On January 10, TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry, released its 2021 annual financial report. According to the financial report, TSMC's revenue in December was NT$155.38 billion (about RMB35.808 billion), an increase of 32% year-on-year, and sales in the fourth quarter were NT$438.19 billion (about RMB100.98 billion).
In addition, the company's total revenue in 2021 was NT$1,587.42 billion (about RMB365.83 billion), an increase of 18.5% compared with NT$1,340 billion last year, and monthly revenue, quarterly sales and total annual revenue all hit record highs. Specific to the income of all aspects, it is estimated that it will not be known until the corporate briefing meeting held by TSMC on January 13.
As the world's largest chip foundry, many manufacturers are competing for TSMC's production capacity. According to the Economic Daily, AMD, Apple, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel and dozens of other manufacturers are competing for TSMC's production capacity in 2022, and have advanced funds, and it is expected that TSMC will receive an advance payment of NT$150 billion (about 34.56 billion yuan) this year.
In the context of the global lack of cores, TSMC has become a semiconductor foundry that is "forced to make money", although the company raised a wave of chip foundry prices in August last year, but in fact it could not block the surging orders. That is to say, TSMC will be busier and more profitable this year, and there is basically no off-season to speak of throughout the year. I have to say that semiconductor foundries are still too popular, making money faster than printing machines.
In order to expand production capacity, TSMC has also built factories everywhere like Tesla, but the problem of global core shortage has not been alleviated, especially now that the demand for car chips, IoT, smart phones and other products is becoming more and more huge, and the company is simply not busy. Some insiders expect that driven by massive demand, TSMC's revenue growth in 2022 can reach 26%, hitting a record high.
As for Samsung, production capacity and chip performance are lagging behind TSMC, although the FOUNDC price is relatively cheaper, but most manufacturers are not willing to risk this money, 7NM, 5NM and this year's 4NM process, the optimal solution should still be only TSMC.
There are rumors that TSMC's big customers Apple and Intel have taken over most of the 3NM production capacity, the former will be used to produce A17 chips and M2 chips for the Mac platform, while the latter will produce mobile platforms and server platform processors, which is believed to bring more amazing revenue growth to TSMC.
Previously, some analysts said that the chip shortage will not be alleviated in 2022. In the future, the demand for chips will only become larger and larger, if there is no other semiconductor factory to grab the cake, it will be difficult for the accumulated electric to make money.