14 DAY TRIAL // The troubles faced by the global economy in the last years seem to have caused more than a few problems for TSMC as the foundry’s Q4 financial results show that its revenue has dropped 4.9 percent year over year.
The Taiwanese company has revealed that it has finished the fourth quarter of last year with a net profit of NT$31.58 billion (about $1.05 billion or 820 million EUR) and with a consolidated revenue of NT$104.71 billion (about $3.5 billion or 2.73 billion EUR).
While these numbers may seem impressive on a first look, if we were to judge them using a YoY basis we would see that the foundry has 4.9 percent lower revenues in Q4 of 2011 when compared to the same period in 2010.
The net income obtained in this last quarter of 2011 is even lower than that of 2010 (year over year) as this decreased 22.5 percent.
Compared to third quarter of last year, fourth quarter of 2011 results represent a 1.7 percent decrease in revenue, and a 3.9 percent increase in net income, according to the EETimes publication.
In 2012, the foundry expects its capital expenditures to reach about $6 billion (4.67 billion EUR), down about 18 percent from the $7.3 billion (5.69 billion EUR) spent in 2011.
“Although the outlook of the global economy remains uncertain, we expect the demand for our wafers to be stronger than seasonal for the first quarter,” said Lora Ho, SVP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC.
In addition to providing the Q4 financial figures, the company also explained just how much the various manufacturing nodes employed in its facilities contributed to the overall sales.
As expected, the 65nm process was the most popular accounting for 30 percent of sales, while the 40nm node followed closely with 27%. The new 28nm process accounted for just 2 percent of revenues, while the rest of TSMC’s sales were represented by larger, trailing edge geometries.