TSMC held its Q1 earnings call this morning

TSMC held its Q1 earnings call this morning. Revenue was NT$508.63 billion, up 3.6% y-o-y and down 18.7% q-o-q. Net profit was NT$206.9 billion, up 2.1% y-o-y and down 30% q-o-q, beating market expectations but the smallest increase in four years.

TSMC expects Q2 revenue of US$15.2 billion to US$16 billion; Q2 gross margin of 52-54%; and full-year capital expenditure of US$32 billion to US$36 billion, with no investment cuts despite external rumours.

In Q1, advanced processes contributed more than half of TSMC's revenues, with 7nm revenues accounting for 20% and 5nm process shipments accounting for 31% of revenues, with the two together accounting for more than 51%, well ahead of other processes.

Among the more advanced processes, TSMC said the 3nm process will be released in volume in the second half of this year, along with the lower cost but less dense N3E process in volume production.

Further back is the 2nm process, which TSMC says customers are excited about and will be on track for volume production in 2025, but no specific customer information was mentioned, and unsurprisingly it is still Apple's first.

TSMC's 2nm process will abandon the FinFET transistor structure and use GAA transistors for the first time. Compared to its N3E (a low-cost version of 3nm) process, the performance of TSMC's 2nm process will improve by 10~15% at the same power consumption; and the power consumption of TSMC's 2nm process will be reduced by 23~30% at the same performance.

However, the transistor density of the 2nm process will only increase by 10%, which is a significant reduction compared to the 60-70% increase in the previous process, let alone the 100% density increase required by Moore's Law.