2025-04-17 TSMC announced during its earnings call that it has no intention of forming joint ventures with other companies. This is undoubtedly a blockbuster news and once again puts Intel's future in a whirlpool of uncertainty. TSMC just reported solid first-quarter 2025 results, managing to pull off a three-game winning streak: beating consensus estimates on its top- and bottom-line metrics and boosting its second-quarter revenue guidance by $1.6 billion (based on the mid-point of the offered range).
TSMC’s revenue in the first quarter of 2025 was US$25.77 billion, compared with expectations of US$25.72 billion. The fab giant expects second-quarter revenue to be in a range of $28.4 billion to $29.2 billion ($28.8 billion at the midpoint). Based on its expected revenue growth in the first half of the year, TSMC’s fiscal 2025 revenue is expected to reach US$109 billion.
In addition, while TSMC acknowledged that there will be uncertainties related to U.S. tariffs in the future, it said that it has not yet found that customer behavior has been affected. As a reminder, both NVIDIA and AMD have disclosed that the Trump administration's recent licensing requirements for H20 and MI308 GPUs, respectively, have resulted in significant financial losses.
TSMC also announced that the output of its Arizona wafer fab is now comparable to that of its Taiwan fab. In addition, the company currently plans to increase its investment in the United States to $165 billion. ,
Of course, the most critical comment from TSMC's earnings call was its refusal to enter into any joint venture or technology transfer agreements with other companies, such as Intel. It should be noted that reports in recent days indicate that Intel and TSMC appear to have reached an understanding to form a joint venture to manage Intel's U.S. fabs. The agreement will also attract other chip design companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Apple. TSMC will retain a 20% stake in the joint venture and provide funding through its technology and expertise provided in kind. However, the Taiwanese fab giant has now explicitly denied this possibility.
Of course, Citi has been skeptical of the joint venture between TSMC and Intel from the beginning, stating:
"Given the differences in manufacturing and operations, we do not believe TSMC's joint venture with Intel will be successful."