Ming-Chi Kuo: TSMC Stockpiled $1 Billion Due to Memory Shortage, Rumors of Apple Chip Production forgo, Related Orders Will Be Planned Ahead

August 11th, Tianfeng International Securities analyst Guo Mingchi issued a statement expressing that recent market rumors claimed that TSMC, due to DRAM supply constraints, had stockpiled approximately $1 billion worth of Apple's 2nm processor semiconductors in unfinished form, unable to complete packaging. This was used as evidence to support TSMC's statement during the second-quarter earnings conference call about "inventory days increasing mainly due to 2nm production ramp-up." However, Guo's industry research indicates that while Apple's hardware shipments this year have indeed been reduced due to storage supply shortages, Apple has actually advanced TSMC's processor orders by at least about 3 months, planning production based on the available storage supply volume, rather than asking TSMC to prematurely produce a large quantity of unfinished products.

Guo Mingchi stated that this does not mean TSMC will not pre-produce and hold unfinished products, but if the supply bottleneck is not on TSMC's end, there is no clear practical benefit to doing so. Apple also has little reason to require TSMC to take such action at an additional cost. Therefore, he believes that the situation of "TSMC stockpiling $1 billion worth of processor unfinished products and then waiting for storage to arrive for packaging" has not occurred.

He further pointed out that the increase in TSMC's inventory days in the second quarter cannot be directly attributed to Apple's processor unfinished products. Firstly, during TSMC's previous production ramp-up period for new advanced processes, inventory days typically increased. Secondly, TSMC's inventory includes not only unfinished products but also finished products, raw materials, materials, and spares. Thirdly, 2nm customers this year are not just Apple but also IC design companies such as AMD, MediaTek, and others.