Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported better-than-expected sales on a boom in artificial intelligence applications demanding more of the industry-leading firm’s chipmaking capacity.
Second-quarter sales totaled NT$480.8 billion ($15.3 billion) according to Bloomberg’s calculations, compared to an average analyst estimate of NT$476.2 billion. Revenue in June came in at NT$156.4 billion.
TSMC is the primary contract manufacturer of Nvidia Corp.’s AI accelerator chips, widely seen as the best hardware for training large data models such as the one underpinning OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The Taiwanese firm’s shares were up slightly on Monday before it reported the monthly sales figure. Goldman Sachs analysts raised their target price for the company to NT$700. The stock has risen more than 25% since the beginning of the year, despite the company’s caution it may temper capital expenditure and revenue for 2023 might fall low- to mid-single digits in US dollar terms.
“We view TSMC as the key AI enabler among our Taiwan semi coverage thanks to its leadership stance in leading edge nodes and advanced packaging technology,” said Goldman Sachs analysts Bruce Lu and Evelyn Yu.
--With assistance from Jeanny Yu.
