TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC reported a 16.5% rise in first-quarter revenue on Wednesday, beating market expectations and coming in at the high end of the company’s forecast range. company, as its sales explode due to demand for artificial intelligence applications.
The world’s largest contract chipmaker, whose customers include Apple and Nvidia, has benefited from a push toward AI that has helped it weather the pandemic-driven drop in demand and pushed the TSMC stock at a record high.
Revenue for the first three months of this year was NT$592.64 billion ($18.54 billion), up from $16.72 billion last year.
That matched the upper end of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) previous forecast that first-quarter revenue would be between $18 billion and $18.8 billion.
The result beat an LSEG SmartEstimate of NT$581.45 billion, compiled by 23 analysts and weighted toward those who are most accurate.
The first half is traditionally quieter for Taiwanese tech companies, after the holiday rush for products like tablets and smartphones in major Western markets, but the AI ​​trend is driving demand even outside season.
For the month of March alone, TSMC said its revenues increased 34.3% year-on-year to 195.21 billion DF, an increase of 7.5% compared to the previous month.
TSMC, Asia’s most valuable publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $662 billion, provided no details or forward-looking guidance in its brief earnings report.
It is scheduled to release its first quarter results on April 18, where it will also update its outlook for the current quarter and year.
TSMC is expected to report a 4% rise in net profit in the first quarter, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate.
Taipei-listed TSMC shares closed 0.5% lower on Wednesday ahead of the release of sales data. The broader market ended down 0.2%.
Shares of the chipmaker have jumped 37% year to date, compared with a 16% gain for the broader market.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Faith Hung; editing by Kim Coghill and Jamie Freed)
