HONG KONG - Asian markets rallied on Wednesday as tech firms enjoyed a much-needed rebound, with investors taking heart from upbeat earnings that lifted sentiment ahead of a crucial reporting season.
Seoul and Tokyo were the headliners again as chipmakers and other key players in the AI buildout boom chalked up healthy gains, following a torrid few weeks fuelled by concerns about profitability and debt financing.
South Korea's SK hynix and Samsung both surged at least seven percent, while Kioxia, Advantest and SoftBank spiked between two and four percent in Japan -- having all been pummelled since the start of last week.
The gains came after Elon Musk's SpaceX reported its first quarterly profit as a public company, as deals to rent out computing power to AI firms sent revenue at its artificial intelligence unit soaring.
Server-maker Super Micro Computer also provided a fillip to buying sentiment as it said preliminary quarterly earnings had come in better than forecast.
The developments soothed worries on trading floors about the outlook for the AI boom, which has seen companies pump hundreds of billions into R&D, software building data centres and other hardware in recent years.
It also bodes well ahead of reports from Magnificent Seven members Tesla and Meta later in the day.
Seoul's Kospi jumped more than four percent, with infrastructure firm Elice soaring around 30 percent, almost wiping out the colossal losses suffered on its trading debut Tuesday.
Tokyo added more than one percent, while Hong Kong, Singapore, Wellington, Manila and Jakarta were also up.
There were losses in Sydney, where data centre developer NEXTDC tanked more than 40 percent after slashing its outlook and renewing its capital expenditure programme.
The broad gains followed a healthy day on Wall Street, though analysts said a lot of the gains were spurred by traders rotating into industrial firms and away from the once-all-powerful tech sector. The Dow ended up one percent and the Nasdaq was marginally lower.
Oil prices jumped more than one percent on supply concerns as the UKMTO maritime agency said on Wednesday that a tanker sailing off the north coast of Qatar had reported being struck "by multiple projectiles", causing an unspecified number of casualties.
- AFP