Taipei, March 6 (CNA) The number of shareholders in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) crossed the one million mark Friday as the company's share price dipped below the nearest technical support of NT$600 (US$21.30) on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Foreign institutional investors sold 250 million TSMC shares over the past 10 consecutive trading days beginning Feb. 16, when the company's share price closed at NT$645.00 per share. By Friday, this had dipped to NT$595.00.
The continued fall saw TSMC's market capitalization shrink by NT$1.29 trillion to NT$15.42 trillion from Feb. 16 to March 4, contributing to a 418-point drop on the broader market.
TSMC's stock price hit a record NT$688.00 on Jan. 17, bolstered by a solid business outlook for this year.
According to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry, it anticipates robust sales in the first quarter of 2022, with a new quarterly sales record of US$17.2 billion, a 7.4 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2021, and a gross profit margin of 53 percent to 55 percent.
TSMC's annual sales are also projected to grow by 25 percent to 29 percent in U.S. dollar terms.
Meanwhile, TSMC is planning to spend US$40 billion to US$44 billion in capital expenditure in 2022, a record high and an increase of 33 percent to 46 percent compared with last year's US$30 billion.
TSMC's share price lost NT$93 per share compared with Jan. 17's record, dropping to NT$595 as of Friday. This saw its market value shrink NT$2.41 trillion, contributing to a 777-point drop on the broader market between Jan. 17 and March 4.
However, the sharp drop in its share price attracted a large number of bargain hunters.
As of March 4, the number of large shareholders with more than 1 million TSMC shares declined by four from a week earlier to 1,555, but shareholders with odd lots and less than 1 million shares rose by 51,980 to 1,003,701, according to Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corp. statistics.
Bevan Yeh (葉獻文), a manager of Prudential Financial High Growth Fund, said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine had prompted foreign institutional investors to largely shift to the sell side on the local equity market, targeting bellwether large-cap stocks.
This was why heavily weighted semiconductor stocks had underperformed compared with the broader market recently, Yeh added.
The further development of the Ukraine crisis will continue to impact global markets and foreign institutional investors' trading strategies in Taiwan, while also affecting TSMC stock prices, according to equity market analyst Wang Chao-li (王兆立).
