TSMC sells British CPU design firm Arm (Arm) shares, profit of $174 million

In the recent global CPU architecture battle and AI compute boom, Arm Holdings, the UK chip design IP heavyweight—standing alongside Intel and AMD in a three-way stalemate—is also in the spotlight for the market. TSMC (2330) announced this morning (the 29th) on behalf of its subsidiary TSMC Partners Ltd., that it disposed of its Arm stock holdings, bringing in $174 million.

TSMC’s disposal of Arm holdings yields a profit of $174 million

Global leading foundry TSMC, through its subsidiary TSMC Partners Ltd., announced that it disposed of all of its holdings of Arm Holdings plc between April 28 and 29. The transaction totaled 1,110,784 shares disposed, with an average price of $207.65 per unit, bringing the total transaction value to $231 million. TSMC said that the disposal gain from this transaction is about $174 million, which will be recorded in retained earnings in accordance with accounting standards, and will not affect current-period profit or loss.

As the current leader in semiconductor architectures, Arm’s position in recent CPU boom years has been able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the traditional giants Intel and AMD. What differs from the two above is that Arm focuses on developing instruction sets for architectures and licensing core IP, and does not directly produce physical chips.

Arm shares surge on the back of CPU momentum

TSMC originally participated in investment when Arm was relisted, mainly to strengthen the strategic alliance between the two in advanced process and ecosystem development. As Arm successfully expanded from mobile devices into the data center, high-performance computing, and AI PC markets, its market value also rose accordingly, creating a favorable time for TSMC to realize profits. Arm is also an important arrangement by SoftBank’s Sun Zhengyi in the semiconductor industry. Over the past week, Arm’s share price once climbed above the 230 level; however, yesterday the share price fell 7.98%.

This “clearing out” of its holdings reflects TSMC’s flexibility in capital allocation. When Arm’s share price stood above the $200 mark, disposing of equity investments in non-core businesses helps TSMC refocus its capital on R&D for advanced processes below 2 nanometers and on massive capital expenditures. In addition, because TSMC’s business model has consistently emphasized not competing with customers, returning to a purely foundry-based cooperation relationship can also help maintain its neutral position within the semiconductor supply chain.

Although the equity relationship has come to an end, technical cooperation between TSMC and Arm has not been weakened as a result. Against the backdrop of continued expansion in demand for AI compute power, Arm’s high-performance architectures still need to rely on TSMC’s most advanced wafer manufacturing technology to be realized. This transaction marks that TSMC has completed a phased strategic investment task, converting investment returns into real cash to meet the more intense semiconductor process competition in the future.

This article TSMC disposes of (Arm) shares of the UK CPU design company Anmong, earning $174 million was first published on 链新闻 ABMedia.