By Rae Wee
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Shares of technology companies surged in Asia on Thursday, after bumper earnings from chipmaker Nvidia quelled investor fears of an AI bubble and breathed new life into a tech-led rally that has propelled global stock indexes to record highs this year.
Nvidia on Wednesday surprised Wall Street with accelerating growth after several quarters of slowing sales and posted a fourth-quarter forecast that exceeded expectations, sending its shares up 5% in extended trading.
That provided a much-needed boost to Asian markets on Thursday, with shares of Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier of chips to Nvidia, jumping 3.6%.
South Korea’s SK Hynix, also a Nvidia supplier, was up more than 4%, while its peer Samsung Electronics gained 4.5%.
The moves sent the tech-heavy Taiwan and South Korea stock indexes up more than 2% each, while in Japan, the Nikkei advanced more than 3% and reclaimed the key 50,000 level.
AI-industry heavyweight Advantest surged 9%, while SoftBank Group and Tokyo Electron rose 4% and 5%, respectively.
“Market psychology has been negative this month as investors worried that the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out was a bubble, and in a few years we may look back at this time and point to signs that it was,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management.
“But in the meantime, the largest technology companies in the world are extremely profitable and they are reinvesting billions of dollars into data centers, servers, and chips and the spending is real.”
Nvidia said it expected fiscal fourth-quarter sales of $65 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $61.66 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Sentiment heading into the company’s earnings was fragile, with equities caught up in an ugly sell-off in recent days over concerns about stretched valuations and the massive spending companies are pouring into all things AI.
Selling from some high-profile investors in tech companies also deepened the unease.
Cloud giants, including Microsoft and Amazon, are investing billions in AI data centers, though some investors have argued these companies were artificially boosting earnings by extending the depreciable life of AI compute gear, such as Nvidia’s chips.
(Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Comments