Taiwan Earthquake Will Affect TSMC Fab More Than Expected

In the hours after the Taiwanese earthquake, TSMC was one of the major tech firms affected by the magnitude 6.4 quake. While the semiconductor manufacturer has initially stated that only minor damaged has occurred, it looks like effects will be longer lasting than expected. In fact, the damage will cause a greater than 1% disruption in Q1 2016 wafer shipments.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC has 9 fabs in operation in Taiwan, with Fabs 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 12A, 12B, 14 and 15 located in the island country. While it’s unknown which fabs were impacted, Fab 6 and 14B is already back up and running while. The main damage is due to a reassessment of the damage done to Fab 14 which is expected to take longer to restore. The original estimate was that 95% of foundry machines would be back up and running within 3 days.

Despite the damage and disruption, TSMC is still expected to hit its revenue targets for the quarter. The firm does have a $100 million range for its target so I would presume that the disruption will likely remain under 2%. Hopefully, this means that Nvidia and AMD won’t face any delays and it’s still much better than what happened to HDDs after the Thai floods in 2011 which saw a massive price spike.