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TSMC CEO Expects High Chip Inventory Due to 5G, Other Demands

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. expects the chip industry’s supply chain “to maintain a higher level of inventory” in 2022, compared with “historical” trends, due to “the industry's continued need to ensure supply security,” said CEO C.C. Wei on a Q4…

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call Thursday. TSMC had Q4 revenue in U.S. dollars of $15.74 billion, up 5.8% sequentially. The U.S. shares closed up 5.3% at $139.19. Though the short-term demand-supply imbalance “may or may not persist, we continue to observe the structural increase in long-term semiconductor demand underpinned by the industry megatrend” of 5G and high-performance computing applications, said Wei. “We also observed the higher silicon content in many end devices, including automotive, PCs, servers, networking and smartphones. As a result, we expect our capacity to remain tight throughout 2022.” The rising deployment of 5G smartphones “will fuel a massive requirement for computation power,” he said.