Topline<\/p>\n
South Korean stocks faced a second straight day of losses Wednesday, led by SK Hynix, as the memory chipmaker\u2019s record AI-fueled earnings fell short of the market\u2019s high expectations and were further dampened by concerns about chipmaking advancements in China.<\/p>\n
SK Hynix shares slumped nearly 10% after an earnings miss.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.Key Facts<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s benchmark KOSPI index fell nearly 13% on Wednesday\u2014triggering a halt in trading\u2014before closing 6% down.<\/p>\n
The KOSPI index has fallen by more than 15% in the past two days amid concerns about the AI-fueled rally, which has boosted Korea\u2019s top chipmaking stocks.<\/p>\n
SK Hynix reported a near sixfold increase in operating profit to a record KRW 60.5 trillion ($42 billion) in the three months ending in June, but this fell short of market forecasts of around KRW 64 trillion ($44 billion).<\/p>\n
This triggered a second straight day of selloff in SK Hynix shares, which tumbled nearly 19% before ending the day at KRW 1.4 million ($964)\u2014down more than 9.6% from Tuesday\u2019s close.<\/p>\n
SK Hynix\u2019s memory chipmaking rival Samsung Electronics\u2019 shares also took a tumble on Thursday\u2014falling 5.2%.<\/p>\n
The sell-off hit other major chipmakers in Asia, including Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia\u2014whose stock fell 13.85% on Wednesday\u2014and Taiwanese semiconductor giant MediaTek, which fell nearly 5%<\/p>\n
News Peg<\/p>\n
Aside from SK Hynix\u2019s earnings miss, the selloff comes amid concerns about advancements reported by Chinese chipmaking and AI companies. Memory chipmaker CXMT<\/a>, which made its market debut earlier this week, saw its stock price soar an additional 12.6% on Wednesday, following a 466% gain on Monday after going public. Along with American semiconductor giant Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix control nearly 90% of the global RAM chip market, which is in high demand due to the ongoing build-out of AI infrastructure. CXMT, reportedly being courted by Apple as an alternative RAM supplier, is seen as a major emerging threat to the trio. China has also reportedly made major strides<\/a> in advanced chip-making machines, which could threaten Dutch semiconductor giant ASML and Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC. ASML\u2019s shares have fallen more than 11% in the past week, while TSMC\u2019s stock has dropped more than 6.5%.<\/p>\n What To Watch For<\/p>\n Despite the selloff in Asia, U.S. stock futures remained largely flat. Memory chipmaker Micron\u2019s stock remained slightly below the closing price of $820 after plunging more than 8.8% on Tuesday. Chipmakers AMD, Intel and Qualcomm inched up slightly in early trading on Wednesday after declines of 8.1%, 5.8% and 4.2%, respectively, on Tuesday. Shares of AI chipmaking giant Nvidia\u2014which ceded the title of the world\u2019s most valuable company to Apple earlier this week\u2014were also flat on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline South Korean stocks faced a second straight day of losses Wednesday, led by SK Hynix, as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7927,114,205620,85,46,207306,1523,71979],"class_list":["post-565291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ai-chips","tag-business","tag-chip-stocks","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kioxia","tag-samsung","tag-sk-hynix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}