TSMC Stock Drops Despite Record Q3 Profit and 69% Earnings Surge

TSMC made more money in Q3 2026 than in any quarter in its history, but its stock still fell.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chipmaker, said on Thursday, October 15, that its third-quarter profit jumped 68.7% from a year earlier to a record NT$763.06 billion (about $23.6 billion).

It beat forecasts and raised its outlook for the year. Yet its US-listed shares were down 1.9% to about $422 in pre-market trading on Thursday morning, a day after falling 3.4% to $430.

So what's going on?

TSMC's numbers weren't the problem. Its shares are caught in a wider chip sell-off driven by fears of more US interest rate hikes, and investors are also weighing thinner margins and heavier spending ahead.

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TSMC's Q3 earnings beat forecasts, and it raised its 2026 outlook

TSMC's profit came in ahead of the NT$746.3 billion ($23.03B) analysts expected, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. It was the company's sixth record quarter in a row. Revenue rose 41.2% to $46.72 billion, above the top of TSMC's own forecast, and earnings reached $4.60 per US share, against the $4.42 analysts expected, according to Investing.com.

TSMC now expects revenue to grow about 44% this year, up from the "slightly above 40%" it forecast in July. For the last three months of the year, it expects $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion in revenue, about 58% more than a year earlier.

AI is doing the heavy lifting.

"The demand is extremely robust. We did not see any sign of slowdown," C.C. Wei, TSMC's chairman and CEO, said on the earnings call.

Sravan Kundojjala, an analyst at research firm SemiAnalysis, told CNBC that "TSMC says demand remains well above its supply capacity."

Why is TSMC stock down?

The slide started before the results came out. TSMC's US-listed shares fell in six of the seven sessions through Wednesday, losing 11.5% in total, according to Stocktwits. In Taipei, the stock closed 2% lower on Thursday, hours before the report.