TSMC’s First NT$500bn Month Leaves September a 6%…

The easy reading of TSMC’s August sales is that a record month signals a record quarter. That gets the logic backwards. The August figure, filed with the SEC on 10 September, matters less as a headline than as arithmetic: it has already done most of the work for the third quarter, and it tells you how little September now needs to deliver. TSMC booked approximately NT$514.81 billion in August, up 53.3% on a year earlier and 10.1% on July, according to its August 2026 revenue report. It is the first month the company has ever crossed NT$500 billion; the previous high was July’s NT$467.58 billion. The release is 13 days old and the market has moved on. The more useful question now sits two weeks ahead, when the September figure lands in early October and settles whether the world’s largest contract chipmaker beats its own guidance for a fifth straight quarter.

Here is the calculation nobody has laid out in plain numbers. TSMC guided third-quarter revenue to US$44.6 billion to US$45.8 billion at an assumed rate of NT$32 to the dollar, which translates to NT$1,427.2 billion to NT$1,465.6 billion. July and August together already total NT$982.39 billion, or 77% of the entire second quarter. September therefore needs only NT$483.2 billion to reach the top of the range. That is 6.1% below August. To land at the bottom of the range, September could fall 13.6%. And the exchange-rate assumption is not doing hidden work: the Federal Reserve’s H.10 series puts the average New Taiwan dollar rate from 1 July to 18 September at 32.02, almost exactly the 32.0 that TSMC’s finance team plugged in.

What the monthly series actually shows

TSMC is one of very few mega-cap companies that publishes sales every month, and it files each figure with the SEC as a 6-K, usually between the 8th and the 13th of the following month. String those filings together and the shape of 2026 becomes obvious in a way quarterly reports blur.

The first quarter opened at NT$401.26 billion in January, dipped to NT$317.66 billion in the shorter month of February and rebounded to NT$415.19 billion in March. The second quarter was flat to rising: NT$410.73 billion in April, NT$416.98 billion in May, NT$442.68 billion in June. Then the step change arrived. July came in at NT$467.58 billion and August at NT$514.81 billion, the two largest months in the company’s history back to back.

Year-on-year growth tells the same story from a different angle. June was up 67.9%, July 44.7%, August 53.3%. Twelve months earlier the comparable August 2025 figure was NT$335.77 billion.

Why the acceleration? TSMC’s own disclosures point in one direction. In the second quarter, 3-nanometer wafers made up 30% of wafer revenue, 5-nanometer 33% and 7-nanometer 11%, so 77% of wafer sales came from 7-nanometer and more advanced nodes, according to the company’s second-quarter earnings release. The 2-nanometer node appeared in the mix for the first time at 3%. Management’s outlook for the current quarter explicitly cited “the steep ramp-up of our 2-nanometer technology”. Its annual report on Form 20-F, filed in April, shows high performance computing (the platform that includes AI accelerators) grew from 43% of revenue in 2023 to 51% in 2024 and 58% in 2025.

Pricing and mix are also visible in the margins. Gross margin reached 67.7% in the second quarter, up from 58.6% a year earlier, and operating margin hit 60.3%. A foundry does not add nine points of gross margin in twelve months by selling more of the same product. It does it by selling more leading-edge wafers at leading-edge prices while older fabs depreciate.

None of this makes August an anomaly. It makes it the latest point on a curve that TSMC itself signalled in July. What is new is how far ahead of that curve the first two months of the quarter have run. When FinanceFeeds published its TSMC stock bull and bear cases on 2 September, the near-term test was whether monthly sales could hold above NT$450 billion. August cleared that bar by 14%.

Who has said what since the record month

TSMC itself has said nothing. The August release is a single paragraph and a table, with no commentary, which is standard for its monthly filings. The company’s next scheduled opportunity to explain the number is the third-quarter earnings call; it reported the equivalent quarter in 2025 on 16 October. Until then, investors are working from the July guidance and from Wendell Huang’s description, as chief financial officer, of a “steep ramp-up” in 2-nanometer production.

The loudest external signal came from the customer side. Nvidia, which names TSMC as a wafer supplier in its latest annual report, reported second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $96.2 billion on 26 August, up 106% from a year earlier, and guided the following quarter to $108.0 billion plus or minus 2%. More telling for a foundry analyst is a single sentence in Nvidia’s quarterly report: “We have significantly increased our supply and capacity commitments from $119 billion last quarter to $279 billion as of July 26, 2026 to meet future demand.” Those commitments cover more than wafers, and Nvidia does not break out what it owes to any one supplier, so the figure cannot be read as a TSMC order book. It is, however, the clearest public evidence that one of the biggest buyers of leading-edge AI silicon is locking in capacity faster than it is booking revenue.

Nvidia’s filing carries a second, quieter data point. Revenue from customers headquartered in Taiwan, which on Nvidia’s own footnote reflects where its direct customers are based rather than where chips end up, rose to $26.99 billion in the quarter from $8.90 billion a year earlier.

Rivals have been busy elsewhere. FinanceFeeds reported this month on Intel Foundry passing one million High-NA wafers while external buyers hold back, and on Samsung’s plan to more than double HBM4 output in 2027. Neither company has responded to TSMC’s August figure, and neither discloses monthly foundry revenue, so there is no like-for-like number to set against it. That absence is itself informative for anyone benchmarking the three.

AMD, which names TSMC as its wafer foundry for high performance computing products in its annual report, has been more explicit about the timing that matters for TSMC’s third and fourth quarters. Reporting second-quarter revenue of $11.5 billion on 4 August, its finance chief pointed to the back half of the year. “We expect Data Center sales to accelerate in the second half of 2026, driving stronger overall revenue growth and continued earnings expansion,” said Jean Hu, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer at AMD, in the company’s second-quarter results release.

The guidance record, and what September has to clear

A single strong month means little without a baseline. The more useful baseline is TSMC’s own guidance history, which every quarter sets a dollar revenue range and then reports against it. Pulling the last five releases from EDGAR gives the following picture.

QuarterRevenue guidance (US$bn)Reported revenue (US$bn)Versus top of range

Q3 202531.8 – 33.033.10+0.10
Q4 202532.2 – 33.433.73+0.33
Q1 202634.6 – 35.835.90+0.10
Q2 202639.0 – 40.240.20at top
Q3 202644.6 – 45.8due OctoberSeptember needs NT$483.2bn for the top

Sources: TSMC quarterly earnings releases filed with the SEC on 17 July 2025, 16 October 2025, 15 January 2026, 16 April 2026 and 16 July 2026.

Four consecutive quarters at or above the top of the range. The margin of beat has been narrow, between zero and US$0.33 billion, which is a sign of a finance team that guides tightly rather than sandbagging. That makes the current quarter look unusual. If September simply matches August, third-quarter revenue would be NT$1,497.19 billion. At the guided NT$32 rate that is about US$46.8 billion, roughly US$1 billion above the top of the range, three times the widest beat in the table.

The currency check matters because TSMC guides in dollars and reports monthly sales in New Taiwan dollars. A sharp appreciation of the local currency would shrink the dollar value of each NT$ booked. Federal Reserve H.10 daily rates show the NT$ averaged 32.22 per dollar in July, 32.02 in August and 31.70 in September to date. The firmer September rate helps the dollar conversion, not hurts it.

For brokers pricing TSM ADRs or single-stock CFDs into the October prints, the practical point is the asymmetry. A September figure anywhere between NT$444.8 billion and NT$483.2 billion keeps the quarter inside guidance. Anything above NT$483.2 billion makes it a fifth straight beat, and a figure at August’s level would make it the largest in at least five quarters.

Where the pressure sits: capital, customers and tariffs

The revenue curve has a cost curve behind it. In January TSMC set its 2026 capital budget at US$52 billion to US$56 billion, a range it repeated in the April 20-F with the caveat that it “may be adjusted later”. The July earnings release and presentation filed with the SEC did not restate it. Board appropriations tell a bigger story. Directors approved about US$14.98 billion in November 2025, US$44.96 billion in February, US$31.28 billion in May and US$29.44 billion on 11 August, a total of roughly US$120.67 billion in four meetings. Appropriations are authority to spend across several years rather than cash out of the door in one, but the pace is striking. Cash capital expenditure in the first half alone was NT$846.76 billion, according to the second-quarter presentation.

Funding is not the constraint. TSMC ended June with NT$3,518.01 billion in cash and marketable securities and generated NT$287.36 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, even after the capex. The board has also authorised up to NT$60 billion of domestic unsecured bonds, a capital injection of up to US$20 billion into TSMC Arizona and, in August, a subscription of up to ¥282 billion in the image-sensor joint venture with Sony Semiconductor Solutions in Kumamoto, targeting volume production in 2029.

Concentration is the harder tension. The 20-F discloses that TSMC’s ten largest customers accounted for 78% of 2025 net revenue, up from 70% in 2023. The largest single customer was 19% and the second largest 17%, up from 11% two years earlier. TSMC does not name them. A monthly revenue line that leans this heavily on a handful of AI and smartphone buyers can move sharply if any one of them pauses orders, and the company’s own risk factors say so.

Then there is trade policy. The same filing records that the US Section 232 investigation into semiconductor imports concluded in December 2025 with a 25% ad valorem tariff on certain advanced computing chips, and that a January 2026 US–Taiwan agreement cut reciprocal tariffs on Taiwanese goods to no more than 15% and granted preferential Section 232 treatment to Taiwanese chipmakers that invest in US capacity. TSMC also noted that the practical effect of the US Supreme Court decision striking down the IEEPA reciprocal tariffs, and of any offsets, remained unclear. For a company putting up to US$20 billion more into Arizona, the preferential treatment is not an abstraction.

What to watch into October

Three things follow from the numbers above, each with a trigger that will be public within weeks.

September revenue will most likely clear the top of guidance. The chain is simple: July and August have already delivered 67% to 69% of the guided range, September has historically moved only modestly against August (last year it fell 1.4%), and the 2-nanometer ramp that management called steep in July is still building. A September figure below NT$483.2 billion would require a month-on-month drop of more than 6%, which would itself be news. The figure should arrive in the second week of October; last year’s September number was filed on 9 October.

The full-year growth target is likely to be nudged up again. TSMC’s 2025 quarterly dollar revenue summed to US$122.43 billion. “Slightly above 40%” growth implies about US$171.4 billion for 2026. With the first half at US$76.10 billion and the third quarter guided to a US$45.8 billion ceiling, the fourth quarter would need roughly US$49.5 billion to hit 40%. If the third quarter comes in near US$46.8 billion, that hurdle falls, and management has already raised the full-year language once, from “above 30%” in April.

The capital budget is the number most likely to change at the October call. Appropriations running at more than double the range TSMC last put in writing, a US$20 billion Arizona injection and Nvidia’s jump in forward commitments all point the same way. Traders who watch the semiconductor complex should expect the capex figure, not the revenue beat, to be the headline that moves equipment suppliers.

Nvidia’s chief executive put the demand side bluntly in his company’s 26 August results release. “The AI infrastructure buildout is at full steam,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Vera Rubin, now in full production, was built to power exactly this moment.” For a broader view of how the chip trade is reaching retail platforms, see FinanceFeeds’ report on STARTRADER adding 49 chipmaker and semiconductor ETF CFDs, and on Alibaba’s Zhenwu V900 chip, a reminder that the largest buyers are also designing their own silicon.

Frequently asked questions

What was TSMC’s revenue in August 2026?

TSMC reported consolidated August 2026 revenue of approximately NT$514.81 billion in a 6-K filed on 10 September. That was 10.1% higher than July and 53.3% higher than August 2025. It is the first month in the company’s history above NT$500 billion, beating the previous record of NT$467.58 billion set in July 2026.

When does TSMC report September 2026 revenue?

Over the past year TSMC has filed each monthly revenue report with the SEC between the 8th and the 13th of the following month, so the September 2026 number should arrive in the second week of October. Last year’s September figure was filed on 9 October 2025, a week before the third-quarter earnings release on 16 October.

How much does September need to be for TSMC to beat guidance?

At TSMC’s assumed rate of NT$32 per US dollar, its third-quarter range of US$44.6 billion to US$45.8 billion equals NT$1,427.2 billion to NT$1,465.6 billion. July and August total NT$982.39 billion, so September needs NT$483.2 billion for the top of the range and NT$444.8 billion for the bottom. Both are below August.

Does the currency change the calculation?

Only slightly. TSMC guides revenue in dollars but reports monthly sales in New Taiwan dollars. Federal Reserve H.10 data put the average rate from 1 July to 18 September at about 32.02 per dollar, almost exactly the 32.0 assumption. September’s firmer rate of about 31.70 would lift, not reduce, the dollar value of each NT$ booked.

Why is TSMC’s revenue growing so quickly in 2026?

TSMC attributes it to demand for leading-edge nodes and the ramp of 2-nanometer production. Seven-nanometer and more advanced wafers were 77% of wafer revenue in the second quarter, and high performance computing, which includes AI accelerators, rose to 58% of total revenue in 2025 from 43% in 2023, according to the company’s 20-F.

What are the main risks to the outlook?

The 20-F flags customer concentration, with the ten largest customers at 78% of 2025 revenue and the top two at 19% and 17%. It also cites US trade measures, including a 25% Section 232 tariff on certain advanced chips, alongside unresolved questions over preferential treatment for Taiwanese producers and the fallout from the Supreme Court’s IEEPA ruling.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and analysis only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or derivative. Figures converted between currencies or combined across filings are FinanceFeeds calculations based on the primary sources linked above. Trading CFDs and leveraged products carries a high risk of loss.