Taipei:Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) announced a record-breaking net profit for the third quarter, driven by robust global demand for AI applications. However, the company's gross margin decreased compared to the previous quarter due to an increase in shipments of chips produced with its advanced 2 nanometer process.

According to Focus Taiwan, TSMC reported a net profit of NT$763.06 billion (US$23.62 billion) for the July-September period, marking a 68.7 percent increase from a year earlier and an 8.0 percent rise from the previous quarter. The third-quarter earnings per share reached a new high of NT$29.43, surpassing the NT$17.44 recorded a year ago and NT$27.25 from the previous quarter.

The company's consolidated sales also reached unprecedented levels, amounting to US$46.72 billion, a 41.2 percent increase from the same period last year and a 16.2 percent rise from the previous quarter. These figures exceeded TSMC's earlier sales forecast of US$44.6 billion to US$45.8 billion. In Taiwan dollar terms, sales totaled NT$1.49 trillion, surpassing the estimated NT$1.427 trillion to NT$1.466 trillion.

The gross margin for the quarter was 66.4 percent, up from 59.5 percent a year earlier but down from 67.7 percent in the previous quarter. Despite the decline, the margin remained within the company's predicted range of 65.0-67.0 percent. TSMC noted that chips using the 2nm process comprised 8 percent of total sales, up from 3 percent in the second quarter, with advanced technologies accounting for 79 percent of total sales.

For the first nine months of the year, TSMC's net profit reached NT$2.42 trillion, a 68.5 percent increase from the previous year, while consolidated sales were about NT$3.90 trillion, a 41.1 percent rise. The gross margin for this period stood at 66.8 percent, up 7.8 percentage points from a year earlier.