#台积电Q2净利暴增77.4% On July 16, TSMC released its financial results for 2Q 2026. Revenue was NT$1.27 trillion (about $40.2 billion), up 36% year over year, nearing the top end of the company’s guidance. Net profit was NT$706.6 billion (about $22.0 billion), up 77.4% year over year, far exceeding market expectations of NT$623.7 billion. Gross margin was 67.7% and operating margin was 60.3%, both setting historical highs. Earnings per share were NT$27.25 (or $4.31 per ADR). This marks TSMC’s fifth consecutive quarter of record profitability.

There is only one core driver behind the surge in performance—AI. By process node, advanced nodes at 7 nanometers and below together accounted for as much as 77% of wafer revenue. Of that, 3-nanometer made up 30%, 5-nanometer accounted for 33%, and 2-nanometer contributed 3% for the first shipment. By platform, high-performance computing (HPC) had a revenue share as high as 66%, up 20% quarter over quarter, and it has surpassed smartphones as the top revenue source for 15 consecutive quarters. Wei Zhejia said at the earnings call that AI-related demand is “extremely strong,” and the shortage cycle for high-end chips will last at least through 2029–2030.

After the earnings release, TSMC’s US stock briefly flipped from being up more than 1% to down more than 5% in after-hours trading. Wall Street once again played out “good news has been fully priced in.” What the market is truly concerned about is the aggressive expansion of capital expenditures—TSMC raised full-year capex from $52.0–$56.0 billion to $60.0–$64.0 billion, and also announced an additional $100.0 billion investment in the United States, bringing total investment to $265.0 billion. Management was even clearer, saying that in the next three years, capex will be “more significantly higher” than in the past three years.

Analysts noted that market concerns are that higher capex will squeeze near-term free cash flow, raise depreciation expenses, and weigh on gross margin. TSMC expects gross margin in the third quarter to fall to 65%–67%, mainly due to the rapid ramp-up of 2-nanometer and dilution from volume production at new overseas plants.

TSMC raised its full-year growth guidance for US-dollar revenue to “slightly above 40%,” and its third-quarter guidance of $44.6–$45.8 billion also came well above market expectations. Wei Zhejia emphasized that it “will not violently raise prices due to tight supply and demand,” and will stick to win-win pricing. The long-term AI trend is clear, technology moats are deep, and customer stickiness is extremely strong. But in the short term, the gross-margin dilution from the 2-nanometer ramp and overseas capacity expansion will continue to suppress profit expectations. TSMC is in the overlap of “the best performance in history” and “the largest expansion in history”—long-term investors are looking at the AI blueprint for 2030, while short-term traders are calculating next year’s gross margin.#