TAIPEI Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) posted a 36% jump in second-quarter net profit on Thursday that beat market expectations as the Taiwanese chipmaker rides a wave of demand for semiconductors used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major Apple Inc and Nvidia supplier, has benefited from a surge towards adoption of AI that has helped it weather the tapering off of pandemic-led electronics demand.

TSMC's April-June net profit climbed to T$247.8 billion from T$181.8 billion a year earlier.

The profit beat a T$238.8 billion forecast for the quarter ended June 30, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 21 analysts. SmartEstimates give greater weighting to forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

TSMC, Asia's most valuable publicly listed company, said second-quarter revenue rose 33% year-on-year to US$20.8 billion , better than the company's previous forecast of US$19.6 billion to US$20.4 billion. The company last week announced second quarter revenue in Taiwan dollars, coming in at T$673.51 billion.

Capital expenditure in the second quarter was US$6.36 billion, TSMC said, compared with US$5.77 billion in the first quarter.

TSMC's Taipei-listed shares have been battered for the past two days after comments by the Republican candidate for the US presidency, Donald Trump, that Taiwan "did take about 100% of our chip business" and should pay the US for its defence.

They closed down 2.4% on Thursday.

  - Reuters