People walk past the logo of Samsung Electronics in Seoul on July 7, 2022. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd turned in its best April-June profit since 2018 on Thursday, underpinned by strong sales of memory chips to server customers even as demand from inflation-hit smartphone makers cools.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images
Asia’s semiconductor and associated stocks slipped Wednesday morning, following a steep plunge in Nvidia’s share price in the U.S. overnight.
In the U.S., chipmaker Nvidia plunged more than 9% in regular trading, leading semiconductor stocks lower amid a sell-off on Wall Street. Economic data published Tuesday resurfaced jitters about the health of the U.S. economy. Nvidia shares continued sliding in post-market trading Tuesday, falling 2%, after Bloomberg reported that the company received a subpoena from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust investigation.
Nvidia’s value chain extends to South Korea, namely, memory chip maker SK Hynix and conglomerate Samsung Electronics.
Samsung shares slid 2.6%, while SK Hynix fell more than 6%, dragging the wider Kospi index down 2.5%. The small-cap Kosdaq fell 3%. SK Hynix provides high bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia, which are used in AI chipsets.
Tokyo Electron dropped 7%, while semiconductor testing equipment supplier Advantest shed more than 8%.
Japanese investment holding company SoftBank Group, which owns a stake in chip designer Arm, fell 6%.
Contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company declined 4.3%. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units which power large language models — machine learning programs that can recognize and generate text.
Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — lost 5%. It has a strategic partnership with Nvidia.
On Tuesday stateside, Nvidia wiped out $279 billion in market cap.
—CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
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