Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) posted its record quarterly profit, fueled in part by Apple’s iPhone 12 family of 5G smartphones. TSMC hiked revenue and capital spending estimates to record levels as it forecast “multiple years of growth opportunities.”
The world’s top contract chipmaker has become increasingly bullish as remote work amid the coronavirus pandemic drives demand for advanced chips to power premium devices – demand that is expected to continue to surge as 5G technology and artificial intelligence applications are adopted more widely.
TSMC now expects to lift capital spending on the production and development of advanced chips to between $25 billion-$28 billion this year, as much as 60% higher than the amount it spent in 2020.
It also revised up its compound annual growth rate targets for revenue during the 2020 to 2025 period to 10%-15% from an earlier estimate of 5%-10%.
Partly helped by the launch of Apple Inc’s iPhone 12, TSMC’s net profit for the October-December fourth quarter soared 23% to T$142.8 billion ($5.1 billion), beating a Refinitiv consensus estimate of T$135.39 billion. Revenue jumped 22% to a record $12.68 billion.
TSMC predicted first-quarter revenue would hit a new record of between $12.7 billion and $13 billion, versus $10.3 billion in the same period a year earlier.
MacDailyNews Take: When Apple reports Q121 earnings results on January 27th, we expect the quarter will have gone quite well.