The artificial intelligence (AI) mania sparked by Nvidia Corp’s sterling results has given a lift to Asia’s major chipmakers, but it has not closed the valuation gap with their US peers.
A Bloomberg gauge tracking Asia’s top semiconductor firms, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co, widened its under-performance against the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index this week. While the Asian index trades at 17 times forward earnings, the US measure is at 27 times, pushing the gap close to a record after Nvidia’s blowout revenue outlook reinforced investor conviction in the boom in generative AI use.
Nvidia’s 8 percent jump this week dwarfed gains of 2.1 percent for TSMC and 0.4 percent for Samsung. SK Hynix Inc, a key memorychip supplier for Nvidia’s AI processors, stood out in Asia with a 10 percent jump to a two-decade high. In total, major Asian chip stocks added US$31 billion in value this week, about one-10th of the gains in US names.
Photo: Reuters
Nvidia rallied as much as 16 percent on Thursday, adding about US$277 billion in market value. That was the biggest single-session increase in market history, beating Meta Platforms Inc’s US$197 billion gain earlier this month.
Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) wealth jumped by US$9.6 billion to US$69.2 billion on Thursday, a gain that leapfrogged him ahead of US billionaire Charles Koch and Chinese bottled-water tycoon Zhong Shanshan (鍾睒睒) to 21st on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nvidia exceeded sky-high investor expectations with a revenue forecast that was more than US$2 billion ahead of analysts’ expectations.
However, lingering concerns about sluggish smartphone and PC demand from China have weighed on major players like Samsung and their stock valuations. Additionally, worries over possible US sanctions have also hurt valuation for Chinese stocks like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯).
Nvidia’s earnings are propelled primarily by AI applications, unlike TSMC, which also relies on a large smartphone business. While TSMC is Nvidia’s go-to chipmaker for fabricating its AI silicon, the “Nvidia earnings rise cannot directly translate into TSMC,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Charles Shum (沈明) said.
However, Templeton Global Equity Group sees investment potential in the Asian semiconductor sector’s relative undervaluation, as the region’s chipmakers could benefit from the AI boom more than what the market expects.
“AI is a secular trend, and Asia plays a pivotal role in its supply chain,” Templeton Global portfolio manager Ferdinand Cheuk (卓兆源) said. “Asia is the backbone for AI.”
Japan excels in providing the equipment and components required to build AI chips, while South Korea specializes in producing memory that integrates with AI chips, Cheuk said.
Taiwan provides both the AI chip foundries and downstream design manufacturers who assemble AI servers, he added.
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