Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (2330) ends the week in a more comfortable position than seven days ago — up 3% on the week to TWD 2,270 — but the story this week is a sharp reversal in the peer dynamic that made last week's note so striking.
The peer landscape has flipped decisively. Where the previous note documented brutal selling across TSMC's correlated names, the same group has now staged a strong recovery. 3711 gained nearly 30% on the week. 2449 added 17%. Korean peers A108320 and A102120 rose 14% and 13% respectively. 6871 climbed 13%. Against that backdrop, TSMC's 3% weekly gain looks measured rather than strong — the foundry's relative resilience in the selloff has been replaced by relative restraint in the bounce. That is not a negative reading on the stock; it reflects TSMC's position as the anchor of the sector, moving with less amplitude in both directions.
The one data point worth watching is the borrow cost trend. Cost to borrow has continued its multi-week climb, reaching 0.85% by Tuesday and closing the week near 0.85% — up 17% on the week and now more than double where it was at the start of May. The absolute level remains low, and the lending market is anything but tight: availability is essentially unconstrained, with the borrow pool far exceeding any current short demand. Utilization is negligible at under 0.1%. The short score of 25.2 places TSMC in the 97th percentile for low short pressure across the universe. This is not a short-interest story; it is simply worth noting that borrow costs have been trending higher for three consecutive weeks, even as the underlying positioning remains distinctly unbothered.
The institutional ownership picture reinforces the stable backdrop. The top-five holders — Taiwan's National Development Fund, Capital Research, BlackRock, Vanguard, and FMR — account for nearly 20% of shares between them, and the most recent reported changes are marginal. BlackRock added around 13 million shares through April, Capital Research added just over 9 million. These are incremental flows, not repositioning moves. On the insider side, Vice President Chuang Tzu-Shou sold 200,000 shares on May 19 for roughly $14 million — a meaningful dollar figure but a negligible fraction of the company. A separate VP made two small purchases on the same day. The net 90-day insider position is a modest positive at just under $14.5 million bought net, though the bulk of that reflects the one sell-side trade in context rather than a coordinated buying signal.
Valuation is stable and consistent with TSMC's premium positioning. The trailing P/E is running near 21.3x, up marginally on the week, while the EV/EBITDA multiple has eased slightly to 13.7x over the past month. The price-to-book of 7x reflects a market that has long been willing to pay for TSMC's technological moat — a view the factor scores support. The dividend score ranks in the 99th percentile, EPS surprise in the 60th. Analyst data in the snapshot is too dated to cite directly. The stock's ORTEX stock score of 89.8, flagged in a recent note, remains the cleaner summary of how the fundamental picture looks: quality-led, momentum-supported, and valued at a premium the market appears comfortable sustaining.
The next confirmed earnings event is July 16. Between now and then, the variable most worth tracking is whether the borrow cost drift — now in its third consecutive week of gains — continues to accelerate or stabilises, and whether the peer recovery that ran so hard this week draws institutional flows back toward the higher-beta names in the semiconductor complex at TSMC's expense.
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