VIS September revenue shock: up 15.9% from August!

A big month, and the year is bigger

Vanguard International Semiconductor makes chips for other companies in its own factories. It reports sales once a month, so you get a fresh reading long before the full accounts arrive. September revenue reached NT$5.9bn. That was 15.9% more than August.

Against the same month a year earlier, revenue grew 15.5%. Stack the whole year together and the picture is calmer. The first nine months of 2026 brought 18.0% more revenue than the same stretch of 2025. So the month was strong, and the year so far is a shade stronger than the month.

What made the month bigger? The monthly release gives one total and nothing else, so a split by product line, by selling price or by wafers shipped is not available in the data. The audited quarterly accounts run only through 2026Q2, so the chart stops there. Growth against the same quarter a year earlier was 21.8%. That is the newest full set of books you can hold up against the monthly releases, and the monthly numbers are not audited.

Its rivals grew much faster

Double-digit growth sounds great until you look sideways. The median growth of the three peers in this comparison was 54.6% in September. Vanguard's own 15.5% growth is the lowest of the four foundries shown. The gap to the peer median is -39.1 pp, which is simply a way of saying it trailed the middle of the group by that many percentage points.

My reading is that the peers carry more of the fast-growing advanced and memory-related work, while Vanguard's older production lines serve a slower corner of the market. The ranking tells you the order. It does not explain it.

You still pay the highest price of the four

Price tags matter as much as growth. Its P/E is 35.5x, while the median peer trades at 20.3x. The earnings behind those multiples run through 2026Q2, the last quarter available in the data, so the multiple looks backwards by design.

In the same window as the announcement, the stock moved -4.0% versus its peer basket, meaning it did that much worse than the average of the three rivals over those days. Same window, not a cause. A monthly sales release is one of many things traders were handling that week.