Taiwan Semi Stock Rises After Earnings. The Next Quarter Could Be Even Better.

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Continued demand for chips in everything from advanced computing to cars helped

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

beat estimates for first-quarter earnings on Thursday —and strong sales are expected to continue.

TSMC(ticker: TSM) notched a profit of $1.40 a share on revenue of $17.6 billion in the first three months of 2022. Sales rose 36% year over year and 12% since the last quarter.

The results soundly beat what was expected by Wall Street. Analysts had estimated TSMC would report earnings per share of $1.35 on revenue of $16.7 billion.

Even better is TSMC’s forecast for the current quarter. The company expects revenue in the three months ending in June to be between $17.6 billion and $18.2 billion. The consensus estimate among analysts was for second-quarter sales to be $17.3 billion.

U.S.-listed shares of TSMC rose more than 2% in U.S. premarket trading. The shares remain down more than 21% this year, outpacing a near 14% decline for the tech-heavy

Nasdaq Composite
index.

“Our first quarter business was supported by strong [high-performance computing] and Automotive-related demand,” Wendell Huang, the group’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.“Moving into second quarter 2022, we expect our business to continue to be supported by HPC and Automotive-related demand, partially offset by smartphone seasonality.”

Write to Jack Denton at jack.denton@dowjones.com