TSMC's net profit in the first quarter is expected to fall 5% from a year earlier, and analysts say the second quarter is also tough.

CTOnews.com, April 18 (Xinhua)-- TSMC expects its first-quarter net profit to fall 5% on Thursday, as the global economic downturn weakens demand for semiconductors in everything from automobiles to advanced computing, Reuters reported.

TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to Apple, is expected to make a net profit of NT $192.5 billion from January to March, below the average of 21 analysts.

Alex Huang, an analyst at Capital Investment Trust Corp, a capital investment trust, said: "looking forward to the second quarter, this is usually an off-season, and TSMC's quarterly sales will be under pressure from inventory adjustments as major customers cut orders."

But he added that the momentum could pick up as early as the third quarter, in line with the improved outlook predicted by some of TSMC's biggest customers such as Apple, Nvidia and AMD.

According to previous reports from CTOnews.com, TSMC's cumulative revenue from January to March 2023 was about 508.633 billion New Taiwan dollars (currently about 114.951 billion yuan), an increase of 3.6 per cent over the same period last year.