The world’s leading microchip manufacturer, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), recently released its quarterly report, which reveals cryptocurrency mining has been carrying the company through a seasonal decline in mobile phone sales.
The recent surge in cryptocurrency mining has taken the world by storm, but it’s still surprising to think that the relatively new trend could impact such an established market in a major way.
TSMC makes over half of the world’s microchips, and while refusing to release the exact figures as to what percentage of their business is now dependent on cryptocurrency mining, the company’s executives had only good things to say about crypto mining in their bullish quarterly report.
Per the report, the company generated $8.5 billion in revenue on Q1 this year, showing a 6.1 percent increase over last year. TSMC provides mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain its ASIC chips, and it appears the success of the Antminer E3 may have something to do with the continued growth, as 41 percent of the Q1 earnings occurred in March.
C.C Wei, President and chief compliance officer (CCO) at TSMC, claimed that “these results were mainly driven by strong demand from high performance computing such as cryptocurrency mining”.
“Our first quarter business was impacted by an unfavorable foreign exchange rate as NT dollar has appreciated by 5.9% against US dollar over first quarter of 2017, as well as mobile product seasonality, while the continuing strong demand for cryptocurrency mining moderated the mobile softness,” said Lora Ho, the company’s SVP and Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
She added:
“Moving into second quarter 2018, continued weak demand from our mobile sector will negatively impact our business despite strength in cryptocurrency mining. Based on our current business outlook, management expects the overall performance for second quarter 2018 to be as follows”:
Mark Liu, also CCO, said “We see very strong demand in the first quarter from cryptocurrencies. During the second quarter, while we do see some weakness in the 28mm chip, the [demand for] the rest of the technology is still very strong on cryptocurrency.” Liu went on to say that blockchain technology and cryptocurrency mining would bring “innovation and demand for years to come.”
The fourth quarter of 2017 was also largely driven by cryptocurrency mining – as the largest semiconductor foundry in the world and producer of over half of the world’s microchips, crypto mining sustaining the manufacturing giant is a strong sign cryptocurrency adoption and mining are rising worldwide.
