The world's largest contract chipmaker said Thursday that net profit for the April to June quarter jumped 77.4 percent from a year earlier to NT$706.56 billion ($22 billion), comfortably beating the NT$632.6 billion mean estimate of analysts polled by LSEG and marking a fifth straight record quarter.
Revenue climbed 36.0 percent to NT$1.27 trillion, while operating profit rose 65.4 percent to NT$766.6 billion.
The operating margin widened 10.7 percentage points to 60.3 percent, crossing the 60 percent threshold for the first time as high-performance computing sales, which include AI chips, surged 20 percent from the previous quarter.
Guidance impressed investors more than the results themselves.
TSMC projected third-quarter revenue of $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion, above market expectations, and raised its full-year dollar revenue growth forecast to slightly above 40 percent from a prior view of more than 30 percent, betting that resilient AI demand will offset softening smartphone and other consumer sales.
The Taiwanese firm also lifted planned 2026 capital spending to between $60 billion and $64 billion, from $52 billion to $56 billion, earmarking 70 percent to 80 percent for advanced nodes and the rest for cutting-edge packaging and testing. The expansion targets capacity that will come on stream from the second half of 2027, underscoring longer-term confidence.
To meet that demand, TSMC will pour an additional $100 billion into its operations in Arizona.
The upbeat outlook did little to steady South Korean chip shares on Thursday, however, as Samsung Electronics tumbled 8.77 percent to 255,000 won and SK Hynix slid 11.53 percent to 1.842 million won, dragged down by an overnight sell-off in U.S. memory names amid worries over rising Chinese supply and cooling data-center spending.
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