TSMC posts 9% profit rise in Q1

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company -- whose clients include Apple and Nvidia -- controls more than half the world's output of silicon wafers, used in everything from smartphones and cars to missiles.

The company said Thursday its net profit increased 8.9 percent on-year in January-March to NT$225.4 billion ($6.97 billion) compared to NT$206.9 billion in the same period last year.

First-quarter revenues also rose 13 percent year-on-year to $18.87 billion, it said.

"Advanced technologies, defined as 7-nanometer and more advanced technologies, accounted for 65 percent of total wafer revenue," it said.

TSMC -- which produces some of the tiniest, most advanced microchips in the world -- had sought to quell investor fears in the past by pointing to the increasing demand for AI-related products, which need the high-performing silicon wafers to function.

Meanwhile their customers -- and governments concerned about critical supplies -- have called for the firm to make more chips off the island.

Self-ruled Taiwan is claimed by neighbouring China, which has in recent years ramped up political and military pressures against Taipei.

In February, TSMC launched a new fabrication plant in the southern Japanese island of Kyushu -- a coup for Japan as it vies with the United States and Europe to woo semiconductor firms with huge subsidies.

Experts had called the new plant in Japan "the most significant TSMC international investment to open in many years".

TSMC also said this month it would build a third semiconductor factory in Arizona, raising its total investment in the United States to $65 billion.

It already had plans to build two plants in Arizona, and another one in Germany.

The preliminary agreement with the US Commerce Department -- tied to a major investment law called the Chips and Science Act -- would see TSMC receiving up to $6.6 billion in direct funding from the US government.

They could also get up to another $5 billion in the form of loans.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo had said this would be the "first time" such advanced semiconductor chips will be made on American soil.

"These are the chips that underpin all artificial intelligence," she said at the time of the grant announcement, adding that 6,000 direct high-tech jobs could be created due to the agreement.