TSMC November sales show signs of weakness

LONDON – November sales at leading foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. declined by 11.4 percent sequentially, hinting that a slowdown predicted for the fourth quarter by TSMC Chairman and CEO Morris Chang earlier in the year could be starting to bite.

November sales at rival foundry United Microelectronics Corp. also declined sequentially, but less steeply and they took UMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) into growth for the year-to-date sales figure for the first time in 2012.

On an unconsolidated basis net sales at TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) were approximately NT$43.64 billion (about $1.50 billion), a decrease of 11.4 percent over October 2012 and an increase of 23.9 percent over November 2011. Typically TSMC's November sales drop sequentially by between 3 and 6 percent.

Because of the steeper-than-usual sequential decline November was a smaller improvement on November 2011 than the 32.3 percent increase October 2012 had been on October 2011. Nonetheless the unconsolidated sales for the first 11 months of the year totaled NT$463.31 billion (about $15.94 billion), an increase of 19.5 percent compared to the same period in 2011.

On a consolidated basis, net sales for November 2012 were approximately NT$44.25 billion (about $1.52 billion), a decrease of 11.4 percent over October 2012 and an increase of 23.4 percent over November 2011. Consolidated revenues for January through November 2012 totaled NT$469.13 billion (about $16.14 billion), an increase of 18.5 percent compared to the same period in 2011.

UMC's November sales were NT$9.01 billion (about $310 million) down by 2.9 percent from October but up 11.7 percent on sales in November 2011. UMC's sales for the year-to-date are NT$98.20 billion (about $3.38 billion) up by 0.4 percent on the same period in 2011.


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