Buy this chipmaker over Nvidia as AI competition ramps up, strategist says
Investors can look to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing for a steady way to play the artificial intelligence rally, according to F.L.Putnam Investment Management chief market strategist and portfolio manager Ellen Hazen. Hazen appeared on CNBC’s ” Power Lunch ” on Tuesday and shared her thoughts about the best way to navigate the AI trade, which has hit some speedbumps in recent months amid concerns about elevated valuations, risky financing methods and the return on hyperscalers’ massive investments. The investor said that “there is almost certainly going to be a bubble” given the amount of spending going into the new technology needed for AI, but she believes that it will not be comparable to the scale of historical tech bubbles, such as the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and the railroad boom-and-bust during the 1840s. Supporting Hazen’s conviction is that the majority of AI deals are not being funded by debt and that tech valuations have mostly been powered by strong earnings growth. Hazen remains invested in stocks such as Nvidia and TSMC, but she recommended the latter given its moat in the chips business. “The AI trade continues to go strong, and Nvidia is not the only name. There are other ways to play it,” she said, highlighting TSMC as a top AI stock that she has owned for a significant period of time. TSMC produces semiconductors for tech companies such as Nvidia, Apple and Advanced Micro Devices , which design their own chips but do not manufacture them. The stock has soared more than 52% this year on the back of strong AI demand. In the third quarter, the company’s high-performance computing division, which encompasses artificial intelligence and 5G applications, accounted for 57% of TSMC’s revenue and made up the biggest chunk of its quarterly sales. “I’ve known that company since it went public back in the ’90s, and it’s a phenomenal company,” Hazen said about TSMC. “They used to have competition in the foundry business, and then for the last decade or so, the peers have really fallen away so that nobody’s near them with respect to their processed technology. So it’s absolutely a good way to play it,” the investor continued. “On top of that, if Nvidia does begin to lose, for example, to the Google TPUs or others, then you still have TSMC manufacturing the chips.” Hazen said she still likes Nvidia but believes that President Donald Trump ‘s decision to let Nvidia sell its H200 chips to “approved customers” in China is not exactly enough to move the needle for the tech giant. Moreover, there are ample questions about whether Beijing will want to buy the Nvidia chips given China’s efforts to reduce its use of American technology, she said. “We think that this is good news for Nvidia … but I think it’s pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Jensen Huang has been on record saying that it could add $3.5 billion per quarter in revenue, and that adds up to a few percent in earnings growth, and that’s if even China is going to buy it. So there are a lot of ‘ifs’ there,” Hazen said.
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