TSMC in top 100 global innovators, marking a milestone for both the company and Taiwan’s business world

October 8, 2013 Leave a comment

TSMC in top 100 global innovators: Reuters

By Kathryn Chiu ,The China Post
October 8, 2013, 12:08 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) was named as one of the world’s top 100 most innovative organizations for 2013 in a survey released by Thomson Reuters, marking a milestone for both the company and Taiwan’s business world. The IP & Science division of Thomson Reuters, provider of information for businesses and professionals, announced its 2013 Top 100 Global Innovators list, which included a Taiwanese company for the first time since its initial publication in 2011.TSMC was the only Taiwanese company on this year’s list, which featured 32 companies from Asia, including 28 from Japan and three from South Korea.

The list, which was released on Monday, also includes 45 American companies, 22 European companies and one Canadian company.

The annual study by Thomson Reuters Co., a multinational media and information firm based in New York, measures patent activity based on four principal criteria: overall volume, success rate, globalization and influence.

“These four benchmarks reinforce that great ideas are part of the strategic equation and that organizations need the ability to protect, commercialize and leverage these ideas around the world in order to be successful,” Thomson Reuters said.

Although China has the world’s most patents, no Chinese companies made it on to the 20l3 list because they did not perform well in the categories of globalization and influence, Thomson Reuters said.

TSMC Surpasses Intel as World’s Largest Chip-maker

The 100 organizations in the 2013 study outperformed the S&P 500 for the third consecutive year, this year by 4 percent in annual stock price growth and 2 percent in market cap-weighted revenue growth. Collectively they generated US$4.5 trillion in revenue, nearly twice the GDP of the United Kingdom.

The “Top Innovators” also added 266,152 new jobs over the last year, a rate that was 0.81 percent higher than the new job creation rate among constituents of the S&P 500. This year’s winners also outspent the S&P 500 by 8.8 percent on R&D; collectively they invested US$223 billion in their research and development efforts.

TSMC sold US$11.98 billion worth of semiconductors in the second quarter of 2013, edging out Intel, which sold US$11.79 billion in the same timeframe, tipster website Fudzilla reports. The site says it pulled its data from market research firm IC Insights.

Things figure to get even better for TSMC as it upgrades its four 8-inch wafer plants to supply parts for the wearable device market.

IC Insights believes the global semiconductor market will be worth US$271 billion this year, with wafer foundries accounting for more than 16 percent of that figure.

Filed under Investing Process, Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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