14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has recently seen itself in the news, putting its business in a rather bad light, as far as stock shares are concerned. But the company hasn't remained arms crossed and clarified that its business was doing well. Lora Ho, one of the company's spokespersons and chief financial officer in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, has stated that TSMC's second-quarter revenues, gross profit margin and operating profit margin are all in line with or slightly higher than the guidance announced at the end of April.
Ho also added that contrary to recent rumors, the company expects its Q3 revenues to grow from the second quarter, while gross profit margin and operating profit margin are expected to remain at Q2 levels. TSMC also keeps to its financial forecast of approximately 5% growth for semiconductor industry revenues this year.
According to some other related news, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced a share buyback program two months ago, as a result of Philips' exit from the company's shareholders. According to the program, TSMC would repurchase its own common shares from the open market between May 14 and July 13, 2008. It seems that these repurchased shares will be canceled. Moreover, the company set July 22 as the 2008 dividend record date, at its June 13 shareholder meeting.
As a result of this program, TSMC and Philips have made an agreement according to which Philips will not participate in any future sales of TSMC on the open market without a prior agreement with the latter.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, being headquartered in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The company works with a number of major hardware manufacturers, including Intel, AMD, Samsung and others.