Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today.
My presentation will start with financial highlights for the fourth quarter of 2025 and a recap of full year 2025. After that, I will provide the guidance for the first quarter of 2026. Fourth quarter revenue increased 5.7% sequentially in NT, supported by strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies. In U.S. dollar terms, revenue increased 1.9% sequentially to TWD 33.7 billion, slightly ahead of our fourth quarter guidance. Gross margin increased by 2.8 percentage points sequentially to 62.3%, primarily due to cost improvement efforts, favorable foreign exchange rate and high capacity utilization rate. The operating expenses accounted for 8.4% of net revenue compared to 8.9% in the third quarter of '25 due to operating leverage. Thus, operating margin increased sequentially by 3.4 percentage points to 54%. Overall, our fourth quarter EPS was TWD 19.5 and ROE was 38.8%.
Now let's move on to revenue by technology. 3-nanometer process technology contributed of 28% of wafer revenue in the fourth quarter, while 5-nanometer and 7-nanometer accounted for 35% and 14%, respectively. Advanced technologies, defined as 7-nanometer and below, accounted for 77% of wafer revenue. On a full year basis, 3-nanometer revenue contribution came in at 24% of 2025 wafer revenue, 5-nanometer, 36% and 7-nanometer, 14%. Advanced technologies accounted for 74% of total wafer revenue, up from 69% in 2024. Moving on to revenue contribution by platform.
HPC increased 4% quarter-over-quarter to account for 55% of our fourth quarter revenue. Smartphone increased 11% to account for 32%. IoT increased 3% to account for 5%. Automotive decreased 1% to account for 5%, while DCE decreased 22% to account for 1%. On a full year basis, HPC increased 48% year-over-year. Smartphone, IoT and automotive increased by 11%, 15% and 34%, respectively, in 2025, while DCE remains flat.
Overall, HPC accounted for 58% of our 2025 revenue. Smartphone accounted for 29%. IoT accounted for 5%, automotive accounted for 5% and DCE accounted for 1%. Moving on to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with cash and marketable securities of TWD 3.1 trillion or USD 98 billion.
On the liability side, current liabilities increased by TWD 182 billion quarter-over-quarter, mainly due to the increase of TWD 95 billion in accrued liabilities and others and the increase of TWD 61 billion from the reclassification of bonds payable to current portion. In terms of financial ratios, accounts receivable days increased by 1 day to 26 days. Inventory days remained steady at 74 days. Regarding cash flow and CapEx, during the fourth quarter, we generated about TWD 726 billion in cash from operations, spent TWD 357 billion in CapEx and distributed TWD 130 billion for first quarter '25 cash dividend. Overall, our cash balance increased TWD 297 billion to TWD 2.8 trillion at the end of the quarter. In U.S. dollar terms, our fourth quarter capital expenditures totaled TWD 11.5 billion.
Now let's look at the recap of our performance in 2025. Thanks to the strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies, we continue to outperform the foundry industry in 2025.
Our revenue increased 35.9% in U.S. dollar terms to TWD 122 billion or increased 31.6% in NT dollar terms to TWD 3.8 trillion. Gross margin increased 3.8 percentage points to 59.9%, mainly reflecting a higher capacity utilization rate and cost improvement efforts, partially offset by an unfavorable foreign exchange rate and margin dilution from our overseas fabs. With operating leverage, our operating margin increased 5.1 percentage points to 50.8%. Overall, full year EPS increased 46.4% to TWD 66.25 and ROE increased 5.1 percentage points to 35.4%.
In 2025, we generated TWD 2.3 trillion in operating cash flow, spent TWD 1.3 trillion or USD 40.9 billion on capital expenditures. As a result, free cash flow amounted to TWD 1 trillion, up 15.2% from 2024. Meanwhile, we paid TWD 467 billion in cash dividends in 2025, up 28.6% year-over-year as we continue to increase our cash dividend per share. TSMC shareholders received a total of TWD 18 cash dividend per share in 2025, up from TWD 14 in 2024, and they will receive at least TWD 23 per share in 2026. I have finished my financial summary.
Now let's turn to our current quarter guidance. We expect our business to be supported by continued strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies. Based on the current business outlook, we expect our first quarter revenue to be between USD 34.6 billion and USD 35.8 billion, which represents a 4% sequential increase or a 38% year-over-year increase at the midpoint. Based on the exchange rate assumption of USD 1 to TWD 31.6, gross margin is expected to be between 63% and 65%, operating margin between 54% and 56%. Lastly, our effective tax rate was 16% in 2025. For 2026, we expect our effective tax rate to be between 17% and 18%. This concludes my financial presentation. Now let me turn to our key messages.
I will start by talking about our fourth quarter '25 and first quarter '26 profitability. Compared to third quarter, our fourth quarter gross margin increased by 280 basis points sequentially to 62.3%, primarily due to cost improvement efforts, a more favorable foreign exchange rate and a higher overall capacity utilization rate. Compared to our fourth quarter guidance, our actual gross margin exceeded the high end of the range provided 3 months ago by 130 basis points, mainly as we delivered better-than-expected cost improvement efforts. In addition, the actual fourth quarter exchange rate was USD 1 to TWD 31.01 as compared to our guidance of USD 1 to TWD 30.6. We have just guided our first quarter gross margin to increase by 170 basis points to 64% at the midpoint, primarily driven by continued cost improvement efforts, including productivity gains and a higher overall capacity utilization rate, partially offset by continued dilution from our overseas fab.
Looking at full year 2026, given the 6 factors, there are a few puts and takes I would like to share. On the one hand, we expect our overall utilization rate to moderately increase in 2026. N3 gross margin is expected to cross over to the corporate average sometime in 2026, and we continue to work hard to earn our value. In addition, we are leveraging our manufacturing excellence to drive greater productivity in our fabs to generate more wafer output. We are also increasing a cross-node capacity optimization, which includes flexible capacity support among N7, N5 and N3 nodes to support our profitability. On the other hand, as the scale of our overseas expansion grows, we continue to forecast the gross margin dilution from the ramp-up of overseas fabs in the next several years to be between 2% to 3% in the early stages and widen to 3% to 4% in the latter stages. Furthermore, the initial ramp-up of our 2-nanometer technology will start to dilute our gross margin in the second half of the year, and we expect between 2 to 3 percentage — percent dilution for the full year of 2026. Finally, we have no control over the foreign exchange rate, but that may be another factor in 2026. Next, let me talk about our 2026 capital budget and depreciation. At TSMC, a higher level of capital expenditures is always correlated to the high-growth opportunities in the following years. With our strong technology leadership and differentiation, we are well positioned to capture the multiyear structural demand from the industry megatrends of 5G, AI and HPC. In 2025, we spent USD 40.9 billion as compared to USD 29.8 billion in 2024 as we began to raise our level of capital spending in anticipation of the growth that will follow in the future years. In 2026, we expect our capital budget to be between USD 52 billion and USD 56 billion as we continue to invest to support our customers' growth. About 70% to 80% of the 2026 capital budget will be allocated to advanced process technologies. About 10% will be spent for specialty technologies and about 10% to 20% will be spent for advanced packaging, testing, mask making and others. Our depreciation expense is expected to increase by high teens percentage year-over-year in 2026, mainly as we ramp our 2-nanometer technologies. Even as we invest in the future growth with this level of CapEx spending in 2026, we remain committed to delivering profitable growth to our shareholders. Finally, let me talk about TSMC's long-term profitability outlook. As a foundry, our biggest responsibility is to support our customers' growth, and we always view them as partners. Having said that, we are in a very capital-intensive business. In the last 5 years alone, our CapEx totaled USD 167 billion. Our R&D investments totaled USD 30 billion.
Therefore, it is important for TSMC to earn a sustainable and healthy return as we continue to invest in leading -edge specialty and advanced packaging technologies to support our customers' growth. Today, we face increasing manufacturing cost challenges due to the rising cost of leading nodes. For example, the cost of tools are becoming more expensive and process complexity is increasing. As a result, the CapEx dollar required to build 1,000 wafer per month capacity of N2 is substantially higher than 1,000 wafer per month capacity for N3. The CapEx per k cost for A14 will be even higher. We also faced additional cost challenges from expansion of our global manufacturing footprint, new investments in specialty technologies and inflationary costs. These all lead to a higher level of CapEx spending. As a result, in the last 3 years, our CapEx dollars amount totaled USD 101 billion, but is expected to be significantly higher in the next 3 years.
Having said that, we continue to work closely with our customers to plan our capacity while sticking to our disciplines to ensure a healthy overall capacity utilization rate through the cycle. Our pricing will remain strategic, not opportunistic to earn our value. We will work diligently with our suppliers to drive greater cost improvements. We will also leverage our manufacturing excellence to generate more wafer output and drive greater a cross node capacity optimization in our fab operations to support our profitability. By taking such actions, we believe a long-term gross margins of 56% and higher through the cycle is achievable, and we can earn an ROE of high 20s percent through the cycle. By earning a sustainable and healthy return, even as we shoulder a greater burden of CapEx investment for our customers, we can continue to invest in technology and capacity to support their growth while delivering long-term profitable growth to our shareholders. We also remain committed to a sustainable and steadily increasing cash dividends per share on both an annual and quarterly basis. Now let me turn the microphone over to C.C.