TSMTaiwan Semiconductor (ADR)
6Bull0Bear20Mention
Serenity @aleabitoreddit
Focused on AI photonics and semiconductor supply chains — sourcing asymmetric setups from bottoms-up value-chain research. Tracks CPO & optical modules closely, with ongoing deep-dives on SIVE, AAOI, LITE, POET.
Quick verdict
TSM is net bullish (6 bull · 0 bear)
Named as a downstream customer of FOCI for optical components and FAU.
Last spoke: 08/18/2026, 14:03 · no conviction
8-10 confidence views use larger markers▲ Bull▼ Bear● Mention
View History (26, newest first)
- The AI semi theme is down if you look at $AVGO to $TSM. Higher beta names seem to have been hit the hardest. From trends I've seen with optical names, $LITE / $COHR recovered fastest, then larger still high beta names like $AAOI / $AXTI (halfway). Then your $SIVE / $POET type names have taken the longest. But I do see a sharper recovery when markets are more risk-on or when earnings forces re-ratings.
- I remain convinced nobody knows how to pronounce or talk about $AAOI in real life. It’s one letter too long to say $TSM or $AMD. And nobody ever says to a friend“Wow, I like applied optoelectronics!”
- Just some interesting takeaways from $FORM earnings call on CPO: Since they attributed systems revenue nearly doubled due to: "accelerating growth in co-packaged optics or CPO". Q1 2026: "we now expect 2026 CPO revenues to come in at the high end of the $10 million to $20 million range" Q2 2026 (now): "expect to exceed that range by the end of the third quarter, and to significantly exceed the $20 million level for the year overall." Management stated "We’re seeing some significant acceleration in this [CPO] business". Q: CPO adoption outlook. Are we perhaps expecting the timeline to accelerate a little bit? A: "What I would say is there’s acceleration here in the very short term." But management stated there's not a significant pull-in on timelines. Citing production infrastructure (not just R&D) for: - The growing volumes of CPO chips planned for later this year + test insertion for scale-up and scale-out switches. - Seems like that CPO piece flows through $TSM COUPE [ likely maps to $NVDA CPO products] - "The CPO piece does flow through that 10% customer" So now, test is ramping given management cited growing volumes of CPO chips. "The rapid recent growth of our CPO business is an exciting development, which we believe represents the very early stages of widespread adoption of silicon photonics in the broader semiconductor industry" TLDR: Fundamentally, CPO as a theme is very early, and should start to go brrr soon since it's starting to show up in earnings now (equipment/test players usually appear up first before optical engines / laser volumes ramp). Personally once all the deleveraging stops, I think markets will start to care more.
- Just some notes from $TSLA transcripts: Elon Musk: "I think Optimus will be the biggest product ever" from Q2 earnings transcripts. Even from Q1, Elon Stated: "I think Optimus will be our biggest product. Not just Tesla's biggest product ever, but probably the biggest product ever. And I remain convinced of that conclusion". It's very rare to see such high conviction reiterated from Elon regarding humanoids both directionally and TAM-wise. In terms of upstream suppliers opportunities, Karn Budhiraj, VP of $TSLA supply chains stated: "We’re seeing the same level of investment going to memory and also new specific items like metal injection molded parts, flexible printed circuits, and all sorts of nonlinear technologies..." And that they had to build new supply chains from scratch. So would be interesting to look at for new supply chain supplier opportunities apart from the known ones. Just pulled older slides and it looks like capacity targets for Fremont are 1M and Giga Texas was 10M, so at scale, $TSLA seems to be the clear US leader. If you're looking at that S-Curve opportunity ramp. On a side note, Elon also gave a shoutout to $MU with likely reasonably priced LTAs, given his statement: "We really appreciate Micron making room for Tesla in the years to come and giving us actually a very significant allocation on reasonable terms given the pretty insane pricing of memory these days." (Just for structural memory demand). Elon also gave a shoutout to Panasonic which had invested many billions in increasing battery cell production (will need to do deeper DD into Panasonic after this), then Samsung and $TSM. Just takeaways from Tesla earnings TLDR: Elon tends to be directionally correct on where the future is heading, such as with EV or Space. He seems extremely bullish on humanoids.
- Thanks, love reading the comments! Goldman Sachs raised Innolight PT to 2581 RMB. Roughly 163.6% upside from current valuations. But the largest thing is its 2026–2028 earnings est revision raised by a whopping 65%/108%/119%, based on: - Much higher silicon photonics module volumes - scale out, scale up, scale across volumes - 1.6T/3.2T lifting blended ASP + margins - increase in AI capex This is typically very material read through on the optical sector since: I tend to think of Innolight as a $TSM (semi capex) type read on how the photonics landscape is doing. Eg. Higher silicon photonics penetration means more TAM for cw lasers like $SIVE (cw) / SOI wafer demand for $SOI. ASP hikes for future gen is positive for the other optical markers too. Think my other takeaway outside the report was Innolight stating 800g demand was growing more significantly than expected from their transcript on the 12th. Which in turn signals more demand for names like $AAOI to $LITE next earnings. TLDR: GS gives high earnings projections during a time of massive corrections. Fundamentally, broader photonics ecosystem should be happy when it’s ER time.
- Apparently there’s a new popular trend to bearpost trillion dollar companies. Like $NVDA or $TSM. By finding isolating technical details, then blowing it out of proportions by claiming their whole program is delayed. -> if the company doesn’t respond, stock prices/sentiment are damaged. -> if the company issues a response, they can’t go into detail since supply chains are confidential… but people still doubt them -> Poster gain more impressions, then does it again with more views the next time. Don’t quite think this is very healthy, with more folks copying that playbook. Especially around incentive structures.
- @yuntungshieh Hmm, maybe the influx of US buying pressure might have have a structural impact though? But I'm sure that's probably the case with a premium as seen with $TSM.
- @SidkMena Dunno, probably just sector selloff. Shunsin recebtly confirmed a direct $TSM COUPE partnership. Then proceeded to crash 15-20%. Don’t think there’s any material developments outside SemiAnalysis bearposting the Nvidia ecosystem over and over https://t.co/jxKIKup6F3
- FYI, I posted ideas about $AXTI at $15, $AAOI at $30, $TSEM at $115, $LITE $300, $MU $300, $SNDK $400, $EWY $110, $SIVE $4. $IQE $13, $SOI $44 and so on. So when they finally have a massive correction due to macro drop the ideas are wrong? And most are still up a few hundred percent. TW CPO names are just really early and I’m down a lot on those but I expect them to recover in due time.
- Very interesting statement today: $MU CEO predicts a multi-decade memory demand cycle driven by humanoid robots. "Humanoid robots, he says, will require roughly ten times more memory than today’s Level 2+ autonomous vehicles." "And that demand wave is set to begin before the decade is out." Something as well as was "Over time, we expect the value of on-device AI combined with pent-up unit replacement demand to drive memory demand growth" Which is also another trend (Apple Intelligence is currently dog, but I'm sure we'll see innovations with localized/edge AI). Feels like all the industry leaders from $TSM Chairman, $TSLA Elon Musk, to $MU CEO see humanoids as the next major trend so physical AI is probably next. I wonder if the world is going to have enough memory. Or if we'll see enough breakthroughs to shrink memory usage.
- @mindmoon_108 @Akaletiko Eh, maybe other way around where $TSM sees what memory players are doing and starts price hiking too.
- Curious if anyone's portfolio is green after today's fun day. $KORU: -32.06% $SOXL: -22.98% $IQE: -13.58% $DRAM: -12.6% $AXTI: -12.57% $FLNC: -12.5% $AAOI: -11.2% $SIVE: -11.7% $TSEM: -10.24% $SNDK: -12.5% $MU: -11.8% Sk Hynix: -12.35% Samsung: -9.6% $MRVL: -8.3% $LITE: -7.6% $SOI -7.15% $TSM: -6.1% $AMD: -6.04% Feels like anything high-beta or semis had a steep drop.
- Dip looks like a clear buying opportunity for me personally from $MU, $INTC, to $TSM. Since we got a massive drop off BS narratives like 3 rate hikes off no newly material macroeconomic data (which comes out Thursday). If institutions really believed 3 rate hike sellside garbage that BofA put out: They would profit off it with CME/prediction markets. Which are still projecting 74% no rate hike in July. But they don't. So they're feeding retail investors garbage.
- @Semiconsight I think my M&A ideas are generally pretty compelling! Apollo fully bought out one of the $TSM Japanese suppliers I identified earlier lol.
- @Joey_TheFarmer My thesis hasn't changed with FOCI, they'll be part of the bottleneck with FAU + passive components in $NVDA $TSM ecosystem as that COUPE scales up.
- I mean... if i had to guess, $LPK did claim "80% of customers among major global players have selected LPKF equipment". Kinda clear glass substrates is the next packaging shift! From est. timelines, major players like Absolics is ramping H2 2026, Samsung Electro Mechanics 2027 + their partners. Then there's major shifts like TSM CoPoS 2028 (seems possible $LPK upstream exposure, unconfirmed). Just that claim of 80% is staggering and my personal expectation was markets might price it in eventually as they volume ramp (disclosure, own LPK). Don't think there needs to be any major news, probably just getting closer to HVM timelines.
- Still holding Foci/Nextronics. There was a CPO bear post from an analyst that said there would be delays (which $NVDA denied), which caused CPO related stocks to crash. Personally think Foci will end up a bottleneck for $TSM COUPE / $NVDA and Nextronics to be a beneficiary of optical components relative to MC in $NVDA supply chains. We'll see how this plays out.
- Just some reflection, my core high conviction ideas from 2025 aged super well! From $ALAB: $97-> $372 $LITE: $330 -> $904 $AAOI: $30 -> $175 And others like $NBIS, $RKLB, and $TSM! This was back when I had close to no followers! I got some nuances slightly off before more information was made public. Lost conviction on ALAB along the way with optical transitions. But this was back when AAOI and others were small $3B companies (~$14B now). So maybe some others in the same range today like $SIVE should get some more attention? But I’m happy a lot of them aged super well. And I think a large part of my recent following growth is just other seeing my ideas like $AXTI get validated over time.
- Basically this… and it’s how cycles work. Retail was early and completely frontran institutions on next architectural shifts. There was close to 0 US institutional ownership on $SIVE. And now you see active institutions like JP Morgan, Fidelity Research, and others on the cap table. Happened last year with $NBIS. > I called out close to <30% institutional accumulation and said they wanted more shares. > institutions bought up majority of the float > bunch of negative articles back then, now it’s positive and ATHs. Two years before it was $RKLB > Was long at $16, but institutional analysts kept giving record low PTs and told retail to sell, although it had such a high reusable rocket rate. > retail sold, institutional ownership stocked up > now it’s ATHs I expect Foci (3363) to be a bottleneck for both $NVDA and $TSM optical programs and now there’s firms implying you to sell that at $2.5B valuations alongside $HIMX. So if you see negative sellside reports or an uncanny wave of negative news, if’s a good signal they need liquidity. Recently some smaller hedge funds have been so desperate that they’re likely even using bot farms on X that told retail to sell lol… which I’ve uncovered recently. Regardless, it’s also why I spend a lot of time doing research on individual names so people can build their own conviction in the face of noise. Unfortunately, it’s just a part of life how the modern liquidity cycles/transfers of US retail -> Institutions work. They don’t work in the best interest of retail investors.
- @vipmoaa $TSM is probably one of the better names to do that for. Probably better RoI than your depreciating car
- Just very helpful timelines reiterated around glass substrate (source: Trendforce): - SKC Absolics (011790) H2 2026 (first mover x $AMAT) - $AMD customers - Samsung electromechanics h2 2027 (009150) x Sumitomo Chem (4005) - Apple / $AVGO / hyperscalers Idk about $INTC 2030 reports, we’ll see. $TSM CoPoS was 2-3Y was correct though from recent TSM chairman comments. Innolux was interesting beneficiary. $SHMD should be too off TSM but financials were pretty toxic. Same players should appear multiple times, eg innolux + SKC. Also applies to $LPK and upstream equipment seller around these ramps.
- $SIVE is #1, $AAOI is #2 used wrong wording above. Generally a fan of: - $SIVE (CPO lasers) - $AAOI (End-to-End pluggable/cpo) - Foci (FAU +passive components $TSM COUPE / $NVDA) - Shunsin (Packaging/Test) - Win Semi (foundry) - $TSEM (foundry) - $SOI (silicon photonics) - Nextronics (CPO connector / cage thermal module) And a few others.
- @RockyKh49376975 Probably just Xintech (3374) which is kinda the unknown $TSM COUPE supplier. They happen to be owned by TSMC too.
- I never thought I’d see the day where $GOOGL needs to raise $80b for AI capex… Then Warren Buffet’s $BRK.A is funding the hyperscaler AI buildout. - $40B ATM, $30B offerings, Berkshire $10B Upstream ecosystem from $LITE to $AVGO to Mediatek to $TSM to $MU should go brrr. Not sure if the Google holders are though, given this massive capex scale isn’t as funded by FCF.
- 几个值得重点关注的“实质性垄断”标的: - MSSCORP (6830)：在检测和 CPO 良率把控上构筑了极深的专利护城河。 - $SOI：主导绝缘体上硅 (SOI) 衬底市场。 - NGK (5333)：稳拿薄膜铌酸锂 (TFLN) 晶圆核心技术。 - $AXTI：把控磷化铟 (InP) 衬底等上游关键材料。 像讯芯 (Shunsin) 这类公司其实很难被轻易颠覆，毕竟背靠富士康，而富士康本身就深深扎根于众多核心供应链的腹地 🏭 $SIVE 的逻辑也极其相似。他们已经成功打入 (design in) 了众多顶尖 CPO 架构的设计体系，抱紧了 Ayar、Lightelligence (壁仞的供应商)、Lightmatter 以及 Celestial 等 众行业领军者的大腿 相比之下，个人认为 $HIMX (奇景光电) 或 Foci (上诠) 未来面临被踢出局 (design out) 的风险最大，很有可能会被台积电的光学部门采钰 (Visera 6789) 这类巨头直接垂直整合。不过话说回来，在未来两三年内，借助 CPO 相关的光纤阵列 (FAU) 和无源器件，他们眼前依然有 波巨大的赚钱机遇
- @_juicebox99_ I don't see FOCI becoming a $50B+ company. They focus on one thing like optical components + FAU for $TSM / $NVDA, then do it at scale. So that would likely drives structural re-rating related to MC. Not quite the same as the US model of TAM expanding into $100B+ companies.
Ongoing takes on other optical names too
Beyond TSM, his viewpoint library also covers: