Hong Kong's market fell 1.10% today, underperforming other global markets, as internal pressures took hold. The decline was driven by profit-taking in recently strong sectors like banking stocks, alongside structural headwinds. The Middle East situation is intensifying, with Iran adopting a tougher stance following a change in its senior leadership. Having engaged with the US for so long, Iran has identified Washington's vulnerabilities, noting that President Trump is preoccupied with midterm elections and cannot focus on the region. Tehran has warned the US that using nuclear weapons would make its global bases targets, and dismissed Trump's claim that Iran fully controls the Strait of Hormuz.
Gold stocks rebounded on strong earnings. CHINAGOLDINTL (02099) reported its best-ever second quarter and first half results. Net profit for the first half of 2026 surged 153% year-on-year to $512 million, while second-quarter sales revenue jumped 50% to $461 million, driven by higher gold and copper prices. The average realized gold price rose 52% year-on-year to $4,703 per ounce, and the average realized copper price increased 73% to $4.66 per pound, pushing results to record highs. The company also approved the next phase of development at the Jiama mine, planning to expand processing capacity from 50,000 tonnes per day to roughly 160,000 tonnes per day and shift to a large-scale open-pit mining strategy, providing clear long-term production growth expectations. Its shares surged over 14% today. LINGBAO GOLD (03330) rose over 4%.
The broader economic impact of the Strait blockade is a significant drag on the global economy. Earnings pressures are becoming more apparent. A typical example is the CK Hutchison group. Although CK ASSET (01113) reported a 38% surge in attributable profit to shareholders, this was mainly due to a one-time gain of approximately HK$9.787 billion from the sale of a UK joint venture. Excluding this non-recurring item, the underlying profit reflecting core business profitability grew only 5% to HK$6.64 billion. Additionally, while property sales revenue surged over 190% in the first half, profit from this segment actually fell 57% year-on-year, with a gross margin of just 3.5%, an unusually low level. This signaled weak growth, and combined with the decision to skip an interim dividend, the stock fell over 6%. CKH HOLDINGS (00001), a highly diversified global conglomerate, saw its core businesses in ports, retail, infrastructure, and telecoms significantly impacted by external headwinds. Its underlying net profit for the first half grew only 6.4%, but it declared an interim dividend of HK$0.7455 per share, limiting its decline to just over 3%.
On the positive side, sentiment in the tech sector remained favorable. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 0.46%, with memory stocks leading the rally. Western Digital and SK Hynix both rose over 7%, Seagate Technology gained nearly 5%, Micron Technology climbed over 4%, and SanDisk surged over 13%. SanDisk's forward guidance was also strong: it targets mid-to-high double-digit revenue growth by fiscal 2028-2030, projects a non-GAAP gross margin of around 80%, and a non-GAAP operating margin of about 75%. SanDisk committed to returning 100% of remaining cash to shareholders after completing business investments. The company expects AI data centers to drastically boost demand for storage, forecasting the total addressable market for enterprise data center flash memory to reach 1.2 zettabytes by 2030. In a separate interview, SK Hynix Chairman Chey Tae-won emphasized the explosive growth in memory demand, warning of the most severe "memory shortage" next year. GIGADEVICE (03986) and 澜起科技 (06809) both rose over 2%.
On August 14, NVIDIA announced that its Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics has entered full-scale production, supporting the next generation of large-scale, expandable network infrastructure for AI factories. The product is manufactured, packaged, and assembled by supply chain partners including TSMC, SPIL, Lumentum, TFC Communication, and Hon Hai. This architecture is expected to significantly increase demand for optical modules. Research firm LightCounting forecasts that the global data center optical module market could reach $22.8 billion in 2026 and grow to $41.4 billion by 2030. Key stocks like Cambridge Technology (06166) and Zhongji Innolight (03308) rose over 9% and 2%, respectively.
Yesterday's sector focus highlighted that both chipmaking giants SMIC (00981) and Hua Hong Semiconductor (01347) achieved record-high quarterly revenues in the second quarter. However, their stock performances diverged sharply. SMIC surged 4.8%, while Hua Hong tumbled 11.55%. The reason is that SMIC's second-quarter gross margin significantly exceeded its guidance, and its third-quarter guidance for gross margin of 26-28% points to further improvement, confirming an upward cycle. In contrast, Hua Hong's second-quarter results only met the upper end of its guidance, and its third-quarter gross margin guidance of 16-18% shows little sequential improvement. This comparison has led funds to favor SMIC over Hua Hong.
Despite the divergent performances, the overall industry outlook from these two giants suggests that the AI narrative hasn't weakened as some feared. 纳芯微 (02676) announced it expects revenue of approximately RMB 2.54 billion in the first half of 2026, up 66.70% year-on-year. Net profit attributable to shareholders is expected to be around RMB 67 million, a turnaround from a loss of approximately RMB 145 million in the same period last year. Its shares rallied nearly 10% today.
Another catalyst emerged for the PCB sector. NVIDIA's next-generation high-frequency CCL material, M10, for its AI platform has officially entered full-process testing. The M10 material for the Rubin Ultra and Feynman platforms is poised to break the sole-supplier status of 台光电 from the M9 era. Three mainland Chinese manufacturers—生益科技 (600183.SH), 南亚新材 (688519.SH), and 沪电股份 (002463.SZ)—have entered the core testing list. Verification is expected within 2026, with mass production scheduled for the second half of 2027, marking a new PCB material upgrade cycle. Kingboard Holdings (00148) rose over 4%. On the earnings front, 广合科技 (01989) reported first-half 2026 revenue of RMB 4.388 billion, up 80.98% year-on-year, and net profit of RMB 956 million, up 94.39%. Both key performance indicators nearly doubled, and its stock gained nearly 5%.
Yesterday's stock pick, 迈富时 (02556), performed strongly. In the first half, the group achieved total revenue of RMB 1.96 billion, up 111.2% year-on-year; AI application business revenue reached RMB 1.13 billion, up 123.7%; and net profit hit RMB 200 million, a staggering 466.1% increase. Profit growth vastly outpaced revenue growth, demonstrating powerful operating leverage and margin optimization. The company generated a strong positive operating cash flow of RMB 500 million, showcasing its ability to self-fund operations with real cash backing its business model. This perfect closed-loop performance led to a surge of over 15% today.
Key Sector Focus
Guangdong Province's first specialized financial product for the token economy, a "Token Loan," was launched in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou. For example, the Bank of China Guangzhou branch developed a bespoke financing product for small and medium-sized computing power enterprises in Haizhu—a "Computing Power Token Loan." The loan amount is determined based on the contract's token consumption quota. It supports credit, accounts receivable pledge, and order financing as primary collateral methods, and can also be combined with guarantees and mortgages to expand the credit line. Even new companies can apply for financing based on orders if they provide proof of continuous operations from a related entity or a guarantee. The Bank of China has already provided trial credit funds of RMB 28 million. This essentially provides direct capital injection to computing power companies, reinforcing the computing power concept stocks like 粤港湾智算 (01396) and 万国数据-S (09698). The "Token" concept itself is also strengthened, benefiting stocks like 迈富时 (02556) and 迅策 (03317).
Stock Spotlight
汇量科技 (01860): Driven by tech investment, sustained growth, share buyback boosts confidence. The company announced plans to use up to HK$300 million for share buybacks. Its first-quarter 2026 report showed revenue of $581 million, up 32.2% year-on-year, with steady growth. Net profit attributable to shareholders was $34.225 million, up 72.1%, and adjusted net profit was $24.21 million, up 10.6%. The share buyback and equity incentive targets demonstrate the company's confidence in the era of auto-pilot. The company is an overseas mobile app ecosystem-focused advertising and marketing technology service provider. Its Mintegral platform is driving accelerated growth, with 2025 revenue of $2.047 billion (up 35.7%) and net profit of $62 million (up 291.5%). In Q1 2026, net profit continued to grow 60.6% year-on-year, with operational efficiency consistently improving. The global mobile advertising and programmatic buying market remains in a high-growth phase. Global online advertising reached $799 billion in 2025, with mobile advertising at $586.6 billion, accounting for 73% of online ads. The global mobile programmatic ad market was approximately $299 billion in 2025, representing 85-90% of the mobile ad market. The scale of independent third-party programmatic advertising platforms outside the US is accelerating. The open web accounts for about 29% of the US programmatic market, providing long-term growth space for independent platforms. AI is further expanding the app ecosystem supply side. AI coding tools lower the cost of developing and operating small and medium-sized apps. AI multimodal capabilities are driving the expansion of entertainment content like micro-dramas and casual games. In May 2026, overseas micro-drama app downloads reached 250 million, up 76% year-on-year, and global MAA material placements for the entertainment sector grew 15% year-on-year, boosting both acquisition and monetization demand. In the competitive landscape, platform giants have data and brand advantages, but advertisers' increasing sensitivity to ROAS is driving independent platforms to break through, forming a market structure with AppLovin as the leader, followed by a strong group including Mintegral, UnityAds, Liftoff, and Moloco. The core of the company's conversion capability lies in its IAP ROAS capability and the iteration speed of its intelligent bidding system. From 2023 to 2025, the company successively launched IAA, IAA+IAP, IAP Target ROAS products and Target CPE capabilities. In 2024, it continuously refined its intelligent bidding product system, driving Mintegral's revenue to grow 39% sequentially and 64% year-on-year in the second half of 2024. Meanwhile, the company is accelerating its AI infrastructure upgrade. Cloud spending exceeded $100 million for the first time in 2025, and a new generation of infrastructure is expected to go live in October 2026, potentially pushing organizational workflows to a higher level of automation. Regarding its business flywheel, the number of apps integrated with the Mintegral SDK surged from 17,000 in 2022 to 117,000 in 2025, and the number of ad requests from SDKs grew from 16 billion to 148 billion. The company's entire advertising transaction chain is AI-driven, with intelligent bidding flow accounting for over 90% of transactions, enabling millisecond-level real-time bidding decisions, creating a high algorithmic barrier.
Comments