Taiwan's TSMC sees improvement in Q4


TSMC chairman Morris Chang

TAIPEI, Taiwan (CNN) -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) expects to see its sales and profits improve in the fourth quarter.

The world's leading made-to-order chipmaker reported on Friday that it earned T$0.06 per share in the third quarter of 2001, beating analyst forecasts.

TSMC chairman Morris Chang told a briefing that sales in the fourth quarter are expected to outperform the third quarter by more than 15 percent.

"Recovery in the fourth quarter comes at a faster speed than we had expected," he said.

Chang added that fourth quarter operating income and net profit would more than double from the previous quarter, and that the growth should extend into 2002.

"I can make a qualified statement that right now it looks like we have no reason to think the first quarter of 2002 would be worse than the fourth quarter of 2001."

TSMC on Friday posted an operating income of $56 million for the July-September period, in line with company guidance that its third quarter operating income would be five times the $8.2 million it achieved the second quarter.

However, TSMC made a pretax loss of $5.8 million due to money-losing overseas subsidiaries, in contrast to a $564.7 million pretax profit in the year-ago period.

Net profit for the third quarter totaled $3.8 million, down 93.8 percent from a year ago.

The earnings announcement was announced after the market close on Friday. TSMC shares rose 0.8 percent to close at T$63.

Reuters contributed to this report.