TSMC's third-quarter revenue surges to record, beating market forecast

TAIPEI, Oct 8 (Reuters) - TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, reported on Thursday record third-quarter revenue of T$1.49 trillion ($46.71 billion), beating the market forecast and rising 50% from the year-earlier period due to surging demand for AI applications.

Revenue in the July-September quarter of this year came in at T$1.49 trillion, according to Reuters calculations, compared with T$989.92 billion in the year-ago period. An LSEG SmartEstimate, drawn from 19 analysts, had predicted third-quarter revenue of T$1.46 trillion.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is a major supplier to companies, including Nvidia and Apple.

In July, on its last earnings call, the company predicted third-quarter revenue of between $44.6 billion and $45.8 billion. The company gives its forecast only in US dollars and not in Taiwan dollars.   

For September alone, TSMC reported that revenue rose 54.6% year-on-year to T$511.86 billion.

Samsung Electronics earlier on Thursday projected its quarterly operating profit would top 100 trillion won, a world first for a technology company, estimating a nearly nine-fold jump in third-quarter earnings as booming demand for AI chips drove strong memory sales.

TSMC, Asia's most valuable publicly listed company with a market capitalisation of $2.1 trillion, did not provide any details or forward guidance in its brief revenue statement.

It is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings next Thursday, where it will also update its outlook and plans for the current quarter and the rest of the year.

TSMC is expected to report a 64% on-year rise in third- quarter net profit to T$740.8 billion, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate. 

TSMC's Taipei-listed shares closed down 1.35% on Thursday ahead of the release of the revenue data. The broader market closed down 1%.

The shares have risen 64.52% so far this year, in line with the broader market.

($1 = 31.9020 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Muralikumar Anantharaman)