Asian chip stocks split after Nvidia’s blowout earnings

Asian semiconductor stocks delivered a split reaction on Thursday after Nvidia ↗ 2.78% reported blowout second-quarter earnings, with memory chipmakers rallying on tight supply signals while equipment and testing names sold off on margin concerns.

Nvidia reported second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year, with Data Center revenue jumping 117% to $89 billion. CEO Jensen Huang said demand is running well above the 70% level the company can currently supply, while CFO Colette Kress guided to approximately 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028 — well above the 44% average analyst estimate.investing+2

"The AI infrastructure buildout is at full steam," Huang said.malaymail

Memory Makers Outperform on Supply Constraints

South Korea's Kospi rose 1.5%, led by SK Hynix ↗ 2.78%, which gained up to 3.6%, and Samsung Electronics, which added around 2.5%. In Japan, memory maker Kioxia surged 5%, buoyed both by Nvidia's memory bottleneck commentary and a Nikkei report that the company plans to invest ¥1 trillion to build a new production plant.realmoney.thestreet+1

Nvidia's commitment of roughly $270 billion in memory supply and capacity purchases — more than doubling from $119 billion three months earlier — provided direct support to the memory sector.startuphub+1

Equipment Names Slide on Margin Pressure

By contrast, equipment suppliers lagged. Advantest fell about 3.1%, Disco ↗ 13.02% dropped 1.4%, and Powertech Technology declined 3.2%, while TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited ↗ 6.33% shed only about 0.2%. Nvidia's softer margin outlook, driven by sharply higher memory costs, raised concerns that equipment demand could face headwinds if customers push back on pricing.investing+1

Charu Chanana at Saxo Markets wrote that management "effectively telling investors that AI demand remains supply-constrained even at this scale" was "a powerful counter to the narrative that the AI capex cycle is already peaking".news.yahoo+1

European Chips Rally; Broader Markets Struggle

European chip stocks saw a more uniformly positive reaction. ASML ↗ 5.02% gained 1.6%, Infineon Technologies rose 4%, STMicroelectronics ↗ 4.43% added 4.3%, and ASM International climbed 2.8%.investing+1

Broader Asian markets struggled, however, weighed down by U.S. data showing the Fed's preferred inflation gauge stuck at 3.7% in July and caution ahead of Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's speech at the Jackson Hole symposium. Nvidia's third-quarter forecast assumed no data-center compute revenue from China, underscoring how export restrictions continue to limit its access to one of the world's largest technology markets.investing+3