TSMC expects Q3 revenue to jump by as much as 34%, boosted by AI demand

TAIPEI (Reuters) - TSMC said on Thursday it expects third-quarter revenue to surge by as much as 34% from a year earlier after the world’s largest contract chipmaker posted a quarterly net profit that beat market expectations.   

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major Apple Inc and Nvidia supplier, has benefited from a surge towards adoption of AI that has helped it weather the tapering off of pandemic-led electronics demand.

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 forecast 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.

TSMC, Asia’s most valuable publicly listed company, said second-quarter revenue rose 33% year-on-year to $20.8 billion, better than the company’s previous forecast of $19.6 billion to $20.4 billion. The company last week announced second quarter revenue in Taiwan dollars, coming in at T$673.51 billion.

Revenue for the current quarter is expected at $22.4-$23.2 billion compared with $17.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, TSMC told an earnings conference.

Capital expenditure in the second quarter was $6.36 billion, TSMC said, compared with $5.77 billion in the first quarter.

TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares have been battered for the past two days after comments by the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump, that Taiwan "did take about 100% of our chip business" and should pay the U.S. for its defence.

They closed down 2.4% on Thursday.

($1 = 32.6000 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Yimou Lee, Ben Blanchard and Faith Hung; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Muralikumar Anantharaman)