Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing’s
latest monthly sales have excited some bulls who say a chip recovery is imminent. But J.P. Morgan cautions that the uptick in revenue might not be a sign of a rise in demand.
On Friday, the world’s largest third-party semiconductor chip manufacturer reported its sales numbers for October.
TSMC’s
(ticker: TSM) revenue for the month grew by 16% from the prior year and jumped 35% from September. It was the first month of year-over-year growth since February.
“A frequently asked question from investors is whether this indicates a sudden improvement in demand. By and large, we believe it’s NOT,” analyst Gokul Hariharan wrote. “Given, weak end-demand and anticipation from the supply chain for an iPhone order cut, we do not expect near-term upside to N3 [the manufacturing process for the latest iPhones] wafer orders either.”
In Tuesday trading, TSMC’s American depositary receipts rose 2.9% to $99.24.
TSMC dominates the market for high-end chips. It makes the main processors inside
Apple
(AAPL) iPhones,
Qualcomm
(QCOM) mobile chipsets, and processors made by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). According to TrendForce, TSMC has about 56% market share of the third-party chip-manufacturing business, followed by
Samsung
with 12%.
The analyst said chip wafer orders typically take three to four months to be reflected in TSMC’s sales. That means October’s stronger sales numbers are likely from the timing of a manufacturing ramp for the latest iPhone processors and the new M3 processor Macs that
Apple
recently announced.
“Demand recovery in other [less advanced manufacturing] nodes is still quite tepid and any sudden change in orders is unlikely to be reflected in TSMC’s 4Q23 revenues due to long cycle times,” he wrote.
Write to Tae Kim at [email protected]
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