After Friday’s Rout, Asia Sorts Its Chip Stocks

TOKYO, Nov. 2 — Asia’sAsia’s chip stocks went separate ways on Monday, in the first trading since Friday’s rout in New York: Seoul’s memory makers and the toolmaker Tokyo Electron rose, while Kioxia, the Japanese flash-memory maker, fell 15.78 percent and the equipment maker SCREEN Holdings 18.96 percent. On Friday Intel had lost 28.58 percent and the PHLX Semiconductor index 7.20 percent.

In Seoul, SK hynix rose 3.81 percent, to 1,472,000 won, and Samsung Electronics 1.78 percent, to 229,000 won. The Kospi closed 2.24 percent higher, at 5,859.08, after falling more than 3 percent on Friday, Yonhap reported. “The KOSPI rebounded from a crash as investors reinterpret the disappointing quarterly earnings from Intel and shift their focus to the strong fundamentals of the local semiconductor sector,” Lee Kyoung-min, an analyst at Daishin Securities, said, as quoted by Yonhap.

In Taipei, TSMC fell 1.69 percent, to NT$2,330, after a 5.95 percent fall in its American depositary receipts on Friday, and the Taiex lost 0.65 percent.TSMNYSE388.62▲13.18+3.5%Taiwan Semiconductor · Monday’s session “The U.S. tumble appeared not to be the end of the world to regional markets,” Kevin Su, an analyst at Hua Nan Securities, said, as quoted by Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

The sorting ran by business and by results, not by country. Investors bought Seoul’s big memory makers and the toolmakers whose outlooks topped expectations, and sold the flash maker that guided flat and the toolmaker that fell short of analysts’ estimates. Kioxia’s fall, Business Insider wrote, showed “just how demanding investors in the AI trade have become.” For New York, which trades again on Monday, the toolmakers’ view of 2027 is the counterpoint to Friday’s selling.

The Exports

Korea’s chip exports came to $56.44 billion in October, up 259.4 percent from a year earlier, the trade ministry said on Sunday, though below September’s $60.30 billion, the first month over $60 billion. Chips were about 49 percent of the $115.28 billion Korea exported, by our arithmetic. “Export unit prices and volumes remained high as global big tech companies continued capital investment to secure leadership in the AI industry,” the ministry said.The Month BeforeOctober’s chip exports were 6.4 percent below September’s, by our arithmetic. In September, the ministry said, they had exceeded “$60.0 billion for the first time as memory demand continued to grow.”

Some of the leap is the calendar. The Chuseok holiday moved from October last year to September this year, the ministry noted, which gave this October more working days; adjusted for them, average daily exports rose 76 percent, against 93.7 percent for the month. Imports of semiconductor equipment rose 49.2 percent, to $2.52 billion.

The Toolmakers

Tokyo Electron rose 5.16 percent, to 10,005 yen, after giving its first forecast for the year to March: sales of 3.70 trillion yen, up 51.4 percent, and operating income of 1.169 trillion yen, up 87.1 percent. Analysts had expected about 1 trillion yen of operating income, according to Fisco, a Japanese financial-news service. With Advantest, which rose 2.61 percent, Tokyo Electron added more than 500 points to the Nikkei 225, by the count of a market column on Kabutan; the index closed down 0.33 percent, at 63,081.86.

It expects sales and profit to rise “reflecting expanding demand for AI servers for data centers.” It also set up a buyback of as much as 150 billion yen of its shares by March 31.The BuybackUp to 25 million shares, 1.1 percent of those outstanding excluding treasury stock, or 150 billion yen, bought on the Tokyo exchange between Nov. 1 and March 31. At Monday’s close, 150 billion yen would buy about 15 million shares, by our arithmetic. The company says it may buy only some, or none.

In its presentation, Tokyo Electron put the market for wafer-fabrication equipment at “Approx. $160B” this year and “$210B+” in 2027, an increase of at least about 31 percent on those figures, by our arithmetic. It expects its own sales of new equipment to reach 1,560.0 billion yen in the six months to March, with DRAM taking 35 percent and non-volatile memory 14 percent. A year earlier, memory’s share was 43 percent.

Lasertec rose 8.01 percent after raising its forecast of orders for the year to June 2027, according to Fisco.

SCREEN went the other way. It reported July–September operating income of 40.2 billion yen, up 82.0 percent but short of the roughly 42 billion yen analysts expected, by Fisco’s account, and left its forecast for the year unchanged, at 156.5 billion yen of operating income on sales of 743.0 billion yen. It closed at 9,218 yen.

At its results meeting, according to the company’s own summary, an analyst asked: “With orders currently at record-high levels and the WFE market outlook being revised upward, why have you kept SCREEN’s full-year sales forecast unchanged for this fiscal year?” SCREEN answered that it was streamlining production at its Hikone factories and that the added sales would build toward the end of the fiscal year and “gain momentum in the next fiscal year.” It put a second-quarter shortfall down to the timing of installations, and said that while its procurement for this fiscal year was “largely on track,” “some components, such as devices used in control boards, are becoming difficult to procure”; it is working to secure parts for higher production from the next fiscal year.

The Flash Maker

Kioxia closed at 11,345 yen, below the 11,380 yen it touched on Oct. 23 after a steep October slide, in its first session on a forecast of a flat October–December quarter. It was the stock’s lowest close since at least May, by Yahoo Finance’s data.Kioxia’s YearKioxia’s shares rose more than 750 percent in the first half of the year, Business Insider reported. Monday’s close is 68.7 percent below the peak close of June 22, by our arithmetic from Yahoo Finance’s prices, adjusted for the three-for-one split of Oct. 1.

Kioxia’s guidance of about 2 trillion yen of non-GAAP operating profit for the quarter compared with a consensus of about 2.3 trillion, by Fisco’s account. The company pointed on Friday to exchange rates, while saying data-center demand should stay strong. Bernstein analysts led by Mark Li called the forecast “a massive miss” in an Oct. 30 note, Business Insider reported. Kioxia also cited delays in shipping data-center storage products, and expects memory supplies to stay tight in 2027, with its planned capacity for that year already sold out, according to Business Insider.

The next tests are American: AMD reports after the market closes on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and Qualcomm and Arm follow on Wednesday, Nov. 4. Tokyo is shut on Tuesday for Culture Day, so Kioxia and SCREEN trade again on Wednesday. Applied Materials reports on Nov. 12.