TSMC Printed the Cycle’s Best Quarter — the Tape Has Been Selling Records All Week
Signal week, day four — companion to this morning’s Morning 10, written as US futures digest the print and before New York opens.
The print: everything above the bar, and the bar was high
TSMC’s Q2, released at 08:00 CET: revenue of $40.2 billion, up 33.7% year over year and at the very top of the company’s own $39.0–40.2 billion guide. EPS of $4.31 against estimates near $3.90.
Gross margin 67.7% against 65.5–67.5% guided; operating margin 60.3% against 56.5–58.5%. Net profit rose 77% to NT$706.6 billion — a record for the fifth consecutive quarter, and comfortably above the NT$632.6 billion consensus. Advanced nodes took 77% of wafer revenue. The forward line kept pace: Q3 guided to $44.6–45.8 billion, roughly 12% above the record quarter it follows and about 36% above the year-ago period.
The Print Record’s TSM card — published the evening before — carried $3.87 and roughly $39.8 billion into this print; the company beat the card’s numbers on both lines.
The answer: capex to $60–64 billion — the echo delivered
The number this diary flagged as load-bearing arrived on the call, and it was not a nudge: 2026 capital spending raised to $60–64 billion, from the $52–56 billion range management had only in April said it would top out. Full-year revenue growth was lifted to over 40% in USD terms, from over 30%. Another $100 billion was committed to the Arizona build.
And the demand language named names: continued strong structural demand, quote, “including the newly emerging agentic AI market.” Twenty-four hours after ASML committed to 30% more EUV capacity for 2027, the foundry that buys those machines raised its spend line 15% at the midpoint — the tools and the wafers confirming each other inside one week, exactly the echo the card said to listen for.
The reaction: all of it, sold
Please continue reading at: https://closelook.net/pulse/2026-07-16-tsmc-record-sold/