According to the results of November, sales volumes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.(TSMC) demonstrated a negative dynamic of decline.
The mentioned indicator was largely disappointing, as the company’s activity was in the growth zone in October. The world’s largest supplier of made-to-order chips recorded a 7.5% year-on-year drop in revenue in November. Last month, the company managed to earn 206 billion New Zealand dollars (6.6 billion US dollars). The chip manufacturer’s revenue for the first eleven months of this year amounted to 1.99 trillion New Zealand dollars. This indicator is 4.1% lower than the result for the same period last year.
The decrease in TSMC’s revenue indicates that the company still has to overcome several challenges before the full recovery of the global microcircuits market, which is in a state of turndown that has turned out to be prolonged. The firm’s financial performance also signals that the hype around artificial intelligence systems, which require chips to create and operate, does not compensate for the specified slowdown.
TSMC is currently actively cooperating with Nvidia and Apple. In October, the company predicted that in the fourth quarter of this year, its sales volume in monetary terms would range from $18.8 billion to $19.6 billion.
During the earnings report for the third quarter of 2023, the chief executive officer of the firm, C. C. Wei, said that TSMC expects the chip market to reach the peak of the recession in the foreseeable future, noting that the likelihood of rapid growth after the start of the recovery process is not expected due to the situation of uncertainty related to the state of affairs in China, where the problems of economic growth are fixed and trade restrictions from the United States are increasing.
Currently, electronics manufacturers and microcircuits suppliers are making significant efforts to cope with the excess of unsold product stocks. The current situation is because, during the period of chip shortage against the background of the coronavirus pandemic, many consumers began to stock these products and increase their respective orders two or three times. However now, the largest players in the microcircuits industry say that excess stocks have mostly been used up.
The demand for artificial intelligence chips is helping companies such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices fill up orders for TSMC’s most advanced production nodes.
This week, AMD improved its forecast on the prospects for the recovery of the microcircuits market, which is necessary for machine intelligence systems. The company expects that over the next four years, the financial volume of this commercial space will increase to more than $400 million. This figure is twice as high as the expectations that were typical for AMD in August. The rapid change in the forecast indicates that the mood toward the prospects of the artificial intelligence chip market is filled with optimism.
TSMC also manufactures AMD microcircuits, including the latest MI300 AI chip.
