Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進), a supplier of display driver ICs and power management chips, expects its revenue next year to surpass the 12 percent annual rate estimated for the global foundry sector, driven by robust demand for chips used in electric vehicles (EVs) and 5G smartphones.
To manage rising chip demand, Vanguard increased its capital expenditure for this year to between NT$8.5 billion and NT$9 billion (US$305.21 million and US$323.16 million), from NT$8.5 billion estimated three months ago.
The expenditure increase would boost capacity slightly this year and about 8 percent next year, it said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
The chipmaker is considering investing in a new 12-inch fab, it said, adding that a small percentage of the chips that are being made at 8-inch fabs would be produced at 12-inch fabs in the next few years because of cost efficiency.
Vanguard operates four 8-inch fabs and is constructing a fifth one.
“Overall, our customers continue to show robust demand for our foundry services. With our current order visibility, we expect factory utilization to remain high throughout the first half of 2022,” Vanguard chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told an investors’ teleconference.
“We hold a positive outlook on next year,” Fang said. “We will outperform the estimated growth in the global foundry sector thanks to growth momentum coming from all segments.”
IC Insights forecast that the global foundry sector would see compound annual growth of 12.2 percent in the five-year period to 2025.
EVs and 5G smartphones are to be the main growth drivers, Vanguard said, due to higher market penetration and the higher number of semiconductors needed.
Replacement demand would also fuel robust demand for commercial laptops next year, the chipmaker said.
Growth momentum this quarter continues to be robust, Vanguard said, adding that growth did not slacken when it shifted to supply driver ICs for high-resolution 4K and 8K TV panels from low-end 50-inch TV panels.
Revenue this quarter is expected to increase 2.56 to 6.93 percent to between NT$12.3 billion and NT$12.7 billion, which would be another record quarter, Fang said.
Gross margin this quarter is expected to be 45.5 to 47.5 percent, compared with 45.8 percent last quarter, the company said.
Vanguard expects shipments of driver ICs used in mobile phones and other consumer electronics panels to show sequential growth this quarter.
Net profit in the three months to September increased to a record NT$3.29 billion, more than doubling the NT$1.53 billion of a year earlier and representing quarterly growth of 26.4 percent from NT$2.6 billion.
Earnings per share last quarter rose to NT$1.99, up from NT$0.93 a year earlier and NT$1.53 in the prior quarter.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS