... or what recently caught my attention.
This time it's the great technology melt-up of 2024.
US stock indexes are performing quite well in 2024, with Technology doing much of the heavy lifting. The pretext for technology melt-up was the world's largest chip manufacturer TSMC’s (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) announcement (January 18, 2024) of the quarterly results for Q4 2023.
TSMC manufactures advanced processors for clients like Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD.
C.C. Wei, CEO of TSMC, expects revenue growth in 2024 “by low to mid 20% in U.S. "dollar terms".
The news boosted other chipmakers and the Philadelphia semiconductor index (PHLX Index) is up YTD as much as +4.02%.
YTD rate of returns:
TSMC is up +9.8%.
Mag7 is up +4.04% (market-cap weights),
Nvidia is up by +20.1%.
Nasdaq 100 is up +2.9%.
Figure 1 shows the YTD results for Mag7 and Novo Nordisk, while Figure 2 shows the YTD results for the major US equity indices.
Below are the most important fragments from the TSMC earnings conference call.
C.C. Wei,’s CEO:
„2023 was a challenging year for the global semiconductor industry, but we also witnessed the rising emergence of generative AI-related applications with TSMC as a key enabler.
(…) Concluding 2023, the semiconductor industry, excluding memory industry, declined about 2%, while foundry industry declined about 13% year over year. TSMC's revenue declined 8.7% year over year in U.S. dollar terms.
(…) Entering 2024, we forecast fab semiconductor inventory to have returned to a healthy level, exceeding 2023.
(…) We expect 2024 to be a healthy growth year for TSMC, supported by continued strong ramp of our industry-leading 3-nanometer technologies, strong demand for the 5-nanometer technologies, and robust AI-related demand.
(…) Coming up the steep inventory correction and low base of 2023, for the full year of 2024, we forecast the overall semiconductor market, excluding memory, to increase by more than 10% year over year, while foundry industry growth is forecasted to be approximately 20%.
(…) We expect our business to grow quarter over quarter throughout 2024, and our full year revenue expect to increase by low to mid 20% in U.S. dollar terms”.
Comments