TSMC Said to be Planning Price Increases in 2023

The global inflation rises are no secret and more and more companies are looking to increase prices of their goods, so not entirely unsurprising, reports of TSMC planning price hikes in early 2023 are starting to appear. TSMC has supposedly already contacted its customers to notify them about the upcoming price increase, to give them as much time as possible to make any changes to their plans, if needed. The price increase will vary depending on the node in question, but is reported to be somewhere between five and eight percent according to the Nikkei.

Part of the increase is also related to TSMC’s rapid expansion that’s going on at the moment, since the company is going to need to invest a lot more capital when it comes to building the advanced fabs that its customers are relying on. TSMC is expected to invest some US$40-44 billion this year alone on fabs and new equipment. This is a fairly small price increase compared to the big increase TSMC implemented in August 2021, where some nodes saw price hikes of up to 20 percent. That said, TSMC isn’t alone in increasing their pricing, as UMC and SMIC have also increased their prices several times since last year. Nikkei claims that UMC and SMIC are charging more than TSMC on some nodes. However, in the past, TSMC used to offer discounts to its clients on a quarterly basis once a chip had gone into mass production and everything progressed smoothly, but TSMC discontinued this discount scheme last year. As such, it looks like cheaper chip costs aren’t to be expected any time soon.