引用:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has seen the delivery time for chips produced on its advanced node processes reduced to less than two months compared with over three months a year earlier - an indication of weak orders for its 12-inch fab capacity, according to industry sources.

TSMC had maintained high capacity utilization of its 12-inch fab capacity in most of 2018, with lead-time for delivery stretching to as long as over six months, the sources indicated. However, fab utilization rates started falling in late 2018, with the foundry already giving a conservative outlook for the first quarter of 2019.

Production at TSMC's Fab 14B was disrupted earlier in January because of the use of defective photoresist material, but the foundry house has maintained that most of the affected wafers can be made up in the first quarter, with the remainder made up in the following quarter.

Its ability to quickly make up the shortfalls is enabled by sufficient capacity resulting from weak orders, the sources noted.

TSMC is expected to see its fab utilization rates pick up starting the second quarter of 2019, according to sources at Taiwan-based IC design houses. However, if the US-China trade war runs out of control, the world's largest pure-play foundry along with its clients will likely experience a particularly weak third quarter this year, the sources said.

TSMC said at its recent investors meeting that the company will likely post a 1-3% revenue increase in 2019, when the global foundry IC market will register only flat growth. The pure-play foundry also forecast the overall semiconductor market excluding memory will grow by a mere 1% this year.