Chip ETF Holds Near €100 as TSMC's Record Quarter Collides With an OpenAI Accounting Puzzle
Published on 10/10/2026 at 15:21 | Editorial boerse-global.de
A curious split-screen has emerged in the semiconductor trade. While the companies that actually fabricate and package the world's advanced chips keep posting extraordinary numbers, a fresh round of confusion over how one of their biggest customers books its revenue briefly knocked the sector's most-watched names off balance.
The VanEck Semiconductor UCITS ETF (ISIN IE00BMC38736) finished Friday at €100.70, a level that leaves it 9.4% below the 52-week high it touched at the end of June. Even so, the fund remains comfortably above its 200-day moving average and has climbed 89% since the start of the year — a reminder that the pullback is a pause, not a reversal.
An OpenAI Accounting Wrinkle Ripples Through the Sector
The turbulence traced back to reporting from the Financial Times and Reuters indicating that OpenAI's annualized revenue stood at roughly $50 billion at the end of September. That figure sits well below the $70 billion that had been circulating in earlier estimates.
Crucially, the gap appears to stem not from fading demand but from a different treatment of cloud-partner sales, according to the reports. Bloomberg noted that OpenAI is still internally budgeting for an annualized run rate of at least $70 billion by year-end. In other words, the headline shortfall looks like a bookkeeping distinction rather than a slowdown in appetite for AI infrastructure.
Markets nonetheless reacted sharply on Thursday. Nvidia shed close to 3%, AMD gave up about 4%, and Broadcom dropped 4.35%. The VanEck Semiconductor UCITS ETF came under pressure alongside the broader indices, though it ended the session with a modest daily decline of just 0.2%.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying VanEck Semiconductor UCITS ETF?
The Foundries and Memory Makers Keep Delivering
Beneath the short-term noise, the operational picture from the companies that make the chips remains remarkably strong. TSMC, the world's largest contract manufacturer, reported September revenue up 54.6% year over year. For the third quarter, its top line reached NT$1.49 trillion — about $46.8 billion — beating the NT$1.46 trillion analysts had penciled in, according to Reuters.
That quarterly figure represents a 50% jump from the same period a year earlier. September's haul dipped just 0.6% from an exceptionally strong August, and for the January-to-September stretch, cumulative revenue totaled NT$3,898.73 billion, a 41.1% advance over the prior year. The engine behind it all is unrelenting demand for AI chips, with TSMC serving as a linchpin supplier to the likes of Nvidia and Apple.
Samsung Electronics offered its own striking data point. The company pre-announced an operating profit of KRW 107.4 trillion (roughly $80.2 billion) for the third quarter of 2026 — nearly a ninefold increase from a year ago. High-bandwidth memory did much of the heavy lifting, with HBM shipments expanding by almost 50% quarter over quarter.
Wedbush analysts read the numbers as a bullish signal for the fourth quarter, pointing to tight foundry utilization as evidence that global demand for advanced process nodes shows no sign of cooling.
What the Calendar Holds
Attention now shifts to a dense stretch of earnings releases that should clarify whether the sector can sustain its current pace of AI-infrastructure buildout.
ASML, the Dutch supplier of the ultra-complex lithography machines that make advanced chip production possible, reports its third-quarter results on October 14. Its order book is widely viewed as a bellwether for the entire semiconductor-equipment complex, since its bookings telegraph how aggressively the industry plans to invest in future capacity.
TSMC follows on October 15 with its full quarterly report, at which point management is expected to lay out detailed guidance on production capacity and the durability of the AI boom. Samsung then steps up on October 29 with complete results and an update on its shareholder-return policy.
Goldman Sachs strategists, meanwhile, forecast 27% earnings growth for the S&P 500 in the third quarter of 2026, with Nvidia and Micron expected to be among the largest contributors to that expansion.
The combination of blowout preliminary figures from the foundries and a heavy slate of upcoming reports is likely to keep volatility elevated in the near term. Yet the record revenues already on the books have given the sector's fundamental case a firmer floor than the day-to-day price swings might suggest.
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