TSMC's revenue and income continued to return to last year's strong levels during its third fiscal quarter, the world's largest chip foundry said last week.

Like its arch-rival, UMC, which reported its Q3 figures last week, TSMC experienced sequential gains, but the figures did not not quite match Q3 FY2004.

For the three months to 30 September 2005, sales totalled TWD69.26bn ($2.06bn), up 18.4 per cent on the previous quarter and only fractionally below the year-ago quarter's total.

Highlighting "continued demand recovery" from its customers, TSMC said wafer shipments increased 19.8 per cent during the quarter, and gross margin rose 4.4 percentage points to 44.1 per cent. Its overall capacity utilisation was 96 per cent.

Net income came to TWD24.49bn ($729.20m), up 33.3 per cent sequentially but 12.3 per cent down on the figure the company posted this time last year.

TSMC reported quarterly earnings per share of TWD0.99 (three cents).

The improvements should continue. "We expect a healthy growth for the coming quarter,” said Lora Ho, TSMC's CFO. The upshot will be sales in the TWD77-79bn ($2.29-2.35bn) range as the firm's production capacity ramps up to 100 per cent. Gross margins will be between 47 per cent and 49 per cent, the company forecast. ®