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A. History and Development of the Company
Our legal and commercial name is United Microelectronics Corporation, commonly known as “UMC.” We were incorporated under the R.O.C. Company Law as a company limited by shares in May 1980 and our common shares are listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange since 1985. Our principal executive office is located at No. 3 Li-Hsin 2nd Road, Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C, and our telephone number is 886-3-578-2258. Our Internet website address is www.umc.com. The information on our website does not form part of this Annual Report. Our ADSs have been listed on the NYSE under the symbol “UMC” since September 19, 2000. In 2025, we were ranked among the top 5% of companies for the eleventh consecutive year in the Corporate Governance Evaluation conducted by the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taipei Exchange. The assessment was conducted across over 1,700 public companies in Taiwan.
We are one of the world’s largest independent semiconductor foundries and a leader in semiconductor manufacturing process technologies. Our primary business is the manufacture, or “fabrication”, of semiconductors, sometimes called “chips” or “integrated circuits”, for others. Using our own proprietary processes and techniques, we make chips to the design specifications of our many customers. Our company maintains a diversified customer base across industries, including communication devices, consumer electronics, computer and others, while continuing to focus on manufacturing for high growth, large volume applications, including networking, telecommunications, internet, multimedia, PCs and graphics. We sell and market mainly wafers which in turn are used in a number of different applications by our customers. The following table presented the percentages of our wafer sales by application for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
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Years Ended December 31,
Application 2023 2024 2025
% % %
Communication 45.1 42.1 41.4
Consumer 24.0 28.4 30.6
Computer 11.0 13.5 11.6
Others 19.9 16.0 16.4
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
We focus on the development of leading manufacturing process technologies designed for mass production. We were among the first in the foundry industry to enter into commercial operation with such advanced capabilities as producing integrated circuits with line widths of 0.25, 0.18, 0.15, 0.13 micron and 90, 65/55, 45/40, 28, 22 and 14 nanometer. The arrival of 5G technologies have increased the penetration rate in smartphones, wearables, and other devices associated with the Internet of Things which will spur a new wave of semiconductor related applications driving long term silicon content and wafer demand. More powerful semiconductors are required to drive multimedia functions (e.g., processing visual data) and to resolve network bandwidth issues. At the same time, the trend towards portable personal electronic devices have resulted in products that are becoming physically smaller and consuming less power. Process technology must also have the ability to shrink form factors of products aggressively to cater to this trend. Such technology must demonstrate the ability to integrate multiple functions, reduce the size of components needed for operation and lower IC power consumption. Dedicated semiconductor foundries need to achieve this process improvement and at the same time develop multiple process technologies to satisfy varying needs of communication, consumer and computer products. We believe our proprietary process technologies will enable us to continue to offer our customers significant performance benefits for their products, faster time-to-market production, cost savings and other competitive advantages.
We provide high quality service based on our performance. In today’s marketplace, we believe it is important to make available not only the most effective and flexible processes, but also the best solutions to enable customers to design integrated circuits capable of incorporating entire systems on a chip. Through these efforts, we intend to be the foundry solution for SoC customer needs. To achieve this goal, we believe it is necessary to timely develop and offer the IP and design support that customers need to ensure their specific design blocks function seamlessly with the other design blocks of the integrated circuit system in the manner intended. Accordingly, we have a dedicated IP and design support team that focuses on timely development of IP and processes specifically designed for our customers in order to ensure products that operate and perform as intended. Our design service team actively cooperates with our customers and vendors to identify, early in the product/market cycle, the offerings needed to ensure that our coordinated offerings are available in a streamlined and easy-to-use manner. This ensures the timely delivery of service offerings from the earliest time in the customer design cycle, resulting in a shorter time-to-volume production. We also provide our customers with real-time online access to production data and specifications, resulting in superior communication and efficiency. We further address our customers’ needs using our advanced technology and proven methodology to achieve fast cycle time, high yield, production flexibility and close customer communication. For example, we select and configure our clean rooms and equipment and develop our processes to maximize the flexibility in meeting and adapting to rapidly changing customer and industry needs. As a result, we believe that our cycle time, or the period from customer order to wafer delivery, and our responsiveness to customer request changes are among the fastest in the dedicated foundry industry. We believe our leading technology and high-volume capability is a major competitive advantage.
Our technology and service have attracted two principal types of foundry industry customers: fabless design companies and integrated device manufacturers. Fabless design companies design, develop and distribute proprietary semiconductor products but do not maintain internal manufacturing capacity. Instead, these companies depend on third party manufacturing sources. Integrated device manufacturers, in contrast, generally have integrated internally some or all functions—manufacturing as well as design, development, sales and distribution.
Our primary customers, in terms of our sales revenues, include premier integrated device manufacturers, such as Texas Instruments and Intel, plus leading fabless design companies, such as MediaTek, Realtek and Novatek. In 2025, our company’s top ten customers accounted for 57.0% of our operating revenues. We believe our success in attracting these customers is a direct result of our commitment to high quality service and our intense focus on customer needs and performance.
In 2014, we established United Semiconductor (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., or USCXM, based in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China that focuses on 12-inch wafer foundry services. The initial groundbreaking event of USCXM took place in March 2015 and the grand opening ceremony took place in November 2016. USCXM successfully commenced commercial mass production by the end of 2016 and has carried out production on both 40nm and 28nm technology nodes in 2017. In February 2020, the board of directors of Hejian Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., or Hejian, approved an investment of US$500 million in USCXM which was completed in March 2023. In addition, we obtained approval from the R.O.C. government on October 26, 2022 for a US$120 million investment by Hejian and a US$664 million investment by UMC to purchase equity interest of USCXM from existing shareholders. After the completion of the transaction in July 2023, the Company and Hejian hold 100% of the shares of USCXM, and USCXM has increased its contribution to the overall financial performance of UMC. As one of our four 12-inch fabs in geographically diverse locations, USCXM provides global customers with high-quality fabrication services and varied manufacturing options.
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On January 25, 2024, we entered into a collaboration with Intel Corporation (the “Collaboration”), pursuant to which the parties agreed to jointly develop and commercialize new 12nm-related technology. In connection with the Collaboration, the parties granted each other certain IP licenses and rights necessary to carry out their respective obligations. The Collaboration is expected to create a 12nm semiconductor process platform to address high-growth markets such as mobile, communication infrastructure and networking. The Collaboration agreements provide for the combination of Intel’s at-scale U.S. manufacturing capacity and our extensive foundry experience on mature nodes, enabling an expanded process portfolio. The Collaboration is also expected to offer global customers greater choice in their sourcing decisions, with access to a more geographically diversified and resilient supply chain. We believe that the Collaboration will enable our customers to smoothly migrate to a 12nm node, and allow us to establish a more significant footprint in the U.S.-based production of the 12nm process, which is expected to begin in 2027. The Collaboration provides for a long-term agreement between UMC and Intel. The agreements may be terminated upon the occurrence of specified events, each as further set forth therein, including uncured material breach or violation of laws, inability to gain required regulatory approval, bankruptcy or similar circumstances, certain change of control transactions or failure to achieve certain business or operational milestones.
On February 27, 2024, our board approved capital injection of up to US$22 million in UMC Capital Corp. to participate in its capital increase. On the same date, the Board of UMC Capital Corp. approved the investment in 7V AI Capital LLC of not more than US$20 million.
On March 22, 2024, our board approved capital injection of up to NT$800 million in Faraday Technology Corp. to participate in its capital increase.
On April 2, 2024, the board of directors of our PRC subsidiary, Hejian, approved the disposal of its ownership in UnitedDS Semiconductor (Shandong) Co., Ltd. to SiS Semiconductor (Shandong) Co., Ltd., an associate of UMC, as part of its strategic plan. The disposal was completed in August 2024 with a total transaction price of RMB¥77 million, which was approximately NT$341 million.
On December 18, 2024, we entered into a corporate power purchase agreement (“CPPA”) with Fengmiao I Offshore Wind Farm (“Fengmiao I”), developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ flagship fund, Copenhagen Infrastructure V. Pursuant to the CPPA, we agreed to purchase more than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of power from Fengmiao I over at least 30 years, marking the largest renewable energy transaction that we have ever made. This agreement will help us achieve our goal of 50% renewable energy use by 2030 as part of our roadmap to net zero emissions and 100% renewable energy by 2050.
On December 4, 2025, we signed a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with Polar Semiconductor, LLC to explore collaboration on delivering scalable U.S.-based 8-inch production of high-quality wafers that are essential across pillar industries including automotive, data centers, consumer electronics, and aerospace and defense.
On December 8, 2025, we announced a licensing agreement with imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies, for the transfer of imec’s iSiPP300 silicon photonics process, featuring co-packaged optics (CPO) compatibility, to accelerate our silicon photonics roadmap. The licensed technology will enable us to bring a 12-inch silicon photonics platform to market targeting next-generation connectivity.
On December 17, 2025, our board approved capital injection of up to NT$700 million in Unimicron Technology Corp. to participate in its capital increase.
Please refer to “Item 5. Operating and Financial Review and Prospects—B. Liquidity and Capital Resources” for a discussion of our capital expenditures in the past three years and the plan for the current year.
Our Strategy
To maintain and enhance our position as a market leader, we have adopted a business strategy that focuses on a partnership-driven business model designed to accommodate our customers’ business needs and objectives and to promote their interests as our partners. We believe that our success and profitability are inseparable from the success of our customers. The goal of this business model is to create a network of partnerships and alliances among integrated device manufacturers, IP and design houses, as well as foundry companies. We believe that we and our partners will benefit from the synergy generated through such long-term partnerships and alliances and from the added value to be shared among the partners. The key elements of our strategy are:
Operate as a Customer-Driven Foundry. We plan to operate as a customer-driven foundry. The increasing complexity of 40 nanometer, 28 nanometer, and more advanced technologies has impacted the entire semiconductor industry, as ICs can now be designed with greater gate density and higher performance while incorporating the functions of an entire system on a single chip. These designs have created new markets in 5G communications, AIoT and automotive applications, as well as increased silicon content per device. We collaborate closely with our customers as well as partners throughout the entire supply chain, including equipment, electronic design automation tool and IP vendors, to work synergistically toward each customer’s SoC solution. We also possess experience and know-how in system design and architecture to integrate customer designs with advanced process technologies and IP. We believe the result is a higher rate of first-pass silicon success for our SoC solutions.
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Our customer-driven foundry solutions begin with a common logic-based platform, where designers can choose the process technologies and transistor options that best fit their specific applications. From there, technologies such as radio frequency complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, or RF CMOS, and embedded flash memories can be used to further fine-tune the process for customers’ individual needs. Furthermore, as IP has become a critical resource for SoCs, our portfolio includes basic design building blocks as well as more complex IP with optimized portability and cost, developed both internally and by third-party partners. With advanced technology, a broad IP portfolio, system knowledge and advanced 300-millimeter manufacturing, we offer comprehensive solutions that help customers deliver successful results in a timely fashion.
Build a Customer-Focused Partnership Business Model. We have focused on building partnership relationships with our customers, and we strive to help our customers achieve their objectives through close cooperation. Unlike the traditional buy-and-sell relationship between a foundry and its customers, we believe our partnership business model helps us understand our customers’ requirements and, accordingly, better accommodate their needs in a number of ways, such as customized processes and services that optimize the entire value chain (not just the foundry portion) and IP-related support. We believe that this business model enables us to deliver our products to our customers at the earliest time they require for their design cycle, resulting in shorter time-to-market and time-to-volume production. Furthermore, we believe we can provide more cost-effective services by focusing our research and development expenditures on the specific requirements of our customers. We believe our partnership business model will help us not only survive a market downturn, but also achieve a better competitive position.
Continue to Focus on High-Growth Applications and Customers and Actively Explore New Market Opportunities. We believe one measure of a successful foundry company is the quality of its customers. We focus our sales and marketing efforts on customers that are established or emerging leaders in industries with high growth potential. Our customers include industry leaders such as MediaTek, Realtek, Novatek and Texas Instruments. We seek to maintain and expand our relationships with these companies. We strive to demonstrate to these customers the superiority and flexibility of our manufacturing, technology and service capabilities and to provide them with production and design assistance. We are also making efforts to further diversify our customer portfolio in order to maintain balanced exposure to different applications and different customers. We believe these efforts strengthen our relationships with our customers and enhance our reputation in the semiconductor industry as a leading foundry service provider.
In addition to customer diversification, we have also been actively exploring new market opportunities in consumer electronics, such as the Internet of Things, where we believe our technology platforms and IP portfolio are highly relevant.
Maintain Our Leading Position in Mass-Producible Semiconductor Technology and Selectively Pursue Strategic Investments in New Technologies. We believe that maintaining and enhancing our leadership in semiconductor manufacturing technology for mass production is critical to attracting and retaining customers. Our reputation for technological excellence has enabled us to acquire both established and emerging leaders in the semiconductor industry as customers, who work closely with us on technology development. We believe our processing expertise enables us to provide flexible production schedules to meet our customers’ particular needs. We plan to continue building internal research and development expertise, focusing on logic and specialty process development to accelerate access to next-generation and specialized technologies.
In April 2021, we announced an expansion of 300mm Fab 12A Phase 6 (P6) in Taiwan’s Southern Taiwan Science Park through a collaboration model. Furthermore, on February 24, 2022, our board of directors approved a plan to build a new advanced manufacturing facility next to our existing 300mm fab (Fab 12i) in Singapore. The first phase of this greenfield fab is expected to have a design capacity of 30,000 wafers per month, with production expected to commence in the second half of 2026. The new fab (Fab 12i P3) will utilize 28nm and 22nm process technologies.
We are also pursuing strategic collaborations to expand our U.S. production footprint and enhance supply chain resilience. In January 2024, we entered into a collaboration with Intel Corporation to jointly develop a new 12nm semiconductor process platform that combines Intel’s at-scale U.S. manufacturing capacity and our extensive foundry experience on mature nodes, with U.S.-based 12nm production expected to begin in 2027. In December 2025, we signed a MOU with Polar Semiconductor, LLC to explore collaboration on delivering scalable U.S.-based 8-inch production of high-quality wafers that are essential across pillar industries including automotive, data centers, consumer electronics, and aerospace and defense. These initiatives are intended to provide our customers with greater choice in sourcing and support a more geographically diversified and resilient supply chain.
Our continuous technology development efforts and capital investments have allowed us to acquire new customers and business opportunities. We believe our progress in developing more advanced process technologies has benefited our customers in the fields of computers, communications, consumer electronics and other applications with specific requirements for product performance, density and power consumption.
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Moreover, we expect to strengthen our leading position and increase our market share by collaborating with DENSO Corporation. In 2022, we agreed to jointly work on the production of power semiconductors at USJC’s 300mm fab to serve growing demand in the automotive market. This cooperation leverages our robust portfolio of advanced specialty technologies and our IATF 16949 certified fabs in diversified locations, positioning us well to serve demand across auto applications, including advanced driver assistance systems, infotainment, connectivity and powertrain.
We also recognize that the foundry industry is ever-evolving. Accordingly, we believe we should invest in new research and development technologies intelligently and in a cost-effective manner to maximize the value of the resulting technologies. We balance the expected rate of return on our research and development investments with the importance of developing technology at the right time to enhance our competitive edge without unduly diluting our profitability. We intend to avoid investments in technologies that do not present commercial potential for volume production. We believe that developing the earliest and most advanced semiconductor technology without regard to its potential for near-term volume production may prove costly to our operations and would not strengthen our competitive position. We therefore believe it is beneficial to defer investment in premature equipment needed to claim the earliest advanced technology and instead to purchase more advanced and less expensive versions of such equipment from vendors who design this equipment based on pre-production lessons learned from the earliest technology. This disciplined approach is intended to reduce the risk of capital inefficiencies while ensuring that we can respond effectively when demand for new technologies reaches sustainable volume levels.
Maintain Scale and Capacity Capabilities to Meet Customer Requirements, with a Focus on 12-inch Wafer Facilities for Future Expansion. We believe that maintaining our foundry capacity with advanced technology and facilities is critical to maintaining our industry leadership. Our production capacity is currently among the largest of all semiconductor foundries in the world. We intend to increase our 12-inch wafer production capacity to meet the needs of our customers and to fully capitalize on the expected growth of our industry. We expect our future capacity expansion plans will focus on 12-inch wafer facilities in order to maintain our technology leadership. 12-inch wafers offer manufacturing advantages over 8-inch wafers due to, among other reasons, the greater number of chips on each wafer and the advantages offered by newer 12-inch capable equipment. In addition, 12-inch wafer facilities present a more cost-effective solution in achieving an economic scale of production. We intend to carefully monitor current market conditions in order to optimize the timing of our capital spending.
B. Business Overview
Manufacturing Facilities
To maintain a leading position in the foundry business, we have placed great emphasis on achieving and maintaining a high standard of manufacturing quality. As a result, we seek to design and implement manufacturing processes that produce consistent, high manufacturing yields to enable our customers to estimate, with reasonable certainty, how many wafers they need to order from us. In addition, we continuously seek to enhance our production capacity and process technology, two important factors that characterize a foundry’s manufacturing capability. Our large production capacity and advanced process technologies enable us to provide our customers with volume production and flexible and quick-to-market manufacturing services. All of our fabs operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Substantially all maintenance at each of the fabs is performed concurrently with production.
The following table sets forth operational data of each of our manufacturing facilities as of December 31, 2025.
Wavetek Fab 8A Fab 8C Fab 8D Fab 8E Fab 8F Fab 8S Fab 8N Fab 12A Fab 12i Fab 12X Fab 12M
Commencement of volume production 1989 1995 1998 2000 1998 2000 2000 2003 2002 2004 2016 2005
Estimated full capacity (1)(2) 26,564 71,700 41,800 39,450 43,700 48,800 39,000 83,300 136,279 57,207 31,500 39,767
wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month wafers per month
Wafer size 6-inch 8-inch 8-inch 8-inch 8-inch 8-inch 8-inch 8-inch 12-inch 12-inch 12-inch 12-inch
(150mm) (200mm) (200mm) (200mm) (200mm) (200mm) (200mm) (200mm) (300mm) (300mm) (300mm) (300mm)
(1) Measured in stated wafer size.
(2) The capacity of a fab is determined based on the capacity ratings given by manufacturers of the equipment used in the fab, adjusted for, among other factors, actual output during uninterrupted trial runs, expected down time due to set up for production runs and maintenance and expected product mix.
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Our fabs are located in the R.O.C., Singapore, PRC and Japan. The following table sets forth the size and primary use of our facilities and whether such facilities, including land and buildings, are owned or leased. The land in the Hsinchu and Southern Taiwan Science Parks is leased from the R.O.C. government. The land in the Pasir Ris is leased from statutory boards of the Singapore government. The land in the Suzhou Industrial Park and Xiang’an District is leased from the PRC government.
Location Size (Land/Building) Primary Use Land (Owned or Leased) Building (Owned or Leased)
(in square meters)
Fab 8A, No. 3, 5, Li-Hsin 2nd Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300094, R.O.C. 43,130 / 83,699 8-inch wafer production Leased (expires in December 2033) Owned
Fab 8C & Fab 8D, No. 6, 8, Li-Hsin 3rd Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300094, R.O.C. 33,784 / 100,609 8-inch wafer production Leased (expires in December 2033) Owned
Fab 8E, No. 17, Li-Hsin Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300094, R.O.C. 35,779 / 76,315 8-inch wafer production Leased (expires in February 2036) Owned
Fab 8F, No. 3, Li-Hsin 6th Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300096, R.O.C. 23,774 / 65,736 8-inch wafer production Leased (expires in February 2038) Owned
Fab 8S, No. 16, Creation 1st Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300093, R.O.C. 20,365 / 65,614 8-inch wafer production Leased (expires in December 2043) Owned
Fab 8N, No. 333, Xinghua St., Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province 215025, P.R.C. 215,621 / 112,247 8-inch wafer production Leased (expires in December 2052) Owned
Fab 12A, No. 18, 20, Nan-Ke 2nd Rd., & No. 57, Nan-ke 3rd Rd., Southern Taiwan Science Park, Sinshih, Tainan, Taiwan 744092 & 744094, R.O.C. 268,683 / 644,893 12-inch wafer production Leased (expires in June 2045) Owned
Fab 12i, No. 3, Pasir Ris Drive 12, Singapore 519528 & 61A Pasir Ris Industrial Drive 1, Singapore 519536 197,953 / 379,514 12-inch wafer production Leased (expires in July 2052) Owned
Fab 12X, No. 899, Wan Jia Chun Road, Xiang’an District, Xiamen, Fujian Province 361101, P.R.C. 250,725 / 348,537 12-inch wafer production Leased (expires in January 2065) Owned
Fab 12M, 2000, Mizono, Tado-cho, Kuwana, Mie, 511-0118, Japan 307,293 / 157,853 12-inch wafer production Owned Owned
United Tower, No. 3, Li-Hsin 2nd Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300094, R.O.C. 8,985 / 85,224 Administration office Leased (expires in December 2033) Owned
Neihu Rd. Office, 8F, No. 68, Sec. 1, Neihu Rd., Taipei, Taiwan 114066, R.O.C. 626 / 4,817 Administration office Owned Owned
Testing Building, No. 1, Chin-Shan, 7th St., Hsinchu, Taiwan 300063, R.O.C. 10,762 / 41,318 Leased to several companies Owned Owned
R&D Building, No. 18, Nan-Ke 2nd Rd., Southern Taiwan Science Park, Sinshih, Tainan, Taiwan 744092, R.O.C. 42,000 / 47,396 Research and development Leased (expires in December 2043) Owned
Wavetek, No. 10, Chuangxin 1st Rd., Hsinchu Science Park, Baoshan Township, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300092, R.O.C. 27,898 / 34,609 6-inch wafer production Leased (expires in December 2034) Owned
Process Technology
Process technology is a set of specifications and parameters that we implement for manufacturing the critical dimensions of the patterned features of the circuitry of semiconductors. Our process technologies are currently among the most advanced in the foundry industry. These advanced technologies have enabled us to provide flexible production schedules to meet our customers’ particular needs.
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We have been constantly strengthening our independent R&D capabilities and fabrication in semiconductor process technologies, especially dedicated to the R&D of logic and specialty processes in the recent years. We will adhere to our R&D strategy to establish independent R&D capabilities and will work with important partners, such as IDM and fabless, to develop key process technologies through technology licensing. We will also work with suppliers of photomask, packaging, equipment, material, and EDA to accelerate market launch schedule in order to fulfill our promise to provide customers with innovative and reliable process technologies.
We pioneered the production of numerous semiconductor products. Our continued enhancement of our process technologies has enabled us to manufacture semiconductor devices with smaller geometries. In 2013, we successfully developed and released into production 28nm Poly-SiON and High-k/metal gate technologies. In 2015, we provided a High-k/metal gate with high performance compact, or HPC, solution and improved to a high-performance compact plus, or HPC+, solution by the end of 2017 for speed-intensive and optimized power consumption products. We and Cadence Design Systems collaborate on certification of analog/mixed-signal flow for 28HPC+ process. Certification enables customers to leverage the integrated, comprehensive AMS solution to facilitate accelerated designs on our most advanced 28nm node. In 2018, we developed 22nm ULP (ultra-Low Power) and ULL (ultra-Low Leakage) technology to provide cost effective solutions and to obtain better chip performance for IoT applications. We also joined the IBM chip alliance, for advanced process development. With IBM’s know-how and support, we aim to continue to improve our internally developed 14nm FinFET technology, so as to offer a 14nm competitive low-power enhanced technology for mobile computing and communication products. In March 2017, we commenced shipments of 14nm wafers to customers and achieved production quality yields for the advanced process that is being utilized for consumer electronic applications. Our 14nm FinFET technology delivers 55% higher speed and twice the gate density compared with 28nm process technology. The 14nm process also consumes approximately 50% less power than the 28nm process. Moreover, we are actively developing a 12nm FinFET Compact (12FFC) process, which offers a significant performance boost, smaller chip size, and lower power consumption compared with the 14FFC process. The 12FFC technology is more competitive and fully leverages the advantages of FinFET process technology to drive the adoption of next-generation silicon chips in various fields, such as networking, artificial intelligence, and further high-end consumer electronic products. We are also collaborating with Intel on the 12nm FinFET process to be manufactured in the United States. The collaboration is an important part of our strategy to pursue cost-effective capacity expansion and technology node upgrades, while maintaining our consistent commitment to customers. The 12nm collaboration is currently progressing smoothly. In 2025, Intel completed the technology transfer based on our electrical design rules and UMC-verified process, successfully replicating our 12nm FinFET process with its advantages of high performance, low power consumption and small chip area. Currently, the qualification of technology transfer is being accelerated at Intel’s Arizona fab in the United States and is expected to be completed in 2026. Production of the 12nm FinFET process is expected to begin in 2027.
Our 22nm technology readiness follows silicon validation on the world’s smallest USB 2.0 test vehicle. The latest specialty process offering provides competitive performance and a seamless migration path from 28nm to 22nm. We are offering a 22uLP version that has compatible design rules and the same mask count as the foundry’s 28nm technology, and also a 22uLL version. UMC 22uLP and 22uLL form a superset to support a voltage domain from 1.0V to 0.6V, allowing customers to enjoy the benefits of both technologies on system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The 22nm platform is supported by our foundation IP and is ideal for a wide variety of semiconductor applications including consumer ICs for set-top boxes, digital TVs, surveillance, power- or leakage-sensitive IoT chips (with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) and wearable products that require longer battery life.
Furthermore, we have successfully developed specialty technologies such as 55/40/28/22nm embedded memory for MCU and automotive products. The 28nm non-volatile memory has completed verification for general-purpose and IoT microprocessors, as well as automotive electronics (Auto G1). We have also developed 40/22nm RRAM for advanced node embedded solutions, which has been validated for general-purpose and IoT microprocessors. In addition, we partnered with Avalanche in 2018 for the joint development and production of MRAM, providing an alternative to embedded flash for 22nm technologies. The 22nm high-density 1Gb HDMRAM product for aerospace and LEO satellite communications has already entered trial production. We also offer 55/40/28/22/14nm eHV device for display drivers. Compared with 28eHV, our 14nm FinFET embedded high-voltage (14eHV) process technology platform greatly improves chip performance, reduces die size, and lowers power consumption by more than 40%. It can be used in display driver ICs to provide higher resolution and higher refresh rates. Moreover, we offer 55/28/22nm BSI-CSI for image sensors, 110/55nm BCD for power management circuits, and RF-SOI technologies of 110/90/55/40nm nodes, covering both custom and platform for RF device applications. All of these specialty technologies enable comprehensive system-on-chip (SoC) solutions.
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We have successfully integrated deep trench capacitors (DTC) into our 2.5D Si interposer solution and have already shipped wafers to major customers, enabling excellent power integrity for various applications in high-performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, and large language models (LLMs) for artificial intelligence (AI). We have launched a wafer-level 3D wafer-to-wafer (W2W) hybrid bonding solution that offers advantages in both bandwidth and form factor reduction, addressing the growing trend of edge computing and the miniaturization requirements of mobile devices. We have collaborated with customers to achieve the mass production of RF components for mobile devices in 2025. For edge AI and high-bandwidth memory applications, Our active interposer, which combines through-silicon via (TSV-middle) technology with logic processes, is currently being validated with multiple customers. We have established a one-stop vertical integration program with our supply chain partners, providing customized low-power logic chips and heterogeneous memory module integration to meet customer requirements in IoT, secure smart infrastructure, and other end devices.
We are actively investing in the research and industrialization of 12-inch silicon photonics technology. In the first half of 2025, we successfully completed the production line configuration required for the 12-inch silicon photonics process, and in the second half of the year, we finalized design tape-outs with customers, officially entering the trial-run stage. Meanwhile, in the second half of 2025, we obtained a license for the iSiPP300 silicon photonics process technology from the globally renowned research institution, imec, showcasing the results of international cooperation. Leveraging our years of semiconductor manufacturing experience, we integrate SOI wafer process technology, 12-inch immersion lithography, Ge and SiGe epitaxy technologies, and our existing 8-inch silicon photonics mass production foundation, combined with imec’s long-standing expertise in silicon photonics processes, to further advance the development of 12-inch silicon photonics technology. This technology encompasses micro-ring modulators, GeSi electro-absorption modulators (EAM), and diverse low-loss fiber interfaces, comprehensively enhancing product performance and application versatility. Currently, we and imec have begun close cooperation and have started trial runs, laying a solid foundation for Taiwan’s semiconductor industry in the silicon photonics field and strengthening its international competitiveness.
The table below sets forth our actual process technology range, categorized by line widths, or the minimum physical dimensions of the transistor gate of integrated circuits in production by each fab in 2025, and the estimated annual full capacity of each fab, actual total annual output and capacity utilization rates in 2023, 2024 and 2025:
Year Ended December 31, 2025 Range of Years Ended December 31,
Years of Process 2023 2024 2025
Commencement of Operation Technologies (in microns) (in thousands of 12-inch wafer equivalents, except percentages)
Wavetek 1989 5 to 0.15 82 83 79
Fab 8A 1995 3 to 0.11 360 368 381
Fab 8C 1998 0.35 to 0.11 210 212 222
Fab 8D 2000 0.18 to 0.11 195 210 210
Fab 8E 1998 0.6 to 0.11 218 233 232
Fab 8F 2000 0.18 to 0.11 253 257 259
Fab 8S 2000 0.18 to 0.11 199 202 207
Fab 8N 2003 0.5 to 0.11 442 450 442
Fab 12A 2002 0.13 to 0.014 1,305 1,556 1,629
Fab 12i 2004 0.13 to 0.040 655 678 684
Fab 12X 2016 0.080 to 0.022 317 318 347
Fab 12M 2005 0.13 to 0.040 438 455 471
Total estimated capacity — — 4,674 5,022 5,163
Total output (actual) — — 3,201 3,451 3,885
Average capacity utilization — — 68.5 % 68.7 % 75.2 %
Capacity and Utilization
The fabs in Taiwan that we own directly are named Wavetek, Fab 8A, Fab 8C, Fab 8D, Fab 8E, Fab 8F, Fab 8S and Fab 12A. All of them are located in the Hsinchu Science Park except for Fab 12A which is located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park. The fab in Singapore is named Fab 12i. The fabs in China are named Fab 8N and Fab 12X, located in Suzhou and Xiamen, respectively. The fab in Japan is named Fab 12M located in Mie.
Our average capacity utilization rate was 68.5% in 2023, 68.7% in 2024 and 75.2% in 2025.
Equipment
Because the performance and productivity of our manufacturing capability depends substantially on the technology node of our capital equipment, we always purchase equipment that not only meet the criteria of our existing process requirement, but also have the capability to be upgraded to match our future demand. The principal equipment we use to manufacture semiconductor devices are scanners/steppers, cleaners and track equipment, inspection equipment, etchers, furnaces, wet stations, strippers, implanters, sputters, CVD equipment, probers, testers and so on. We own all of the production equipment except for a few demonstration tools.
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Our policy is to purchase performance proven equipment from vendors with dominant market share to ensure our continued competitiveness in the semiconductor field.
Although some equipment is only available from limited qualified vendors and/or is manufactured in limited quantities, we believe that our relationships with equipment suppliers are strong enough to allow us to leverage our position as a major customer to purchase equipment with competitive terms.
Although we face the challenge of procuring the right equipment in sufficient quantity necessary for ramp-up or expansion of our fabrication facilities under constraint of short lead times, we have not in the past experienced any material problems in procuring the latest generation equipment on a timely basis even in periods of unpredictably high market demand. We manage the risks through procurement process via timely internal cross-division communications, efficient market information collection, early slot booking and constant communications with our suppliers.
Raw Materials
Our manufacturing processes use many raw materials, primarily silicon wafers, chemicals, gases and various types of precious sputtering targets. These raw materials are generally available from several suppliers. Our policy with respect to raw material purchases, similar to that for equipment purchases, is to select only a small number of qualified vendors who have demonstrated quality and reliability on delivery time of the raw materials. We may have long-term supply contracts with our vendors if necessary.
Our general inventory policy is to maintain sufficient stock of each principal raw material for production and rolling forecasts of near-term requirements received from customers. In addition, we have agreements with several key material suppliers under which they hold similar levels of inventory in their warehouses for our use. However, we are not under any obligation to purchase raw material inventory that is held by our vendors for our benefit until we actually order it. We typically work with our vendors to plan our raw material requirements on a monthly basis, with indicative pricing generally set on a quarterly basis. The actual purchase price is generally determined based on the prevailing market conditions. In the past, prices of our principal raw materials have not been volatile to a significant degree. Although we have not experienced any shortage of raw materials that had a material effect on our operations, and supplies of raw materials we use currently are adequate, shortages could occur in various critical materials due to interruption of supply or an increase in industry demand.
The most important raw material used in our production processes is silicon wafer, which is the basic raw material from which integrated circuits are made. The principal makers for our wafers are Shin-Etsu, GlobalWafers, Sumco Group and Soitec. We have in the past obtained and believe that we will continue to be able to obtain a sufficient supply of silicon wafers. We believe that we have close working relationships with our wafer suppliers. Based on such long-term relationships, we believe that these major suppliers will use their best efforts to accommodate our demand.
We use a large amount of water in our manufacturing process. We obtain water supplies from government-owned entities. We also use substantial amounts of dual loop electricity supplied by Taiwan Power Company in the manufacturing process. We maintain back-up generators that are capable of providing adequate amounts of electricity to maintain the required air pressure in our clean rooms in case of power interruptions. We believe our back-up devices are reasonably adequate in preventing business interruptions caused by power outages and emergency situations.
Quality Management
We believe that our advanced process technologies and reputation for high quality and reliable services and products have been important factors in attracting and retaining leading international and domestic semiconductor companies as customers.
We structure our quality management system in accordance with the latest international quality standards and our customers’ strict quality and reliability requirements. Our quality management system incorporates comprehensive quality control programs into the entire business flow of foundry operation including, among others, new process development management, production release control, incoming raw material inspection, statistical process control and methodology development, process change management, technical documentation control, product final inspection, metrology tool calibration and measurement system analysis, quality audit program, nonconformity management, customer complaint disposition, eight-discipline problem solving and customer satisfaction monitoring.
We set high quality standards to ensure consistent high yielding and reliable product performance. Our quality program is continually enhanced through top-down annual Business Policy Management and bottom-up Total Quality Management activities. In addition, our efforts to observe best practices among fabs in the foundry industry have also contributed to the improvement of our overall quality management system.
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Many of our customers perform physical production site qualification process in the early development phase and routine quality conformance audits in the volume production phase. These audits include both quality system review and physical fabrication area inspection for verification of conformity with the international quality standard and customers’ quality requirement. Our quality management system and quality control programs have been qualified and routinely audited by numerous customers who are recognized as world-class semiconductor companies with best-in-class quality standards.
Our Quality Assurance Division and Reliability Technology and Assurance Division collaborate to provide quality and reliability performance to customers. With our wafer processing quality and reliability conformance monitoring program, we monitor the product quality and reliability at various stages of the entire manufacturing process before shipment to customers.
All our fabs are certified in compliance with IATF 16949 and QC080000 IECQ HSPM standards. IATF 16949 sets the criteria for developing a fundamental quality management system emphasizing on customer satisfaction in quality management, continual improvement, defect prevention and variation and waste reduction. QC080000 IECQ HSPM sets the criteria for developing a process management system for hazardous substances and focuses on developing environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. We are committed to continuously improving our quality management system and to delivering high quality product to our customers.
Services and Products
We primarily engage in wafer fabrication for foundry customers. To optimize fabrication services for our customers, we work closely with them as they finalize circuit design and contract for the preparation of masks to be used in the manufacturing process. We also offer our customers turnkey solutions by providing subcontracted assembly and test services. We believe that this ability to deliver a variety of foundry services in addition to wafer fabrication enables us to accommodate the needs of a full array of integrated device manufacturers, system companies and fabless design customers with different in-house capabilities.
Wafer manufacturing requires many distinct and intricate steps. Each step in the manufacturing process must be completed with precision in order for finished semiconductor devices to work as intended. The processes require taking raw wafers and turning them into finished semiconductor devices generally through five steps: circuit design, mask tooling, wafer fabrication, assembly and test. The services we offer to our customers in each of these five steps are described below.
Circuit Design. At this initial design stage, our engineers generally work with our customers to ensure that their designs can be successfully and cost-effectively manufactured in our facilities. We have assisted an increasing number of our customers in the design process by providing them with access to our partners’ electronic design analysis tools, IP and design services, as well as by providing them with custom embedded memory macro-cells. In our Silicon Shuttle program, we offer customers and IP providers early access to actual silicon samples with their desired IP and content in order to enable early and rapid use of our advanced technologies. The Silicon Shuttle program is a multi-chip test wafer program that allows silicon verification of IP and design elements. In the Silicon Shuttle program, several different vendors can test their IP using a single mask set, greatly reducing the cost of silicon verification for us and the participating vendors. In our alliances with them, we coordinate with leading suppliers of IP, design and ASIC services to ensure their offerings are available to our customers in an integrated, easy to use manner which matches customers’ need to our technologies. With a view to lowering customer design barriers, we expanded our design support functions from conventional design support to adding IP development to complement third-party intellectual properties and to provide customers with the widest range of silicon-verified choices. Our offerings range from design libraries to basic analog mixed-mode intellectual properties which, together, have helped shorten our customer’s design cycle time.
Mask Tooling. Our engineers generally assist our customers to design and/or obtain masks that are optimized for our advanced process technologies and equipment. Actual mask production is usually provided by independent third parties specializing in mask tooling.
Wafer Fabrication. As described above, our manufacturing service provides all aspects of the wafer fabrication process by utilizing a full range of advanced process technologies. During the wafer fabrication process, we perform procedures in which a photosensitive material is deposited on the wafer and exposed to light through the mask to form transistors and other circuit elements comprising of a semiconductor. The unwanted material is then etched away, leaving only the desired circuit pattern on the wafer. As part of our wafer fabrication services, we also offer wafer probing services, which test, or probe, individual die on the processed wafers and identify dice that fail to meet required standards. We prefer to conduct wafer probing internally to obtain speedier and more accurate data on manufacturing yield rates.
Assembly and Testing. We offer our customers turnkey solutions by providing the option to purchase finished semiconductor products that have been assembled and tested. We outsource assembly and test services to leading assembly and test service providers, including Siliconware Precision Industries Co., Ltd., or Siliconware, and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. in Taiwan. After final testing, the semiconductors are shipped to our customers’ designated locations.
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Customers and Markets
Our primary customers, in terms of our sales revenues, include premier integrated device manufacturers, such as Texas Instruments and Intel, plus leading fabless design companies, such as MediaTek, Realtek and Novatek. Although we are not dependent on any single customer, a significant portion of our operating revenues has been generated from sales to a few customers. Our top ten customers accounted for approximately 57.0% of our operating revenues in 2025.
Set forth below is a geographic breakdown of our operating revenues in 2023, 2024 and 2025 by the location where our customers are headquartered.
Years Ended December 31,
Region 2023 2024 2025
% % %
Taiwan 30.7 36.1 38.6
China (including Hong Kong) 12.4 16.0 15.8
Japan 5.2 3.9 4.4
Korea 13.9 11.3 10.7
USA 26.6 25.0 22.0
Europe 11.2 7.7 8.5
Others 0.0 0.0 0.0
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
We believe our success in attracting these end customers is a direct result of our commitment to high quality service and our intense focus on customer needs and performance. As an independent semiconductor foundry, most of our operating revenue is generated by our sales of wafers. The following table presented the percentages of our wafer sales by types of customers for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Years Ended December 31,
Customer Type 2023 2024 2025
% % %
Fabless design companies 78.3 84.3 80.9
Integrated device manufacturers 21.7 15.7 19.1
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
We focus on providing a high level of customer service in order to attract customers and maintain their ongoing loyalty. Our culture emphasizes responsiveness to customer needs with a focus on flexibility, speed and accuracy throughout our manufacturing and delivery processes. Our customer-oriented approach is especially evident in two types of services: customer design development services and manufacturing services. We believe that our large production capacity and advanced process technology enable us to provide better customer service than many other foundries through shorter turn-around time, greater manufacturing flexibility and higher manufacturing yields.
We work closely with our customers throughout the design development and prototyping processes. Our design support team closely interacts with customers and IP vendors to facilitate the design process and to identify their specific requirements for IP offerings. We are responsive to our customers’ requirements in terms of overall turn-around time and production time-to-market by, for example, helping our customers streamline their IP offering processes and delivering prototypes in a timely and easy-to-use fashion. We also maintain flexibility and efficiency in our technical capability and respond quickly to our customers’ design changes.
For IP offerings, we work with several leading IP vendors from digital, memory and analog fields in the semiconductor industry to deliver quality IP blocks that have been silicon validated using our advanced processes. Our alliances with major electronic design automation vendors provide our customers with digital/analog reference design procedures and easy-to-use design solutions. By continuously enhancing our IP offerings, reference design procedures and design services through collaboration with major vendors, we aim to provide complete, accurate and user-friendly design solutions to our customers.
As a design moves into manufacturing production, we continue to provide ongoing customer support through all phases of the manufacturing process. The local account manager works with our customer service representative to ensure the quality of our services, drawing upon our marketing and customer engineering support teams as required.
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We offer an online service, “MyUMC,” which gives our customers easy access to our foundry services by providing a total online supply chain solution. MyUMC offers 24-hour access to detailed account information such as manufacturing, engineering and design support documents through each customer’s own customized start page. The features that are available to customers through MyUMC include (i) viewing the status of orders from the start of production to the final shipping stages; (ii) designing layouts to shorten customers’ tape out time; (iii) collecting customer engineering requests; (iv) gathering and downloading documents for design purposes; and (v) accessing online in real-time the same manufacturing data used by our fab engineers.
We also have system-to-system connecting services to provide direct data exchange between our system and our customers’ systems. These services, which include our “Design Support Online Services,” facilitate our design collaborations with our customers to help reduce the cost of chip designs and reduce the time to market. In order to continue to improve our information security management system, we received the certification of ISO/IEC 27001:2005 in 2008 and renewed ISO/IEC 27001:2022 in 2025.
In addition, we have established a data-driven advanced semiconductor smart manufacturing system to provide world-class quality production, ensure information security and service quality, as well as improve customer satisfaction, operational and R&D efficiency. We achieved this by integrating a spectrum of innovative digital technologies, including Internet of Things, big data, cloud, artificial intelligence and information technology, and our enterprise information and semiconductor expertise.
We price our products on a per die or per wafer basis, taking into account the complexity of the technology, the prevailing market conditions, the order size, the cycle time, the strength and history of our relationship with the customer and our capacity utilization. Our main sales office is located in Taiwan, which is in charge of our sales activities in Asia. United Microelectronics (Europe) BV, our wholly-owned subsidiary based in Amsterdam, assists our sales to customers in Europe. Our sales in North America are made through UMC Group (USA), our subsidiary located in Silicon Valley. We also have sales offices in China, Japan and Korea to support our customers in those regions.
We advertise in trade journals, organize technology seminars, hold a variety of regional and international sales conferences and attend a number of industry trade fairs to promote our products and services. We also publish a corporate newsletter for our customers.
Information Security Risk Management
We have made information security risk analysis and have taken the mitigating measures as described below:
(1) Risk Management Organization
We have established an Enterprise Risk Management Committee to coordinate with key internal departments for risk management and control, jointly reviewing and managing internal and external risks of the Company. In addition, we established the “Corporate Security Division” in 2018, which is responsible for our information security and physical security planning and related audit matters, and work together with our Information Technology Division to further strengthen information security.
(2) Information Security Policy (Internal Control and Protocol)
Our information security policy is based on the guiding principle: “To establish Information Security Management rules in accordance to customer’s requirement, to reach a consensus that information security is everyone’s responsibility through full awareness, to protect information confidentiality, integrity, availability for the Company and customer, and to provide safe production environment to ensure sustainable operation of the Company’s business.” Our major information security objectives are aimed at antivirus, anti-intrusion and anti-leakage through the building of multiple internal controls such as firewall, intrusion detection and antivirus systems to enhance our ability to defend against external attacks. Also, through regular educational and training programs, security operation/awareness is embedded and seamlessly integrated into every employee’s daily work.
(3) Establish Enterprise Risk Management System
According to the Enterprise Risk Management Committee management procedure, we assess the risk level of information security, take the appropriate actions and regularly review the effectiveness of these actions. The committee regularly reviews the possibility of risk occurrence and the potential change of severity over time to understand and assess the effectiveness of risk management programs and related control operations. We comply with multiple ISO certification standards in the areas of quality, environment, water resources, carbon footprint and green energy. Related information security certification includes ISO15408, ISO22301 and ISO27001.
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(4) Assessment of Information Security and Cyber Risks
We place particular emphasis on preventing information security and cyber risks, and have built a comprehensive multi-layered defense mechanism including firewall, intrusion detection, antivirus system, vulnerability scanning, patch management procedure and penetration testing. Our company followed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish a corporate information security framework and created corresponding metrics to strengthen information security management including (i) aiming to further improve the detection of irregularities and elevate preventive capabilities including protocols such as Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), (ii) optimizing network security area of overall information systems and (iii) increasing the multi-factor authentication protection for hosting privileged account login.
(5) Information Security Management System (ISMS) Verification
Our ADRs have been listed on NYSE since 2000 and we have complied with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX 404) for internal control over financial reporting processes. We also strengthened our information security process by introducing ISO27001 information security management system certification to reduce security risk and production anomaly that may be caused by human error. We carry out the relevant continuous improvement and recertification on an annual basis.
In 2014, a cross-division security committee was established. Based on the need to produce secure products like smart card ICs, we introduced ISO15408 (CC, Common Criteria) certification specifically designed for secure production procedures not only in data receiving, processing and destruction but also higher physical access control request for the purpose of securing entire production line. We carry out the relevant continuous improvement and recertification on a biennial basis.
(6) Insurance against Information Security Risks
Data leakage, virus infection, ransomware attacks and hacking event in Taiwan and throughout the world have caused many international and well-known companies to encounter significant operating loss. There is no guarantee that enterprises will not become the target of attacks despite reasonable security protection in place. In view of this, we obtained cybersecurity insurance to mitigate and reduce this risk. Such insurance policy has been in effect since January 2019 with retroactive option which can trace back to undiscovered pre-existing threats. The annual insurance coverage is US$15 million for the Company and its subsidiaries.
(7) The Impact of Occurred Major Asset Security Incidents and Response Measures
We had no major information security incidents in recent years, except for a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on our official website in October 2024. This led to slow access to the Company’s official website, making it unable to provide normal services. This incident did not cause system infection, damage, intrusion, or data leakage, and had no significant impact on the Company’s operations. The Company immediately blocked the attacking IP addresses through the security protection system, and activated traffic cleaning services, and the official website was restored back to normal access. The Company has established corresponding DDoS monitoring indicators to detect and respond to potential attacks early.
In short, new invasive techniques are constantly evolving but past defense achievements do not necessarily mean or guarantee that anomaly breach will not occur in the future. Enterprises must keep pace with the ever-changing and growing information security threat and requires continuous improvement. We will uphold to “Integrity, Pragmatism, Agility, Ingenuity” as corporate culture and will fulfill due care/due diligence’ management responsibility to provide customers with a secure production environment to reduce operational risk and reward shareholders with highest investment value as possible.
Competition
The worldwide semiconductor foundry industry is highly competitive, particularly during periods of overcapacity and inventory correction. We compete internationally and domestically with dedicated foundry service providers, as well as with integrated device manufacturers and final product manufacturers which have in-house manufacturing capacity or foundry operations. Some of our competitors have substantially greater production, financial, research and development and marketing resources than we have. As a result, these companies may be able to compete more aggressively over a longer period of time than we can. In addition, several new dedicated foundries have commenced operations and compete directly with us. New entrants in the foundry business are likely to initiate a trend of competitive pricing and create potential overcapacity in legacy technology. Any significant increase in competition may erode our profit margins and weaken our earnings.
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The principal elements of competition in the semiconductor foundry industry include technical competence, production speed and cycle time, time-to-market, research and development quality, available capacity, manufacturing yields, customer service and price. We believe that we compete favorably with our competitors on each of these elements, particularly our technical competence and research and development capabilities.
Intellectual Property
Our success depends on our ability to obtain patents, licenses and other intellectual property (IP) rights covering our production processes and activities. To that end, we have developed and acquired certain patents and patent licenses and intend to continue to seek patents on our production processes. As of December 31, 2025, we had obtained more than 16,700 patents worldwide, of which more than 7,490 patents were in the U.S. As trade secret protection become increasingly critical, we have stepped up internal compliance training and established a robust IP management system. In 2023, we achieved Taiwan Intellectual Property Management System (TIPS) certification for the second year, with our certification level improving from AA to AAA (such certificate is valid until December 31, 2026), underscoring our unwavering commitment to IP and corporate governance best practices.
Our ability to compete also depends on our ability to operate without infringing on the proprietary rights of others. The semiconductor industry is generally characterized by frequent claims and litigation regarding patent and other IP rights. As is the case with many companies in the semiconductor industry, we have from time to time received communications from third parties asserting patents that allegedly cover certain of our technologies and alleging infringement of certain IP rights of others. We expect that we will continue to receive similar communications in the future. Irrespective of the validity or the successful assertion of such claims, we could incur significant costs and devote significant management resources to the defense of these claims, which could seriously harm our company. See “Item 3. Key Information—D. Risk Factors—Risks Relating to Manufacturing—Political, Economic, Regulatory and Legal Risks—Intellectual property disputes could result in lengthy and costly arbitration, litigation or licensing expenses or prevent us from providing services to customers.”
In order to minimize our risks from claims based on our manufacture of semiconductor devices or end-use products whose designs infringe on others’ IP rights, we in general accept orders only from companies that we believe have established satisfactory reputation and for products that are not identified as risky for potential infringement claims. Furthermore, we obtain indemnification rights from customers. We also generally obtain indemnification rights from equipment vendors to hold us harmless from any losses resulting from any suit or proceedings brought against our company involving allegation of infringement of IP rights on account of our use of the equipment supplied by them.
We have entered into various patent cross-licenses with major technology companies, including a number of leading international semiconductor companies, such as IBM and Broadcom Inc. Our cross licenses may have different terms and expiry dates. Depending upon our competitive position and strategy, we may or may not renew our cross licenses and further, we may enter into different and/or additional technology and/or IP licenses in the future.
Research and Development
We place significant importance on the dynamics of the semiconductor industry and continue to invest and develop semiconductor manufacturing process technology and know-how. In order to continue the development of logic and specialty technologies, optimize transistor performance, reduce power consumption, and continuously enhance our technical advantages, in 2023, 2024 and 2025, we spent NT$13,284 million, NT$15,616 million and NT$17,725 million (US$565 million), respectively, on research and development, which represented 6.0%, 6.7% and 7.5%, respectively, of our operating revenues of such years. Our research and development efforts mainly focus on delivering comprehensive foundry solutions that consist of the key process technologies encompassing logic as well as specialty manufacturing technologies that address customers’ needs. These resources provide our foundry customers with improved opportunities to develop diverse product lines that supply the global semiconductor market. Our commitment to research and development can be illustrated by our research and development expenditures, which was approximately 7.5% of operating revenues, and a total of 623 domestic and foreign patents granted in 2025.
As of December 31, 2025, we employed 1,591 professionals in our research and development activities. In addition, other management and operational personnel are also involved in research and development activities but are not separately identified as research and development professionals. We will continue to invest in technology innovation, optimize capacity to enhance product mix and penetrate emerging applications. We believe that these efforts will create higher customer adoption of our logic and specialty technologies and expand our market share to fuel growth.
Our Investments
Our investment holdings consist of equity interest in certain company and reflect current market valuations as these assets may change in accordance with market conditions.
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The following table sets forth the sales of our investments in 2023:
Number of shares sold Proceeds from disposal
Investees (in millions) (in NT$ millions)
King Yuan Electronics Co., Ltd. 23 1,331
Unimicron Technology Corp. 2 293
Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corp. 3 285
AMPAK Technology Inc. 3 256
Win Win Precision Technology Co., Ltd. 4 217
The following table sets forth the sales of our investments in 2024:
Number of shares sold Proceeds from disposal
Investees (in millions) (in NT$ millions)
FORTEMEDIA, INC. 13 223
PHISON ELECTRONICS CORP. 2 214
The following table sets forth the sales of our investments in 2025:
Number of shares sold Proceeds from disposal
Investees (in millions) (in NT$ millions) (in US$ millions)
OAK HILL OPPORTUNITIES FUND, SEGREGATED PORTFOLIO 0 372 12
Environmental, Safety and Health Matters
We have implemented extensive ESH management systems since 1996. These systems enable our operations to identify applicable ESH regulations, assist in evaluating compliance status and timely establish loss preventive and control measures. The systems we implemented in all our fabs have been certified as meeting the ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 standards. ISO 14001 consists of a set of standards that provide guidance to the management of organizations to achieve an effective environmental management system. Procedures are established at manufacturing locations to ensure that all accidental spills and discharges are properly addressed. ISO 45001 is an international occupational health and safety management system standard, which may be applied to assess and certify our management systems. Our goal in implementing ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 systems is to continually improve our ESH management, comply with ESH regulations and to be a sustainable green foundry. Our major ESH policies include:
Environmental Protection Aspects:
• Fully comply with or go beyond requirements of environmental laws and regulations, and international conventions, striving for zero pollution and sustainable development.
• Integrate environmental management into the Company’s operational and management systems, and build an environmentally conscious company culture.
• Actively set aggressive environmental management goals, regularly track and continuously improve environmental performance, and reduce environmental impact.
• Actively consult external stakeholders to introduce and develop environmentally friendly technologies that can be applied to R&D, procurement, production operations, business facilities, distribution and logistics, products, and/or services to minimize environmental impact at each life cycle stage in order to achieve green design, green production, and green operations goals.
• Stay informed of environmental trends around the world, assess the associated opportunities and risks, engage in proper waste management, effectively utilize energy/resources, and promote circular economy.
• Conduct regular training on risk assessment and risk management to ensure employees understand the environmental impact of their work activities, enhance environmental protection awareness, and encourage responsible action.
• Enhance awareness of the Company’s environmental policy and environmental impact among both internal and external stakeholders (including the Company and its subsidiaries, value chain partners, civil society) through due diligence, active communication and engagement, and transparent information disclosure.
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• Fulfill corporate social responsibility and cooperate with the government, the public and global business partners in ecological improvement and rehabilitation.
Safety and Health Aspects:
• Meet or exceed the requirements on occupational safety and health of the place of operation and comply with ISO 45001 and relevant international standards, aiming for zero incident. We are committed to steady development while making safety a priority.
• Set up prioritization and action plans, continue to promote safety and health management system and risk improvement processes to achieve and maintain world-class safety/health and risk management performance.
• Use advanced safety and health technologies as well as risk and disaster rescue techniques to actively enhance all safety aspects in a pioneering manner.
• Implement due diligence to ensure the safety of the work environment and operations, contractors, customers as well as partners in the operation of the enterprise.
• Through communication, consultation and participation in decision-making with staff or their representatives, make it a responsibility for personnel of all levels to exercise influence, eliminate hazard factors, prevent occurrence of accidents and work-related illnesses, and promote effective safety and health interactions through cooperation and sharing.
• Continue conducting safety and health education and advocacy, encouraging active participation in safety and health activities, and allowing for health and safety to be a habit and a way of life for all workers.
As a member of the global community and a semiconductor industry leader, we have implemented measures to deal with environmental problems and mitigate climate change. We have introduced green concepts in our operations, including green commitment, management, procurement, production, products, recycling, office, education and marketing.
With respect to safety and health management, we realized that lowering the risks in equipment and processes can reduce accidents, but cannot guarantee the safety of all employees. In order to achieve the goal of “zero-accident,” we intend to promote the concept of “safety is my responsibility.” We have educated employees with the concepts of “be aware of your own safety as well as the safety of others” and “safety is everyone’s responsibility, and my personal accountability.”
Furthermore, we have implemented the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method to foster employees’ capabilities in risk analysis. Therefore, we established a channel for communication to encourage and ensure the employees to fully express their opinions for professional response and assistance. By doing so, we hope to establish a culture of “Safety and health first” to further improve the quality of our working environment, and eventually to become a good example of global safety and health management.
The following list sets forth some of the important awards that we received in environmental protection, safety and health:
• Achieved the top ranking in the Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment sector by the S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) for two consecutive years, and has also been selected as a component of the Dow Jones Best-in-Class World Index (DJBIC World Index) for seventeen consecutive years and the Emerging Markets Index for eight consecutive years;
• Selected as component of MSCI ACWI Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Index, the MSCI ACWI Selection Index, and the MSCI Emerging Markets Selection Index;
• Selected as component of FTSE4Good All-World Index and FTSE4Good Emerging Index for eleventh consecutive years, and FTSE4Good TIP Taiwan ESG Index since the launch of the index in 2017;
• Recognized double A List by CDP for climate change and water security for four consecutive years;
• Awarded “Top 10 Taiwanese Companies Sustainability Model Award” (2025) and “Corporate Sustainability Report Award” (2008-2025) for eighteen consecutive years by Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy;
• Awarded “National Enterprise Environmental Protection Award” by Ministry of Environment, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. (2003-2025) for twenty-three consecutive years;
• Awarded “Outstanding Unit for Promoting Occupational Safety and Health - Special Excellence Award” (1998-2025) and “Environmental, Safety and Health Sustainable Development Action - ESG Excellence Leadership” (2025) by the Hsinchu Science Park, National Science and Technology Council;
• Awarded “Occupational Health and Safety Performance Disclosure Evaluation - Outstanding Enterprise” by Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Ministry of Labor, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. (2025);
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Climate Change
Our climate change policies include: (i) achieving carbon neutral status via carbon management, (ii) becoming a comprehensive low-carbon emissions solution provider, and (iii) leveraging corporate resources to cultivate a low-carbon emissions economy. In order to implement these policies, we set greenhouse gas reduction goals as to various phases. In the program of UMC Sustainability Strategy and Blueprint, we launched resource and energy productivity improvement plans which target to reduce the usage of water, electricity and waste per unit of product by 30%, 30% and 50% in 2030, respectively, compared to 2015.
In June 2021, we announced our pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and to take concrete steps to Net Zero Action as the first semiconductor foundry globally. We are vigorously responding to the Paris Climate Agreement goal and pursuing efforts to limit the global warming not exceeding 1.5°C. In addition, we were admitted into RE100, becoming the second semiconductor wafer foundry in this initiative, and committed to using 100% renewable energy by 2050. To reach net zero emissions by 2050, we have three resolutions to cover direct emissions from fab operations, indirect emissions from energy consumption, and indirect emissions from value chain. The three resolutions are:
• Persistent and proactive carbon emission reduction: Through continually developing advanced foundry process technologies, enhancing productivity and improving energy efficiency, we are able to minimize carbon emissions in both manufacturing stage of wafers and using stage of IC end products.
• 100% renewable energy: A 3-stage objective of 25% by 2025, 50% by 2030, and 100% by 2050 is set to substantially increase the proportion of consuming renewable energy, and we will also invite our value chain to support the low-carbon energy transition.
• Investment in net-zero technologies: we commit to investing in net zero emissions technologies and participating in Carbon Offset Projects to remove and offset carbon emissions that are inevitable or still subject to technical restrictions.
In 2021, we officially pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and received approval from the international renewable energy initiative “RE100,” committing to 100% renewable energy usage by 2050. In 2022, our GHG reduction targets passed the SBTi review, making it the world’s first semiconductor foundry to do so. Having achieved its near-term reduction targets ahead of schedule, we further raised its targets and passed the SBTi net-zero target review in 2025. Its near-term, long-term, and net-zero targets are in line with the 1.5°C pathway. By 2030, we aim to reduce total GHG emissions, including direct emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions from electricity (Scope 2) by 42%, and to reduce value chain (Scope 3) emissions by 25%, compared to the 2020 baseline year. Furthermore, to achieve the 2050 net zero target, we plan to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 95% and Scope 3 emissions by 90%, with the remaining unavoidable emissions to be offset or neutralized.
We also support timely disclosure of carbon information and ensuring data quality and engage third-party verifiers to ensure the quality of the data. We completed the verification on greenhouse gas emission and reduction records for all of our fabs on an annual basis. Since 2006, we have participated in the Carbon Disclosure Project formed by global institutional investors and disclosed our annual greenhouse gas emission volume, reduction goals and results. In 2025, we have been recognized in CDP’s “A List” for transparency and action on both climate change and water security. We stand out as the sole semiconductor company globally to secure this double “A” recognition for four consecutive years, affirming our commendable performance in greenhouse gas emission reduction and water resource management.
Climate change will not only bring about negative impacts but also drive opportunities for semiconductor simultaneously. Consequently, we have been proactively searching for our own climate related opportunities by considering of market demand for energy-saving and our technique advantages. We are committed to investing in the development of high-efficiency product technologies, providing semiconductor manufacturing services in clean technology fields such as automotive electronics, smart energy management, industrial automation, and system optimization, to reduce carbon emissions across the value chain, i.e., the end products of customers. To align its technology development with global carbon reduction goals, we have set phased targets to increase the revenue share of sustainable products by 2030.
Risk Management
Risk and safety matters are administered by Group Risk Management and Environmental Safety Health Division. We are pursuing the goal of a highly protected risk status in the semiconductor industry through the implementation of strict engineering safety procedures, regular enforcement of safety codes and standards, and compliance of detailed industry safety guidelines.
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Our risk control strategy has been implemented in many ways, including constructing inherently safe fabs, strengthening physical protection standards, redundancy/contingency design, providing with real-time abnormity detection, implementing disciplined maintenance and inspection, deploying natural hazard early warning systems, enhancing emergency response abilities, and developing business continuity plan, which includes crisis management and recovery procedures, to achieve our continuous operation promise. The achievements in the recent years are as follows:
• We collaborate with international insurance companies, such as American International Group (AIG), and global insurance brokers to regularly conduct risk audits.
• Inherent safety design and rescue skill develop for emerging risk, including but not limit to: solar power generation system on the roof-top, lithium battery inside automated guided vehicle and uninterruptible power supply system, and electrical car, etc.
• Enhanced power distribution system’s reliability and early abnormality detection, such as gradually replace existing lead-acid UPS batteries with lithium-iron, install real-time leak current measurement of cable shielding conductors’ grounding system of HV distribution system, enlarge diesel generators installation rate to increase emergency power percentage and maintain diesel oil in a safety level, etc. For the countermeasure against momentary voltage drops, continually increase the uninterruptible power supply coverage rate for production tools.
• Fixed-term contract for private water source and water trucks and in combination with self water-saving, U Water, and reclaimed water usage, which can supply more than 50% of water consumption to overcome water shortage risk in the drought season.
• Enhance cleanroom’s seismic bracing for suspended ceiling and raised floor in older 8-inch fabs in Hsinchu. The earthquake improvement plan will continue to expand to other areas, such as laboratories.
Taiwan situates in Circum-Pacific Seismic Belt, and the threat of earthquakes cannot be underestimated. We have implemented tons of proactive efforts in earthquake loss prevention. We imported the latest anti-seismic technologies, a seismic isolation platform for newly installed reticle stocker and furnace and built up an earthquake warning system in Tainan production base that will provide us with enhanced response time in the event of an earthquake.
Nowadays, extreme weather has become a risk to various business operations. In the face of water shortage, we have implemented actions based on different water restriction stages, including formulating various water-saving measures and production scheduling adjustments. We also continue to hire water trucks and increase the capacity of contracted private water sources as a contingency plan. In the future, various options such as the use of reclaimed water, recycled water and desalinated seawater will be continuously introduced to reduce water risks.
In addition, we are fully aware of the impact presented by business interruption. We are also devoted in the pursuit of corporate resilience and continuity by committing non-interrupted services to satisfy our valued customers and important shareholders. Since 2013, Fab 12A in Tainan was the first foundry in the world to receive ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management certification. To date, all our production sites have been certified. It demonstrates our commitment to carrying out disaster response abilities and ensuring continuous production objective.
Insurance
We maintain industrial all risk insurance for our buildings, facilities, equipment and inventories as well as third-party properties. The insurance for fabs and their equipment covers losses from physical damage and business interruption up to their respective policy limits except for policy exclusions, including damages and interruptions caused by natural disasters such as earthquake or typhoons. In addition, we purchase directors and officers liability insurance for our board directors and executive officers, covering the liabilities incurred in relation to his/her/its operation of business and legally responsible for. We also maintain public liability insurance for losses to third parties arising from our business operations. We believe that our insurance arrangement is adequate to cover all major types of losses relevant to the semiconductor industry practice. However, significant damage to any of our production facilities, whether as a result of fire or other causes, could seriously harm our business and we may not be able to recover all of our losses through insurance policy coverage.
Seasonality
We generally experience seasonal lows in the demand for semiconductor services and products during the first half of the year, primarily as a result of inventory correction by our customers.
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C. Organizational Structure
The following list sets forth our subsidiaries as of December 31, 2025:
Company Jurisdiction of Incorporation Percentage of Ownership as of December 31, 2025
UMC Group (USA) U.S.A. 100.00 %
United Microelectronics (Europe) B.V. The Netherlands 100.00 %
UMC Capital Corp. Cayman Islands 100.00 %
TLC Capital Co., Ltd. Taiwan, R.O.C. 100.00 %
Green Earth Limited Samoa 100.00 %
Fortune Venture Capital Corp. Taiwan, R.O.C. 100.00 %
UMC Investment (Samoa) Limited Samoa 100.00 %
ECP Vita Pte. Ltd. Singapore 100.00 %
Soaring Capital Corp. Samoa 100.00 %
Unitruth Advisor (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. China 100.00 %
Tera Energy Development Co., Ltd. Taiwan, R.O.C. 92.64 %
United Microchip Corporation Cayman Islands 100.00 %
Wavetek Microelectronics Corporation Taiwan, R.O.C. 79.12 %
Everrich Energy Investment (HK) Limited China 92.64 %
Everrich (Jining) New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (formerly Everrich (Shandong) Energy Co., Ltd.) China 92.64 %
Wavetek Microelectronics Corporation (USA) U.S.A. 79.12 %
Best Elite International Limited British Virgin Islands 100.00 %
Infoshine Technology Limited British Virgin Islands 100.00 %
Oakwood Associates Limited British Virgin Islands 100.00 %
Hejian Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. China 100.00 %
United Semiconductor (Xiamen) Co., Ltd. China 100.00 %
UMC Korea Co., Ltd. Korea 100.00 %
Omni Global Limited Samoa 100.00 %
United Microtechnology Corporation (California) U.S.A. 100.00 %
Sino Paragon Limited Samoa 100.00 %
United Semiconductor Japan Co., Ltd. Japan 100.00 %
D. Property, Plants and Equipment
Please refer to “—B. Business Overview—Manufacturing Facilities” for a discussion of our property, plants and equipment.