Zero One Daily Intelligence Brief — May 29, 2026

Foxconn Guides 100% Profit Growth on Server Demand; TSMC Says Power Efficiency, Not Compute, is Next Bottleneck

Top Market Signals

Foxconn says AI servers will double its profit in two years

Foxconn (2317 TT) chairman Young Liu told shareholders that surging AI server demand should lift annual earnings per share toward NT$20 within two years — roughly double the NT$10-a-share pace the company has cleared for five straight years (a record NT$13.61 in FY25).

According to Liberty Times reporting from the annual meeting, Foxconn posted FY25 earnings per share of NT$13.61, a record since its 1991 listing, and the board approved a record dividend of NT$7.2 per share, holding the payout ratio above 50% for a seventh consecutive year. Liu framed the new target as a function of customer spending: the four largest cloud service providers (CSPs) will spend around US$700bn on capex this year and could cross US$1tn next year, and "the customers' capex is Foxconn's opportunity."

Liu put Foxconn's AI server market share above 40% and said AI rack shipments will grow several-fold this year. The company will also start shipping co-packaged optics (CPO) switches, where optical engines sit in the same package as the switch chip to cut power and raise bandwidth, targeting 10,000 units this year in what Liu called "definitely the world's first" volume at that scale. Total 2026 capex will rise more than 30% from last year's NT$170bn.

The forward framing matters more than the single-year print. Liu set a NT$11tn annual revenue ambition and named electric vehicles, robotics, semiconductors and low-earth-orbit satellites as the second growth curve, with Foxconn's ion-trap lab now able to stably control more than 15 ions, a building block for quantum hardware.

Linked stocks: 2317 TT, NVDA US

Sources: AI轉型開始收成 劉揚偉：鴻海拚年年賺2股本, 鴻海喊話 拚每年賺兩股本, Google News

MediaTek lets customers pick Intel packaging over TSMC

MediaTek (2454 TT) said it supports both TSMC's CoWoS and Intel's EMIB advanced packaging and lets the customer choose, a rare dual-track stance that hands Intel a credible opening in AI-chip back-end work.

CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) is TSMC's advanced packaging method used across AI chips including NVIDIA's; EMIB (embedded multi-die interconnect bridge) is Intel's competing approach. Per Reuters reporting carried by Liberty Times, MediaTek senior vice president Vince Hu said "we are one of the few custom-chip suppliers that supports both CoWoS and EMIB, and we let customers choose." Two people familiar with the matter said MediaTek is weighing Intel's EMIB for the custom AI chip it designs for Google; MediaTek does not publicly confirm Google as a customer and declined to comment on the packaging choice.

The same briefing reaffirmed MediaTek's 2026 data-center revenue target of US$2bn, double the prior plan, and put the 2027 custom-ASIC total addressable market at US$70bn to US$80bn, with MediaTek targeting 10 to 15 percent share. ASIC here means application-specific integrated circuit, a chip built for one customer's workload rather than a general-purpose GPU.

MediaTek also said it has run tests on TSMC's A14 node, the next-generation process slated for 2028 mass production, and plans to build some 4nm and 3nm chips at TSMC's Arizona fab to meet specific US customers' localization demands. The read-through is that the most coveted Taiwanese ASIC designer is no longer a single-foundry, single-packaging account.

Linked stocks: 2454 TT, 2330 TT, INTC US

Sources: 聯發科：台積電CoWos、英特爾EMIB技術都支援, Google News

Dell's blowout AI-server guide lights up Taiwan's ODM chain

Dell Technologies (DELL US) reported its best revenue growth since its 2018 re-listing and lifted its AI-server revenue target, sending its shares up the most since 2018 and dragging Taiwan's contract makers higher; Compal (2324 TT) hit limit-up.

According to Economic Daily News, Dell's results beat expectations on strength in both AI and traditional servers, with its client-solutions unit (commercial and consumer PCs) also posting double-digit growth. Reporting on the results put Dell's AI-server revenue target at US$60bn. Compal, a core Dell supplier, closed up 9.5% at NT$36.7 on roughly six times its prior-day volume; chairman Chen Ruicong was among the guests at NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang's Taipei dinner this week, and the company is positioned as a beneficiary of NVIDIA's GPU shipment ramp.

The order does not stop at Compal. Dell builds with Wistron (3231 TT) and Quanta (2382 TT) as well, and Lenovo (992 HK) shares doubled in May, the stock's best month in 27 years, on the same AI-server pull. AI server demand is now showing up as revenue and price hikes at the brand level, the most direct near-term funnel into Taiwanese ODM (original design manufacturer) earnings.

Linked stocks: DELL US, 2324 TT, 3231 TT, 2382 TT

Sources: 仁寶 押價內外10%, Google News

UMC reprices on three drivers and lands Intel's 12nm work for 2027

United Microelectronics (2303 TT) president Wang Shi said the foundry is partnering Intel on 12nm FinFET production in the US, with Arizona output starting in the second half of 2027, as UMC opens fresh pricing talks on three growth drivers.

UMC stock hit a limit-up NT$143.5 on May 27. Per TechNews, citing Wealth Magazine, chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung said rising material costs, higher Singapore production costs and continued R&D mean UMC will renegotiate quotes on new orders and new capacity, while honoring existing long-term contracts unchanged. He stressed this is not "opportunistic" pricing but a reflection of UMC's investment in technology, supply-chain security and global footprint, with small, selective adjustments in the second half.

The platform mix is doing the rest. The 22nm node is now UMC's most important platform, and management is steering customers from 28nm to 22nm on a "more volume, no price increase" basis; high-end power-management ICs (PMICs) and specialty processes are keeping 12-inch utilization high. Overall utilization sits near 85%, with 12-inch fabs above average and Singapore near full load.

On advanced packaging, UMC is pursuing wafer-level work rather than competing with traditional assembly houses, and has lifted silicon-interposer capacity from 3,000 to 6,000 wafers. Liu said meaningful business from the Intel 12nm tie-up should surface only after the second half of 2027, framing it as a platform build rather than an immediate earnings event.

Linked stocks: 2303 TT, INTC US

Sources: TechNews

Winbond chairman sees memory tight into 2028, recruits ex-TSMC veteran

Winbond Electronics (2344 TT) chairman Jiao You-jun said the memory industry has entered a structural, across-the-board shortage and that supply will stay tight into the second half of 2027, with the squeeze now spreading from DRAM to NAND and NOR flash.

According to Liberty Times, Jiao told the annual meeting the shortage cannot be eased quickly because cleanroom space is the binding constraint and added capacity is slow to arrive. Winbond has begun designing a second Kaohsiung fab, to be built next year and reach production around 2029, and shareholders approved a global depositary receipt (GDR) issue of 200m shares to fund it. President Chen Pei-ming went further, calling memory a "strategic material" and saying the imbalance could extend to 2028; Winbond's 2Q26 DRAM, NAND and NOR price increases all ran ahead of plan, and both revenue and profit will grow from 1Q26.

The governance move is the tell. Winbond is recruiting former TSMC R&D heavyweight Chiang Shang-yi as an independent director to accelerate its CUBE technology, a 3D-stacked, advanced-packaged memory aimed at the bandwidth bottleneck in edge-AI devices. Pulling a leading-edge packaging veteran onto a niche-memory board signals where Winbond thinks the value is migrating.

Linked stocks: 2344 TT

Sources: 華邦電：記憶體缺貨到明年下半年, 華邦電董座：記憶體缺貨漲價延燒 明年下半年難紓解

TSMC puts power at the center of the chip roadmap

TSMC (2330 TT) deputy co-chief operating officer Y.P. Chang said surging AI electricity demand is making energy efficiency, not raw compute, the main constraint on future chip development, as Taiwan's largest technology firms pressed the government to treat power supply as a crisis.

Per Economic Daily News, Chang's framing was echoed by Quanta, Wistron and Taiwan Mobile, whose chairman Daniel Tsai urged the government to confront the power shortage and update energy policy. The shift in language matters: for a decade the foundry roadmap was defined by transistor density, and management is now telling customers the gating variable is joules per operation. Separate reporting on TSMC's technology symposium put a target of roughly 30% power savings at the center of its next-generation strategy.

This reframes the AI infrastructure trade. If energy efficiency is the binding constraint, value accrues to power delivery, advanced packaging that shortens interconnects, and design wins that cut system watts, which is the same thread running through Foxconn's CPO push and the broader 800V data-center power build-out flagged across today's Taipei tape.

Linked stocks: 2330 TT, 2382 TT, 3231 TT

Sources: 科技巨頭疾呼 正視供電問題 高喊AI用電需求暴增, Google News

先聲 First Word — Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

Nan Ya to sell down Nanya Tech and Nan Ya PCB to fund substrate materials

Nan Ya Plastics (1303 TT) chairman Wu Chia-chao said the group is planning to divest stakes in its two cash-cow units, Nanya Technology and Nan Ya PCB, after announcing a second Nan Ya PCB share release of 19,385 lots; even fully executed, Nan Ya would still hold 61% of the PCB maker. The goal is to raise the PCB unit's free float and fund Nan Ya's production of CCL, copper foil and glass fabric, the upstream materials feeding ABF (Ajinomoto build-up film) substrate demand. (29 May 2026) Source: 南亞兩考量 賣南電、南亞科股

Zhen Ding and Unimicron substrate units both head for Hong Kong IPOs

Unimicron (3037 TT) shareholders approved a plan for its Suzhou Qunce Technology unit to list on Hong Kong's main board, while Zhen Ding-KY (4958 TT) said its substrate-only subsidiary Lichi Technology will expand capacity and pursue a Hong Kong IPO of its own. Two of Taiwan's largest PCB groups carving out and separately listing their substrate arms points to how much capital the ABF and BT substrate build-out now requires. (29 May 2026) Source: 臻鼎及欣興旗下載板廠尋求赴香港IPO 均經各自股東會通過

ITEQ guides Q2 revenue up about 20% on glass-fabric shortage and AI material

ITEQ (6213 TT) told its earnings call that a severe shortage of E-glass electronic-grade fiber, plus copper-foil and resin cost pressure, has triggered standing quarterly price hikes, lifting 2Q26 revenue an estimated 20% with gross margin recovering above 14 to 15 percent. The CCL (copper-clad laminate) maker ships GB200 riser, networking and switch boards for the largest AI GPU vendor and supplies higher-grade M7 and M8 material to AWS and Meta ASIC programs, with Thailand capacity doubling to 600,000 panels a month by year-end. (29 May 2026) Source: cnYES 鉅亨網

Advantech adds ex-NVIDIA Taiwan chief to board, moves to CXO structure

Advantech (2395 TT) shareholders re-elected the board, with ASUSTeK taking an institutional seat and former NVIDIA Taiwan general manager Lily Chiu joining as an independent director, lifting the company to two women directors. The industrial-computer leader laid out a five-year plan built on a worldwide business operations hub and Cross-Docking AI-driven logistics, and said it will adopt a CEO/CFO/COO leadership model by year-end as part of succession planning. (29 May 2026) Source: 〈研華股東會〉董事會換血組新隊形 華碩入列 邁向長期成長新階段