Leading foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) recorded sales in June of NT$60.34 billion (about $2.01 billion), a decrease of 0.7 percent from May 2014 and an increase of 11.7 percent over June 2013.
This resulted in TSMC just beating its Q2 revenue forecast top end of NT$183 billion and achieving sequential quarterly revenue sales growth of 23 percent. TSMC regularly has a relatively quiet Q1, partly due to Chinese New Year holiday season, followed by a strong second quarter. However, typical Q2/Q1 increases have historical are off the order 15 to 18 percent.
This years 23 percent jump is a record for recent years and comes even before the company has been shipping significant volumes of chips to Apple. Such shipments are thought to have started in July and could add considerable upside to TSMC's third quarter results. However it also has to be tempered in the longer term by the fact that Qualcomm is increasing the list of foundries it goes to with the addition of SMIC (see Qualcomm, SMIC Partner for 28nm Snapdragon Production). It is not known how far along with that collaboration Qualcomm and SMIC are.
TSMC's sales should also be seen in context that its monthly year-on-year growth did decline during the second quarter. The year-on-year increase was 23.6 percent in April, 17.4 percent in May and down to 11.7 percent in June. This suggests the year-on-year increase could dip into single-digit percentage in the third quarter.
TSMC's revenues for the first half of 2014 totaled NT$331.24 billion (about $11.05 billion), an increase of 14.8 percent compared to the same period in 2013.
Foundry UMC, also based in Hsinchu, Taiwan, announced June sales revenue of NT$12.14 billion (about $405 million), up 15.3 percent from the same month a year before. UMC's half-year sales were NT$67.56 billion (about $2.26 billion), an increase of 13.2 percent on its first half sales in 2013.
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