMC kept a bullish annual view on artificial-intelligence demand while saying U.S. tariff policy had not yet changed customer behavior, even as it added uncertainty. (marketscreener.com) The first-quarter mix shows where that demand is coming from. In TSMC’s slide deck, high-performance computing accounted for 59% of revenue, ahead of smartphones at 28%, and chips made on 7-nanometer-class processes and below made up 73% of wafer revenue. (investor.tsmc.com) That mix matters because artificial-intelligence servers use the most advanced chips and packaging, where capacity is harder to expand quickly. When tariff threats and export controls shift at the same time, buyers can keep ordering aggressively while still facing noisier pricing, routing and delivery timelines. (marketscreener.com) TSMC’s own calendar shows the next hard datapoint will be April 10 monthly sales for April, followed by second-quarter results later in July. For now, the company’s message is that chip demand is still climbing faster than the trade backdrop is clearing. (investor.tsmc.com)
