芯片股创最佳季度表现，AI需求驱动但投资者担忧持续性

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenbec on Bloomberg Radio. >> You're not going to be surprised by this at all if you've been paying attention. We're talking, of course, about semiconductor stocks. Heading for their best quarter ever, extending an extraordinary start to the year driven by insatiable demand for AI equipment. But after recent jitters sent the stocks tumbling, investors are wondering how much further can the rally go. >> Yeah, let's see what Ian King has to say. He's Bloomberg News US semiconductor reporter. He is in our Bloomberg News San Francisco bureau. He is always our gut check and reality check when it comes to the semiconductor world. Hey Ian, it is good, great actually to have you here with Tim and me. Um quite a run, quite a bounce back uh that we have seen in semis. The run in your view in the second quarter. Is it justified against the backdrop of the fundamentals of these companies?

And I think we have to be smart here, right? Because not every semi-name is the same. >> No, you're you're absolutely right. We've seen a huge runup overall. Um, but some companies have run up way more than others. And if you look at what that's done for the valuations, then that's clearly something that investors can key upon and decide. At the moment, it looks like we we don't really care. You've got a company like Intel, which I believe is the second best performer on the socks this year, and it's um trading at sort of o above 500 times. Whereas a company like Micron which I believe is still the best performer this year is trading I think in the 20s. So there doesn't appear to be a huge amount of differentiation between companies that are generating you know really good earnings and companies that are still got to prove themselves. Um maybe that's how things will pan out as we move forward. You know, Carol taught me this great function on the terminal at the end of the first year of working together where you can just look at member ranked returns for certain categories. I just did that for the socks. Ian, the worst performer so far this year, Nvidia only up 6.5%. >> It's notable given that Nvidia was kind of the company that at least for a lot of people started this all. It was the one that really surged back a few years ago and continued that surge. What has been Nvidia's challenge this year?

>> I mean I you know just reading the reports and and talking to investors there is no problem. There's nothing wrong. The growth that it is showing from an incredibly high level at this point is still there. All of the demand drivers is still in place. It's it's getting new products out quickly. The new products are doing okay. So in terms of you know the fundamentals, it doesn't appear to be anything wrong. But what people have told me is that, you know, the story has changed. We've we we've switched. Uh, you know, going back maybe two years ago, Nvidia's position was absolutely unchallenged. You could say it's probably not challenged yet, but there is more talk, there's more stories, there's more narrative that's looking at other companies, new offerings that might come in that might begin to steal a little bit of market share from Nvidia. So, that's really what it's facing. It's more of a the story isn't as fresh as it was rather than there's anything fundamentally wrong. >> So Ian, I had this great teacher courtesy of Bloomberg who has taught me about semiconductor cycles and how demand increases and then you have semiconductors ramp up uh to meet that demand and then you have over supply. That teacher is you. And so um I just you know dare I say is something different this time around. Are we seeing the build happen or I feel like we've had some conversations around this table with maybe Mandep Singh or you know where or and others that you know companies are are careful about not overbuilding or building too quickly but where are we on that?

Yeah, I mean that's sort of ongoing tension within the industry right now. We have all of this insatiable demand signaling going on. All of this capex spending keeps going up and we're talking, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars that's been committed to spending on this gear. So there's the demand side is absolutely there. So then well why isn't supply ramping up to meet that?

And primarily that's the memory chip guys. They're the kind of bottleneck at the moment. And the answer to that is they're not stupid. They've seen this movie before. Of course, they're going to increase supply. Of course, they're going to tell their customers that they're going to increase supply, but they're not going to do it at this kind of reckless breakneck speed that we've seen in the past. I mean, there's only really three of them now that matter. Um, so it's very clear who's doing what, and there's no kind of wild cavalry charge into the kind of capacity bills that we've seen in the past. I mean, three years ago, these guys were losing money. So there's an element of uh sort of common sense exerting itself that maybe some of the you know the executives running Samsung running SKH Highix running Micron perhaps are wise enough to you know that this is perhaps too good to be true. So they're going to be careful they're not going to get ahead of their skis. So we're seeing that tension right now. >> Ian to to Carol's point you have been doing this and and covering this beat for a while. You've seen different cycles. you were actually in Korea years ago covering some of the companies that are now worth upwards of a trillion dollars that we've been talking about for the past few months sky and the like. I I'm curious about uh where not where we are in the cycle because Carol was asking you about that, but really if there's any historical parallel with the dot boom and then bust what we saw in the '9s or maybe even what we saw in the early 2000s. Is there anything is there any historical correlary here?

Well, I mean the culerary would always be that you know good times particularly for the memory chip guys always been the the herald of of doom and gloom and disaster that follows shortly. >> This time though they are actually saying it out loud. They're making that dangerous proclamation that it is different and it's certainly we're certainly seeing a new area. You know that the extent that it's happening is is is enormous. But really we have to be careful. We have to be cleareyed because computing has changed. Computing has found a new form. It's found a new market, but it's still restricted to computing. What we need, I think, for this to to to gain confidence and gain the sense that, hey, it's going to last longer is AI to get out there in society to have more profound impact on the economy. Right now, it's made coding much better. Um, it's made internet search much better. It's made some of the things that we all do on computers on a regular basis easier, but what else has it done?

And I think if we saw more signs of that, if we saw more signs of it really getting into new industries, pharmaceutical for example, >> then perhaps there'd be more confidence that this isn't just a bigger bubble than we've seen in the past. >> Yeah, I feel like it just plays so largely into this whole AI narrative, right?

Like just how big is this going to impact our world?Then obviously that will determine how much we need in terms of semiconductors. Um you are a great teacher Ian King. Thank you so much. Always always Ian King. He's Bloomberg News US Semiconductor reporter. He's out there in San Francisco. >> Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this. >> You're listening to the Bloo