TSMC rides AI demand to raise revenue forecast, says no to US joint venture

By Yimou Lee, Ben Blanchard and Faith Hung

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, raised its full-year revenue forecast on Thursday given surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence, and rejected the idea of a joint venture factory in the United States.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), a major Apple Inc and Nvidia supplier, has benefited from the global AI boom that has helped it weather the tapering off of pandemic-led electronics demand.

The bellwether for the chip industry earlier on Thursday posted net profit that beat market expectations. It raised its 2024 revenue forecast to growth of slight to above the mid-20% range in U.S. dollar terms, versus a previous prediction of an increase in the low to mid-20% range.

"AI is so hot; right now everybody, all my customers, want to put AI functionality into their devices," Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei told analysts and reporters at an earnings conference.

The company's U.S.-listed shares rose 3.3% in pre-market trading following the results.

Its Taiwan-listed shares, however, closed down 2.4% before the earnings announcement, extending falls this week after U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that Taiwan "did take about 100% of our chip business" and should pay the U.S. for its defence.

TSMC is spending $65 billion on three plants in the U.S. state of Arizona and has other new factories in operation or planning stages in Japan and Germany, which have partner investors.

Asked if TSMC would consider a joint venture in the United States following Trump's comments, Wei said no.

"So far we did not change any of our original plans of expansion of our overseas fabs. We continue to expand in Arizona, in Kumamoto, and maybe in future in Europe. No change in our strategy. We continue in our current practice," he added.

On whether TSMC has enough capacity to support the demand for chips, he said things were "very, very tight".

"We are working very, very hard to get enough capacity to support my customers from now all the way to next year, to 2026."

CFO Wendell Huang said supply for leading edge nodes, including its 3nm and 5nm, would remain very tight next year.

SMARTPHONE CHIPS DEMAND

For the current quarter, TSMC said its revenue would increase by as much as 34%, in a range of between $22.4 billion to $23.2 billion.

The company adjusted its capital expenditure plans for this year to between $30 billion and $32 billion, compared with a previous forecast of $28 billion to $32 billion.

TSMC's April-June net profit climbed to T$247.8 billion ($7.60 billion) from T$181.8 billion a year earlier.

The profit beat a T$238.8 billion estimate for the quarter ended June 30, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 21 analysts. SmartEstimates give greater weighting to forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

"Moving into the third quarter of 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies," Huang said.

Second-quarter revenue at TSMC, Asia's most valuable publicly listed company, rose by 33% to $20.8 billion, better than the company's previous forecast of $19.6 billion to $20.4 billion.

($1 = 32.6000 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Yimou Lee, Ben Blanchard and Faith Hung; Additional reporting by James Pomfret; Writing by Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)