저자: ParkevTatevosian,CFA · 외국인
요약 보기
반도체 제조주 TSMC, 인텔, 마이크론, ASML을 매출성장·현금흐름·ROIC·밸류에이션으로 비교. TSMC는 사업 성과 최고이나 대만 리스크·미국 생산 마진 하락 우려, 인텔은 파운드리 회복 기대되나 현재 고평가, ASML은 독점적 지위지만 고평가, 마이크론은 HBM 완판과 낮은 선행 PER(7.6)로 2026년 최선호. 종합 1위 마이크론, 2위 TSMC, 3위 ASML, 4위 인텔 제시.
다듬은 글
The semiconductor industry is one of the most exciting industries for investors because of ompanies like Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom are all semiconductor design companies. These companies don't have manufacturing in-house. They outsource to companies like Taiwan Semiconductor. And Taiwan Semiconductor is one of the companies I will evaluate in this video to determine the best semiconductor manufacturing stock for 2026 and beyond.
I'm going to compare Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company with Intel, with Micron, and with ASML, which you can argue it's not a semiconductor manufacturing company. It's more of a assembler of semiconductor equipment technology, but I'm going to include it in this mix because of its vital role supporting the semiconductor manufacturing industry.
&, I'm going to compare these four companies across three important financial metrics, including revenue growth, cash flow from operations, and returns on invested capital. And then I'm going to look at valuation and compare these companies across valuation, comparing them to their financial performance across these important metrics and incorporating my prospects for where I believe these companies will be in 2026 and beyond to come to my conclusion.
So starting with revenue growth, Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company in the green here has been the most significant beneficiary from the rising effectiveness of AI because it's one of the primary manufacturing partners of Nvidia and AMD for that matter and Apple even is one of the companies that manufactures some of its products at TSMC.
And so it's seen its revenues explode from $29 billion in 2016 all the way up to $119 billion in the most recent trailing 12-month period. ASML has also seen excellent revenue growth, increasing from 7.2 billion in 2016 all the way up to 37.8 billion in the most recent trailing 12-month period. That's actually good for a compounded annual growth rate of 21% which is the best of these four companies I evaluated here.
Importantly, these companies Intel, Micron, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing all buy ASML's equipment. So ASML is a supplier to Micron, Intel, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. In fact, if you didn't know the history of Intel, one of the reasons why Intel fell so significantly behind in the race for artificial intelligence is because the company in the 2010s did not invest in the most cuttingedge technology from ASML.
While others in the industry like Taiwan Semiconductor did invest in that technology and so they leapfrogged Intel and now Intel had fallen significantly behind. Its troubles have been widely publicized. The company had to pause its dividend because of cash flow concerns and the CEO was forced out and now new CEO under new leadership.
The stock price has uh stabilized and it's improved in 2025 and investors are hopeful that 2026 will also be a strong gim. Micron Technology has increased its revenue nicely from 12.4 billion in 2016 up to 37.4 4 billion in the most recent trailing 12-month period. I've been uh recommending and boasting about Micron as a great investment opportunity in 2024 and in 2025.
It was one of my better investment recommendations in 2025. The stock price absolutely soared. The next metric I wanted to compare these companies on is the return on invested capital. Now, semiconductor manufacturing is a very capital inensive industry. The equipment from ASML alone costs hundreds of millions of dollars for each single machine.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing regularly invests over $30 billion annually on capital expenditures to maintain and improve its manufacturing equipment. It's a very capital-intensive industry and so the return on invested capital is an important metric to evaluate these companies to see how good they are at allocating capital since allocating capital is an important part of all their businesses.
So ASML is best-in-class here with the return on invested capital at 54% that's up from 13% in 2016. ASML is widely publicized as being one of the only companies, in fact the only company that can produce the higherend EUV manufacturing machine that produces the highest end semiconductor manufacturing technology that's employed by these three companies.
All three of them have purchased this technology from ASML and arguably it gives ASML strong pricing power. It can continue raising prices because it has very extremely limited competition on the highest end of the products it produces. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing has also done an excellent job with its ROIC coming in at 33.4% in the most recent trailing 12-month period.
Taiwan Semiconductors profit margins are under pressure because of the company's most recent geopolitical diversification. As you may have heard, China is threatening Taiwan. And those threats have increased concerns from TSMC's biggest customers like Nvidia, Apple, and AMD, which have asked the company, "Hey, it would be nice if you can diversify some of the manufacturing away from Taiwan.
have some facilities outside. And so TSMC has expanded. It's expanded into the United States building the manufacturing facility in Arizona and production has started from that manufacturing facility. But the management team has also said that its profit margins are not as good when it's producing outside of its home base.
And so it's told investors that its gross profit margin could decrease by about 500 basis points down from roughly 58% to 53% over these next few years. Now that's still a strong gross profit margin, but it's just not as strong as what the company was delivering over recent years. Intel, meanwhile, has seen its profit margins collapse, and that's a result of several factors.
is one of which I already mentioned. The company's fallen behind losing market share and so it's not utilizing as much of its manufacturing capacity and so its capacity utilization is lower than usual. And when you have a manufacturing business and you're only producing a fraction of the available capacity, it hurts your margin significantly because you're paying for all of that manufacturing capacity, but you're not utilizing it.
And so that hurts margins significantly. But thankfully, Intel has made some announcements where it's signed on some customers and there's increasing interest from Intel's manufacturing capacity because there's been constraints at other facilities. TSMC has notably not invested aggressively in expanding its capability, its supply because TSMC is historically a conservative manufacturing company.
It doesn't get too excited when the manufacturing cycle, the semiconductor cycle is near its peak like it is right now and demand is soaring. It doesn't get excited and build out all this capacity, all this availability because it understands that the semiconductor industry is cyclical. It doesn't want to build all this capacity during a boom and then when demand flows it doesn't want to have all that extra capacity.
So right now during this boom there is this elevated demand and restricted capacity. So, Intel is in a position where it can gain some new orders and new customers for its recently built foundry business where it's hoping to manufacture chips for third party business. Not its own branded chips, but for companies perhaps Nvidia, which it signed a deal with as an equity investor.
It's hoping to gain some manufacturing business from Nvidia. It's hoping to gain some manufacturing business from any of these manufacturing design companies including a AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, Apple. It just wants business because it has that capacity and it wants to utilize that capacity and I think it will utilize more of that capacity and I think its returns on invested capital will improve going forward.
Micron meanwhile has demonstrated excellent improvement here after bottoming out at -12%. It's now at 14.8% ROIC and Micron's management team I recently covered their earnings call the transcript the management team said that it's HBM memory technology is sold out for 2026. It's all sold out. It's already spoken for.
Prices are increasing. The management team is forecasting double-digit demand growth for both its memory and storage business over the next 2 to four year periods. So it's looking very good the prospects for Micron Technology over the next 2 to four years as well. I also wanted to evaluate these companies on their cash flow to sales ratios and again Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company takes the lead here.
best-in-class. In fact, I would argue that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the best manufacturing company in the world in terms of performance, financial performance, critically important metric, competitive advantages, etc. Just not thinking about valuation, just looking at business performance, TSMC, I would argue, is the best manufacturing company in the world, bar none.
uh doesn't matter if you're manufacturing cars, if you're manufacturing uh soda cans, whatever it might be. I have not observed a manufacturing company with better performance than Taiwan Semiconductor in any industry. Its cash flow to sales ratio is at an impressive 60% in the most recent trailing 12-month period.
Second place is Micron at an impressive 47% and I expect that margin will continue improving for Micron as it continues to sell out of its technology as it plays an integral role in the buildout of artificial intelligence. Memory is an important component in these chips in these uh machines that are utilizing artificial intelligence.
Whether it be the data centers optimized for AI or whether it be the devices like smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers that utilize the computing requirements for artificial intelligence. ASML at 33 and a half percent is not too shabby, but comparing them to the others makes it look like a poor performer, but it's really not.
It's really an excellent business. A 33 12% cash flow to sales ratio is impressive to be sure. And in last place, Intel, which has seen its cash flow to sales ratio collapse and hopefully stabilizing here at 16%. and I would expect its cash flow to sales ratios to improve over the next few years. So now that we looked at the important metrics, we realized that Taiwan Semiconductor Company is the best one out of the four in terms of looking at the business performance on most important metrics.
But the best business in the world can be a poor investment if the valuation is too expensive. So let's take a look at valuation and let's start with my proprietary discounted cash flow valuation model which I'm sharing with you here and you can get access to my spreadsheet that contains all of my discounted cash flow valuation models for all of the companies that I'm following and all the semiconductor companies I mentioned even Broadcom, Nvidia, AMD.
I have these cash flow valuation calculations for all of them and you can get access to all that with a channel membership at the investor tier or above. So, Intel, I calculated a fair value for its business at $30 per share. The current market price is $37 per share. So, Intel looks slightly overvalued after accounting for a margin of safety based on my discounted cash flow valuation model.
Next on the list, Micron. It's trading at a market price of $285 per share. The fair value I calculated is $263 per share. And so accounting for a margin of safety, I would say that Micron stock is fairly valued at these market prices. ASML, I calculated an intrinsic value per share at $693. The current market price is $1,69.
It's trading near its 52- week high. I can say that ASML stock looks overvalued despite what an incredible business it is. The market knows that ASML is a great business and it's share it's trading the stock price accordingly. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company I calculated a fair value at $257.
The current market price is $34. After accounting for a margin of safety, I would say that TSMC is slightly overvalued. based on this valuation metric, but I also like to look at valuation on a market multiples basis. And I'm going to utilize the forward price to earnings ratio. And according to this ratio, Intel stock looks super expensive at a forward PE of 87.
But there's [clears throat] an important caveat here. Intel, recall, has invested so aggressively in building out the foundry business. It's expense is not expected to be as high as it was in previous years. Its earnings per share are expected to explode higher over these next few years because its cost will decrease significantly and it will slowly start to utilize more of its manufacturing capacity that it's built.
It'll start to reap the benefits of all the investments it's made in recent years. ASML is trading at a forward price to earnings of 36. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company at 22. And the cheapest of these at a remarkably low forward price to earnings of 7.6 is Micron. So if I had to pick only one of these semiconductor manufacturing companies for 2026, I would say the best one to buy in 2026 would be Micron.
Micron would be my choice for the best stock, best of these to buy for 2026. If I had to pick second place, I would say it's TSM, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Third place, ASML, and fourth place I would say would be Intel. But ASML and Intel would be close because of the improvement I see in Intel's prospects and because of the valuation premium for ASML stock.
But first place would be Micron Technology, my choice for the best semiconductor stock to buy for 2026. Hey, if you value my process for researching stocks, I think you'll appreciate access to my spreadsheet containing my discounted cash flow valuations which calculate a fair value for over 200 companies.
It answers the question, what's a good price to pay for a certain stock? You can get access by joining our channel at the investor tier or above. See the link in the description or click the join button below to learn
Comments 0