| Invested through |
|
|---|---|
| Asset Classes | Listed equity |
| Impact strategy | Impact Equities and Bonds |
| Bloomberg ticker | TSM US |
| ISIN code | US8740391003 |
| Industry group | Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment |
| Aligned with SDGs |
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) exclusively produces chips for third parties and is the leading company in this market. TSMC offers customers the full range of chip production processes. From legacy production processes that manufacture relatively simple chips, to the most advanced processes that manufacture the processing unit for the newest smartphones. TSMC’s customers include Apple and Nvidia, but also Intel.
TSMC is based in Taiwan but has several production sites in China and the US. It was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang, a former Texas Instruments executive. TSMC has more than 50,000 employees and is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Investment rationale
Our society is demanding more computing power as our lives are increasingly taking place online, while innovations such as electric vehicles also increase demand for power. Without improvements in the design or the production of chips, this demand cannot be satisfied without a concurrent increase in demand for power. Also, chip production is an environmentally sensitive process.
TSMC is the leading company when it comes to the production of chips. While it relies on machines from, among others, ASML to produce these chips, its expertise in building chip production lines is unrivaled. This expertise helps to scale up innovations in chip production equipment. This is important, as without this expertise, we would not have been able to make chips smaller, faster and less power hungry. Such chips would then only be available in small numbers. As a result, TSMC makes a significant contribution to a digitizing but power-efficient society.
TSMC's size enables it to produce chips in a safe and environmentally efficient way. Chip production requires quite some water, but TSMC has strong policies and practices to deal with this. The same goes for its management of CO₂ emissions and waste. As our society cannot function without chips, we prefer to see them being manufactured by a company like TSMC.