15 January 2026
If you are covering TSMC’s latest financial results, please find below a comment from Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot:
“TSMC reported a good set of financial results today, with earnings ahead of expectations and crucially capital expenditure rising to satiate AI demand. We already knew the revenue numbers, but earnings were up 35%, with sales growth of 25% helping to drive this. Gross margins too were better than expected, with TSMC really beginning to fire on all cylinders.
“Capex is rising to $54bn, 8% ahead of what market analysts expected and really goes to show that the company is confident in the demand it is seeing for AI related products and services. Given the time it takes to build new facilities this capex will really impact 2028’s capacity, and as such this means TSMC has good visibility of earnings going forward and it can afford to push its capex harder as a result.
“This is ultimately a very positive start to the earnings season for the tech giants. These results give us a good indication of what we are likely to see from both the chips companies and the semicap equipment providers. TSMC is at the forefront of this growth too and is executing well with tremendous scale. While the likes of Nvidia, Broadcom and AMD fight it out for chip supremacy, TSMC ultimately benefits as the key manufacturer of all their chips.”
