저자: CoreyJohnson · 외국인
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TSMC 실적은 매출·마진이 강해 AI 수요를 입증하는 핵심 기업으로 평가. 설비투자(capex) 520~560억달러가 예상(460억달러)을 상회해 주목. 인텔의 18A 공정 경쟁 가능성은 있으나 시장은 TSMC 실행력을 더 신뢰. 고성능 칩의 전력 효율 개선이 데이터센터 전력 부담을 완화할 수 있다고 봄. 지정학(대만 해협) 리스크는 여전히 가장 큰 위험으로 언급. 구체적 주가 방향 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
Joining us is Corey Johnson, chief market strategist at Epistrophe Capital Research. I'm hoping we have Corey with us. Corey, can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Wonderful. I'd love to get your key takeaways from the earnings report that we got today. And also, if you think perhaps we can put this AI bubble conversation to rest for a bit.
Well, what we see is the participants in the bubble and maybe the most important participant saying this thing is going to go on for a long time and they're going to spend money to make sure that this happens. You know, at Apostrophe, we cover the fifth be most important companies in technology. And so I get to say that a lot.
I'm used to saying that, but I have to say that you can make the argument that Taiwan Semiconductor is the singular most important company in all of technology. You can also make the same argument for that matter of ASML. But without these two companies, we wouldn't have AI. We wouldn't have the boom that we're having here.
And we wouldn't have the techn technological sort of creation that's happening both uh technologically and economically. And yes, for investors in the marketplace. So if we break down the the numbers, Corey, obviously we got that 35% as far as the the profit is concerned. I mean that record revenue.
It was the capex that caught a lot of attention today as well with that range of 52 to 56 billion compared to the 46 billion estimates. I mean what was the most important number that we heard from that company when they reported? I would say the capex except that all these things go together right the fact that we got such amazing gross margins 62.3% margins are just fantastic for this company.
I mean look the revenue number of $33 billion. This is a company that did 12 billion in the fourth quarter uh just in December 2020. I mean, the notion that after in December 2020, they could somehow add oh, you know, another 21 billion to fourth quarter revenues in a few years is just an amazing thing.
And I think it shows you that even as big as that is, the company says it's going to get bigger by by reference of the capex number, but also uh telling us that the gross margins are going to continue to stay as high as they are, which means that they are figuring some things out technologically that will let them expand into into 3 nanometer and even into 2nometer.
uh which normally when you move into those more and more difficult processes whatever they are going back decades that usually uh means a decline in gross margins until they they build up the kind of the efficiency of the process as well as fill those factories. They say that's not an issue right here that they are going to uh power ahead with high gross margins which means high utilization and a great success in terms of the technological difficulty of these unimaginable things of the past.
So Corey, you bring up the advanced chips, you know, they're now, I think according to the report, 77% of their overall wafer revenue. How big of a competitive moat does that give TSMC versus other foundaries? Oh, it's such a great question because we got news last week that Intel is going to be out with their 18 uh A process, which kind of competes with the 2n process and and Intel's doing it only for their own chips at this point, but Intel has struggled.
so mightily. You know, Intel once the leader in technology in terms of chip manufacturing at at scale. The notion that Intel is going to have some chips out there shows there is a little bit of competition finally for Taiwan Semi. Now, the market takes for granted that Taiwan Semi is going to do what it says.
The market does not take for granted that Intel will. I think that's why you've seen um some speculation in the share price of Intel with the notion that, hey, maybe they finally figured some things out. We will see. Um perhaps they will um what's the expression? Chuck a wobbly to the market. Sam, what you said that with the last guest and I was really confused about chucking a wobbly.
I learned so much on this show, but I have no idea what chucking a wobb chuck a wobbly. I was laughing. I was laughing with the producer in the break about that going, "Did you guys know what I meant?" Um look to translate throwing a tantrum. you can in cricket, in any sport, throw a tantrum. Um, but then I also rephrased it as throwing the toys out of the pram, which I also realized was extremely Australian as well.
So, here we are out of the bag, Cory. That's right. But look, the guest understood where I was going with that. Hey, look, um, I I hear what you're saying about the competition. Maybe it's a good thing though, Cory, because they are facing a capacity crunch. I mean, we've heard about that. We've heard about Nvidia reportedly asking TSMC, hey, let's put the pedal to the metal for these H200s.
Can we spare up a bit of capacity to get those to China? Um, but I also wanted to get your thoughts on CCway's comments about being nervous about whether AI demand was real or not. And I I don't mean to speculate because I don't like to do that, but would it have been a different outcome if say Jensen Hang had said that?
No, I think in in both cases you have CEOs who have been through in fact these two have been through it together for for decades now and and they've got enough control of their companies and enough humility. Humility is not the right word in both cases, but they've got enough notion that things can change and and that they need to adapt their companies to it.
So, um when they're placing all this these bets into one place, they've been through this before. They've seen it work out and they've seen things not work out and it'd be crazy not to be concerned about it. But I think you can see that both companies are clearly putting their their their their chips on the table and and they're really expect that this is what's going to happen and every indication they have is that that is indeed what's going to happen that we're going to see continued fantastic growth of AI and and you know and all hands uh lighten the the load when it comes to whether we'll get competition and we'll have Intel helping out and we'll have TSMC helping out and everybody making it look if semiconductors are going to be a good thing if AI is going to be a good thing we're going to need lots of companies to make those things.
I'll also say that it's really interesting to see that these increased um uh uh smaller wafers, right? The the these new kinds of chips will use less power. We've been talking so much about the need for more power for data centers based on kind of the trailing notion of how much power it takes to light up these data centers.
If these chips use less power, it will in some way lessen the load, the power load on future demand of data centers. And so we might actually get to the place that we want to get to with lots of AI capacity with uh without the need for as much power as maybe being envisioned if the chips, you know, the skate all around technology that both um TSMC is talking about and Intel's talking about which will create more compute, using less power, creating less heat.
Nvidia's talked about the same. That's an exciting thing because it really does mean that this growth will continue at a very fast pace in the world of AI and data centers. And other things that were flagged, Corey, were, you know, concerns about memory shortages and higher prices. We saw a lot of the memory names moving to the upside on that commentary as well of tariffs being a potential risk for the company.
You know, how much concern do you have any of those potential headwinds? Boy, this this company is so interesting, right? You could talk about the geopolitical importance of Taiwan semi forever. And I think it's really interesting that the the the geopolitical risk, right? The risk of China uh starting a war that is a a global problem.
Um forget how widely it spills out. If China tries to capture Taiwan and starts a war uh doing so, we've seen all kinds of saber rattling and intentions from the leadership in China that they want to do that. If Taiwan semiconductor expands in Japan, in Dresden, in in in in Arizona, which is uh which they are certainly doing, in some way it lessens the uh the political the geopolitical moat and the importance of Taiwan as the sole source.
So, it might be better for the world to have other sources of high-end semiconductors. And yet, one wonders, does that actually raise the risk of of a war over the the Taiwan Straits? It's it's it's really worrisome. Uh it's arguably the greatest risk in the world uh right now of something really bad that could happen.
Uh and yet the what we see from a quarterly earnings report and a capex number from Taiwan Semiconductor directly affects the risk of what might what might happen in terms of a future war there. Corey, we appreciate you being with us to talk Taiwan Semi on this record-breaking day for them. That's Corey Johnson, chief market strategist at Epistrophe Capital Research.
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