Comment by araes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by araes | Hacker News Reader

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The article pretty much says it right in the opening section

> investing a further $400 billion in the US alongside buying a stake in Intel seems improbable from a purely financial standpoint

TSMC's entire assets are ~$200,000,000,000 [1] (cash, inventory, accounts receivable, land, buildings and equipment.)

Buying 49% of Intel ... maybe. Intel's outstanding Market Cap is current ~$88,600,000,000. (4,377,000,000 outstanding shares [2] @ 20.26 8/5/25 midday price [3]). Double TSMC's entire assets is a bit extreme.

Notably, Intel's valuation also seems kind of nonsense. They made $13B in revenue last quarter. 2024 yearly was $53B ... on a market cap of $88B? Intel's been a mess lately, yet their valuation's also kind of a mess. If they ever stop bleeding money on operating profit and net income they won't look that bad.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC

[2] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/intc/instituti...

[3] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/intc

They could do the China[1] / EU[2] strategy of announcing they'll do it, but never following through with it. When your opponent has the attention span of a drunken gnat, it's a surprisingly good strategy.

[1] https://archive.ph/sAFWP

[2] https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/fossil-fool

What part of any plan they have had tells you they are likely to stop losing money any time soon? They are basically selling for asset price right now...because the market doesn't believe they are worth more than their assets.

No plan, but wouldn’t be the first time a juggernaut is turned around.

Wouldn't be the first time they became obsolete either...and I think even with the US governments help they are too far down the drain to come back.

Why would they buy exactly 49% and not 51% of Intel? If these extra 2% are not available, why buy 49% then and not just 2-5%?

They don’t want a successful foreign company to have a controlling interest in their failing domestic company

Is your "they" the same as the parent's "they"? Seems like you're talking about different parties.

They want to ensure that TSMC doesn't have a controlling stake.

The remaining 51% would be highly fractured unless it was like the US government on the otherside. One of the publicly traded companies I worked at effectively got taken over with <20% of regular shares by an activist billionaire.

Ya, they would have to make their stake non-voting regardless, then what would be the point? I don't think Trump thought this through.

The 51% would be controlled by the few people from funds, who live in USA - and who are easy to "influence"

That money will be provided via a loan, from the US Government, at a reasonable interest rate. USG doesn't lose money, TSMC gets to expand into all of Intels fabs (when they raise the money to buy a controlling interest in INTC down the line.)

Or the entire thing can be done by a stock swap, with whoever diluting themselves however amount is necessary, etc.

They are $50bn in debt.

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