On May 10, TSMC announced its April revenue report. Due to the recovery in consumer electronics, demand for artificial intelligence continued to grow, and TSMC's sales jumped 60% in April to reach NT$236.02 billion (equivalent to RMB 52,632 billion).

April revenue increased nearly 60% year over year

According to published data, TSMC's consolidated revenue for April 2024 was approximately NT$236.02 billion, an increase of 20.9% over the previous month and an increase of 59.6% over the same period last year, reaching a record high for the same period of the previous year.

TSMC's cumulative revenue from January to April 2024 was approximately NT$828.665 billion, an increase of 26.2% over the same period last year.

TSMC's announcement also stated that it approved the distribution of a cash dividend of NT$4.00 per share for the first quarter of 2024. The common stock dividend reference date was set at September 18, 2024, and the ex-dividend trading date was September 12, 2024.

Last month, TSMC announced its first quarter results and gave a positive outlook for the second quarter.

Due to the burgeoning demand for AI, the company's revenue and net profit both greatly exceeded expectations, achieving positive profit growth for the first time in a year. (Click to view details). Revenue for March was approximately NT$195.211 billion, up 7.5% from the previous month and 34.3% from the same period last year. Revenue for the first quarter was approximately NT$592,644 billion (US$18.54 billion), an increase of 16.5% over the same period last year.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, TSMC expects revenue for the second quarter to be 19.6 billion US dollars to 20.4 billion US dollars, and the market is expected to be around 19.1 billion US dollars. For the second quarter, the operating margin is expected to be 40%-42%, and the market expects 41.3%; the gross margin is 51%-53%, and the market expects 52.8%.

TSMC and Apple join forces to develop chips

The huge success of OpenAI's ChatGPT has sparked an AI gold rush, and demand for cutting-edge chips needed to train and run AI services has surged around the world.

Meanwhile, TSMC dominates the global chip industry, supplying chips for various products from Apple to Nvidia's cutting-edge artificial intelligence hardware, and most of its manufacturing plants are located in Taiwan, China.

Recently, the US “Wall Street Journal” quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Apple is cooperating with TSMC to develop chips for artificial intelligence (AI) software for data center servers.

A number of sources said that Apple has been working closely with its chip manufacturing partner TSMC to design and initially produce these chips, but it is uncertain whether the final chips have been produced so far.

Furthermore, TSMC announced in April that it plans to build a third plant in the US, increasing its total investment in the US to 65 billion US dollars.

Its US project was blocked last year, and the company attributed it to a lack of human resources because manufacturing chips required highly specialized skills.

This year, TSMC also launched a new plant costing 8.6 billion US dollars in Kyushu Island in southern Japan. The company also plans to set up another Japanese factory in Kumamoto Prefecture to produce more advanced chips.

In terms of stock price performance, TSMC's US stock rose more than 3% before the market, and its stock price has increased by more than 37% since this year.