Burney Company disclosed a new position in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in its latest 13F filing, entering the stock at an average cost basis near $209 per share. The Kansas City-based investment manager, which oversees approximately $1.8 billion in AUM across institutional and high-net-worth channels, had not held TSM in the previous quarter.
The position represents roughly 1.2% of Burney's disclosed equity portfolio as of the filing date, placing it among the firm's top twenty holdings. Taiwan Semi closed the most recent session at $211.34, giving Burney a modest gain on entry. The timing aligns with TSM's guidance for $38 billion to $42 billion in 2025 capital expenditures, a figure the company has maintained despite softer PC and smartphone end-markets. Management reiterated that AI accelerator demand—particularly for CoWoS advanced packaging and N3-class nodes—justifies the spend.
Burney's entry follows a quarter in which institutional ownership of TSM ticked higher by 170 basis points to 19.8%, according to FactSet data. The move comes as the foundry sector bifurcates: Samsung struggles with yield on its 3nm GAA process, while TSMC ships N3E wafers to Apple, Nvidia, and AMD without public yield drama. The company's Arizona fab remains on schedule for volume production in early 2026, with CHIPS Act subsidies now locked at $6.6 billion in grants and $5 billion in loans. That de-risks the U.S. supply chain angle for allocators worried about Taiwan Strait scenarios, though it does not eliminate the risk.
The thesis here is capacity, not multiple expansion. TSM trades at 21x forward earnings, near its five-year average, while revenue growth estimates for 2025 sit at 18% to 22% depending on AI server attach rates. Burney appears to be underwriting sustained hyperscaler capex—the same conviction driving Blackstone's recent $8 billion data center fund and KKR's $50 billion infrastructure vehicle. If Meta, Microsoft, and Google maintain their combined $200 billion annual infrastructure run rate, TSM becomes the ASML pick-and-shovel play one layer down. The company's gross margins of 53% to 54% provide cushion if wafer pricing softens in 2026, which some sell-side analysts now model as base case.
Operators should watch TSM's April earnings call for any revision to the 35% to 40% CoWoS capacity expansion target. The company has added 150,000 wafer-per-month capacity since mid-2023, but Nvidia's Blackwell ramp and Broadcom's custom AI silicon could absorb that by Q3. Samsung's foundry losses—$3.2 billion in 2024—make customer defection less likely, which supports TSM pricing power. Allocators should also track Arizona fab hiring; the facility needs 12,000 workers by year-end 2025, and any delay signals either demand slowdown or execution friction.
Burney's entry is not a headline bet. It is a measured allocation into the only foundry that ships leading-edge nodes at scale, in a market where $1 trillion in AI-adjacent capex needs chips that do not yet exist.