Today · event date October 15

TSMC posts a 66.4% gross margin; the release gives no prices

TSMC's third-quarter gross margin reaches 66.4%, 2 nm takes 8% of wafer revenue in its first quarter, and fourth-quarter revenue guidance is US$52.3B to US$54.3B

Concept illustration: a beige base strip runs along the bottom of an off-white background, and on it two round discs sit in beige cradles, a black disc with a white grid at left, cut off by the left edge, and a red-orange disc covered in a black grid in the centre, whose cradle has a white label lettered "2-NANOMETER". At right, a tall beige box-like structure, cut off by the right edge, carries red lowercase lettering "tsmc" over a circle with grid lines and small black squares, with a ® mark and a red line beneath, and below that a white panel lettered "TSMC".

Why it matters: Gross margin reached 66.4% in the first quarter with any 2 nm revenue; TSMC's release has no wafer prices, so whether TSMC raised prices stays open.

TSMC's third-quarter revenue was US$46.72B, up 41.2% from a year earlier, with gross margin of 66.4%; 2 nm took 8% of wafer revenue in its first quarter of revenue and 3 nm 33%; fourth-quarter guidance is revenue of US$52.3B to US$54.3B and gross margin of 65% to 67% (TSMC 6-K, 2026-10-15). The guidance midpoint is about 14% above third-quarter revenue (our calculation).

Not proven yet: what drove the margin up; the press release gives no wafer prices How we checked →

Judgment update: One working read on our watchlist holds that NVIDIA and TSMC control scarce supply but deliberately price below the ceiling. The stated reasons are to avoid antitrust attention and to avoid pushing customers toward alternatives. That read is not settled. A margin of 66.4%, with fourth-quarter guidance still at 65% to 67%, looks like prices moving toward that ceiling, which sits in tension with the read. A higher margin can also come from a larger 2 nm and 3 nm mix, or from exchange rates, and the press release text gives no unit prices. The tension is logged next to that read, and the read itself is unchanged. What would tell the two explanations apart is whether the earnings-call presentation discusses 2 nm pricing.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 16, 2026, alongside 19 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "TSMC posts a 66.4% gross margin; the release gives no prices." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-10-16-2/. Accessed access date.