TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD (TSM) Stock Analysis
TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD
▾ What's in the 26/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read TSM
We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.
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Reported earnings & margins ↓
What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
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Balance sheet & book value ↓
Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
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Who's selling & betting against it ↓
Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
Our DCF for TSM lands well below today's price. For a non-cyclical that usually means the market is pricing in growth far beyond recent cash flows (or there's a data quirk), so we don't headline a single fair-value number.
What to use instead: The Reverse-DCF shows exactly how much growth the price demands — decide whether that's realistic. Pair it with peer multiples.
This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — TSM's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.
Football field: where does the price sit?
Different valuation methods produce different fair-value ranges depending on assumptions. Plotting them together lets you see at a glance whether the current price is reasonable across approaches, or only one specific lens.
Industry multiples sourced from: industry: Semiconductors. See the Peer Basket section below for the peer comparison and its limited-comparables caveat.
Bankruptcy + quality screens
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
Safe zone under the classic Altman thresholds — companies scoring here have historically gone bankrupt only rarely within ~2 years. A screening signal, not a guarantee.
The classic Z-score was calibrated on manufacturers. It is less reliable for asset-light or non-manufacturing businesses (broadcasters, media, software, services) and not applicable to banks, REITs, or insurers — for those the coefficients and the asset-turnover term distort the result. Read it as one screening input, not a verdict.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
The F-score compares two consecutive years of income, cash-flow and balance-sheet data. We have 5 years of income data for this filer, but no machine-readable cash-flow statement or balance sheet — so several of the nine checks have no input at all. We show nothing rather than score a partial year against itself. The reported figures in the financial tables below are unaffected.
What if you assume different inputs?
Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount RateDiscount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for TSM. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.
Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.
A full intrinsic value isn't shown for TSM because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.
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⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
A standard discounted cash flowDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → (DCF) valuation is not meaningful for TSM because the model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory, indicating that trailing cash flows alone do not support the current valuation. Investors are betting on continued revenue growth, which has been 16.6% annually over four years, and expanding gross margins. The market may be assigning value to the company's critical role in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, which is not fully captured by backward-looking cash flow models. The biggest risk is that the model's underlying assumption of sustained revenue growth at 16.6% annually over four years may not materialize.
As of today
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Quarterly revenue growth rates for advanced nodes
- Gross margin trends in upcoming earnings reports
- Announcements regarding new fab construction or technology breakthroughs
The trend, in plain numbers (2023 → 2024)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Revenue grew +25% to $88.27B.
- Gross margin improved to 56% (+2 pts).
- Net income grew +27% to $35.30B.
Nothing clearly worsening year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
C.C. Wei serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a role he has held since 2018. Mark Liu is the Chairman. The company was founded by Morris Chang in 1987, who served as CEO until 2018.
What They Make
TSMC manufactures and sells integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices. Their primary customers are fabless semiconductor companies and integrated device manufacturers who pay TSMC to produce their chip designs.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market prices TSM based on expectations of continued high revenue growth (16.6%/yr over 4yr) and expanding gross margins (53.1% to 56.1%), which are positive health signals. The price is 64.4x the model's intrinsic valueIntrinsic Value — Our DCF model's estimate of what each share is mathematically worth based on projected cash flows.
Why it matters: Compare to current price. Below IV = potentially undervalued. Above IV = priced for growth that must actually happen.
Reference: Model-derived; quality depends on data and assumptions.
Full explanation →, suggesting the market is pricing optionality related to its indispensable role in the global technology supply chain and future demand for advanced semiconductors, which is not fully captured by trailing cash flows.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
TSMC funds itself through its positive net income, which has been profitable for 5 out of 5 years, and likely reinvests heavily in capital expenditures for new fabs and R&D. Specific dividend or buyback rates are not available from current data sources.
Growth / Revenue DCF
No cash flow statement data available - using revenue/margin growth model as fallback.
Show advanced inputs
| RevenueGrowth | 16.6% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project product, services and recurring/cloud lines independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue has been growing at 16.6% annually over four years, from $47694M to $88268M.
Geography & Markets
TSMC is headquartered in Taiwan and operates globally, serving customers across North America, Asia, and Europe. Exact geographic revenue mix is not available from current data sources, but its primary manufacturing base is in Taiwan.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)54.3NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (5)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- Price is 64.4x model IV - market may be pricing optionality, narrative catalysts, or margin expansion beyond what trailing cash flows support.
- Extreme valuation: the price is far above the model output for a non-cyclical — likely dominated by a data issue. The model value is suppressed.
- VALUATION HELD (EXTREME_MODEL_GAP): per-share values suppressed due to the model output failed plausibility checks.
- Extreme valuation gap (P/IV null): result may be dominated by model assumptions, share count issues, or sector-specific dynamics. Treat as low confidence.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 88.3B | 35.3B | $1.36 |
| 2023 | 70.6B | 27.8B | $1.07 |
| 2022 | 73.7B | 32.3B | $1.25 |
| 2021 | 57.2B | 21.4B | $0.82 |
| 2020 | 47.7B | 18.2B | $0.70 |
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 204.1B |
| Total Liabilities | 73.6B |
| Equity | — |
Recent video coverage
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