“The establishment of a Japanese R&D center is currently under consideration”
TSMC is making investments of up to 28 billion dollars (about 30.7 trillion won) this year. This is the largest investment ever.
On the 14th, TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendel Huang said in a conference call for the fourth quarter of 2020, “We will spend 25 billion dollars to 28 billion dollars of capital on facility investment this year.”
80% of the investment will be used for microprocessing such as 3 nano, 5 nano, and 7 nano. 10% goes into packaging and testing of high-performance integrated circuits, as well as developing photomasks. The remaining 10% will be used for special process development purposes. CFO Hwang said, “The 3-nano process will start production in 2022.”
TSMC’s investment amount is three times the expected investment amount of Samsung Electronics this year. Samsung Electronics invested 9 trillion won in the system semiconductor sector including foundries last year. This year, it is expected to reach 10 trillion won, up 10% from this.
CFO Hwang only said that he was evaluating the establishment of a Japanese factory and related R&D center. He stressed that nothing has been decided yet. It also said that it is working with partners to jointly develop 3D packaging.
On this day, TSMC announced its fourth quarter 2020 results, with sales of 36.13 billion Taiwan dollars (about 14.14 trillion won) and operating profit of 14.27 billion Taiwan dollars (about 5.58 trillion won). Compared to the same period last year, sales increased 25.2% and net profit increased 70%.
The annual performance was Taiwanese dollar in sales of 1.338.3 trillion (about 52 trillion won) and Taiwanese dollars in operating profit (about 22.17 trillion won). This is the highest performance since its inception. Sales and operating profit increased by 25% and 52%, respectively, compared to the previous year.
Microprocessing sales of 7nm and below were high. It accounted for more than 40% of sales at the level of 7nm 33% and 5nm 8%. By field, smartphones were the highest at 48%. It is influenced by Apple, the largest customer. Apple is consigning production of application processors (AP) to TSMC.
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