← Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited
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.
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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 |
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.
Q2 2026 press release - the margin guide
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.
Q2 2026 press release - the node ramp and the full-year guide
- Jul 16, 2026 In the second quarter, shipments of 2-nanometer accounted for 3% of total wafer revenue; 3-nanometer accounted for 30%; 5-nanometer accounted for 33%; and 7-nanometer accounted for 11%. Advanced technologies, defined as 7-nanometer and more advanced technologies, accounted for 77% of total wafer revenue.
- Jul 16, 2026 Revenue is expected to be between US$44.6 billion and US$45.8 billion;
Q2 2026 earnings deck - the annual outlook
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.
Q2 2026 press release - what management said about demand
- Jul 16, 2026 Our business in the second quarter was supported by strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies
- Jul 16, 2026 Moving into third quarter 2026, we expect our business to be supported by continued strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies, including the steep ramp-up of our 2-nanometer technology.
Q2 2026 earnings deck - the only forward number TSMC gives
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 revenue | 8.0x |
| Terminal value | $3.17T |
| Discounted at 10.0% a year, terminal value becomes | $1.97T |
| Share of enterprise value from the terminal | 83% |
| Enterprise value | $2.38T |
| Net cash | $78.68B |
| Equity value | $2.46T |
| Shares | 5.19B |
| 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.
The projected path
| Quarter | High Performance Computing | Smartphone | Internet of Things | Automotive | Digital Consumer Electronics | Others | Tesla 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.
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.
| Date | Fair value then | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 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. |