Anthropic提交IPO申请，Meta拟募资950亿美元

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Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Doug Krizner. The big news [music] in the US was Anthropic's filing for its long-awaited IPO. This will obviously serve as a litmus test for new equity tied to the AI trade. And at the same time, Meta Platforms announced it will seek to raise as much as $95 billion from the selling of both common and preferred stock. This will be one of the largest equity offerings in history.

For a look at some of the market action, let's bring in Bloomberg's Paul Dobson. Paul is executive editor for Asia markets and he joins from our studio in Singapore. Where do you want to begin? How about the news with Anthropic? I'm seeing a little bit of a a knock-on effect for markets in the APAC region.

Yeah, it does seem to have led to a little bit of positivity at the start of the Asia day. The confirmation this is going ahead it should be an opportunity to whip up excitement in the AI space. You know, the the flip side of that is you could see that it brings in more competition for investors chasing that sort of same narrative. But at the the kind of clarity that we have now on what that looks like, what the marketing is going to focus on and and [clears throat] therefore, you know, the opportunity especially for the opportunity for up and down the rest of the supply chain seems to be creating a feel-good factor in Asia's markets.

But I would say it's not just that. We've got a lot of fundraising getting done this week which has been sort of an overhang for markets. We have the Broadcom deal, $60 fundraising. We have Meta as you mentioned and also SpaceX pushing ahead with big funding plans as well. So that again sort of has that implication for the rest of the supply chain where Asian companies come to the fore.

So, it seems to be a critical week given the fact that with all of these opportunities out there, demand is going to be a critical story here and whether or not it it rises to meet the occasion. Do you think that's fair?

Well, yeah, absolutely right. It's a critical week, Doug. We've got all of the earnings as well. We've got all the central bank meetings as well. We've got elections left, right, and center. [laughter] There's an awful lot to try to keep keep abreast of. But what we do have, you know, is a little bit of a sign that, you know, after a really awful week and really bruising sort of um pullback from the AI trade and from some of those names last week that turned pretty brutal at times, we do seem to find be finding a little bit of stability and looking to the possibility of more positive news and opportunities to sort of form a base and rebuild from here.

You know, we talk a lot about the impact of AI, what we suspect it may involve including the reduction of workers. I was struck today by the news from Microsoft. The company's going to be offering buyouts to around 60,000 workers part of the effort to trim cost and appears as though some of this is a retooling of the workforce for the AI era. Are we likely to see more cases of this?

I think 100%. I mean, I think that this is what investors want and I think that this is what the AI companies want as well really. So, it's not, you know, without without being cruel or being brutal or anything like that. You know, you need to be able to show that you are making productivity gains, that you are making efficiencies, that you are able to do things with AI that improves and streamlines your your business lines and opportunities.

That doesn't necessarily mean that all of those people are going to disappear from the workplace. Um, what it means is that people are going to have to find different ways, different skills, different um opportunities, um making use of the new technology, in order to continue to sort of progress with their careers and in order to, uh, sort of drive forwards the the economy and growth in this sort of new new age where AI is going to become much more of a feature of all of our lives.

So right now we're seeing a lot of positivity in the South Korean equity market, SK Hynix shares in particular. You and I just a moment ago were referring to the Anthropic story and then you brought up the fact that the the chipmaker Broadcom has arranged $63 billion in a deal to finance AI compute for Anthropic using AI technology from Broadcom, which is kind of an interesting in and of itself. But I'm looking at the GDP data coming out of South Korea, an expansion in uh the third quarter of 1%.

That's quarter on quarter, which was a little bit above forecast. Is a lot of this being driven by what's happening in the semiconductor complex?

Yeah, yeah. Almost almost all of it, I think at the moment. You know, just those exports are absolutely uh off the scale uh for South Korea. And so that's driving a lot of the the revenue. What South Korea as a country would like to see is how that filters back through the economy. Is it just concentrated in a few workers or can it be socialized? You know, can the government take some of the extra taxes that it's going to receive in revenue uh from um the the sales of the AI of the of the um memory chips and and and so on from those companies and and turn it into useful sort of social benefits that help the broader economy.

That's kind of South Korea's uh big big goal here for for for taking advantage of this opportunity. I think Hynix is interesting because it's also talking about um returning more cash to shareholders, which is obviously going to help uh help them. Um they're also investing a lot, you know, the expansion plans. And the big sort of concerns before the memory chip sector, while we've seen that massive pullback, is on the one hand, you know: Can it overcome the sort of cyclicity that we've seen before with kind of booms and busts?

And can those companies stay ahead of competitors, like in China or in the US, that are starting to nibble away at some of their market share? I would say things bode well because they've locked in a lot of long-term contracts, and they look incredibly cheap. I saw this amazing statistic that we had from our Markets Live team at the end of last week, that South Korea is half as expensive or twice as cheap, depending on which way you look at it, as Indonesia.

And remember, Indonesia is at risk of being kicked out not only of emerging market indexes, but skipping frontier and going all the way to sort of a unique case. So, um you know, if you look at valuation metrics, then South Korea definitely looks like a an opportunity for longer-term investors there.

I'm seeing a little bit of weakness in the price of crude oil in New York trading. I think WTI was down from a 6-month high. There is this view out there that a broader escalation in the Middle East will be avoided. I guess we were learning that some senior officials from a number of countries flew to Tehran to revive these talks. To what extent does crude remain the biggest threat to keeping this risk-on move intact, do you think?

Yeah, for me, I think that it's hugely important. Uh I I I I guess you can I I would put it in two different ways. One, the economy is still growing strongly in any case. Um and that AI-powered momentum is still pushing through the earnings complex and pushing through the equities market. Um but on the other hand, the cost of living is definitely a concern that is rising very rapidly up the worry list. And you see that getting expressed in some of the the elections, you know, in in Brazil, that was definitely a concern.

We've got other other votes coming up like New Zealand, um, and of course the US midterms where where that's also an issue. Problem is, you know, the cost of gasoline is so high uh or the cost of diesel which has knock-on impacts for the rest of the supply chain. And on top of that, you know, because the Fed has been raising interest rates, central banks have been raising interest rates, the