Bloomberg
The hunt is on for companies that could benefit from the tailwinds of an unprecedented wave of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the US, and investors are increasingly honing in on the Asian supply chain. Their thesis is that the billions of dollars that Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX), Anthropic PBC and OpenAI are set to raise would prompt a fresh round of technology spending — with a good chunk of that finding its way to the makers of server parts, specialized materials, cooling components and power equipment. For stock markets in Asia, that could be the catalyst for the next leg of a historic rally. Hardware firms in the region are among the biggest winners of the data-center buildout, which has propelled chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc into the trillion-dollar club.
A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York on Oct. 16 last year.
However, after their breakneck gains, some investors have become uneasy about those lofty valuations and are now betting that the next phase would create a new class of champions. “AI IPOs could further fuel the capex boom at a time when Asian chip stocks look stretched,” Eastspring Investments Hong Kong Ltd equity portfolio specialist Ken Wong (黃嘉權) said. “We’re currently underweighting semiconductors in our Asia technology strategy and focusing more on the electronic component makers.”
