Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Limited (TSM) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

April 14, 2022 2:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Jeff Su - Director, IR

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to TSMC’s First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. This is Jeff Su, TSMC’s Director of Investor Relations and your host for today. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, TSMC is hosting our earnings conference call via live audio webcast through the company’s website at www.tsmc.com, where you can also download the earnings release materials. [Operator Instructions]

The format for today’s event will be as follows: first, TSMC’s Vice President and CFO, Mr. Wendell Huang, will summarize our operations in the first quarter 2022, followed by our guidance for the second quarter 2022. Afterwards, Mr. Huang and TSMC’s CEO, Dr. C.C. Wei, will jointly provide the company’s key messages. Then we will open the line for Q&A.

As usual, I would 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 on our press release.

And now I would like to turn the call over to TSMC’s CFO, Mr. Wendell Huang, for the summary of operations and the current quarter guidance.

Wendell Huang - CFO

Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My presentation will start with financial highlights for the first quarter 2022. After that, I will provide the guidance for the second quarter.

First quarter revenue increased 12.1% sequentially at NT terms or 11.6% in U.S. dollar terms as our first quarter business was supported by strong HPC and automotive-related demand. First quarter gross margin increased 2.9 percentage points sequentially to 55.6%, mainly as we continue to sell our value and improve cost. Operating margin increased 3.9 percentage points sequentially to 45.6%, primarily due to lower vaccine donation expense as compared to the fourth quarter. Overall, our first quarter EPS was TWD 7.82, and ROE was 36.2%.

Now let’s move on to revenue by technology. 5-nanometer process technology contributed 20% of wafer revenue in the first quarter, while 7-nanometer accounted for 30%. Advanced technologies, which are defined as 7-nanometer and below, accounted for 50% of wafer revenue.

Now moving on to revenue contribution by platform. All 6 platforms increased in the first quarter. Smartphone increased 1% quarter-over-quarter to account for 40% of our first quarter revenue. HPC increased 26% to account for 41%. IoT increased 5% to account for 8%. Automotive increased 26% to account for 5%. And DCE increased 8% to account for 3%.