TSMC is expected to report a sixth consecutive quarter of record earnings on Thursday, as the artificial intelligence building boom continues to push demand for the world’s most advanced chips past the company’s own forecasts.
Analysts expect the Taiwanese chipmaker to post third-quarter net profit of T$746.3 billion (about $23.4 billion), up 65% from a year earlier, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate compiled from 16 analysts and reported by Reuters. Any figure above T$706.56 billion would be the highest quarterly profit in the company’s history, and meeting the estimate would also extend its run of profit growth to 11 straight quarters.
The revenue number is already in
Half of Thursday’s story is known already. TSMC reports sales monthly, and its figures for July through September add up to third-quarter revenue of T$1.49 trillion (about $46.71 billion), a record for the company and a rise of 50% from the T$989.92 billion it booked in the same quarter last year, according to Reuters calculations from the company’s monthly statements.
That total cleared two separate bars. It beat an LSEG SmartEstimate of T$1.46 trillion drawn from 19 analysts, and it landed above the guidance range of $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion that TSMC itself gave investors in July. September alone brought in T$511.86 billion, up 54.6% year on year, which suggests demand did not fade as the quarter went on.
TSMC is the main contract manufacturer for companies including Nvidia and Apple, and its sales are widely read as a proxy for the health of the AI hardware cycle. Reuters noted that demand remains strong both for the company’s leading-edge chipmaking capacity and for CoWoS, its advanced packaging technology used to assemble AI accelerators. A Morgan Stanley report dated October 6, cited by Reuters, pointed to strong demand for TSMC’s 3-nanometre chips.
Thursday is about guidance, not the past
Because the revenue is already public, the earnings call — scheduled for 0600 GMT on Thursday — will be judged mostly on what TSMC says about the current quarter and the rest of the year. The company is expected to update its full-year outlook alongside fourth-quarter guidance.
Morgan Stanley analyst Charlie Chan expects TSMC to raise its full-year revenue growth forecast to the low-to-mid 40% range, up from its current guidance of more than 40%, according to Reuters. Whether management goes that far is the main open question of the release: the third-quarter beat makes an upgrade plausible, but TSMC gave no detail or forward guidance in its brief revenue statement last week.
The scale behind the numbers keeps growing. TSMC’s market capitalization stands at around $2.1 trillion, according to Reuters, making it Asia’s most valuable listed company and nearly twice the size of South Korean rival Samsung Electronics — whose own record quarter, driven by AI memory, we covered in our report on Samsung’s third-quarter earnings.
The Arizona question
Investors will also listen for any update on the company’s American expansion. TSMC is investing $265 billion to build factories in Arizona, including an additional $100 billion that was unveiled in July, according to Reuters. The Arizona build-out is the largest single piece of the industry’s effort to move advanced chip production onto US soil, and progress there has become a standing item on every earnings call.
One caution from last week’s trading: TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares closed down 1.35% on Thursday ahead of the revenue release, on a day when the broader market fell 1%. The stock move is a reminder that, at this valuation, even a record quarter can land as old news. What would not be old news is a guidance raise — and that is exactly what Thursday’s call will decide.
