TSM (TSM) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Thursday, July 16, 2026 at 2:00 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Director of Investor Relations - Jeff Su
• Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer - Wendell Huang
• Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - C.C. Wei

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $40.20 billion in the second quarter, representing a 33.7% increase in U.S. dollar terms.
• Net Income -- NT$706.56 billion, reflecting a 77.4% year-over-year increase.
• Diluted EPS -- NT$27.25 per share, up 77.4% from the prior-year period.
• HPC Platform Growth -- Growing 20% quarter over quarter to account for 66% of total second quarter revenue.
• Advanced Technology Share -- Accounting for 77% of total wafer revenue, with 3nm and 5nm technologies contributing 30% and 33% respectively.
• 2nm Technology Contribution -- Contributing 3% of wafer revenue during the second quarter.
• Automotive Platform Growth -- Increasing 15% sequentially to represent 4% of total revenue.
• Q3 2026 Revenue Guidance -- Projected between $44.6 billion and $45.8 billion, representing a 12% sequential increase at the midpoint.
• Q3 2026 Margin Guidance -- Expected gross margin of 65% to 67% and operating margin of 56% to 58%.
• 2026 Revenue Growth Forecast -- Anticipated growth of slightly above 40% year over year in U.S. dollar terms.
• 2026 Capital Expenditures -- Raised to $60 billion to $64 billion to support multiyear structural demand from artificial intelligence and High Performance Computing.
• Arizona Investment Expansion -- Announcing an additional $100 billion investment to build several more semiconductor wafer fabs for 2nm and below technologies.
• Annual Cash Dividend -- Increasing to NT$24 per share for 2026, representing a 33% increase from NT$18 per share in 2025.
• A14 Technology Performance -- Providing a 10% to 15% speed improvement at the same power or 25% to 30% power improvement at the same speed compared to N2.
• A14 Production Roadmap -- Volume production scheduled for 2028, with pre-production starting in 2027.
• 2nm Margin Dilution -- Expected to impact second-half gross margin by 3 to 4 percentage points during the initial ramp-up phase.
• Overseas Expansion Impact -- Forecasted gross margin dilution from overseas fabs at 2% to 3% in early stages, widening to 3% to 4% as projects scale.
• A13 and A12 Production Timelines -- Volume production scheduled for 2029 for both derivative technologies of the A14 family.
• Inventory Management -- Inventory days increased by seven days to 87 days, primarily due to the ramp of 2-nanometer technology.
• Liquidity Position -- Ending the second quarter with cash and marketable securities of NT$3.5 trillion, or $110 billion.

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RISKS

• Wei stated, "consumer and the price-sensitive end market segment are being challenged due to the impact of rising component prices and macroeconomic uncertainties," noting a prudent approach to business planning for these segments.
• Huang stated, "we expect the steep ramp-up of our 2 nm to dilute our gross margin by about 3 percentage points-4 percentage points in the second half of the year," identifying a near-term profitability headwind.

SUMMARY

Management reported that second quarter results were supported by demand for leading-edge process technologies, specifically within the High Performance Computing platform. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance and expanded its 2026 capital budget to address structural demand from artificial intelligence and 5G megatrends. Strategic initiatives included a significant increase in U.S. capital investment and the advancement of the A14 technology node. While demand for leading-edge nodes remains strong, management identified margin dilution factors related to the 2nm production ramp and overseas manufacturing expansion.

• Chairman and CEO Wei noted that the emergence of agentic AI is driving a resurgence in CPU demand alongside AI accelerators, stating, "no matter what CPU approach is taken, whether it's a x86, Arm-based, or RISC-V architecture, they are almost all TSMC's customers."
• The company is accelerating its global manufacturing footprint, with plans to build 13 leading-edge and advanced packaging fabs in Taiwan over the next several years alongside expansions in Arizona, Japan, and Germany.
• Regarding foundry competition, Wei emphasized that technology, manufacturing, and customer trust remain core advantages, stating, "choosing a technology, ramping it up, is not buying a milk from 7-Eleven."
• TSMC is addressing supply constraints in advanced packaging by expanding capacity and welcoming alternative market solutions to support overall front-end wafer growth.
• The A14 technology development is progressing on schedule, with internal vehicles demonstrating approximately 90% device performance and 90% yield for 256 Mb SRAM.
• Wei characterized the current market expansion as the birth of a new industry, stating, "we are witnessing a kind of a new industry called AI industry," which is expected to impact automotive, humanoids, and robotics sectors.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• 2nm: TSMC's 2-nanometer process technology, which utilizes a nanosheet transistor architecture for improved performance and efficiency.
• A14: TSMC’s second-generation nanosheet transistor technology node, scheduled for volume production in 2028.
• Agentic AI: AI systems capable of autonomous reasoning and action to achieve goals, driving increased demand for CPUs in data centers.
• CoWoS: Chip on Wafer on Substrate, an advanced packaging technology used to integrate multiple chips into a single package for high-performance applications.
• HPC: High Performance Computing, a platform encompassing servers, data centers, and AI accelerators.
• Nanosheet: A transistor architecture where the gate surrounds the channel on all sides, providing superior control over current and reducing power leakage.
• TIFRS: Taiwan International Financial Reporting Standards, the accounting standards used for TSMC's consolidated financial statements.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Jeff Su: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TSMC's second quarter 2026 earnings conference and conference call. This is Jeff Su, TSMC's Director of Investor Relations and your host for today. Today's event is being webcast live through TSMC's website at www.tsmc.com, where you can also download the earnings release materials. If you're joining us through the conference call, your dial-in lines are in listen-only mode. The format for today's event will be as follows. First, TSMC's Senior Vice President and CFO, Mr. Wendell Huang, will summarize our operations in the second quarter 2026, followed by our guidance for the third quarter 2026. Afterwards, Mr. Huang and TSMC's Chairman and CEO, Dr. C.C. Wei, will jointly provide the company's key messages.

We will open both the floor and the line for the question and answer session. As usual, I'd like to remind everybody that today's discussions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to the safe harbor notice that appears in our press release. Now, I would like to turn the microphone over to TSMC CFO, Mr. Wendell Huang, for the summary of operations and the current quarter guidance.

Wendell Huang: Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My presentation will start with financial highlights for the second quarter of 2026. After that, I will provide the guidance for the third quarter of 2026. Let's move on to revenue by technology. 2 nm process technology contributed 3% of wafer revenue in the second quarter. 3 nm, 5 nm, and 7 nm accounted for 30%, 33%, and 11% respectively. Advanced technology, defined as 7 nm and below, accounted for 77% of wafer revenue. Moving on to revenue contribution by platform. HPC increased 20% quarter-over-quarter to account for 66% of our second quarter revenue. Smartphone decreased 4% to account for 22%. IoT increased 4% to account for 5%.

Automotive increased 15% to account for 4%. DCE increased 5% to account for 1%. Moving on to the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter with cash and marketable securities of TWD 3.5 trillion, or $110 billion. On the liability side, current liabilities increased by TWD 144 billion quarter-over-quarter, mainly due to the increase of TWD 58 billion in accounts payable and the increase of TWD 48 billion in accrued liabilities and others. In terms of financial ratios, accounts receivable days increased by three days to 29 days. Inventory days increased seven days to 87 days, primarily due to the ramp of N2 technology.

Regarding cash flow and CapEx, during the second quarter, we generated about TWD 783 billion in cash from operations, spent TWD 496 billion in CapEx, and distributed TWD 156 billion for third quarter 2025 cash dividends. Overall, our cash balance increased TWD 99 billion to TWD 3.1 trillion at the end of the quarter. In U.S. dollar terms, our second quarter capital expenditures total $15.7 billion. I finished my financial summary. Let's turn to the current quarter guidance. Based on the current business outlook, we expect our third quarter revenue to be between $44.6 billion and $45.8 billion, which represents a 12% sequential increase or a 37% year-over-year increase at the midpoint.

Based on the exchange rate assumption of $1 to TWD 32, gross margin is expected to be between 65% and 67%. Operating margin between 56% and 58%. This concludes my financial presentation. Let me turn to our key messages. I will start by talking about our second quarter 2026 and third quarter 2026 profitability. Compared to the first quarter, our second quarter gross margin increased by 150 basis points sequentially to 67.7%, slightly ahead of our guidance, primarily due to cost improvement efforts and a slightly higher overall capacity utilization rate, partially offset by dilution from our overseas fabs. We have just guided our third quarter gross margin to decrease by 1.7 percentage point to 66% at the midpoint.

Primarily as we expect the steep ramp-up of our 2 nm technology to dilute our gross margin by about 3 percentage points-4 percentage points. This dilution is expected to be partially offset by very strong demand for our leading-edge technologies and continued cost improvement efforts, including productivity gains and across-node capacity optimization. Looking at the second half of the year, given the six factors that determine our profitability, there are a few puts and takes that I would like to share. First, we expect the steep ramp-up of our 2 nm to dilute our gross margin by about 3 percentage points-4 percentage points in the second half of the year.

As the scale of our overseas expansion grows, we continue to forecast the gross margin dilution from the ramp-up of overseas fabs in the next several years to be 2%-3% in the early stages and widen to 3%-4% in the latter stages. On the other hand, demand for our leading-edge technologies is very strong. In addition, we continue to leverage our manufacturing excellence to generate more wafer output and drive greater across-node capacity optimization in our fab operations to support our profitability. Finally, we have no control over the foreign exchange rate, but that may be another factor. Let me talk about our 2026 capital budget.

At TSMC, a higher level of capital expenditures is always correlated to higher growth opportunities in the following years. With our strong technology leadership and differentiation, we are well-positioned to capture the multi-year structural demand from the industry megatrends of 5G, AI, and HPC. Given the continued strong structural demand from our customers, including the newly emerging agentic AI market, we have decided to raise our full year 2026 capital budget to be between $60 billion and $64 billion as we continue to invest heavily to support our customers' growth.

We always collaborate closely with the tool suppliers well in advance to prepare the capacity, whether it is a strong upcycle or downcycle, just like our customers collaborate with us well in advance to plan our capacity. We do not foresee any bottlenecks to our capacity expansion plans. About 70%-80% of the 2026 capital budget will be allocated for advanced process technologies. About 10% will be spent for specialty technologies, and about 10%-20% will be spent for advanced packaging, testing, mask making, and others. Even as we invest for the future growth with this level of CapEx spending in 2026, we remain committed to delivering profitable growth to our shareholders.

We also remain committed to a sustainable and steadily increased cash dividend per share on both an annual and quarterly basis. In 2025, we paid TWD 467 billion in cash dividends, up 28.6% year-over-year, as TSMC shareholders receive a total of TWD 18 cash dividend per share. In 2026, they will receive TWD 24 per share, up another 33% year-over-year. We expect a continued and increasing cash dividends per share in 2027 as well. Now let me turn the microphone over to C.C.

C.C. Wei: Thank you, Wendell. Good afternoon, everyone. First, let me start with our near-term demand outlook. We concluded our second quarter with revenue of $40.2 billion at the high end of our guidance in U.S. dollar terms, driven by strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies. Moving into third quarter, we expect our business to be supported by continuous strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies, including the steep ramp of our 2 nm technology. Looking ahead, we observe consumer and the price-sensitive end market segment are being challenged due to the impact of rising component prices and macroeconomic uncertainties.

As such, we are being prudent in our business planning while focusing on our fundamentals of our business to further strengthen our competitive position. Having said that, AI related demand continues to be extremely robust. The AI megatrend continue to drive the need for more and more computation, which supports the robust demand for leading-edge silicon. Our customers and customers' customer, who are mainly the cloud service provider, continue to provide us with their very strong signal and positive outlook. Thus, our conviction in the multi-year AI megatrend remains very high. Supported by our robust technology differentiation and broad customer base, we now expect our full year 2026 revenue growth to be slightly above 40% year-over-year in U.S. dollar terms.

Let me talk about the acceleration of agentic AI. The AI market continue to be very dynamic. The emergence of agentic AI is leading to a resurgence in the role of CPUs in AI data centers, which drive more silicon demand in addition to AI accelerators. We believe this is positive for TSMC, as no matter what CPU approach is taken, whether it's a x86, Arm-based, or RISC-V architecture, they are almost all TSMC's customers. We are already collaborating closely with our CPU customers and working to support them with the most advanced technologies and necessary capacity so they can capture the agentic AI market opportunities. Let me talk about TSMC's capacity expansion strategies.

To address the structural increase in overall long-term semiconductor market demand profile, TSMC collaborate closely with our customer and our customer's customer to plan our capacity. Given the fundamental complexity of leading-edge technologies and the design-in and lead time involved, we also have a very good idea of their multi-year product roadmap and production plans. This is important because it takes more than five years to develop the technology and product, prepare the capacity, and ramp it up to high volume production. Internally, TSMC employs a disciplined capacity planning system to assess the market demand from both a top-down and bottom-up approach. This is a continuous and ongoing process.

Based on our assessment, we are stepping up our CapEx investment to increase our capacity to support our customers' future growth. With the strong collaboration and support from our leading U.S. customers and the U.S. federal, state, and city government, we would like to announce an additional $100 billion investment in Arizona. This is to build several more semiconductor logical wafer fab for 2 nm and below technologies, as well as advanced packaging fabs to support the strong multi-year demand from our leading U.S. customers. We believe this investment will help to further foster the development of the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem, strengthen the supply chain, and support an increasing number of high-tech, high-paying jobs in the United States.

At the same time, we are building 13 leading-edge and advanced packaging fab in Taiwan over the next several years, and we will continue to further invest in Taiwan. Therefore, TSMC's semiconductor technology and manufacturing will continue to play a pivotal role in supporting the global semiconductor industry while unleashing our customers' innovations. Let me talk about the current N3 capacity expansion. We are executing well on our global plan to add three additional 3 nm fabs, one in Taiwan, one in Arizona, and one in Japan to support the robust multi-year pipeline of demand for 3 nm technologies. In addition to all the new fabs, we continue to convert 5 nm tools to support 3 nm capacity in Taiwan.

We are also leveraging our manufacturing excellence to drive greater productivity across our fab in all locations to generate more wafer output. We are also focusing on capacity optimization across node, which including flexible capacity support among N7, N5, and N3 nodes. In summary, we are using multiple levers to do everything we can, wherever we can, however we can to maximize the support to all our customers. Let me talk about our mature node strategies. TSMC's strategy at mature node has not changed. Our first priority is to fully support our customer, we continue to increase, not decrease, our mature node capacity in the higher value added segment.

For example, we are increasing our mature node capacity through JASM Fab 1 in Japan for CMOS image sensor application and ESMC in Germany for automotive and industrial applications. In today's market, outside of specific areas such as power management IC and CMOS image sensor, the mature node demand in other commodity areas is not as strong. Thus, TSMC will continue to focus on the higher value-added and strategic segment by ensuring we have the necessary capacity to support our customers' growth. Let me talk about our A14 status. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the complexity of leading-edge technology continues to increase.

The lead time to develop a new technology such as A14, building the capacity, and then ramping it up now takes five to seven years. There are no shortcuts. Our A14 technology, representing the second generation of nanosheet transistors, and delivers another full node stride from N2 with performance and power benefit to address the incessant need for high-performance and energy-efficient computing. Compared with N2, A14 will provide a 10-15 speed improvement at the same power or 25-30 power improvement at the same speed and close to 20% chip density gain. A14 technology development is on track and progressing well. Internal product line vehicle demonstrate close to 90% device performance and close to 90% 256 Mb SRAM yield.

We are observing a strong level of customer interest and engagement from both smartphone and HPC AI applications. Customer now tape-out activity is ongoing and ahead of schedule. Pre-production will start in 2027, and volume production is scheduled for 2028. With our strategy of continuous enhancement, we also introduce the A13 and A12 as an extension of the A14 family. A13 represents a further advancement over A14, achieving an over 6% die area saving through an innovative 97% optical shrink. Through continuous design technology co-optimization, A13 also drives further performance and power efficient improvement. A13 design rules are backward compatible with A14 to ensure smooth IP migration.

We also introduce A12, which will bring our innovative Super Power Rail technology to the A14 platform for superior performance, power, and area benefit. Both A13 and A12 are scheduled for volume production in 2029. We believe A14 and its derivative technologies will prepare our A14 family to be an even larger and long-lasting node for TSMC than N2. Just like a 2 nm technology is a larger and longer-lasting node than 3 nm, here further extend our technology leadership position well into the future. This concludes our key messages, and thank you for your attention.

Jeff Su: Thank you, C.C. This does conclude our prepared statements. Before we begin the Q&A session, again, I would like to remind everybody to please limit your questions to two at a time to allow all the participants an opportunity to ask their questions. Questions will be taken both from the floor and from the call online. Should you wish to raise your question in Chinese, I will translate it to English before our management answers the question. For those of you on the call, if you'd like to ask the question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad now. If at any time you'd like to remove yourself from the questioning queue, please press star two.

Please note that we will try to conclude today's meeting at around 3:10 P.M. or so. We will try to get in as many participants' questions as possible. If we're not able to, we do apologize in advance. Thank you everyone for your patience. Operator, well, let's begin the Q&A session. We'll take the first few questions from the floor. Then we'll go online. Maybe again, left, center, right. Maybe we'll take the first question. Sunny Lin from UBS, please.

Sunny Lin: Thank you very much. Congrats on the very strong performance and outlook. Number one, I'll do a double click on the CapEx. Very encouraging CapEx outlook. I do think it's essential that TSMC showcase a stronger determination in capacity expansion, given the stronger demand and the very tight supply. Beyond 2026, I think every large client also wonders how aggressive TSMC is planning for CapEx. Back in the COVID super cycle, TSMC did provide a three-year CapEx outlook back then. I wonder at this point, will it be possible for you to share any color, maybe for the coming three years' CapEx? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Okay. Sunny's first question is regarding CapEx. She does believe it's important, essential, to show our determination to support our customers with these large CapEx investments. She wants to know, do we have a three-year CapEx guidance 2026, 2027, 2028, similar to what we did back in 2021?

Wendell Huang: Okay, Sunny. We do not have a number to share with you, but as you know, we invest CapEx this year for the future business opportunity. As long as there are business opportunities, we will not hesitate to invest. As you can hear from our prepared remarks, that our conviction in the megatrend, AI megatrend, multi-year, is very strong, and we are stepping up the CapEx, including increasing this year's CapEx. Last time we said our CapEx in the next three years will be significantly higher than the CapEx in the past three years. The CapEx in the next three years will be even more significantly higher than the past three years. Okay.

Sunny Lin: Yeah. Well, sorry, maybe let me follow up on CapEx from another-

Jeff Su: Second question.

Sunny Lin: Oh, yeah, sure. You just announced additional $100 billion CapEx in the U.S., I think that's pretty important for you to secure the business in the U.S. as well. Now with total TWD 265 billion CapEx in Arizona, what's your current plan to bring on the capacities in Arizona in the coming few years?

Jeff Su: Sunny's second question is on to, C.C. said, investing an additional $100 billion in Arizona based on the strong demand from our customers. The total investment now is TWD 265 billion. What is the schedule, time frame, or the plan for this investment? Is that correct, Sunny? Yeah. Okay.

C.C. Wei: Sunny, the schedule will depend on the market situation. You know that. Today's situation, the megatrend is so strong so that we announce additional $100 billion investment in Arizona. How many fabs? Many. Actually, let me say that. It probably additional four more fabs will be built.

Sunny Lin: That's combining front and back-end?

C.C. Wei: Yes.

Sunny Lin: Okay, thank you.

Jeff Su: Okay, thank you. Let's go to the middle. We have Charlie Chan from Morgan Stanley. We'll go left, middle, right from where I sit. Thank you.

Charlie Chan: Thanks for taking my question. Good afternoon. First of all, congrats for a very strong outlook. My first question is really about the foundry competition. I understand that there's no shortcut for a newcomer like TerraFirma, but how about Samsung Foundry, right? They got a huge profit from memory business. Intel got a U.S. policy support. I'm not sure how TSMC is going to address those competition, because apparently, several U.S. companies are engaging with those industry peers. Recently, actually yesterday, ASML just announced to expand the EUV capacity for 2028. Would TSMC worry that your competitors to take more slots and build a large capacity in the future to compete with you in the leading-edge business? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Charlie's question is competition from two angles. One, he does note, C.C. said foundry competition, no shortcuts, but he says, according to the news, many of our customers are engaging with our foundry competitors. One of them in Korea is making huge amounts of money these days. Another one may have the U.S. government policy support. The first part of his question, how do we see the competition and threat of customers moving to our competitors, number one?

C.C. Wei: Well, let me say that. Yes. One of my competitor in South Korea, they make a huge amount of money, and I'm jealousy about it. The other one in the U.S., they got a very strong U.S. government support. We also got the government support, by the way, although we don't announce it. However, let me share with you, as we said, there is no shortcuts. What does that mean? Meaning that in this semiconductor industry, you have to go back to fundamental. Government's help is welcome. Really, we also appreciate that. A lot of money, of course, that's nice to have. The most important thing, as we continue to say, is the technology, manufacturing, and customer trust.

These three fundamental never change. For my 30-some, 40 years career, it always the most important thing. That always the TSMC's secret recipe to win the business. From the competition point of view, choosing a technology, ramping it up, is not buying a milk from 7-Eleven. Well, I'm quoting the sentence from my customer, anyway. It says that you're choosing a kind of technology partner. It is no shortcut. You need to understand the technology. You need to really utilize it using the test chip, and then something, and work together, and then prepare the capacity and ramp it up. That's why I say it takes about five years.

It's not that today you think this milk is better, you go to the next store, it's a 7-Eleven. You don't like it, you go to another store. No. That's my answer. Charlie, is agree?

Charlie Chan: Yeah. Hope you can buy more milk so other people can get it. Thank you. Yeah. Let me switch gear to a more exciting side. C.C. just said you see a very strong signal from customers. You also revised up the full-year revenue guide. Are you ready to revise up the five-year revenue CAGR, especially this AI semi CAGR? I remember it was high 50%. Here comes the question. That generative AI demand is so strong, CPU is a great opportunity for TSMC, but how about those memory cost increase? This big chunk of this AI CapEx.

What's the update of the AI semi CAGR, and how should we look at the contents of this AI semi related to TSMC's growth? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Okay. Charlie, second question is regarding the AI-related demand. We do continue to see very strong and positive signals from our customers. We've revised up our full year. His question is around our AI CAGR guidance that we gave in January on a five-year period, mid to high 50% CAGR growth. He's wondering if there's any update to that. Agentic AI, a new opportunity, what is our definition of AI accelerator? Do we include that, and what is the CAGR?

C.C. Wei: Charlie, if you read our message that we continue to invest more. We increase the CapEx with a good reason. If you asking about the AI's CAGR, let me give you not a number, but it's stronger and stronger. We don't give you the number today because it continue to increase, so we don't know how to answer this question. Stronger than what we said before.

Charlie Chan: Okay.

C.C. Wei: Okay.

Charlie Chan: Great.

C.C. Wei: Yeah.

Charlie Chan: Thank you.

Jeff Su: Thank you, Charlie. All right. Let's move to this side. Maybe we'll take the question from Arthur from Macquarie.

Speaker 5: Hi. First, congrats on the strong execution and performance. My question is regarding the new advanced packaging technology. We noticed that especially the EMIB-T is gaining traction. How will TSMC react this request?

Jeff Su: Okay. Sorry. Arthur's first question is on advanced packaging and competition. I guess very simply put, EMIB-T, in his view, is gaining traction, how do we see the competitive threat from this?

C.C. Wei: Well, let me say that our packaging capacity is so tight that now it's limiting my customers' growth. We welcome that additional flexibility in the market. That will help TSMC's front-end wafer business growth, which is a majority part of TSMC's business. The technology looks good, according to the newspaper. We hope they will be successful, that share some of the loading from TSMC. Today, we're working very hard to shorten the gap between the demand and the capacity. As I said, we welcome have this additional alternative, the flexibility for my customer.

Speaker 5: Thank you. That make a lot of sense. A follow-up. As this is a new technology, if your clients ask your support, and our value is support our customer success, how TSMC will handle this special request?

Jeff Su: Sorry, your question is-

Speaker 5: If these technologies have some small problem, and then ask our company to support, how our company accommodate it?

Jeff Su: Arthur's question is, if there is some issues with this technology, is there an alternative plan?

C.C. Wei: Let me answer the question. Our number one is to support our customers' success. Whatever that we can help our customers' business, we want to win. Does that answer your question? Okay.

Jeff Su: Let's come back. We'll take one more here, and then we'll go online and then back to the room. All right. Yeah. Go, go.

Gokul Hariharan: Yeah. Hi. Thanks C.C., and Wendell, and Jeff. First question on, maybe since you're not wanting to give a longer term numerical guidance, could you talk a little bit about the philosophy of how you are expanding capacity? Obviously, customer feedback, customers' feedback is important. Do you also consider competitive pressure? As an outright market leader, having under supply for a very long period of time is not really desirable for TSMC, right? You probably want a market which is more balanced. When you think about your capacity expansion, how long do you think it takes to fulfill the demand as you see right now? That's one.

Second, chips obviously is the current shortage, but there is also a lot of discussion about data center delay, power capacity being available. Could you also share some thoughts on how you are layering in that kind of concerns? You don't want your chips to be available, but having to wait for the data center deployment to happen. Just to understand how that goes into your planning framework as well.

Jeff Su: Thank you. Gokul's first question is, again, how do we plan our capacity and determine the capacity expansion plan? Certainly, we take into consideration the demand, multi-year demand from our customers and customers' customers. Do we also consider the competitive pressures from competitors building capacity? Is that part of our calculus to expand the capacity, one. What about things outside of chips, like data center delays or power, these type of deals?

C.C. Wei: Gokul, that's a good question. Definitely, every time when we think about the business, we consider the competition. That's number one. We look at where we are, we decide a bottom-up, top-down assessment of those demand. Those are the typical thing, I mean, in our daily life. We make a lot of judgment, we be more careful. We talk to customer, and customer's customer. Those are the CSPs. We get all their input for the demand. We make a judgment. Now, remember that I believe every customer tell me the truth. Everyone. You put all the truths together, it's not the truth. We have to make some of the judgment, you know what I mean. Since you are laughing.

Because all the customer are very aggressive, right? That's a CEO's job. CEO got to be aggressive. They give me the number of their demand, and I believe they try their best to tell me the truth. I put all together, all the truths together is not a truth. Mark down that word. Yes, we do a very careful judgment. Might not be correct. We did carefully, and because this is a big money, right? This year, we say we increase the CapEx from TWD 52-TWD 56, now TWD 60-TWD 64. You bet that will continue to increase. It's a big money, so we do it carefully. We did all the assessment, and that lead to your second question.

Are we sure that we deliver the chips to our customer, and they will not put into inventory? Actually, we are checking the AI data centers of progress, the building, the location, the demand, the rest. We checking all that to make sure that TSMC's chips will not be put in inventory. That answer your question?

Gokul Hariharan: Yeah. That's clear. C.C., do you still believe even end of next year, we are still going to be running short of supply even with this elevated capacity build-out plans?

C.C. Wei: You want me to give you a guarantee, right? Let me say that I believe from this day on all the way to probably 2029, 2030, the demand is very strong. Whether in between there's a dip or not, I'm not very sure. The trend is so robust that I believe we are witnessing a kind of a new industry. I would like to say the new industry called AI industry, which is so common in our daily life because you're going to affect our automotive, affect the humanoids, robot, and also impact to all the industry.

By the amount of money we put in, I mean, including all the CSPs, this alone is a very important new industry to the world. The demand will be there. The fundamental thing is semiconductor chips, and most of them in TSMC.

Gokul Hariharan: Thanks, C.C. My second question is on your profitability. C.C., you joke that you are definitely jealous of your memory competitor on their margins, it definitely feels like profitability-wise, longer term foundry, especially leading-edge foundry, should be higher than memory, looking at number of competitors out there. As you are investing for a lot of your customers, how is that discussion going? Because you are no longer the most profitable semiconductor manufacturing company at this point in time. You probably have less pressure in terms of passing on your value and capturing your value right now compared to maybe one year back.

Jeff Su: Okay. Gokul's second question is on profitability and pricing to a certain extent. Of course, some of the memory makers are making very good profitability and margins today, he notes the role of foundry could be even more value, and TSMC's role as well. What should be the right way to think about the long-term profitability for a foundry? Should it be better? I guess really pricing into this, what type of pricing approach do we want to take?

C.C. Wei: Yeah, Gokul, your question actually is simple. What is the wafer pricing strategy for TSMC, and what kind of gross margin we should have? The higher the better, of course. We are a partner, a partner meaning that I said many times, our customer got to be successful. I don't want to squeeze them out from the market. Besides, we are very trustable company with our customers. We don't suddenly increase our price by, which I like to have, a 4x or 5x. For your customer to survive for that kind of a price increase.

We earn our value, and we make sure that our profit, our gross margin, is enough for our long-term sustaining expansion that's to the benefit of my customer and TSMC also. That's our philosophy. Yes, I'm really jealous about memory companies, 86% gross margin. 86%? About 68%, I would be happy about that. All right. Anyway, I answered the question. We are very trustable.

Gokul Hariharan: Thank you.

Jeff Su: Okay, thank you. Operator, can we take the next two questions from participants on the line, please?

Operator: Yes. Now it's Jim Fontanelli from Arete.

Jim Fontanelli: Thank you. Could I ask about the risk that you see around customer concentration, as AI demand continues to significantly outgrow other end markets? I think your exposure to your top five customers is becoming meaningfully larger than at any point in your history. I'd just like to understand how you see that risk.

Jeff Su: Okay. Jim's first question is risk around customer concentration. We have large customers that are getting larger. Are we worried that we have too many big customers or the customer concentration?

C.C. Wei: No, that's not our concern. Besides, what you say, the customers are growing bigger and bigger, we are very happy about it. Some of the customer also growing very fast. Jim, it's not what you said that the bigger customer is growing bigger and bigger. No. There's a lot of new player in the AI industry.

Jeff Su: Do you have a second question?

Jim Fontanelli: Thank you. Yes. We're seeing your direct customers put capital into both financing, and investing in AI demand. Is that something that TSMC is considering?

Jeff Su: Jim's second question, he knows some of our customers are helping to invest in their customers. Jim, if I understand you correctly, you're asking if TSMC, this is an approach we would take to invest in our customers. Is that correct? Or financing and investing.

Jim Fontanelli: Yeah. In the end customers, not your direct customers.

Jeff Su: Right. In customer's customers as well.

C.C. Wei: To answer, Jim, to answer your question directly, every company has a different consideration, and every company has a different strategy. So far, no, TSMC don't do this kind of financial arrangement because of we think we are working with current customer with the current model smoothly and also successfully.

Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you. Operator, can we move on to the next participant on the line, then we'll come back to the floor.

Operator: Next one to ask question, Mehdi Hosseini from SIG.

Mehdi Hosseini: Yes. Thanks for taking my question. I want to go back to the $100 billion investment in the U.S. Is there any way you can give us some timeline? Is it over the next three years, five years? How should we think about the progression of this $100 billion investment in the U.S.? I have a follow-up.

Jeff Su: Mehdi's first question is around the announcement today, additional $100 billion investment in the U.S. In terms of the CapEx timeframe, is it in the next three years, in the five years? Do we have any schedule or timeframe to share about this additional $100 billion?

C.C. Wei: We do have a plan, but let me share with you actually the progress or the schedule. Most of the time, it depends on the market situation and our customers' demand. If you ask me to give you a firm schedule, no, we don't have it today, but we do have a plan. We speed it up. We try to speed it up as fast as possible.

Mehdi Hosseini: Okay. The message is, you're flexible, but also you're expediting the investment in the U.S. Is that correct?

Jeff Su: I think C.C. said we're trying to move as fast as we can, but everything is based on our customer needs.

C.C. Wei: We're also moving the new fabs and the facilities in Taiwan as fast as possible. The same thing, we try to bring up a new fab in Japan as fast as possible. The situation today is the demand and the supply, the gap is so big, so we are working very hard to narrow the gap.

Jeff Su: Do you have?

Mehdi Hosseini: Thank you. I want to as a follow-up, actually, I want to dive into the compute part of the HPC, and I want to ask you about the networking switches. In that context, when should we expect the COUPE platform to have a material contribution to your top line?

Jeff Su: Okay, Mehdi's second question, very specific. He wants to know for our COUPE platform, when will it have a very meaningful contribution to the business?

C.C. Wei: We start the production right now, and it will be ramped up. As time goes by, I think the AI data center need to lower down the power consumption and increase the bandwidth of the communication channel. I believe the COUPE will continue to increase the demand, and then will become a very important technology in the next few years.

Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you. Let's come back to the floor. We'll take the next question from Citibank, Laura Chen.

Laura Chen: Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my questions. My first question is also about very promising outlook as TSMC raised the CapEx and also the growth outlook for this year. Particularly, I think, C.C., you mentioned about the agentic AI and the CPU growth potential. Can you give us more update among that AI, different kind of chips between GPU, accelerators, or CPU? What you see the growth potential and your visibility? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Laura's first question is around sort of the outlook. We obviously raised the CapEx and growth outlook for this year. She wants to know within the AI, the outlook for agentic AI and CPUs versus AI accelerators, GPUs, et cetera. How do we see these segments?

C.C. Wei: Laura, I don't think I can give you a very specific number, but let me share with you, all of them are in TSMC, and they're also using the same kind of leading-edge technologies. We working with our customer to allocate the wafer, the supply, to balance the CPU, GPU, XPUs ratio. Okay.

Laura Chen: Okay. Thank you. That makes sense. My second question is also about the advanced packaging. We know that during the symposium, TSMC previously already announced a 14x reticle CoWoS roadmap to enable larger AI packaging. At the same time, we also noted that TSMC, maybe last month in Japan, you showed the substrate developments for CoWoS to enable some of the glass technology. I'm just wondering if you can give us more technologies progress update on the different kind of technology for glass core or glass substrates or glass carrier. What's the progress at TSMC right now? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Laura's second question is on advanced packaging. She notes, as we said, we roadmap to even larger than 14x reticle size with CoWoS. She also wants to know the technology process in newer areas like glass substrates, glass cores. What is the progress and status?

C.C. Wei: Let me say that today, the majority is still CoWoS, right? We are developing that alternative, try to lower down the cost. We also work with a substrate vendor so that our customer can have their product be in the market. The progress, we're building a pilot line that I announced a few quarters ago, and it will take about another one year to be mature so we can put it into the production with our customer. Okay.

Laura Chen: Thank you.

Jeff Su: Thank you. Let's move to this side of the room. Bank of America, Haas Liu. Sorry.

Haas Liu: Yes. Thanks, C.C., Wendell, and Jeff for taking my questions, and congrats on the great results. My first question is regarding your CapEx and sales. You gave a pretty solid CapEx outlook for this year, also said the CapEx outlook in the next couple of years will continue to be pretty significant. You also raised this year at 40%+. Would you be able to provide your next couple of years' sales growth outlook, try to quantify it? Relatedly, I think also on that topic is whether you can just try to break down which part of the demand you are seeing as the key driver for you to raise your CapEx and also for this year's demand.

Is this still mostly driven by cloud computing, or it is proliferating to edge computing? To some extent, is it also related to your equipment supply chain is raising their price as well? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Okay. That's several questions in one. I'm going to take that as one and a half questions at least. Basically, Haas is asking, with the CapEx increase and the revenue increase this year, I think he's trying to look at intensity, but he wants to know what about the revenue guidance for the next several years. Yeah, I'll stop there for now.

C.C. Wei: Okay. Let me answer that question. Because of the revenue corresponding to our investment, right? We know, we forecast our demand, and then we make an assessment, and then we do the CapEx. Next few years is going to be a very good business for TSMC. That's all I can say.

Jeff Su: The other part, what's the key driver? Is it cloud AI? Is it edge AI?

C.C. Wei: Oh, okay.

Jeff Su: Is it because tool vendors are increasing the price?

C.C. Wei: It's all AI related. Everything.

Haas Liu: Okay. Yeah.

Jeff Su: You have a quick follow-up?

Haas Liu: Yes. I think it is more on your long-term strategy because a lot of people have actually been asking about your CapEx and also competition on the front end. I would actually say that if on the back end competition is rising, especially coming from Intel EMIB-T, are you worried that your value add for your overall foundry business across front-end manufacturing to the back-end packaging business, the value add could actually be cannibalized with growing competition? Thank you.

Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you. Haas's second question is around the competition in advanced packaging. If our competitors are able to gain traction or business with things like EMIB-T, would that be the gateway or an entryway into more competitive threat on the front-end logic wafer side? Does advanced packaging lead to front-end wafer?

C.C. Wei: Haas, let me answer that. The front end's wafer business and the back end's business are two different things, right? If they are the same, you can expect ASE become the front-end competitor also. It's two different things. I also say that since our capacity in the back end is so in shortage mode, the gap is bigger. I welcome that the competitor offers some of the flexibility to my customer so that their front-end wafer can be put into the package, and that help TSMC's front-end wafer business. That's our attitude.

Haas Liu: Okay. Thank you.

Jeff Su: Thank you. Operator, let's take one more from the online, and then we'll wrap up with back in person.

Operator: Next one to ask question, Robert Sanders from Deutsche Bank.

Robert Sanders: Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. You recently stated that High-NA tools were too expensive, but could you please discuss how your customers are considering the impact of die stitching challenges from a smaller field size with High-NA? Could that actually slow the adoption of High-NA even if the tech improves or the tech gets more productive? I have a follow-up. Thanks.

Jeff Su: Rob's first question is a very specific technology around High-NA adoption. He wants to know the customer's feedback on the challenges with die stitching. Is this an impediment or barrier to High-NA adoption in our view?

C.C. Wei: You got a very detailed understanding of the High-NA. Today, the field size is only one half, we put that one into our consideration of the manufacturing cost and something. Let me answer this question quickly. Whether we use a High-NA or not, actually, one, High-NA is a very good tool. Let's assume that, all right? We understand it's a very high performance. TSMC make it clear that we work with ASML and try to make it more suitable for manufacturing in terms of the cost and in terms of the maturity. We always consider that technology maturity and the cost, and whether we use it or not. Okay.

Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you, C.C. Do you have a second question, Robert?

Robert Sanders: Just a quick follow-up. I think all of us on this call are assuming that the unconstrained demand for 3 nm and below is sort of 30%-50% above your ability to supply. Is it in fact much larger than 30%-50% above? It feels like it might be based on what you're saying here, because I think all of us are assuming it sort of solvable over the next three, four years. It sounds like the number could be much larger. Thanks.

Jeff Su: Well, those are your numbers. Robert is asking the demand in excess of supply, is it 30%-50%? Is it something even larger? Do we have a number to share?

C.C. Wei: No, we don't have a number to share. Let me say that the gap is very big. Sorry, I don't want to make a comment on the memory, a very big gap.

Jeff Su: Okay. We have about nine minutes left. We'll come back to the floor with any question. Let's take one from here. Evelyn Yu from Goldman.

Evelyn Yu: Thank you for taking my question. We mentioned a lot on that we're going to step up our capacity growth. I'm just trying to quantify here. I noticed that during your symposium that you actually mentioned about 2 nm family capacity growth will be growing at around 70% CAGR from 2026 to 2028, N3 plus and N5 to grow by 25% CAGR from 2022 to 2027. I was just wondering, are those numbers still right assumptions today? Are we seeing actually any changes over the past quarter? How should we compare with the non-supporting demand out there?

Jeff Su: Okay. Evelyn's first question is around capacity growth. She knows during the Symposium, we did share some five-year CAGR growth numbers for 2 nm, around 70% CAGR, and then 3 nm around, I can't remember the exact, but 25%. Are those numbers still the same, or has it changed now that our CapEx and stuff?

C.C. Wei: Did we say that in Technology Symposium? Oh, we show the chart. Okay, now is bigger. That's all I say.

Jeff Su: You have a second question.

Evelyn Yu: Okay, thank you. Very good direction. All right. My other questions touch base on the advanced packaging side. You always bundle the advanced packaging CapEx together with testing, mask making, and others. That's around 10%-20% of total CapEx. One thing I'm trying to figure out here is that how much of that actually goes to advanced packaging alone? Given that advanced packaging is capital intensive, less capital intensive versus front-end, how should we think about a gap between its price and revenue share and its CapEx share over the next few years?

What I think finally is that as it becomes more important, how should we think of, maybe you should consider breaking it out as a separate CapEx item going forward?

Jeff Su: Okay. Evelyn's question is around advanced packaging. She wants to know, when we guide for the CapEx, of course, we guide it in a bucket of packaging, testing, mask making, and others together. Why do we not separate out just into packaging specifically? Her suggestion is we should. That's part of it, number one, the CapEx breakdown.

C.C. Wei: Evelyn, let me say that we try very hard to make sure that our CapEx, the number is correct, with the flexibility between the front end and the back end. Sometimes we have a bottleneck, we put more money to buy the bottleneck tools, sometimes it's in the front end, sometimes it's in the back end. In the ballpark, the percentage is just like a Wendell share with everybody. For long term, that's a back end, is about-

Jeff Su: 10%-20%.

C.C. Wei: 10%-20%. Oh, that's a big range. Anyway, all I can say is that's still 10%-20%. As I said, actually, I'm very honest to tell you that as time goes by, some of the CapEx in the tester or in the packaging or in other areas. That's why we cannot very specifically say which area we put how much of the CapEx.

Jeff Su: That's too specific. Yeah. Okay. With the last participant, KGI, Felix Pan. Thank you for being patient.

Felix Pan: Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is regarding to the CapEx revision. From year to date, TSMC raised the CapEx guidance by almost $10 billion. Can you give me some color where is the upside from how you guys see the difference from six months ago? Is that from CPU accelerator or memory components or back-end CoWoS expansion? Just the upside, how we see things differently from six months ago.

Jeff Su: Okay. Felix is noting, in January, we guided for $52 billion-$56 billion. In April, we said closer to $56 billion, now $60 billion-$64 billion. We have increased the CapEx guidance. What is driving this? Is it agentic AI only? Is it packaging? Is it AI accelerator?

C.C. Wei: Well, simply put, the most important reason is because of demand continue to increase, and we feel the pressure from the customer to drive TSMC, not drive actually, to cooperate with TSMC for the capacity increase. That's one of the major reason. The second reason is inflation. Now we buy the tools with inflation price. Okay. You understand what I say?

Felix Pan: Okay. Thank you. My second question is about the mature nodes. People always focus on AI leading nodes, but it seems like mature nodes also seeing the very strong demand recovery and also some supply issue as well. How you guys see the demand supply dynamic and pricing and for the mature node? Because apparently, there's some impact from the AI crowding out effect, but mature nodes still largely depends on the consumer demand. Consumer demand is still weak, how you guys see the demand supply dynamic for mature nodes? Thanks.

Jeff Su: Thank you. Felix's second question is on mature node. He notes there's lots of talk that mature nodes are seeing a strong demand recovery, and the supply is very tight, mature node pricing is very favorable or strong. He wants to know how do we see the mature node supply demand situation.

C.C. Wei: Actually, the mature node cover a lot of different segment. Only the one which are related to AI is in shortage, which is the most important one, is the number one, is power management IC, because of all the AI data center need a lot of power management. Those are the mature node technology like 0.18 micron, 19 nm, or something like that. Those are in shortage, definitely. Also, the sensor portion, because you need a lot of sensor to detect the environmental information and put into the AI data center to analyze it. Other than that, other area, just like you pointed out, the consumer product is not in a high demand, other segment is not so strong demand.

As I pointed out in my statement, other area, no, it's not so much of, say, in a lot of shortage. Not at all.

Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, C.C. Thank you, Wendell. Thank you, everyone. This does conclude our Q&A session. Before we conclude today's conference, please be advised that the replay of the conference will be accessible within 30 minutes from now. The transcript will become available 24 hours from now, both are going to be available through our website, again, at www.tsmc.com. If some of you were not able to ask your question, please feel free to reach out to TSMC IR, and we will follow up with you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We hope everyone continues to stay well. Have a good summer, and we hope you'll join us again next quarter.

Thank you and have a good day.

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