Staff writer, with CNA
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp.TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said.
A person walks past Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s logo at its headquarters in Hsinchu on Jan. 29.
“The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said, referring to a Wall Street Journal report on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement for the latter to manufacture some chips for Apple devices.“As TSMC had been leading a significant rebound of the semiconductor industry over the past month, investors simply seized on the Intel lead to lock in their gains,” Huang said. “But today’s losses were minor compared with TSMC’s previous gains, as many investors remain upbeat about its sound fundamentals during the current artificial intelligence [AI] boom.”
