Asian Chip Stocks Sell Off: SK Hynix -15%, SoftBank -10%
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- SK Hynix slid more than 15% despite posting record quarterly profit and revenue, as the chip giant missed analyst estimates in a session that analysts blamed on Korean deleveraging rather than fundamentals
- Japanese chip names declined steeply: Kioxia dropped 14%, Tokyo Electron fell 12.6%, and SoftBank Group — viewed as an AI proxy through its Arm stake — lost nearly 10%
- Taiwan's TSMC was 3.9% lower, while mainland China's ChiNext 300 index lost 0.63% and the Hang Seng China Semiconductor Chips Index fell more than 6%
- U.S. semiconductor stocks fell overnight, feeding the Asian slide: Intel dropped nearly 6%, AMD lost 8%, Sandisk shed 14%, and SK Hynix's U.S.-listed shares dropped 9%
- Aberdeen Investments' Kieron Poon called the weakness "the ongoing deleveraging process in Korea and softer sentiment towards global technology stocks," while arguing the pullback has brought valuations to "more attractive levels"
- Riedel Research Group's David Riedel said investors are "giving back a little bit of the froth that was in the AI market" and that memory chipmakers "will be fine" despite giving back sudden gains
- Chinese internet stocks listed in Hong Kong bucked the regional weakness, with Tencent up 4%, Meituan up 2.49%, and Alibaba, Baidu, and Kuaishou all trading higher
Why it matters: The drop is being framed by sell-side voices as a leverage-and-froth unwind rather than a thesis break, but SK Hynix's 15% slide came after it missed estimates despite record profit — suggesting the deleveraging in Korean chip names is exposing results days that strong revenue could not mask, while Chinese internet names quietly decoupled.
