Taiwan

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reported record Q3 2026 revenue of about NT$1.49t, with September alone at NT$511.86b, driven by demand for chips used in AI workloads. Management highlighted advanced packaging services for AI accelerators as a key contributor to the quarter, and said leading edge capacity is fully booked through 2026. TSMC also agreed a multi year, US$2b silicon interposer supply arrangement with GlobalFoundries that includes the first U.S.-based silicon interposer production for its packaging, extending its CoWoS packaging supply chain into the United States and spreading manufacturing risk. The company is supporting a US$64b capex plan, and investors will watch whether it can ease advanced packaging constraints and how much of that spend translates into stable utilization and revenue progress through and after the Malta ramp toward 2028.

KONST, a Taiwan-based next-generation AI compute operator, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by ADATA Technology, with strategic participation from MMobility, Pegatron Venture Capital, and several other corporate investors. The company said it will use the proceeds to scale up its AI data center buildout across Asia and accelerate its Token Factory strategy, which treats compute as production equipment and tokens as its output. That strategy rests on three layers: Konstra AI handles compute supply, from site selection and mechanical, electrical, and environmental control systems through GPU cluster tuning and operations; Glows.ai provides the conversion layer, breaking cluster compute into smaller units billed per second; and Horizon AI's (k) ATP Token handles governance and delivery, letting enterprises connect to every authorized model with a single project key and track usage through audit logs. KONST said the round's principal investors come from memory and storage, electrification solutions, and electronics manufacturing, while other participants span energy, semiconductors, and thermal management. Co-founder and chairman Ben Chang said the round is about more than the amount raised, adding that once AI becomes part of operations, computing power becomes essential infrastructure rather than a one-time project expense.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of NT$1,270.38 billion, up 36.0%, with net income and diluted earnings per share both climbing 77.4%. Advanced technologies of 7-nanometer and smaller accounted for 77% of wafer revenue, with the 3-nanometer node at 30% and 5-nanometer at 33%, while gross margin reached 67.7%, operating margin 60.3%, and net profit 55.6% of revenue. September revenue came in at about NT$511.86 billion, up 54.6% year over year, following August's 53.3% gain, and first-nine-month 2026 revenue rose 41.1%. Management guided third-quarter revenue to between US$44.6 billion and US$45.8 billion, versus US$40.20 billion in the second quarter, but projected gross margin of 65% to 67% and operating margin of 56% to 58%, both below second-quarter levels, as the 2-nanometer process ramps up after contributing 3% of wafer revenue in the second quarter. At a forward P/E of 28.44 as of October 6, above its 5-year average of 21.78 and the sector's 23.74, TSMC trades at a premium, with EPS expected to rise 30.04% in 2027.

Wedbush Securities said Taiwan Semiconductor's stronger-than-expected third-quarter sales are a good sign for the chipmaker's fourth quarter. Taiwan Semiconductor, the world's largest contract chipmaker, reported record third-quarter revenue of NT$1.49T, or $46.71B, up 50% year-over-year, exceeding the LSEG SmartEstimate of NT$1.46T and the company's own guidance of $44.6B to $45.8B. Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson wrote in a note to clients that the result represents a slightly larger than typical beat, noting that upside last quarter totaled about 1%, and that with revenue ahead of the range and the exchange rate essentially in line with the 32.0 TWD/USD embedded in the outlook, gross margins will likely at least meet the 66% midpoint of TSMC's 65% to 67% guidance and more likely exceed his 66.0% estimate. Bryson, who has an Outperform rating on Taiwan Semiconductor and a NT$3,000 price target, added that given TSMC's near monopoly position in cutting edge fabrication, with all major AI paths currently reliant on TSMC, he continues to see the stock as one of the best and safest ways to invest in a future dominated by AI. Taiwan Semiconductor is scheduled to release its full third-quarter financial results and provide updated guidance on Oct. 15.

Samsung Electronics reported the most profitable quarter ever by any company at $80.2 billion, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company posted record third-quarter revenue of $46.7 billion, up 50% year over year. Samsung, the world's largest memory manufacturer, counts Qualcomm, Alphabet, Tesla, Advanced Micro Devices and Amazon among its main customers. TSMC, the world's largest manufacturer of AI chips, produces over 60% of all global contract chips and over 90% of advanced chips, with NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, Apple and Broadcom among its customers. Earlier this week, SpaceX announced it will raise $40 billion in debt to buy NVIDIA chips as it scales its AI compute, with a payback period well under one year thanks to deals with Google and Anthropic. The results and the SpaceX debt raise suggest record capital expenditure on AI infrastructure will continue.

Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or CCET, reported monthly sales for September 2026 of 644.831 million US dollars, up 16.6% compared with September 2025 and up 78.14% compared with August 2026, when sales stood at 361.988 million US dollars. After the figures were announced, CCET shares closed at 10.00 baht, up 8.710%, or 0.80 baht, on trading value of 2,282.49 million baht. The stock opened at 9.15 baht, with a high of 10.00 baht and a low of 9.10 baht.

Asia Plus Securities, or ASPS, assesses that the Thai stock market has a chance of a temporary short-term recovery, supported by the yield on 10-year US government bonds falling from 5.34% to 5.23%, together with the WTI crude oil price easing to near 91 US dollars per barrel after President Donald Trump signalled that he would not yet take military action against Iran before the midterm elections on 3 November 2026. Meanwhile, the auction of 22 billion US dollars of 30-year US government bonds drew strong interest, with a bid-to-cover ratio as high as 2.54 times, above the historical average of 2.41 times. However, ASPS still advises investors to be cautious about long-term volatility, because senior Federal Reserve officials are still signalling a tight monetary policy stance to bring inflation down to the 2% target. It expects US September CPI inflation to rise to plus 3.6% year on year, from plus 3.4% in the previous month. On the AI hardware stock front, the sector faced short-term profit-taking, led by CoreWeave down 8%, Oracle down 6%, and Nvidia down 2.9%, after OpenAI reported annual revenue at the end of September of about 50 billion US dollars, below the market expectation of 68 billion US dollars, and cancelled the launch plan for its GPT-6.1 Astra model and slowed its plan to list the company on the stock exchange. Meanwhile, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, reported record-high third-quarter 2026 revenue of 1.49 trillion Taiwan dollars, above the market expectation of 1.46 trillion Taiwan dollars, driven by demand for advanced chips for AI-processing GPUs and CPUs, along with plans to raise chip production prices next year. As for the Thai stock index, it most recently fell 14 points, or 0.88%, to 1,570.61 points, pressured by the transport and logistics group, which dropped 2.80% after news of preparations to collect three tourist fees and taxes totalling 2,570 baht, combined with concerns over the September consumer confidence index, which fell for the first time in four months amid the flood crisis and diesel prices surging above 40 baht per litre. ASPS recommends a strategy of catching a relief rally in domestic play, tourism, and healthcare stocks, with five standout picks: DISNEY19, which is entering the high season for fourth-quarter earnings on the buzz around the blockbuster film Avengers: Doomsday; AAPL80, which benefits from the upcoming launch of its first foldable-screen smartphone; Bangkok Expressway and Metro Public Company Limited, or BEM, which has a high chance of winning the contract to operate the southern Purple Line electric train, combined with third-quarter 2026 earnings that are expected to hit the year's peak; Com Seven Public Company Limited, or COM7, whose third-quarter 2026 profit is expected to grow more than 30% year on year; and Bangkok Chain Hospital Public Company Limited, or BCH, whose second-half revenue from foreign patients is trending strongly higher, led by patients from the Middle East, particularly the United Arab Emirates.

Lynx Equity Strategies analyst KC Rajkumar expects the AI semiconductor rally to extend into year-end, with Nvidia, Micron Technology and Sandisk among the names leading the move. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index pulled back modestly Wednesday after four consecutive sessions of gains, but Rajkumar said the broader rally that began after the Federal Reserve's Sept. 15 meeting remains intact, with AI semiconductor stocks bought in waves as the sector shrugs off higher bond yields. Micron was the latest beneficiary, rising roughly 4% Wednesday despite a weaker broader market, after breaking out of its trading range in early September. On memory pricing, Samsung reported preliminary third-quarter operating profit up roughly ninefold year over year and Micron's August-quarter operating profit rose about 11%, while Micron management said supply-demand conditions in fiscal 2027 and 2028 should be significantly tighter than in fiscal 2026. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reported third-quarter revenue growth of 51% year over year, above the high end of its guidance, which Rajkumar said could push TSMC's 2026 revenue growth from its guidance of slightly above 40% to at least the mid-40% range. Rajkumar added that AI semiconductors are emerging from a period of investor skepticism and are no longer the crowded trade they were several months ago, pointing to growing popularity of AI agents from Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic and stronger-than-expected AI-driven services at Accenture as signs demand is broadening.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co has signed a $2 billion multi-year supply agreement with GlobalFoundries Inc to manufacture silicon interposers in the United States, sending GlobalFoundries shares up 4% in premarket trading on Thursday. Under the deal, GlobalFoundries will provide manufacturing services from its Malta, New York facility to support TSMC's Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate advanced packaging ecosystem, adding fabrication capacity at the site to scale advanced packaging solutions across multiple product generations while integrating embedded deep trench capacitor components. The partnership carries an initial five-year term with an underlying framework to expand production capacity over time as customer demand increases. The move addresses a critical bottleneck in the semiconductor supply chain, as high-performance computing and AI hardware increasingly rely on sophisticated packaging techniques to link memory and logic chips, with volume production at the Malta facility expected to begin ramping during the first half of 2028. For GlobalFoundries, the partnership validates its footprint in trusted U.S. manufacturing while positioning the foundry as an indispensable partner to the world's leading chipmaker.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said on October 8 that its third-quarter revenue soared to a record NT$1.49 trillion, or about $46.71 billion, jumping 50% from a year earlier and beating market expectations, driven by red-hot demand for chips used in artificial intelligence processing. Actual revenue also came in above TSMC's own guidance of $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion given at its July earnings conference. For September alone, TSMC reported revenue rose 54.6% year on year to NT$511.86 billion. However, TSMC did not disclose further details or any business outlook in its brief monthly revenue filing. The company is scheduled to report full third-quarter results and financial statements next Thursday, October 15, when it will also unveil its business outlook and operating plans for the current quarter and the remainder of the year. Meanwhile, LSEG SmartEstimate projects that TSMC will report third-quarter net profit surging 64% year on year to NT$740.8 billion. In Taipei stock market trading today, TSMC shares closed down 1.35% ahead of the revenue figures, in line with the broader Taiwan market, which ended 0.99% lower.

Samsung Electronics reported third-quarter operating profit up nearly ninefold to 107.4 trillion won, or about 80.1 billion dollars, a record high, while revenue more than doubled. The figures still fell slightly short of the analyst average estimate. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, reported record third-quarter revenue of 1.49 trillion Taiwan dollars, or about 46.71 billion dollars, up 50% from a year earlier and above market expectations. LSEG SmartEstimate, which compiles estimates from 19 analysts, had forecast revenue of 1.46 trillion Taiwan dollars, compared with 989.92 billion Taiwan dollars a year earlier. Despite the record results, Samsung shares fell 2.4% in the South Korean stock market, and shares of suppliers in the Japanese market such as Tokyo Electron, Advantest and Ibiden also declined, amid concerns over how long AI investment reliant on rising debt financing can continue as global borrowing costs climb. Demand for high-bandwidth memory chips, or HBM, used with Nvidia Corp.'s AI accelerator chips has benefited Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology. Counterpoint Research raised its forecast for third-quarter DRAM chip prices to a 10% to 20% rise from the previous quarter, up from 5% to 10%, after customers rushed orders. Analysts at Citigroup expect HBM4 chip prices to rise 100% to 150% next year, even though Citigroup cut its full-year profit estimates because of the stronger South Korean won. Analysts expect Samsung's chip business to post operating profit of 110 trillion won, with the company due to release full financial results on October 29.

Yuanta Securities assesses that electronics stocks have already passed their bottom and are entering a period of accelerating profit, believing the earnings cycle still has room to run for another 12 months because AI demand is spreading from GPU and Memory into Networking, Optical, Power, Cooling, PCB and EMS. Q3/2026 will be a key proving point, with mid-cap stocks' profits likely to accelerate on recovering utilization and margins, making second-tier names in the sector stand out. The research team maintains an Overweight on the sector and is shifting focus from AI Leaders to stocks whose earnings are still in the early stage of recovery, selecting HANA as Top Pick with a BUY rating and a target price of 60.25 baht, followed by SMT at BUY with a target price of 8.40 baht, and CCET at BUY with a target price of 11.30 baht, on earnings upside and valuation catch-up, while DELTA and KCE are better suited to trading. As for signals to start watching, there are three: a slowdown in hyperscaler capex, orders and utilization ceasing to accelerate, and 2027–2028 earnings estimates beginning to be revised down. If these signals occur together, that would be the point at which the share price cycle may end ahead of earnings.

ASUS has opened global pre-orders for its new ProArt RTX Spark Windows PCs, a lineup of creator laptops and a mini PC powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark, with pre-orders starting October 7 and shipping estimated to begin October 16, 2026. The lineup comprises the ProArt P16 and P14 laptops and the compact ProArt GR1X mini PC, all built on NVIDIA RTX Spark, which combines an NVIDIA Blackwell RTX GPU, an NVIDIA Grace CPU, fifth-generation Tensor Cores with FP4 support and NVIDIA NVLink-C2C interconnect technology, delivering up to 1 petaflop of AI performance and up to 128GB of high-bandwidth unified memory. In Canada, the ProArt P14 will initially be offered with 24GB or 128GB of LPDDR5X memory and the ProArt P16 with 32GB or 128GB, with 48GB ProArt P14 and 64GB ProArt P16 configurations arriving later this year; the ProArt P14 starts at C$3,499 and the ProArt P16 starts at C$4,999. ASUS is pairing the hardware with an agent-and-application ecosystem that includes its preloaded MuseTree and StoryCube apps, its Zenni Claw assistant, and partnerships with ComfyUI and Hermes Agent by Nous Research, alongside Adobe Creative Cloud bundles and a Google AI bundle on eligible laptops. The ProArt RTX Spark PCs sit within a broader ASUS local AI portfolio that also includes systems equipped with GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, the ASUS Ascent GX10 powered by NVIDIA DGX Spark, and the ASUS ExpertCenter Pro ET900 powered by NVIDIA DGX Station.

Global semiconductor sales surpassed $1 trillion through August for the first time in history, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported. Sales totaled $159.7 billion in August, up 8% sequentially from July's $147.9 billion and up 144.3% year over year from August 2025's $65.4 billion. SIA president and CEO Michael Robbins said the global market grew for the 18th consecutive month in August, with sales into the Americas, the Asia Pacific, and China driving strong and sustained year-to-year growth, and the association projects sales to hit more than $1.6 trillion by the end of 2026. The August figure followed an exceptional first half of 2026, when global semiconductor sales reached $403.3 billion in the second quarter and $298.5 billion in the first quarter, representing sequential increases of 33.1% and 25%, respectively. Against that backdrop, Zacks named four chip stocks with upside: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, Analog Devices, NVIDIA Corporation and MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc.

Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su said demand for compute is still running above supply and is expected to stay strong for the next several years, with AMD planning to substantially increase supply in 2027 after already raising it this year. Roughly 80% of Anthropic's planned $518 billion in cloud and compute spending over the next decade is non-cancelable or payable regardless of how much capacity it actually uses. Elon Musk confirmed over the weekend that SpaceX and Taiwan Semiconductor are in discussions about a potential collaboration in which the Taiwanese foundry giant may use Terafab, the vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing initiative launched by Musk, Tesla and SpaceX, as an anchor client for a future Texas semiconductor facility. Zscaler reaffirmed its Q1 and full-year 2027 guidance, with CEO Jay Chaudry warning in a CNBC interview that autonomous AI agents will become the primary cybersecurity risk vector in the coming years. Wells Fargo maintained its overweight rating on Meta Platforms and raised its price target to $1,000, citing Muse as driving a larger long-term AI cycle.

Taiwan's stock market is emerging as a more compelling choice than South Korea's for investors looking to ride the artificial intelligence wave in the final stretch of 2026, after growth in the AI industry began spreading from chipmakers to other businesses across the supply chain. Taiwan's Taiex index has jumped roughly 72% since the start of 2026, the highest among more than 90 global equity indexes tracked by Bloomberg, while South Korea's KOSPI has gained about 63%, ranking second. In the third quarter, the Taiex outperformed the KOSPI by about 23 percentage points, the widest gap since the early 2000s, and earnings estimate upgrades for Taiwanese listed companies outpaced South Korea's for the first time since March 2025. Earnings estimates for companies in the Taiex were revised up by about 19% in the quarter ending in September, compared with an increase of about 15% for KOSPI companies. A Bank of America fund manager survey in September found that about 40% of respondents said they were overweight Taiwanese stocks relative to the benchmark, compared with 25% who held the same view on South Korean stocks. In the survey of 87 fund managers overseeing a combined 211 billion dollars in assets, 35% said Taiwan would be the Asian stock market to benefit most from AI going forward, while only 5% chose South Korea. A key factor is Taiwan's industrial structure, which is linked to the AI supply chain at many levels, from semiconductor design and manufacturing to chip packaging, networking systems and servers. South Korea's market, by contrast, still relies on just a few large chipmakers, particularly Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which fell between 19% and 33% in the three months ending in September after six straight quarters of gains. Societe Generale continues to favour Taiwanese stocks over South Korean ones, expecting the rise in memory chip prices to slow over the coming quarters before returning to normal in 2028 amid growing competition from Chinese producers. However, Peter Lee, a managing director at Citigroup, believes investors should start accumulating shares such as Samsung and SK Hynix, because the market may be underestimating demand for high-bandwidth memory chips, or HBM, in 2027. On valuations, Taiwan's market trades at about 18 times forward 12-month earnings estimates, above the KOSPI's roughly 5.5 times. And Taiwan's rally is not confined to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. alone. TSMC shares rose 2.9% in the quarter ending in September, their sixth straight quarterly gain, while about 10% of stocks in the Taiex have at least doubled since the start of the year, compared with just 4.1% of KOSPI stocks and 5.7% of stocks in Japan's Nikkei 225.

Space Exploration Technologies completed Starship Flight 14 to low Earth orbit, deploying a batch of Starlink satellites. The company is in advanced talks with TSMC on an exclusive manufacturing arrangement for custom AI-focused semiconductor chips. Starlink also signed a new Direct to Cell partnership with Beeline Kazakhstan to extend satellite connectivity to standard mobile phones. The company, a US-based telecom player with a market cap of $2.3 trillion, faces an FAA review and has less than 1 year of cash runway. The Starship flight, the TSMC chip discussions and the Beeline Direct to Cell deal only show part of the SpaceX story.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company plans to substantially increase manufacturing capacity as demand for artificial intelligence processors and CPUs continues to outstrip supply. The supply expansion will involve securing additional capacity from Taiwanese supply chain partners, with Su traveling to Taipei to hold discussions with TSMC and other key regional providers, according to Reuters. Shares of the computer processor maker jumped 3.6% in the afternoon session before cooling to $649.82, up 2.9% from the previous close. AMD is up 191% since the beginning of the year and has set a new 52-week high at that price. The stock has been extremely volatile, with 53 moves greater than 5% over the last year.

Vietnam's data center colocation market is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 27.71% between 2025 and 2031, according to a new supply and demand analysis from ResearchAndMarkets.com. Growth is being driven by cloud migration, artificial intelligence adoption, digital transformation, hyperscale investment, and improved international connectivity. Recent developments include a November 2025 collaboration between Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corporation, Accelerated Infrastructure Capital, and VietinBank on an AI-focused data center campus at Tan Phu Trung Industrial Park with a planned capacity of 200 MW, and a June 2026 partnership between Foxconn and Brookfield to develop up to 1GW of renewable energy and battery storage capacity in Vietnam under a long-term Power Purchase Agreement. In May 2025, Viettel IDC partnered with KT on an AI-focused data center and GPU farm representing an investment of approximately $94.5 million. Retail colocation generated the largest share of total market revenue in 2025, but wholesale colocation is projected to contribute nearly 47% by 2031, driven by hyperscale deployments and larger leasing requirements. The cloud and IT sector led colocation demand in 2025 at approximately 20% of the market, with Vietnam targeting full cloud computing adoption across government agencies by 2031 and 70% adoption of domestic cloud services among businesses.

The World Bank raised its 2026 growth forecast for the East Asia and Pacific region to 4.5%, a 0.3 percentage point increase from its prior estimate, citing surging global demand for AI-related hardware. The revision, published in the bank's East Asia and Pacific Economic Update on October 6, 2026, covers 23 economies including China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, and projects regional growth to moderate to 4.4% in 2027-2028. Vietnam received the largest upgrade among major regional economies, up 1.1 percentage points to 7.4%, while Malaysia and Thailand were each lifted 0.7 percentage points to 5.1% and 2.0%. China's projection was left unrevised at 4.4% amid property sector weakness, the Philippines held at 3.7%, and Pacific Island nations were downgraded to 2.2%. The World Bank said AI goods drove over half of regional export growth and more than 70% in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, with six regional economies shipping $1.4T in AI goods in the twelve months to April, and flagged a potential correction in global AI capital expenditure as a primary downside risk.

Jim Cramer told a caller on the October 1 lightning round of Mad Money that he likes Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and advised buying the stock. The endorsement came as TSMC reported second-quarter revenue of $40.20 billion, up 33.7% year-over-year in U.S. dollar terms, with net income rising 77.4% to NT$706.56 billion and a gross margin of 67.7%. Advanced technologies at 7 nanometers and below generated 77% of wafer revenue, and August revenue reached approximately NT$514.81 billion, up 53.3% from a year earlier, bringing first-eight-month revenue up 39.3% to approximately NT$3.39 trillion. Management raised its 2026 capital expenditure budget to $60 billion to $64 billion, while warning that the initial 2-nanometer ramp will cut second-half gross margin by roughly 3 to 4 percentage points and that overseas factories will dilute margins by 2 to 3 points early on, potentially widening to 3 to 4 points. For the third quarter, the company guided to revenue of $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion and gross margin of 65% to 67%, below the second-quarter level despite higher expected sales.

Zacks Investment Research named Lam Research, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Marathon Petroleum as stocks to buy before third-quarter earnings, citing Technology and Energy as the two strongest sectors. S&P 500 earnings are set to rise 24.6% year over year on 11.6% higher revenues, the eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth, with Technology earnings expected up 43.3% and Energy up 114.3%. Semiconductor earnings are projected to jump 85.5% on 62.8% higher revenues, and Energy has drawn the largest upward revision since the quarter began on elevated oil prices tied to Persian Gulf disruptions, with Brent crude above $100 per barrel as of Oct. 5. Lam Research posted $6.72 billion in fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter revenues, up 30%, and guided September-quarter revenues to $8.1 billion plus or minus $400 million with adjusted EPS of $2.15 plus or minus 15 cents, ahead of its Oct. 21 report. TSMC guided third-quarter revenues of $44.6-$45.8 billion and gross margin of 65%-67%, with its report due Oct. 15, while Marathon Petroleum expects third-quarter crude throughput of 2.82 million barrels per day and 94% utilization ahead of its Nov. 3 report.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company shares touched intraday all-time highs on Monday after Elon Musk confirmed early-stage talks with the chipmaker about a potential collaboration on his Terafab semiconductor initiative. Musk responded on X over the weekend to a newsletter from tech journalist Tim Culpan, who wrote that TSMC is exploring ways to work with Terafab to help the startup chipmaker run its new semiconductor factories in Texas, saying, "Just discussions, but something may come of it." Terafab is Musk's plan to build a giant semiconductor factory to serve Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. US chip maker Intel, which joined Terafab back in April, was down roughly 2%. TSMC is the world's largest foundry, and its business has boomed on demand for semiconductors used in artificial intelligence, with the stock up about 60% year to date as the company expands in the US to manufacture chips for clients including Apple, Nvidia, and AMD.

Schneider Electric agreed to buy PTC for about $22.6 billion in an all-cash deal aimed at tapping into the artificial-intelligence boom, sending PTC shares rallying. Qualcomm shares moved higher after the company agreed to license patents underpinning Huawei Technologies Co.'s novel LogicFolding chipmaking technique. Taiwan Semiconductor shares gained as sentiment was boosted by discussions between the Taiwanese chip giant and Elon Musk's Terafab on potential collaboration.

Nvidia is poised to open at a record high after Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision, reported better-than-estimated numbers, with the strong results extrapolated through to the AI chipmaker. Renewed talk that Nvidia's valuation looks low, given its still-expanding earnings, is also helping the stock as the AI trade continues largely unabated. Separately, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas reiterated his overweight rating on SpaceX with a $300 price target, arguing the stock is cheap at its current level of 159 and implying roughly 100% upside, citing the difficulty of valuing its AI business by price per token and its rocket work such as heat shields, orbital re-entry, booster landings and hot staging. Cerebras rose 6% in premarket trading after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the company a close partner, saying the two are working together very, very closely.

GF Securities expects United Microelectronics to post stronger earnings per share over the next two years on a combination of stronger prices and margins, supported by rising orders from key clients that are lifting utilization rates at its foundry. Analyst Jeff Pu said 12-inch utilization should reach about 93% by end-2026 on strong DDIC volumes from Novatek and Samsung LSI at 22/28nm and Apple's Mac at 55/65nm, with upside from Sony's sensors, while 8-inch utilization should reach about 90% by end-2026 and full loading by 2H27 on intact demand for datacenter PMIC, MCU and embedded memory. Pricing momentum extends from 2H26 for selective customers into 1H27 at 10-30% across 12-inch and 8-inch, and into 2H27 where negotiations are ongoing, suggesting visibility extending into 2H27. GF Securities raised its EPS forecasts for the entirety of 2026 and 2027 by 2% and 8% respectively and maintained its Buy rating, with UMC expected to begin another growth phase in 2028 when it transitions to asset-light FinFET and optical full solutions, driven by Intel 2nm as a major inflection. Interposer and advanced packaging are expected to begin contributing during the second half of 2027, supported by silicon capacitor, DTC, hybrid bonding and controller-to-bonding integration. UMC shares were down 8% in pre-market trading on Monday, but the stock has surged 32% over the past month and more than 230% year-to-date.

Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, reported a 47% year-on-year surge in third-quarter revenue, beating estimates on strong AI demand. Revenue for the July-September quarter was T$3.03T, or $95.4B, well above an LSEG SmartEstimate of T$2.83 trillion. The Apple and Nvidia supplier, formally known as Hon Hai Precision, reported September revenue of $1.16T, up 38.42% year-on-year. The company said AI-related operations are expected to continue growing in the fourth quarter, and together with the traditional peak season for electronics products in the second half, this should support overall performance in line with current market expectations. Foxconn will report full third-quarter earnings on November 12.

Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or CCET, has announced a five-year business strategy, building on its EMS business toward higher-value technology products. Managing Director Khongsin Chokvicharoen said the company will expand into new businesses in AI servers, CSP, LVDC and HVDC, alongside developing automation and AI to elevate itself into a smart factory. This year the company is accelerating the setup of an AI server production line, which is expected to begin operations before the end of the third quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, CSP-related products are in the process of setting up production lines and are preparing to start manufacturing in Thailand within the second half of 2026. On the high-end power supply side, the company has already begun producing electric vehicle chargers, while CRPS and LVDC products are in trial production and are expected to begin commercial production in the second half of this year. HVDC, developed jointly with affiliated companies, is targeted to start production within 2027. For its long-term plans, the company has a quantum computing project, having already developed and produced a working prototype, and is conducting joint research with ITRI in Taiwan as well as leading universities in Taiwan. It also has an LEO satellite project through a long-term partnership with a leading satellite service provider from Taiwan, which is currently in the development and business model study stage.