Posted on Thursday, January 15 2015 @ 15:05 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Taiwanese semiconductor foundry TSMC announced its net profit for 2014 rose more than 40 percent versus the year before on strong orders for mobile chips.
The world’s biggest contract chip maker said that its net profit totaled US$8.32 billion for 2014, which was up 40.3% from a year earlier. Its earnings per share stood at US$0.31, compared with US$0.22 recorded a year ago.
For 2014, TSMC’s gross margin rose 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier to 49.5%. During the fourth quarter, the company posted US$2.49 billion in net profits, up 4.8% from the third quarter. The fourth quarter’s earnings per share rose to US$0.1 from the third quarter’s US$0.09. Between last October and last December, TSMC’s gross margin was 49.7%, within the company’s previous estimate of between 48% and 50%, but down from the third quarter’s 50.5%.
VR World also reports that UMC, the second-biggest chip foundry in Taiwan, is planning to roll out trial production of its 14nm FinFET process. The company has built a production line with a monthly capacity of about 3,000 wafer units in preparation for the trial production.
