Competitive Comparison

Taiwan Semiconductor vs. Intel Foundry

The dominant contract-chipmaking leader I watch but don't own, against the manufacturing turnaround bet I do — two very different stages of the same foundry business.

Metric	Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM)	Intel (INTC)
PEG ratio	1.55	N/A (negative EBITDA growth)
EV/EBITDA	18.02x	23.73x
Capex (TTM)	$40.41B	−$13.10B

EV/EBITDA, compared

TSM

18.02x

INTC

23.73x

Same EV/EBITDA figures as the table above, plotted for a direct read. Bold = held in this book.

Market cap, P/E, PEG, EV/EBITDA, and capex sourced via public filings and financial-data aggregators (GuruFocus, StockAnalysis, company earnings releases), as of July 2026. PEG ratio sourced primarily from GuruFocus where available; different providers use different growth-rate assumptions, so figures elsewhere for the same stock can vary by several multiples. Gold-highlighted column(s) indicate the name(s) actually held in this book.

Why Intel, not TSMC — a deliberate turnaround bet

Taiwan Semiconductor is the dominant leading-edge foundry the entire industry depends on, with a reasonable PEG of 1.55 and consistent profitability — genuinely the safer, more proven way to own the foundry business. I hold Intel instead because it's a specific, higher-risk turnaround bet: whether Intel Foundry can land real external customers and catch up on process-node execution, not a bet that Intel is currently the better business. TSMC's $40.41 billion trailing capex against Intel's negative EBITDA growth is the honest measure of the gap between them today — I'm sized small in Intel on purpose because the turnaround thesis is unproven, while TSMC would be the lower-risk, already-priced-in way to own the same foundry theme.