Daily Brief Equity Bottom-Up: Taiwan Tech Weekly: TSMC’s Massive New 1nm GIGAFAB in Development; Can Japan Build the Next TSMC? and more

• TSMC Expands 2nm & Advanced Packaging in Taiwan, Advances 1nm “GIGAFAB” in the South — Despite U.S. Tariff Risks
• Japan’s Semiconductor Gamble: Can Rapidus Challenge TSMC? — Maintain Structural Long for TSMC.
• Apple Supply Chain Monitor — Why Zhen Ding and Kinsus Interconnect Could Be in a Favorable Position Relative to Apple’s AI Trajectory

• Rapidus Corporation — The Japan-based semiconductor startup has emerged as a key part of the country’s ambition to reclaim a foothold in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing space.
• How Rapidus Compares to TSMC — Rapidus’s challenge is not only in catching up with TSMC’s leading-edge process nodes but also in ensuring manufacturing maturity and cost competitiveness.
• Maintain Structural Long rating for TSMC — Accumulate on market weakness. TSMC is partially insulated from U.S. tariff risks thanks to its position producing the most advanced chips.

• Q424 revenues of $7.7. billion, up 12% QoQ, up 27% YoY and $200 million above the guided midpoint. This marked the company’s highest ever quarterly revenue
• AMD forecasted Q125 revenues of $7.1 billion at the midpoint, up 30% YoY but down ~7% sequentially. This caused the share price to decline by ~9% in after hours trading
• H125 is a reset period for AMD’s Data Center GPU roadmap. ROCm simply isn’t mature enough to compete effectively with NVIDIA. AMD must do better, and I believe they will.

• Trane Technologies reported robust financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024, reflecting strong execution across its business segments and demonstrating the benefits of its purpose-driven strategy focused on innovation and sustainability.
• The company achieved 10% organic revenue growth, expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by 110 basis points, and increased adjusted earnings per share (EPS) by 20%.
• For the full year, Trane Technologies reported 12% organic revenue growth and 24% adjusted EPS growth, affirming its ability to outperform peer groups in these critical financial metrics.

• 4Q24: just inline, flattish AI GPU revenue, recovery in Server and PC. Not impressive but ok. What matters is: accelerating GPU launch in 2025, the open-source software platform gains traction.
• Please take this literally, from CEO: Data Center AI (revenue will increase) from US$5bn in 2024 to tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue over the coming years.
• Stock has corrected by -32% since Oct-24. It’s trading at -1 standard deviation on forward EPS or 23x 2025EPS. Time to Buy.

• TSMC: +20.8% Premium; Wait for More Extreme Level vs. Relative Range; Comments from Morris Chang on Premium
• ASE: +0.5% Premium; Good Level to Go Long the Premium
• ChipMOS: 1.9% Premium; Can Consider Shorting Premium at Current Level

• Now that Lee Jae-Yong’s legal problems appear to have finally have been resolved, it could positively impact Samsung C&T, Samsung Electronics, and Samsung Biologics.
• Given the fact that Samsung Electronics and Samsung Biologics are the two most important drivers of Samsung C&T, this could positively benefit the valuation of Samsung C&T. 
• Our NAV analysis of Samsung C&T suggests NAV of 38.7 trillion won or NAV per share of 217,747 won which is 84% higher from current levels.

• Since the start of 2025, Arras has released two batches of drill results from its exploration activities in Kazakhstan. Early results look very promising and the stock has reacted accordingly.
• 2025 is going to be a very busy year of newsflow for Arras with a lot of optionality to drive a further re-rating.
• Arras remains a high risk/reward junior exploration company with a market cap of only 33M USD. Arras is targeting both copper and gold.

• Alphabet maintained their low double digit revenue growth. For the 10th consecutive quarters, Google network’s revenue went down.
• Cloud revenue growth decelerated from 35.0% YoY in 3Q’24 to 30.1% in 4Q’24.
• I will note, however, that Google usually discloses every quarter that GCP grew at higher rate than overall Cloud, but in this call, they mentioned “GCP grew at a rate that was much higher than cloud overall”. 

• Predictive Discovery receives a strategic investment of $69 million from Lundeen and Zejin, leading to a 13% increase in stock price
• The funds will be used for advancing the DFS at the Bankhan gold project in Guinea and other development activities
• Predictive’s Bankan project has a 5.4 million ounce resource and a 3 million ounce reserve, with an average production profile of 269,000 ounces per annum over 12 years at an AISC of $1,100 per ounce

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