Asia tech stocks rally as Nvidia earnings soothe AI slowdown fears
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Asian tech stocks rallied in early trading on Thursday as stronger-than-expected results from Nvidia eased concerns that momentum in artificial intelligence sector was cooling.
Shares of South Korean chipmaking giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix jumped in early trade.
SK Hynix, which is a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory used in AI applications to Nvidia, rose over 2%. Samsung Electronics, which has been a decades-old partner of Nvidia, was up about 5%.
“This is a positive read through for many of the Asia supply chain players including SK Hynix, Samsung, and many others given the explosion of data center demand,” said Dan Ives, senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities.
Other South Korean tech stocks also rose, with components manufacturer LG Innotek surging almost 14%, while Seoul Semiconductor soared 13%.
In Japan, the TOPIX Information & Communication index climbed 2.6%, building on previous day’s 0.58% gain.
Software firm Trend Micro jumped 5.95%, while Sony Group rose over 3.86%. SoftBank Group added 5%.
Andrew Jackson, head of Japanese equity strategy at ORTUS Advisors, said that flows will continue to favor AI-linked names, suggesting potential upside for Japanese gallium nitride and silicon carbide plays such as Fuji Electric, as investors position for sustained data-center buildouts. The company’s shares were up 1.7%.
Nvidia reported that revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter climbed 73% to $68.13 billion from a year earlier, beating analysts’ estimates for $66.21 billion. The company now gets over 91% of sales from its data center unit, which houses its market-leading artificial intelligence chips.
Dan Niles, portfolio manager at Niles Investment Management, said the current setup still favors semiconductor infrastructure names over software, noting Nvidia remains “really the king of the infrastructure for all of this.
Japanese chip firms Advantest and Renesas, however, were 2.35% and 1.75% lower, respectively.
