What you need to know
- TSMC has had an exceedingly fruitful past six fiscal quarters, including the most recent, which netted it $15.8 billion in revenue.
- The company estimates a 2022 budget of between $40 and $44 billion (USD).
- Demand for semiconductors remains high as ever.
Though companies such as NVIDIA see an end to the worst aspects of the global semiconductor shortage hitting sometime in late 2022, the problem as a whole isn't going anywhere just yet. That means those who've been profiting most from massive spikes in semiconductor demand will keep doing so for the foreseeable future, including TSMC.
TSMC, in its quarter that ended December 31, 2021, brought in $15.8 billion USD in revenue. That's no small figure, nor is the number the company is presenting as its anticipated 2022 budget, which is expected to be somewhere between $40 and $44 billion.
In other words, it's business as usual ("usual" being relative to the pandemic era): Spend big, make bigger profits. Because, as is well known in business circles, there's always more money to be made and, by extension, averted from competitors' war chests. That's why Intel took a veiled jab at TSMC recently, calling Taiwan unstable. The comment came at least in part to illustrate the supposed risks of the U.S. government's semiconductor funding spreading itself to overseas companies.
Of course, there's a chance that same semiconductor funding won't go to Intel anyway after the company angered a U.S. senator with its controversial apology to China.
Regardless of what TSMC's competition does, then, with or without external aid, the semiconductor manufacturing company will keep powering forward in as strong of a position as it's ever been in. It's making record sums of money and dwarfing the competition in terms of market share, two trends that don't show signs of stopping.
