Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you, C. C. This concludes our prepared remarks. Again, thank you, everyone, for your patience. Should you wish to raise your question in Chinese, I will translate it to English before our management answers your question. [Operator Instructions]. So now let’s begin the Q&A session. Operator, can we please proceed with the first caller on the line? Thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. The first one to ask questions is Gokul Hariharan, JPMorgan.
Gokul Hariharan: My first questions are on demand. So C. C., you kind of reduced the expectation for the overall semiconductor industry growth. Could you talk a little bit about where is the area where you have seen that slower pickup in demand? I think you talked about smartphone a couple of times in the call. Is it primarily the smartphone area where you’ve seen a slower pickup in terms of demand? And previously, a couple of quarters back, you talked about cannibalization or decline in regular data center demand due to the crowding out of AI and being a drag for TSMC. Do you see that the regular compute, regular data center networking kind of demand is coming back? Or is it still remaining muted and most of the demand uptick is still focused on AI?
Jeff Su: Okay. So Gokul, thank you. So Gokul’s first question is a little bit 2 parts. So he notes that we have lowered our overall semiconductor ex memory growth forecast for this year to approximately 10% and foundry now to mid to high teens. So Gokul wants to understand, in what segments or applications or areas are we seeing a slower pickup in demand? And then also, in terms of specifically AI versus traditional servers, how are you seeing that demand shape out? And what is the impact to TSMC? Is that generally correct, Gokul?
Gokul Hariharan: Yes. And I think maybe since you called out smartphone, just maybe mention how you see the smartphone demand compared to maybe 3 months back as well.
C. C. Wei: Well, Gokul, this is C. C. Wei. Let me answer your questions and some of your comment also. Yes, smartphone end-market demand is seeing gradual recovery and not a steep recovery, of course. PC has been bottomed out and the recovery is slower. However, AI-related data center demand is very, very strong. And the traditional server demand is slow, lukewarm. IoT and consumer remain sluggish. Automotive inventory continue to correct, okay? What does that mean to TSMC? The budget for a hyperscale player, their wallet share shifted from traditional server to AI server is favorable for TSMC. And we are able to capture most of the semiconductor content in an AI server’s area as we define the GPU, networking processor, et cetera. Well, we have a lower presence in those CPU-only, CPU-centric traditional server. So we expect our growth will be very healthy. Do I answer your question, Gokul?
Gokul Hariharan: Okay. So yes, I just wanted to ask, is it smartphone the main change compared to, let’s say, back in January when you had more than 10% growth for semi? Or is it across the board you’re seeing a slower recovery?
Jeff Su: So Gokul is asking sort of versus 3 months ago, where have we seen the major shift in the overall end market? Is there a particular area that we have seen?
Wendell Huang: Yes, Gokul, three months ago, we project that one of the platforms, the automotive platform was — will increase this year, but now we’re expecting it to decrease. So I think that is the one area that we saw was different.
Gokul Hariharan: Okay. My second question, just wanted to understand gross margin trends. We talked about 3 to 4 percentage point gross margin dilution from N3 ramp in second half of the year. Should we think that the N3-related gross margin drag is more severe than usual for what we have seen for leading-edge nodes in the past? Or is it largely similar to what we have seen in N5 or N7? And when we go to N2, do you think that this will kind of be the similar pattern? Or do you think that the gross margin dilution will be lower when we go to like future process nodes given that N3 seems to be, at least compared to previous cycle, seems to be dragging a little bit more compared to like N5 or N7 in the past few years?
Jeff Su: Okay. Thank you, Gokul. So let me summarize your second question, basically, is on gross margin. Gokul notes that N3, as Wendell said, will dilute our margin by 3 to 4 points, percentage points in the second half. So his question is, it seems that N3, the gross margin dilution or drag is more severe than past nodes such as N5 and N7. Is that the case? And also, of course, with N2 upcoming, will we face a similar pattern? Or what is the margin profile for N2? Which I think Wendell can address, yes.
Wendell Huang: Yes, Gokul, it is true that N3 is taking longer time to reach the corporate margin than the other nodes like N5 or N7. N5 or N7 before, it was like 8 to 10 quarters to reach the corporate. But for N3, we think it will take about 10 to 12 quarters. And this is probably because N3 process complexity has increased, and also our corporate average gross margin also increased during the period. But another reason is that we set the pricing of N3 very early, several years ahead of production. However, we experienced a lot of cost inflation pressures in the following years. So as a result, N3 will take a longer time than N5 and N7 to reach the corporate average gross margin. For N2, based on what we can see so far is that we are doing a better job in cost and selling our value, and we expect N2 to have a better margin profile than N3.
Operator: The next one to ask a question, Brett Simpson, Arete.
Brett Simpson: I had a question on the AI returns at TSMC. So I think it’s clear that AI is producing a large profit pool at your customers. And the HBM is also driving super-normal returns for memory players. So my question is, does TSMC believe they’re getting their fair share of the returns in the AI value chain today? And is there scope for TSMC to raise pricing for AI chips in the future?
