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TSM · Forward model

Revenue by vertical, 20 quarters out

Model as of

Each segment is projected from its own operating driver, rolled up into consolidated cash flow, and discounted back to a fair value per share. The assumptions below are editable — change them and every number on this page moves with them.

TSMC has no reportable segments in the Microsoft sense - it is a single foundry business and reports one consolidated profit and loss. What it publishes every quarter, on one slide of its earnings deck, is revenue BY PLATFORM as a percentage of net revenue: High Performance Computing, Smartphone, Internet of Things, Automotive, Digital Consumer Electronics and Others. Those six percentages sum to exactly 100 in all eight quarters here, so multiplying them by the reported dollar revenue gives six lines that reconcile to the consolidated total exactly. That is the whole basis of this model's verticals, and its limitation: the percentages are WHOLE NUMBERS, so every line carries up to half a point of rounding - about $200M a quarter on a $40.2B base, which is half the DCE line and a quarter of the Others line. Read the two small platforms as indicative and the three large ones as sound. What TSMC does NOT publish is any economics by platform. There is no gross margin, no operating margin, no capital expenditure and no capacity by platform - only consolidated figures - so all six verticals here carry the SAME margin and the SAME capital intensity, and the split does no economic work at all. It changes the revenue path and nothing else. The margin used is the disclosed 60.3% operating margin plus depreciation and amortisation added back at 15.14% of revenue, the first-half 2026 rate, giving 75.4%. There is no corporate overhead layer because there is nothing unallocated to put in it. One number in that add-back deserves attention: TSMC's depreciation was NT$359.5bn in the first half of 2026 against NT$359.0bn in the first half of 2025 - essentially FLAT - while capital expenditure ran at NT$496bn in the basis quarter alone. The fabs being built now are not yet in service, so the depreciation from this capital wave has barely started to arrive. Finally, the driver: TSMC publishes wafer shipments only in total (4,336 thousand 12-inch equivalents in the basis quarter) and gives no capacity or shipment figure per platform, so all six verticals run growth drivers. A per-platform wafer driver would have to assume every platform earns the same revenue per wafer, which is the one thing that is certainly false when HPC sits on 2-nanometer and IoT sits on mature nodes. A seventh vertical, Tesla AI5, is carried at ZERO in every reported quarter and starts in 2027. It is not a TSMC disclosure of any kind - TSMC has never named Tesla as a customer, never mentioned AI5 and publishes no wafer price - and it exists on this page to make one question answerable: what is a flagship automotive AI design win worth to a company running at $45bn a quarter? The arithmetic is two million cars a year at two half-reticle dies each, so four million chips or one million a quarter, at roughly $150 of TSMC revenue per die - about $22k a wafer over some 175 good dies, plus packaging. That is $153M in its first quarter, growing to $225M by 2031 as Optimus and training clusters lift the die count toward 1.8 million a quarter. It never exceeds 0.28% of revenue and it moves base fair value by one dollar, from $472.80 to $473.80. Note also that Tesla's EXISTING silicon is already inside the Automotive and HPC lines, which are projected from history that contains it, so this vertical must be read as incremental AI5 volume above the current run rate or it double-counts.

TSM REVENUE MODEL

Latest: $102.58B (2031Q2E)

Period Value
2024Q3 $23.50B
2024Q4 $26.88B
2025Q1 $25.53B
2025Q2 $30.07B
2025Q3 $33.10B
2025Q4 $33.73B
2026Q1 $35.90B
2026Q2 $40.20B
2026Q3E $44.93B
2026Q4E $49.51B
2027Q1E $54.03B
2027Q2E $58.15B
2027Q3E $62.00B
2027Q4E $65.60B
2028Q1E $68.96B
2028Q2E $72.11B
2028Q3E $75.08B
2028Q4E $77.89B
2029Q1E $80.59B
2029Q2E $83.18B
2029Q3E $85.69B
2029Q4E $88.15B
2030Q1E $90.57B
2030Q2E $92.97B
2030Q3E $95.36B
2030Q4E $97.75B
2031Q1E $100.15B
2031Q2E $102.58B
Scenarios

Where each case comes from

Bear case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bear column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

First-half 2026 consolidated statements - the depreciation that has not arrived

Bull case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bull column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

Wei case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Wei column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

Valuation

From cash flow to fair value

The published model, discounted at 10.0% a year with an exit multiple of 8.0x on revenue. The sliders above do not change this walk.

Present value of free cash flow, 20 quarters$412.36B
Terminal-year revenue$395.84B
Terminal-year EBITDA$287.92B
Exit multiple, on revenue8.0x
Terminal value$3.17T
Discounted at 10.0% a year, terminal value becomes$1.97T
Share of enterprise value from the terminal83%
Enterprise value$2.38T
Net cash$78.68B
Equity value$2.46T
Shares5.19B
Fair value per share$473.80
Against the deployed price of $428.03, as of +11%

10% on a business with $78.7B of net cash and a 60% operating margin, marked up for a manufacturing base concentrated on one island and an end market - AI - that supplies all of the growth. The exit multiple is the number to argue with, and unusually so here: TSMC publishes no multi-year target, so nineteen of the twenty projected quarters rest on it. 8x terminal revenue on the roughly 72% terminal EBITDA margin in this model is about 11x EBITDA, which is a defensible multiple for a capital-intensive monopoly, against the 12x forward revenue the shares carry today.

Read the other way round: at $428.03 the market is paying 7.0x terminal-year revenue, holding every other assumption on this page fixed. That is the number to argue about.

Quarter by quarter

The projected path

Quarter High Performance ComputingSmartphoneInternet of ThingsAutomotiveDigital Consumer ElectronicsOthersTesla AI5 Revenue YoY EBITDA Capex FCF R40 PV of FCF
2026 Q3E $31.04B$8.89B$2.07B$1.69B$410M$828M$0 $44.93B +36% $33.77B $16.94B $13.80B +66 $13.48B
2026 Q4E $35.42B$8.93B$2.13B$1.76B$417M$850M$0 $49.51B +47% $37.09B $18.09B $15.58B +78 $14.86B
2027 Q1E $39.59B$8.98B$2.18B$1.83B$424M$871M$153M $54.03B +50% $40.35B $19.17B $17.37B +83 $16.17B
2027 Q2E $43.52B$9.02B$2.23B$1.90B$431M$891M$156M $58.15B +45% $43.30B $20.08B $19.04B +77 $17.31B
2027 Q3E $47.19B$9.07B$2.28B$1.96B$437M$910M$159M $62.00B +38% $46.05B $20.88B $20.64B +71 $18.32B
2027 Q4E $50.62B$9.11B$2.32B$2.02B$443M$928M$163M $65.60B +32% $48.60B $21.59B $22.15B +66 $19.20B
2028 Q1E $53.81B$9.16B$2.36B$2.07B$448M$946M$166M $68.96B +28% $50.97B $22.22B $23.58B +62 $19.96B
2028 Q2E $56.79B$9.20B$2.41B$2.13B$454M$963M$170M $72.11B +24% $53.19B $22.78B $24.94B +59 $20.61B
2028 Q3E $59.59B$9.25B$2.45B$2.18B$459M$980M$174M $75.08B +21% $55.28B $23.30B $26.22B +56 $21.16B
2028 Q4E $62.24B$9.30B$2.49B$2.23B$464M$996M$178M $77.89B +19% $57.25B $23.78B $27.44B +54 $21.62B
2029 Q1E $64.76B$9.34B$2.53B$2.28B$469M$1.01B$182M $80.59B +17% $59.13B $24.24B $28.61B +52 $22.01B
2029 Q2E $67.19B$9.39B$2.57B$2.34B$474M$1.03B$186M $83.18B +15% $60.94B $24.68B $29.73B +51 $22.34B
2029 Q3E $69.54B$9.44B$2.61B$2.39B$479M$1.05B$190M $85.69B +14% $62.69B $25.11B $30.82B +50 $22.61B
2029 Q4E $71.83B$9.48B$2.66B$2.44B$484M$1.06B$195M $88.15B +13% $64.41B $25.54B $31.87B +49 $22.83B
2030 Q1E $74.08B$9.53B$2.70B$2.49B$489M$1.08B$199M $90.57B +12% $66.10B $25.97B $32.91B +49 $23.02B
2030 Q2E $76.31B$9.58B$2.74B$2.54B$495M$1.10B$204M $92.97B +12% $67.78B $26.41B $33.92B +48 $23.17B
2030 Q3E $78.53B$9.63B$2.78B$2.60B$500M$1.11B$209M $95.36B +11% $69.45B $26.86B $34.93B +48 $23.29B
2030 Q4E $80.75B$9.67B$2.82B$2.65B$505M$1.13B$214M $97.75B +11% $71.13B $27.32B $35.92B +48 $23.39B
2031 Q1E $82.98B$9.72B$2.87B$2.70B$510M$1.15B$219M $100.15B +11% $72.82B $27.80B $36.92B +47 $23.47B
2031 Q2E $85.23B$9.77B$2.91B$2.76B$515M$1.16B$225M $102.58B +10% $74.52B $28.29B $37.91B +47 $23.54B

Every row is projected. A year-over-year change is shown only where the quarter it compares against exists — an em dash means there is no comparable quarter, not a flat year.

Track record

Model revisions

Assumptions are marked to reality as each quarter prints. Every change is appended here, with the fair value the model produced at the time, so the model's own history stays visible.

DateFair value thenNote
2026-08-25 First build, on the 2026 Q2 basis, from the intake brief.
2026-08-25 $473.80 Added a Tesla AI5 vertical with no history, starting 2027 Q1: one million half-reticle dies a quarter at about $150 of TSMC revenue each, growing toward 1.8 million as Optimus and clusters join. Moves base fair value from $472.80 to $473.80.