Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday reported that its consolidated sales last month fell 11.4 percent from a month earlier to NT$156.4 billion (US$4.98 billion), and 11.1 percent from a year earlier, with analysts attributing the decline to continued industry-wide inventory adjustments.
Second-quarter sales fell 5.46 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$480.84 billion, but were within TSMC’s forecast range.
At an investors’ conference in April, TSMC gave guidance that consolidated sales for the April-to-June period were expected to be between US$15.2 billion and US$16.0 billion.
Photo: Lam Yik Fei, Bloomberg
Based on the exchange rate of NT$30.4 the company used to make the projection in April, the chipmaker’s second-quarter sales were forecast to be between NT$462.08 billion and NT$486.40 billion.
In the first six months of this year, TSMC generated NT$989.47 billion in consolidated sales, down 3.5 percent from a year earlier.
Analysts said TSMC’s sales this year could bottom out in the second quarter.
With the peak season coming, its revenue is likely to rebound, increasing more than 10 percent from a quarter earlier, in particular due to large orders placed by Apple Inc for chips made using TSMC’s advanced 4-nanometer and 3-nanometer technologies, analysts said.
TSMC has scheduled an investors’ conference for Thursday next week, when it is expected to detail its second-quarter results and give a forecast for the third quarter.
The market has been anxiously waiting for TSMC’s forecasts on capital expenditure, sales for the whole of this year, the progress of its sophisticated process development and its global expansion, analysts said.
In April, TSMC said that its sales this year would fall 1 to 6 percent from last year in US dollar terms.
Earlier this year, it said its capital expenditure for this year would fall at the lower end of US$32 billion to US$36 billion.
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