OpenAI年化收入预期下调致半导体股抛售

[music] Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. [music] Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Doug Krishnner. The US equity market struggled a bit with some negativity regarding the AI trade [music] and interestingly it involved Open AI. The company is on track to generate annualized revenue of roughly $50 billion. That's based on its current performance. Yes, it's an uptick from the prior year, but it's less than the near $70 billion in some recently reported estimates.

So, with that news, we had some selling in semiconductor stocks. A key question may be whether the AI spending spree will become harder to justify. We had the Philadelphia semiconductor index down about 3.4%. Now, it may be a little difficult to gauge the reaction in the APAC region since we have market holidays today in South Korea and Taiwan. For a closer look at what we're seeing in markets, let's bring in Bloomberg's Paul Dobson.

Paul is executive editor for Asia Markets and he joins from our studio in Singapore. Thank you for being here. How would you go about trying to ascertain sentiment as it relates to the chip stocks if we have South Korea and Taiwan closed today?

Yeah. Hi Doug. Well, we do have Japan open, so that gives us something to go off. And of course, SoftBank is very much tied to open AI. It's opened week. We'll see how that unfolds through the day. We also have the likes of Kioxia, which will give us a little bit more of a steer on how people are viewing various chip makers. That also opens a little bit to the downside. So the Nikkay overall is the best um lean that we have or the best steer that we have on on the AI trade in Asia's markets.

We also have US futures and um at the start of the day they were up a little bit. So um pointing to signs of a modest uh recovery from uh the dip that we saw in US trading. I think the one other thing that really has captured the attention and the hearts and the minds of uh audience in this part of the world has been the firm deal which um they were trying to do an IPO in Australia for their data centers. It looks like that has been sheld postponed or at least isn't going to happen in the form that they were hoping.

I'm wondering what's going on with this AI trade right now because Thursday in the AP pack we had Samsung electronics and Taiwan semi both reporting blowout results. The market seemed to react I don't want to say with a shrug necessarily because the stocks were down. In the UK Samsung I think fell about 3.8% and here in the states US shares in TSMC were down about 3%. What is this telling us? Have these stocks come so far so quickly, maybe when you get a little bit of news that is slightly disappointing that there is a strong negative reaction?

I think that there's an increasingly high bar for the AI companies and prospective AI um fundraising deals right now to overcome. Uh and so that's definitely a challenge to beat the expectations that the market's already priced in is difficult. Um, with uh Samsung, I wouldn't take it too hard because Samsung often um has a down day the day that it puts out that initial uh comment on sales. They did increase ninefold um as you say.

So it it it it's certainly um you know uh strong for the moment and what investors will want to look at is how long does that stretch out into the horizon or you know is there a risk that once again the memory uh chip stocks have a cyclical kind of um trading pattern whereby they start to top out and the long-term picture starts to erode. what they've been doing is trying to lock in uh longerterm sales into the future with customers as that will give them more certainty on on pricing and volume as well.

So that is something that people will certainly pay more attention to when we get Samsung and SKH Highix's um earnings uh reports. I think um the the other thing though is is is just that broader picture of that anxiety over funding costs. Um because it feels like the companies almost see this as a whatever it takes kind of um uh mission right now. If it if you're going to charge me 11% for my uh loans so that I can build my dent data center, so be it.

I need to build this data center no matter what. But that's going to squeeze margins and make the profitability and the investment case harder for investors to stomach.

Is there the view that we're going to continue to see upward pressure on treasury yields whether we're talking about US treasuries or even in the case of Japan JGBs that there is still so much inflation concern right now particularly when you look at the price action in crude oil yields are probably going to remain at elevated levels. to your point about funding cost, you got to look at what the curves are telling us, right?

Yeah, that's certainly going to matter a lot in terms of that fundraising in the in the credit space. Um market positioning would suggest that people still see the potential for US yields to go higher. Um people have been reloading their shorts um in recent days. uh but you know we have got to pretty high levels and I think more and more voices are also emerging uh suggesting that at these yields um it's worth buying um even if there's a chance that we get slightly higher yields from here you're protected to a certain extent by um those regular payments now so the uh sort of longerterm horizon for bonds starts to look a little bit more appealing and rosy we had a strong US 30-year auction um on Thursday and the market responded pretty uh favorably to that as well.

So, it seems that there's two-way risk right now. I think what you're what you pointed to though, Doug, is really the crucial key for us to to to watch out for in terms of where the bond market's going, and that's really the oil price and the price of those refined products as well. It had a bit of a jump yesterday. I'd say for all the bad news that we had in the oil markets, it probably was uh less extreme than people might have feared.

It wasn't the sort of volatility that we saw when we were at the start of the uh war in the Middle East. Even though there was I'll give you a little list. Um there was uh the you the potential um or reports of the US um sizing up options for another attack on Iran. There was a strike on Tanka near Qatar which is deep into the Gulf of Hormuz which we haven't seen for a month or so. There's um the escalating tension between Saudi and uh the Yemeni Houthis.

Um there was the the storm in the Gulf of Mexico which has shut in uh some production as well. Um so several factors and then if you look at the cost of shipping as well that's really spiking higher. So um oil traders have a lot to uh digest at the moment and if that translates into higher oil prices you're right that that will automatically put more pressure or more upward pressure on bond yields around the world. And to the point that you're making in New York trading, I think we had WTI up more than 3 and a.5%.

We're down a bit right now in Asian trading and you mentioned that we do have price action today in Japan. The market is obviously up and running on the last day of the trading week and we're basically getting the earning season underway. Is is it off to a strong start, would you say, in Japan?

I think that we'll need to see more numbers before we really get much certainty there. What we had um this week that sort of jolted the trading a little bit in Japan and made it a little bit more difficult to read was this big rebalancing of the topics index whereby uh more than 600 uh of the smaller companies are are most likely going to get cold from the index. Um there's a little bit of a review period but they're basically on watch and that should make um it overall more accessible for international investors.

But in the meantime, there's going to be some adjustments and some uh uh jockeying for positions there.

Talk to me a little bit about the macro story in Japan. I was reading on the Bloomberg terminal that a second supple