Weaker-Than-Expected US Tech Earnings Trigger Stock Correction
US tech giants Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Intel recently reported earnings, with some profits, cash flows or guidance falling short of market expectations, triggering sharp stock corrections and refocusing market attention on the monetization of AI investments. After Alphabet reported earnings, its share price not only fell below the annual moving average but also formed a death cross, weakening the medium- to long-term technical outlook. The market value of Berkshire's Alphabet holdings has shrunk by about US$7 billion from the peak at the end of June, about NT$224 billion, while Meta shares have also fluctuated near the annual moving average.
Customer Concentration Toward Large Cloud Providers Reduces Bad-Debt Risk
According to Mirror Media, analysts note that Elon Musk previously warned that more than 200 emerging cloud computing vendors face bankruptcy risks, including Nebius, CoreWeave and others. Such vendors are themselves high-risk customers, and once their funding chains break, AI computing demand will concentrate with the well-funded four major cloud service providers Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook. Hon Hai, Quanta and Wistron were already first-tier contract manufacturers for these large vendors, and after the customer mix reshuffle, bad-debt risk is reduced, with long-term orders and profits better secured.
Computing Shifts to Inference With Continued Hardware Specification Upgrades
In the past 2 years the market heavily purchased chips for large-model training, and now as large vendors such as Microsoft and Amazon face pressure to monetize AI applications, infrastructure is accelerating its shift toward inference applications. To reduce reliance on expensive Nvidia chips, North American large vendors are expanding investment in self-developed inference chips, such as Google TPU, which will drive demand for TSMC advanced-process foundry services, as well as long-term business opportunities for ASIC design service vendors such as MediaTek, Alchip and Global Unichip. The global data center expansion wave has not stopped because of the stock correction, with large vendors' capital expenditures this year still set to hit new highs and capacity remaining tight. As Nvidia's high-power cabinets enter mass production and generational transition, manufacturing bottlenecks remain in areas such as liquid cooling, high-specification power supply units and high-bandwidth memory, and Taiwan vendors that can overcome yield challenges and enter the high-end component supply chain still enjoy advantages in long-term product pricing and gross margin.
Profit Momentum Remains With Positioning Opportunities After Correction
Institutional investors estimate that driven by AI demand, overall corporate profits in Taiwan's technology supply chain still have double-digit growth momentum this year, and the foundation for a medium- to long-term bullish structure remains. The current sharp stock decline mainly reflects deleveraging and digestion of excessive valuations, and when share prices return to reasonable or even undervalued ranges, it instead provides long-term value investors with positioning opportunities. Investing involves risks, please be cautious.