TSMC to give each employee NT$25,000 Sports Day bonus

Taipei, Nov. 8 (CNA) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, said on Saturday that each of its employees working in Taiwan and abroad will receive NT$25,000 (US$806) as a special Sports Day bonus.

Speaking at the annual Sports Day event at Hsinchu County Stadium, TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) expressed his gratitude to his employees for their contribution in helping the chipmaker smash records in sales and profit so far this year, explaining that as a result of their hard work, the company has decided to hand out a "small gift" to them as it has done in past events.

Wei said this year's Sports Day bonus was bigger than last year's NT$20,000, and unlike the previous bonus handout, which had been given only to TSMC's Taiwan-based employees, the company's overseas workers this year are also eligible to receive the cash.

With 75,000 employees in Taiwan and abroad, TSMC is expected to issue about NT$1.875 billion in the Sports Day special bonuses this year, compared with NT$1.2 billion last year.

That means workers at TSMC's foundries in the U.S. state of Arizona, Japan's Kumamoto and Germany's Dresdner will also receive the bonus.

TSMC has been expanding globally after other countries encouraged and gave incentives for the company to set up semiconductor chip manufacturing facilities in their territory amid growing tensions between Taipei and Beijing and geopolitical unease in the Taiwan Strait. The chipmaker has said that its global investments aim to cater to demand from its foreign clients.

The annual Sports Day event, which started in 1993, is something TSMC's employees look forward to because of the sizable bonus that usually comes with it.

Sports Day was canceled for three years from 2020 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but TSMC still gave employees special bonuses of NT$12,000 in 2020, and NT$16,000 in 2021 and 2022.

It was the second year for Wei to preside over the annual event since he took the helms as TSMC's chair in June 2024. Wei joked that he spent 26 years to secure the post to preside over the Sports Day and hoped he will perform better in the future as practice makes perfect.

"TSMC's record sales and profit completely came from your hard work," Wei said to his employees. "I hope TSMC will continue to report record sales and profit every year in the future."

Wei also thanked family members of the company's employees, saying that without their support, TSMC's workers would have not been able to work so hard to boost the company's performance.

In the first nine months of this year, TSMC posted NT$1.21 trillion in net profit, up 51.8 percent from a year earlier, with earnings per share at NT$46.75, while its consolidated sales rose 36.4 percent from 2024 to NT$2.76 trillion on the back of global strong demand for high-end processes during the current boom in artificial intelligence development.

In an investor conference held in mid-October, TSMC forecast its sales will rise almost 35 percent from a year earlier in 2025 in U.S. dollar terms, an upgrade from a 30 percent increase it had estimated previously.

According to Taipei-based market information advisory firm TrendForce, TSMC's global market share hit a new high of 70.2 percent in the second quarter of this year.