Dr J Rould
Full-Time Tech Investor, Quantum/Cybersecurity, Philosophy Background
TSMC is irreplaceable as the maker of the world's most advanced chips for Nvidia, Apple and AMD. x.comÂ
TSMC manufactures chips for most of the leading tech companies while Intel still struggles with its own foundry. It makes NVIDIA's GPUs, Apple's phone chips, AMD's processors and Google's TPUs, plus chips for Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. x.com x.comÂ
TSMC may lose pricing power as performance gains shift from shrinking transistors to stacking, interconnects and optics, while logic folding could make older processes competitive. Despite strong leading-edge demand, investors may overestimate the profit share its node leadership can retain. Its cautious expansion and past reluctance toward advanced packaging suggest a risk-averse culture that protects returns but could leave it late to disruptive technologies and key customers. x.comÂ
TSMC is the one company the AI chip boom cannot happen without, since every advanced chip runs through its fabs and Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm all depend on it. Q1 profit rose 58% to a record and revenue grew 35% to $35B, with high-performance computing now 61% of sales. It is spending $52-56B on capex this year to build capacity competitors are a decade behind replicating. x.comÂ
TSMC is the single supplier the AI revolution depends on, so owning it means owning the supply chain the world follows. Nvidia, Apple, AMD, Google and Meta all rely on its fabs in Taiwan. TSMC makes up 42% of Taiwan's stock market, which at nearly $5 trillion rivals India's $4.9 trillion despite 23 million people against 1.4 billion. x.comÂ
TSMC's failure to prioritize Apple marks an irreversible turning point that the market will take a long time to price, even though near-term results won't be hurt. Apple paid development costs for 2nm and saw itself as a de facto shareholder, yet got no priority supply. TSMC is not expanding capacity and told Google to go through back-end partners. That treatment drives customers like Apple toward Intel, and years from now CC Wei's stance will be looked back on with regret. x.com x.com x.com … Show more
Semiconductor leaders look better placed than high-beta stocks with poor company models. TSMC, ASML, Nvidia and memory should lead the sector and belong in the buy basket, with Broadcom not far behind. The CPU basket is only a hold: much of its upside was priced in during Intel and AMD's run. x.comÂ
TSMC's record quarter shows chip demand is accelerating, not peaking. Q3 revenue was about $46.7 billion (NT$1.49 trillion), up 51% year over year and above both the top of TSMC's guidance and Street estimates of NT$1.46 trillion. Quarterly revenue is up about 2.4x in three years. Despite bubble fears, the AI buildout still looks early and TSMC can go much higher than people realize. x.comÂ
TSMC is not a favorite longer term because the US administration and US companies have a stated goal of building a domestic source of silicon supply, and relationships toward that are already being forged. x.comÂ
TSMC will still dominate and remains a good stock to own, though buyers now may be a bit late to the party. It has been a critical bottleneck for the semiconductor industry for half a decade, not just becoming one. Intel is becoming a viable threat and Samsung may eventually become one too. x.comÂ