TSMC First Quarter 2022 Financials Show 45.1% Increase in Revenues

A new quarter and another forecast shattering revenue report from TSMC, as the company beat analysts’ forecasts by over US$658 million, with a total revenue for the quarter of US$17.6 billion and a net income of almost US$7.26 billion. That’s an increase in net income of 45.1 percent or 35.5 percent in sales. Although the monetary figures might be interesting to some, far more interesting details were also shared, such as production updates about future nodes. As a followup on yesterday’s news post about 3 nanometer nodes, the N3 node is officially on track for mass production in the second half of this year. TSMC says that customer engagement is stronger than at the start of its N7 and N7 nodes, with HPC and smartphone chip makers lining up to get onboard. The N3E node is, as reported yesterday, expected to enter mass production in the second half of 2023, or a year after N3. Finally, the N2 node is expected in 2025 and won’t adhere to TSMC’s two year process technology cadence.

Breaking down the revenue by nodes, N7 has taken back the lead over N5, as N7 accounted for 30 percent of TSMC’s Q1 revenues up from 27 percent last quarter, but down from 35 percent in the previous year. N5 sits at 20 percent, which is down from 23 percent in the previous quarter, but up from 14 percent a year ago. The 16 and 28 nm nodes still hold on to 25 percent of TSMC’s revenue, which is the same as a year ago and up slightly from the previous quarter. Remaining nodes are unchanged from last quarter.

TSMC is also reporting revenue by region and platform, where its North American customers have dropped from 67 to 64 percent of the total revenue. The slack seems to have been picked up by TSMC’s customers in China with a revenue share of 11 percent, although the revenue from China is down one percent from the previous quarter. Asia Pacific accounted for a further 15 percent, which is up from last quarter, but down compared to a year ago. EMEA and Japan make up for the last 10 percent.

As far as revenue by platform goes, High Performance Computing overtook the smartphone business for the first time, with a revenue share of 41 versus 40 percent. HPC has gone up over six percent since the same time last year, while smartphone SoCs have dropped by five percent. Keep in mind that this is revenue based and not wafer volumes. The remaining platforms remain pretty stable with a minor decrease in IoT revenue and a slight increase in automotive revenue.

TSMC foresees a busy year and expects revenue growth to meet or exceed its guidance in the upper half of 20 percent. The CEO went on record to say that TSMC is not planning any cuts to its capex, even if there’s a temporary demand slump, as the company is planning its capex based on long term customer plans. The biggest concern during the Q&A session was the shortage of production equipment and TSMC’s CEO said the company has been aware of the issue since the beginning of this year and is doing its best to avoid issues due to it. However, the company didn’t have any specifics to share about how they’re going to be able to work around the shortage of equipment when it comes to its new fabs. Overall it seems like TSMC has very little to worry about at the moment, as things seem to be on target for the time being, but it’s clear that there are challenges ahead.