TIVP024: TSMC (TSM): The Most Important Business in the World? w/ Daniel Mahncke & Shawn O’Malley

Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O’Malley turn their focus to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ticker: TSM) — the quiet engine powering nearly every device we touch and the global AI boom. Pioneering the pure-play foundry model, TSMC went from a government-backed experiment in the late 1980s to controlling more than 90 % of the world’s leading-edge chip production, fabricating Apple’s A- and M-series processors, Nvidia’s AI GPUs, and virtually every 3nm part on the planet. In this episode, you’ll learn how Morris Chang’s radical bet rewired the semiconductor industry, why extreme scale and EUV mastery give TSMC a moat rival chipmakers can’t cross, how its Arizona and Japan fabs fit into a strategy shaped by China-Taiwan tension, and how wafer volumes, node mix, and multi-billion-dollar capex translate into free-cash-flow and ROIIC. Daniel and Shawn also debate the right way to price the ever-present geopolitical “wipe-out” tail risk, and ask whether today’s market price offers a ...