Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, October 6, 2026

Foxconn books Taiwan's first NT$1tn month as board material prices climb again

Top Market Signals

Foxconn books Taiwan's first NT$1tn revenue month

Foxconn (2317 TT) reported September revenue of NT$1.16tn, up 38.4% YoY and 25.7% MoM. It is the first Taiwan-listed company to pass NT$1tn in a single month. Foxconn first reached NT$1tn for a full year in 2006. 3Q26 revenue was NT$3.03tn, up 47% YoY and 20% QoQ, above the LSEG SmartEstimate of NT$2.83tn.

AI servers drove the quarter. Against a year earlier, Foxconn said its cloud and networking, components and computing segments all grew strongly on AI product demand, and new iPhone launches lifted consumer products in September against August. Cloud and networking was already 51% of sales in 2Q26. Foxconn said in August that its AI rack shipments would more than double in 2026, and Vera Rubin racks entered volume production in 3Q.

Margin is the open question. 2Q26 gross margin slipped to 6.12% from 6.33% a year earlier, although operating profit rose 68% and operating margin reached 3.75%. Morgan Stanley expects Foxconn's share of high-end AI racks to fall to about 39% this year from 51% in 2025 as standard designs let rivals compete. The board has approved up to NT$60bn of unsecured bonds, and Foxconn is adding capacity in Taiwan, the US, Mexico and Vietnam.

Foxconn expects AI revenue to keep growing in 4Q26 and overall results in line with market expectations. Its shares opened as much as 4.9% higher on 6 Oct, then turned lower. The 12 Nov 3Q26 results will show whether operating profit keeps growing faster than revenue as rack volumes double.

Linked stocks: 2317 TT, NVDA US, 2382 TT

Nanya's 3Q revenue tops its entire first half

Nanya Technology (2408 TT) reported 3Q26 revenue of NT$133.65bn, up 612% YoY and 62% QoQ. It is the first quarter above NT$100bn, and more than Nanya's whole first-half revenue. September revenue was NT$45.09bn, up 577% YoY, the 11th straight monthly record.

Price is doing nearly all of the work. Nanya's new DRAM contract prices took effect in July, and the company expects shipments to stay roughly flat until its new fab starts producing. September revenue rose only 0.9% from August, which fits a business where volume is fixed and the step-up came when the new contracts began.

Winbond (2344 TT) shows the same pattern with a volume lift on top. 3Q26 revenue was NT$82.33bn, up 278% YoY, and nine-month revenue of NT$180.43bn is already double its full-year 2025 total of NT$89.41bn. President Chen Pei-ming had said he expected both prices and bit shipments to grow in 3Q, and that he expects memory supply and demand in 2027 to be tighter than this year.

The rate of increase is slowing. TrendForce expects 4Q26 contract prices for standard DRAM to rise 10% to 15% QoQ, a smaller increase than in 3Q, with recent extra demand coming from solid-state drive makers. Next quarter's revenue growth at Nanya depends on that smaller price step until new capacity adds volume.

Linked stocks: 2408 TT, 2344 TT, MU US, 000660 KS

Board material prices climb as glass cloth sells out

ITEQ (6213 TT), a maker of copper-clad laminate (CCL, the base material that circuit boards are built from), raised prices by about 30% in 3Q26, against the 20% analysts had expected, Liberty Times reported, citing a Japanese broker. The broker expects ITEQ to raise prices a further 20% to 30% in 4Q26 as the cost of the glass cloth woven into laminates rises.

The three Taiwan laminate makers all set records in September. Elite Material (2383 TT), the largest, reported revenue of NT$21.53bn, up 169% YoY and its seventh straight monthly record. Its high-end laminates are sold out, and more customers are asking for long-term contracts as AWS Trainium 3, NVIDIA Rubin and Google TPU v8 servers ramp. ITEQ's revenue rose 111% YoY and Taiwan Union Technology's (6274 TT) rose 115%. The same broker puts 2026 price increases at about 100% for low-end laminates and 40% to 50% for high-end ones.

The shortage starts upstream. Nitto Boseki (3110 JT), a Japanese supplier of T-Glass, a low-thermal-expansion glass cloth used in high-end laminates and chip substrates, told Nikkei that demand exceeds supply and its lines are running full. It is adding a glass yarn furnace at its Taiwan plant and a glass cloth plant in Fukushima. Japanese media expect its FY2028 capacity to reach three times FY2025, and management has said orders are growing faster than it can expand. It has no further T-Glass price increase planned.

Our 5 Oct 2026 Blade reported 2027 contract increases for silicon wafers and power chip increases of up to 15%. Laminates add circuit board materials to the list of AI server inputs going up in price. The price increases could fade in 2027 as new glass cloth and laminate capacity opens, analysts told Economic Daily News, with ITEQ's growth shifting toward higher-grade products.

Linked stocks: 2383 TT, 6213 TT, 6274 TT, 3110 JT

Banks sell down US$60bn loan for Anthropic's chips

Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley began inviting other banks on 5 Oct to take part of a US$60bn chip financing for Anthropic, the Financial Times reported, in what it called the largest single chip financing on record. The money funds Anthropic's 2027 orders to rent Google chips, and rent starts only after the chips are delivered.

The deal comes in two parts with different risk. About US$42bn is a senior secured loan guaranteed by Broadcom (AVGO US), which is rated A minus, and banks began offering that portion on 5 Oct; it could later be resold through private placements or the investment-grade bond market. The other US$18bn is subordinated debt with no Broadcom guarantee, to be launched later by the same banks. Blackstone (BX US) has committed about US$9bn of it.

Lenders on the subordinated part carry Anthropic's own credit risk, so the banks may wait until Anthropic lists this year and investors can see its public financials. Broadcom's latest quarterly filing also says Anthropic may issue up to US$42bn of convertible bonds to Broadcom to pay the rent.

Our 2 Oct 2026 Blade reported Broadcom's agreement to provide Anthropic with up to US$42bn of financing, as disclosed in Anthropic's IPO filing. Today's report gives the full size and shows that lenders will take the Broadcom-backed portion first. How quickly banks place the unguaranteed US$18bn will show how much appetite there is for AI debt that rests on a model maker's own balance sheet.

Linked stocks: AVGO US, GOOGL US, BX US

Lisa Su returns to Taiwan to lock 2027 capacity

AMD (AMD US) chief executive Lisa Su arrived in Taiwan on 6 Oct, her second visit in under five months, for closed meetings with suppliers, Commercial Times reported. Supply chain sources told DigiTimes that apart from TSMC (2330 TT), her main task is to secure capacity from packaging, test and substrate suppliers, which are short of capacity and raising prices.

Her schedule reportedly includes TSMC, Foxconn (2317 TT), Quanta (2382 TT), Wistron (3231 TT) and Inventec (2356 TT), Economic Daily News reported. AMD's MI450 AI chips, made on TSMC's 2nm process with CoWoS packaging, started wafer production at TSMC in 3Q26 and reach volume shipments next year. The visit centers on capacity for the MI455, which follows in 1H27, and on supply through 2027 and 2028.

Demand behind the trip is concentrated in OpenAI, which plans to deploy 6GW of AMD Instinct GPUs starting in 2H26. Supply chain sources told Commercial Times that OpenAI's first in-house inference chip, Jalapeno, runs with AMD's EPYC Turin processors, and that its next chip, Cayenne, also plans to use AMD processors. Su announced more than US$10bn of investment in Taiwan's supply chain during her May visit.

Linked stocks: AMD US, 2330 TT, 2317 TT, 2382 TT

US data centers face a 32GW power gap

US data center developers face a 34% net power shortfall through 2028, equal to 32GW, even after counting on-site generation and fuel cells, Morgan Stanley said in a 5 Oct report. The bank does not see the shortfall putting NVIDIA's (NVDA US) or Broadcom's (AVGO US) 2027 forecasts at risk, because both track where their chips are actually installed and are expanding into other regions.

The exposure sits further down the chain. If customers cannot get power to install chips they have already bought, they may delay deliveries or cancel orders, and Morgan Stanley says memory, optical networking, power management and analog chip suppliers have the most inventory exposure to that.

Demand is not the limit, according to Nokia (NOK US) chief executive Justin Hotard, whose company sells the networking gear that links AI data centers. He told CNBC that customers would build twice as fast if supply allowed, and that even with no new frontier AI models for three years, deploying today's models leaves plenty of room to grow. Memory and power shortages are now the main limits on how fast data centers get built.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, AVGO US, NOK US, MU US

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

Global Unichip's September revenue nearly doubles to a record

Global Unichip (3443 TT), a custom AI chip design services company, reported September revenue of NT$7.15bn, up 97.8% YoY and its fourth straight monthly record, taking 3Q26 revenue up 117.8% YoY and nine-month revenue 29% above its full-year 2025 total. More TSMC wafer allocation is lifting its production business, and its HBM4E memory interface on TSMC's 2nm N2P process has been adopted by an AI chip customer. (05 Oct 2026) Source: 創意9月營收雙高

Notebook parts orders drop from September, suppliers see no 2027 recovery

Notebook parts makers say customer orders fell sharply from September, when peak season usually starts, and expect no improvement in 2027, DigiTimes reported; battery maker Dynapack's (3211 TT) September revenue fell 53.7% MoM and 34.1% YoY. The slump follows Quanta's one-week halt of supply to HP in September to force a price increase, and points to rising component costs now cutting notebook orders. (06 Oct 2026) Source: NB寒冬供應鏈兩樣情　ODM伺服器撐腰、零組件轉型找春天

UMC raises US$1.8bn in zero-interest convertible bonds for equipment

UMC (2303 TT) priced two US$900m overseas convertible bonds with a 0% coupon and conversion prices of NT$179.19 and NT$202.06, against a NT$152.5 close on 5 Oct, with all proceeds going to equipment and plant. With August's NT$4bn domestic issue, UMC has raised more than NT$60bn for capacity in specialty processes and silicon photonics, betting on AI demand for power management and connectivity chips made on older processes. (06 Oct 2026) Source: 10／6盤中熱門焦點股