September foundry sales: a tale of differing fortunes
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Strong demand for foundry TSMC’s leading-edge wafer processing continued in September allowing the company to beat the sales guidance it gave for 3Q24 back in July.
In September TSMC’s net revenue was NT$251.87 billion (about US$7.83 billion), up 0.4 percent sequentially but up 39.6 percent compared with the same month a year before. As a result, TSMC’s sales or the first nine months of 2024 are NT$2,025 billion (about US$62.97 billon), up 31.9 percent compared with the same period in 2023.
This brought TSMC’s sales for 3Q24 to NT$759.69 billion (about US$23.6 billion). This is ahead of the guidance given of between US$22.4 billion and US$23.2 billion.
And so TSMC continues to increase revenues in 2024 at a far higher rate that than the semiconductor industry more generally. Most analysts are forecasting that the global chip market will grow by about 16 percent.
WSTS predicts 2024 chip market will grow 16%
As a major foundry serving multiple customers that publishes sales figures on a monthly basis, TSMC has been an industry bellwether for many years. However, recently its strong support for smartphone makers such as Apple and AI hardware leader Nvidia means it is more of an outlier in the market. TSMC reported that leading-edge manufacturing at 7nm, 5nm, 3nm accounted for 67 percent of revenues in 2Q24.
In September Taiwanese foundry UMC’s sales were NT$18.94 billion (about US$589 million), a sequential drop of 8.25 percent and annual drop of 0.6 percent. This suggests that the computer, communications and consumer markets that it serves are not doing quite so well.
In the first nine months of 2024 UMC took in revenue of NT$171.92 billion (about US$5.34 billion), up 2.6 percent compared with the first nine months of 2023.
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