Key points
- TSMC (TSM) reports Q2 2026 earnings before the US market opens on July 16. EPS estimate is $3.77, up from $3.49 last quarter, and it has beaten estimates for six straight quarters.
- AIStockWire's Stock Scorer grades TSMC 88 out of 100, an A+, on a fortress balance sheet, the company repurchasing its own shares, and rising profit.
- Individual insider buying looks strong on paper, 21 buys and 0 sells across the last 20 Form 4 filings, but nearly all of it is routine employee stock purchases, not a conviction bet.
- TSM is down about 1% today and 13% off its June 30 high, right as the rest of the semiconductor complex, Micron, SanDisk, and SK Hynix's Nasdaq stock, is selling off hard.
We wrote earlier today about money rotating out of semiconductors and into the Mag 7. Micron, SanDisk and SK Hynix's new Nasdaq stock are all down 8% to 11% as an earlier spike in the week unwinds. Tomorrow morning, before the opening bell, the company that actually makes most of the world's advanced AI chips reports earnings. If anything can turn today's selling into a bounce, it's this one.
What Wall Street expects
TSMC (TSM) reports Q2 2026 results before the US market opens on July 16. Wall Street expects $3.77 in earnings per share, up from $3.49 last quarter and $2.47 a year ago. The company's own guidance already points to revenue between $39 billion and $40.2 billion, with a gross margin of 65.5% to 67.5%. That guidance came from TSMC itself back in April. So the real question tomorrow isn't whether they hit it. It's whether they beat it, and what they say about demand for the rest of the year.
TSMC has beaten that estimate for six straight quarters, including last quarter's report. That's a real trend, not a coin flip. The stock is up roughly 40% for the April to June quarter alone, built on progress toward 2 nanometer production, more packaging capacity, and steady AI chip demand from the big cloud companies. It has pulled back about 13% from its June 30 high since then. Shares trade around $416 today, down about 1%.
What our Stock Scorer says
We ran TSMC through our own Stock Scorer, which grades any US-listed ticker from 0 to 100 using real SEC filings. TSMC comes back with an 88, an A+. That score leans on a fortress balance sheet, real buybacks instead of dilution, and steadily rising profit. Click through and run the same check on any ticker yourself, every component gets its own score and its own explanation.
The only real weak spot is valuation, and that might be the whole story going into tomorrow. Trailing P/E sits around 61, rich even against tech-typical multiples for chip stocks. TSMC is priced for continued beats. Everything else, the balance sheet, the buybacks, the actual profit growth, is about as clean as a large semiconductor stock gets.
About that insider buying score
The Stock Scorer's insider component gave TSMC full marks. It counted 21 open-market buys worth $83,209 combined against zero sells, over the last 20 Form 4 filings. Worth being straight about what that actually is, though. Nearly every one of those filings is a small, routine purchase. Executives buy 28 to 146 shares each through TSMC's Employee Stock Purchase Plan, at a fixed internal price. That's not a discretionary bet made with conviction. The one real open-market purchase we found, a vice president buying 2,000 shares, happened back in mid-May. That's two months old now. A real buy, but a stale one, and it isn't a fresh signal tied to tomorrow's report. Net-net, insiders aren't selling, which is a mildly good sign. But this isn't executives loading up ahead of earnings.
Can TSMC actually save the semiconductor trade?
Here's the honest setup. Today's selling is mechanical. A thinly traded new US listing of a Korean chipmaker is giving back its earlier spike, and that's not a demand story. TSMC's earnings are a real demand story, maybe the closest thing the market gets to a direct read on AI chip orders from Nvidia, AMD, Apple and everyone else who depends on TSMC's factories. A strong beat with confident guidance on 2 nanometer production and AI packaging capacity could give the whole semiconductor group, Micron included, a reason to stop falling and start buying again. A cautious report, even a technical beat with soft comments about the rest of the year, could do the opposite. It could confirm that today's move into the Mag 7 has further to run.
We explained why TSMC sits at the center of almost every AI chip's supply chain here. Worth a read if you want the fuller picture of why one earnings report moves so much more than just TSM stock.
What to actually watch
Watch the gross margin number first. That's the cleanest read on whether AI demand is still giving TSMC pricing power. Watch any comments on 2 nanometer yields and capacity, since that's the multi-year growth story underneath the quarter. And watch how Micron, AMD and SK Hynix's stock trade in the hour after the print. That's your real-time answer to whether this was the report that stopped the bleeding.
Cover photo: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
