Third Point – Taiwan Semiconductor: The ‘Toll Road’ For AI Compute
Summary:
- During the quarter, we added to our TSMC investment, which we initiated in May of last year.
- We view TSMC as the “toll road” of the semiconductor industry, particularly for AI compute.
- We believe TSMC has significant untapped pricing power which can be levered to offset (if not expand) its already admirable returns on capital.
The following segment was excerpted from this fund letter.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM)
During the quarter, we added to our TSMC investment, which we initiated in May of last year. TSMC is coming off its worst year since the Global Financial Crisis, and in the years to come we see a combination of cyclical recovery plus structural growth in AI demand fueling substantial earnings growth for the company.
We view TSMC as the “toll road” of the semiconductor industry, particularly for AI compute. TSMC holds more than 90% market share for leading edge semiconductor manufacturing, where all AI silicon is being processed. Beyond their reliable execution producing some of the most complex products on earth in volume, TSMC has spent decades optimizing for and building ecosystems around their 500+ customers, an advantage that cannot be replicated overnight.
Today, TSMC derives a relatively small percentage of its revenues from AI processors, largely from NVDA, but we see that percentage quickly rising as AI compute broadens from just the GPU to custom accelerators. With Nvidia’s GPUs costing tens of thousands of dollars, the bulk of which go to Nvidia’s gross profit, hyperscalers are doubling down on their efforts to develop in-house silicon to alleviate AI compute’s economic burden. Google was the first mover to custom accelerators with the TPU almost 10 years ago, and today this is already a multi-billion dollar business for TSMC. Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have all followed Google’s lead and have announced (and in Amazon’s case already mass producing) their own chips. As these products scale, we see TSMC’s AI revenue growing by multiples in the coming years.
While TSMC’s fundamental outlook looks bright, the market has concerns which are reflected in the stock’s 10x+ discount to the SOX, the widest in TSMC’s history. The main concern is Intel’s entry into the foundry market. While we commend Intel’s efforts to diversify the global semiconductor supply chain and have admiration for the company’s rich IP and manufacturing expertise, we think it will be difficult for Intel to challenge TSMC’s dominance in foundry. Putting aside the onerous capital requirements necessary to stand up a foundry business (TSMC’s capital budget stands at ~2x Intel’s projected EBITDA), we believe the transition from internal manufacturing to an external foundry will be a difficult one. Intel has spent the past 40+ years tailoring its manufacturing process and transistor design to suit its own narrow product suite. Broadening to a multitude of customized external customer designs across a variety of end markets, in particular mobile, we believe will prove challenging.
We believe TSMC has significant untapped pricing power which can be levered to offset (if not expand) its already admirable returns on capital.
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