Tiburon News, TSMC has raised its full-year revenue target at the same time many companies are cutting or canceling orders. Recently, sources told digitimes that TSMC's confidence in its performance stems from securing orders from six major customers, including Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia.

The main driver of TSMC's second-half earnings growth came from a large order from Qualcomm. In addition to the 7nm process, Qualcomm has placed orders for 5nm and 4nm chips, which are expected to make up for reduced orders from other customers.

It is understood that TSMC's 5nm and below processes have better yields and performance than competitors, and sources said Qualcomm's cooperation with TSMC will continue on 3nm and 2nm.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm recently signed a long-term purchase agreement with Ge-Core. Qualcomm will buy a total of $7.4 billion from GF through 2028, more than double the $3.2 billion in the previous agreement. 12nm and 14nm and above special processes do not affect Qualcomm's cooperation with TSMC at 7nm and below.

TSMC has noted weaker market demand on the consumer side, but demand for data center and automotive electronics applications has remained stable. TSMC has been able to support these demands by reallocating capacity. Even with continued inventory adjustments, customer demand continues to exceed TSMC's capacity supply. As a result, capacity is expected to remain tight throughout 2022.

The semiconductor industry believes that eventual inventory adjustments will continue through the first half of 2023.

TSMC's largest customer is believed to be Apple, accounting for more than 25 percent of its revenue. The customer is gradually increasing TSMC's Mac series orders, and TSMC will become the exclusive manufacturer of Mac chips in 2023, sources said.

TSMC will also benefit from favorable exchange rates and overall price increases in 2022. In addition, the average selling price (ASP) of the 7nm and 5nm processes, which account for 51% of the company's revenue, has increased significantly. The 28nm process is estimated to have risen to more than $3,000. 16nm and 12nm wafers are priced at around $5,000, 7nm at close to $10,000, and 5nm and 4nm at $16,000-$20,000.

After the merger of AMD and Xilinx -- both of which are TSMC customers -- their data center platform shipments and market share have increased, while TSMC's orders have not dropped significantly, the sources said.

Intel and Nvidia will not be TSMC's main revenue growth drivers in 2022, the sources noted. Intel's 7nm and 5nm process orders are contributing less revenue, while Nvidia's RTX30 series has a higher inventory with Samsung's 8nm process.

Intel's next-generation Meteor Lake processor platform reportedly won't be available until the first quarter of 2024, which has also delayed the adoption of TSMC's 3nm process by U.S. customers, the sources said. However, Intel will reportedly expand its 7nm and 5nm orders to maintain its relationship with TSMC, the sources said.

NVIDIA's next-generation RTX40 series using TSMC's 5nm process was originally scheduled to launch in August, but has been delayed by at least a quarter and may not even launch until the first quarter of 2023, the sources said. TSMC already has other customer orders to make up for the delay, and the two sides have reached an agreement on an order contract, the sources added.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

source from：jiweiwang