TSMC Holds NT$512 Billion Sales as Packaging Stays Tight

TSMC booked NT$511.86 billion of sales in September 2026, up 54.6% from a year earlier and down 0.6% from August. The print kept the foundry above NT$500 billion for a second month and, at the NT$32-per-dollar rate used in its own third-quarter guide, about $16.0 billion.

That is cash coming in on orders already on the books. High-performance computing already takes two-thirds of sales, and Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei has said packaging is so tight it limits customer growth. On October 8, the same day as the monthly release, GlobalFoundries took a $2 billion job making the silicon interposers that sit under those AI packages.

September Stayed Above NT$500 Billion

TSMC’s September net revenue of NT$511.86 billion is NT$511,857 million on the company’s unrounded table. August was NT$514,806 million, still the peak month. The 0.6% dip is the usual late-quarter wobble, not a break in demand: September was still 54.6% above September 2025.

January through September added NT$3,898.73 billion, up 41.1% from the same stretch of 2025, or about $121.8 billion at NT$32 per dollar. Every 2026 month is higher than a year earlier. February was the soft print, at NT$317,657 million, up 22.2%. June’s 67.9% jump was the fastest. The run only crossed NT$500 billion in August.

July, August and September sum to NT$1,494,243 million, about NT$1.49 trillion. Converted at the same NT$32 rate TSMC used when it guided third-quarter sales to $44.6 to $45.8 billion, that is about $46.7 billion, roughly $0.9 billion above the top of the range. The audited quarter, margins and a fresh outlook are due on October 15. CFO Wendell Huang is the named spokesperson on the monthly note.

SEPTEMBER 2026 SALES BY MONTH

The 2026 figures are unaudited. TSMC reports only consolidated sales on this cadence, and the monthly file does not split AI accelerators from phones, cars or industrial parts. Year-to-date growth of 41.1% against September’s 54.6% means the third quarter ran hotter than the first nine months as a whole. A 0.6% step down from August does not unwind that. It does show the monthly ceiling is now set by how much the plants can finish, not by whether customers still want the wafers.

Two-Thirds of Sales Now Come From HPC

The last full mix TSMC has published is the second quarter, on the second-quarter 2026 earnings call. Revenue was NT$1,270.38 billion, or $40.20 billion, up 12.0% from the first quarter and 33.7% in dollars from a year earlier. Gross margin was 67.7%. Operating margin was 60.3%. Net income was NT$706.56 billion, up 77.4% from a year earlier, and earnings were NT$27.25 a share.

High-performance computing rose 20% from the first quarter and accounted for 66% of sales. Smartphones fell 4% and accounted for 22%. HPC is TSMC’s platform bucket for data-center processors, accelerators, networking chips and other fast silicon. It is not a clean AI-chip total, and treating 66% as a pure accelerator share overstates the case. It is still the line that swallowed the company’s growth.

Q2 2026 SALES BY PLATFORM

• High-performance computing: 66% of sales, up 20% from the first quarter.
• Smartphones: 22% of sales, down 4% from the first quarter.
• Internet of Things: 5% of sales, up 4% from the first quarter.
• Automotive: 4% of sales, up 15% from the first quarter.
• Digital consumer electronics: 1% of sales, with other work at 2%.

By process, 2-nanometer wafers were 3% of wafer sales, 3-nanometer 30%, 5-nanometer 33% and 7-nanometer 11%. Nodes at 7-nanometer and below were 77% of wafer sales. North America accounted for 78% of revenue. Wei told the same call that consumer and price-sensitive products are under pressure from higher component prices and a shaky macro picture, and that TSMC is being careful in those plans. He also said AI-related demand “continues to be extremely robust” and that full-year 2026 dollar sales should grow slightly above 40%.

September is a phone-ramp month in a normal year. That seasonal lift is still in the building. It is no longer the engine. A 22% smartphone share that was already shrinking in the second quarter cannot explain a 54.6% jump from September 2025. The extra money is coming from the HPC queue, which is why a flat-to-down month against August still prints as a blowout against last year.

Why Packaging Still Caps Shipments

TSMC can sell a record amount of silicon and still leave customers short of finished accelerators. The bind is not the lithography tools at the front of the line. It is the step that mounts compute dies and high-bandwidth memory on a silicon interposer, the family of flows TSMC sells as CoWoS. Wei answered a question about rival packaging, including Intel’s EMIB-T, with a rationing line rather than a market-share speech.

Well, let me say that our packaging capacity is so tight that now it limits my customers’ growth. So we welcome that additional flexibility in the market and so that will help TSMC’s frontend wafer business growth, which is a majority part of TSMC’s business.

C.C. Wei, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, TSMC Q2 2026 earnings call

Huang, on the same call, raised the 2026 capital budget to $60 to $64 billion from $52 to $56 billion. About 70% to 80% of that pool is for advanced process technology, about 10% for specialty nodes, and 10% to 20% for advanced packaging, testing, mask making and other work. He said TSMC does not foresee bottlenecks in its capacity-expansion plans because it books tools early with suppliers. Those two statements sit together without cancelling out. The wafer fabs can be funded and staffed on a schedule. The packaging halls are the gate on what actually ships as an AI part.

TSMC does not publish CoWoS wafer starts or customer shares. Research shops have filled the gap with wide ranges, and those figures are estimates, not company numbers. Counterpoint Research has put TSMC’s CoWoS supply-demand gap near 20% in 2026, narrowing toward 10% in 2027 if in-house output climbs toward 185,000 wafers a month. The useful fact is simpler and on the record: the CEO says packaging is limiting growth, and only 10% to 20% of a record capital budget is aimed at that back end, a slice that also has to cover testing and masks.

A New York Interposer Deal, Same Day

GlobalFoundries announced on October 8 a U.S. silicon interposer manufacturing agreement with TSMC. The pact is valued at $2 billion, runs five years at the start, and adds work at GF’s Malta, New York, plant. Volume is due to ramp in the first half of 2028. GF said Malta would be the first U.S. source of silicon interposers for advanced packaging, including parts with embedded deep-trench capacitors, and that the contract can grow if demand does.

Ed Kaste, GF’s senior vice president for CMOS, said advanced packaging is now critical to performance, power use and scale in the next round of AI systems, and that a U.S. manufacturing footprint gives customers a second geography for those parts. CoWoS assembly stays with TSMC. The slab under the dies gets another address, in New York, two years out. That lag is the point. A monthly sales number in 2026 cannot be read as proof the packaging shortage is over when the first extra U.S. interposer line is scheduled for 2028.

The deal also shows how TSMC is using other factories without giving up the package brand. Front-end wafers remain the majority of its business, which is why Wei said extra packaging supply elsewhere would help that wafer line. GF is being paid to make a component TSMC is short of, not to take over the AI foundry franchise. Anyone waiting on CoWoS in 2026 and 2027 is still waiting on TSMC’s own halls in Taiwan.

Arizona’s $265 Billion Campus Keeps Growing

On July 16 Wei announced an additional $100 billion Arizona investment for more 2-nanometer and below logic fabs and advanced packaging plants, to support multi-year demand from leading U.S. customers. The U.S. Commerce Department said the add-on takes TSMC’s planned U.S. spending to $265 billion and the U.S. site count to 12 leading-edge semiconductor and packaging facilities. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the expansion would create tens of thousands of American jobs. Wei called the total the largest foreign direct investment in U.S. history.

He also said TSMC is building 13 leading-edge and advanced packaging fabs in Taiwan over the next several years and will keep investing at home. Overseas plants dilute gross margin. Huang forecast that drag at 2% to 3% in the early stages of a foreign ramp and 3% to 4% later. The September sales line does not show that cost. It only shows that U.S. customers, already 78% of second-quarter revenue, are still filling the Taiwan lines while Arizona is built out.

THE CASH AND CAPACITY CALENDAR

1. July 16, 2026: TSMC reports $40.20 billion of second-quarter sales, raises 2026 capex to $60 to $64 billion, and adds $100 billion of Arizona spending.
2. August 2026: Monthly sales reach NT$514,806 million, the first month above NT$500 billion.
3. October 8, 2026: September sales come in at NT$511.86 billion, and GlobalFoundries takes the $2 billion Malta interposer contract.
4. October 15, 2026: TSMC is due to report full third-quarter results, margins and a new outlook.

Huang told the July call that a higher capital budget is tied to higher growth in later years, and that 2026 cash dividends will be NT$24 a share, up 33% from NT$18 in 2025. Second-quarter capital spending was $15.7 billion. Cash and marketable securities were TWD 3.5 trillion, or $110 billion. Funding is not the constraint. Time, packaging tools and yield on a new node are.

The 2-Nanometer Ramp Will Test Margins

N2 contributed 3% of wafer sales in the second quarter, its first disclosed slice. Huang said the steep 2-nanometer ramp should dilute gross margin by about 3 to 4 percentage points in the second half, which is why third-quarter gross margin was guided to 65% to 67%, or 66% at the midpoint, 1.7 points below the second-quarter 67.7%. Operating margin was guided to 56% to 58%. Inventory days rose 7 days to 87, mainly because of the N2 ramp.

A monthly sales beat can arrive with a fatter revenue line and a thinner margin if the new node is still climbing the yield curve. That is the conversion test on October 15. Third-quarter dollar sales already look set to clear the July guide at the company’s own FX rate. The open question is how much of the extra NT$1.49 trillion is left after N2 costs, overseas-fab dilution and the packaging bottleneck Wei described.

TSMC made 12,682 products for 534 customers with 305 process technologies in 2025, per its second-quarter release. That breadth is real. Concentration is also real. When two-thirds of sales sit in HPC and 78% of sales sit in North America, a handful of U.S. processor designers set the loading plan. TSMC does not name them on the monthly sheet. The platform math is enough: the foundry is collecting on a locked HPC build, not on a broad rebound in phones and PCs.

Samsung Foundry Is Left With the Remainder

TrendForce put second-quarter revenue among the top 10 foundries at about $53.49 billion, up 11.5% from the first quarter. TSMC’s $40.20 billion was 72.5% of that group on TrendForce’s tally. Samsung Foundry was second, at about $3.26 billion, or 5.9%, even after a 1.8% sequential rise. The gap is the story inside the September print. Record TSMC sales are not lifting the rest of the foundry list in proportion. They are widening TSMC’s lead at the nodes and packages that AI buyers will pay for.

Q2 2026 FOUNDRY STANDING

Customers that cannot get a CoWoS slot, or that want a second geography, will keep knocking on Samsung, Intel’s packaging flows and OSAT lines. Wei said TSMC would welcome that extra flexibility because it supports the front-end wafer business. The September number shows the other side of the same bargain. As long as HPC customers keep taking the advanced wafers, TSMC can post NT$500 billion months even when sequential sales stall, and rivals pick up only the work that does not fit through that gate.

Full third-quarter accounts on October 15 will show whether the N2 ramp and overseas plants ate the extra sales already visible in the monthly file. Until then, NT$511.86 billion is the bill for capacity that was reserved in advance, not a fresh verdict that packaging has caught up.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of TSMC’s monthly sales, prior earnings remarks and related company notices, and is for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell TSMC or any other security, or a forecast of future revenue, margins or share price. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or other qualified professional who can review their own holdings, time horizon and risk before acting on any figure in this piece. Sales totals, mix shares, capital budgets and plant timelines are taken from the cited company and government materials as of the dates of those documents and can change with later filings, earnings calls or revisions.