By Nathan Vifflin and Ozan Ergenay <\/p>\n
July 23 (Reuters) – European semiconductor stocks moved sharply on Thursday after earnings updates, with Soitec surging on strong photonics demand linked \u200cto artificial intelligence applications, while STMicroelectronics and BE Semiconductor Industries (Besi) fell as investors reacted \u200cto weaker near-term performance and elevated growth expectations. <\/p>\n
Soitec shares jumped around 23% after the French semiconductor materials supplier beat \u200bsales expectations by a wide margin and pointed to accelerating demand for photonics wafers used in artificial intelligence applications. <\/p>\n
The company guided for revenue growth of more than 30% in the second quarter and said revenue from its Photonics-SOI business was expected to more than double from slightly above $100 million \u200cin the prior year. <\/p>\n
By contrast, \u2060STMicroelectronics fell 15% after reporting quarterly profit below expectations, with investors focused on the pace of recovery in its automotive and industrial markets. <\/p>\n
Shares in Dutch \u2060semiconductor equipment maker Besi also fell around 3% despite strong order bookings after second-quarter revenue came in slightly below expectations. Andrew Gardiner, head of European technology equity research at Citi, said consensus forecasts \u200balready \u200bassumed strong growth in 2026 and 2027, raising the \u200bhurdle for further upside. <\/p>\n
“You’re seeing more \u200cquestions being asked about where’s the future revenue going to come from,” said Rushabh Amin, multi-asset portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments. <\/p>\n
“Twelve months ago the rage was about hyperscalers and the same questions were asked. Now, the semis came into the fold.” <\/p>\n
Nokia, meanwhile, offered another indication of robust AI-related demand. The Finnish network equipment maker said demand remained strong but that supply \u200cconstraints persisted in parts of the semiconductor market. <\/p>\n
“Demand remains \u200bstrong, while supply continues to be the main industry \u200bconstraint, prompting our customers to place longer-term \u200borders,” CEO Justin Hotard said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Nokia’s shares were little changed \u200cdespite a second-quarter profit beat. Hotard told \u200bReuters the company was \u200balso feeling the impact of rising memory prices as AI customers competed for chip supply. <\/p>\n
“Where we have pricing that we can’t absorb through a different design, we’re passing it \u200bon to customers,” he said. <\/p>\n
Google \u200cowner Alphabet earlier this week reported record cloud growth but faced investor scrutiny \u200bover a $15 billion increase in planned 2026 capital spending. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nathan Vifflin and \u200bOzan Ergenay in Gdansk; Editing by Matt Scuffham) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nathan Vifflin and Ozan Ergenay July 23 (Reuters) – European semiconductor stocks moved sharply on Thursday after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,75143,28161,120624,111,139,69,1405,6164,266110,211814,145],"class_list":["post-540360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-be-semiconductor-industries","tag-expectations","tag-growth-expectations","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-revenue-growth","tag-semiconductor","tag-soitec","tag-stmicroelectronics","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}