Concerns for Apple sales as Taiwan Semiconductor cuts forecasts

TSMC, which gets roughly 20% of its revenue from Apple, predicted sales of between $8.4bn and $8.5bn over the three months leading to 31 March, falling short of Wall Street projections of $8.61bn, on a flat-to-slightly higher gross margin of 49.5% to 51.5%.

The NYSE-listed firm's weak projections also raised concerns that Apple's all-important holiday period sales could come in softer than expected.

Investors had hoped that increasing demand for TSMC's chips, used to mine virtual currencies like Bitcoin, would soften the blow suffered as a result of a generally weakening mobile market, as co-chief executive officer Mark Liu said on Thursday that its high-performance computing division was set to experience record growth in 2018, with analysts projecting cryptocurrency revenue to double from 5% to 10% of the company's total income.

Overall, TSMC reported a 0.9% drop in net income to NT 99.3bn throughout the fourth quarter, slightly ahead of projections of NT 97.2bn, despite gross margins moving back from 52.3% to 50%.

Smartphone shipments declined almost 12% in China throughout 2017 as the market seemingly reached saturation point, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

Woodseer estimated a final dividend of NT 8.75 for TSMC with an ex-div date of 25 June.

As of 0920 GMT, shares had gained 2.13% to $43.13 each.