Hong Kong stocks opened firmer on Tuesday, building on the positive momentum from the previous session driven by the anticipated meeting between Chinese and US leaders, but gains faded into the close as lingering uncertainties over the US-Iran situation prompted a late retreat. The Hang Seng Index finished the session marginally higher by 0.18%.
President Trump's approval ratings have slid further to a historic low of 32%. Seizing the moment while Trump is preoccupied with midterm elections and sagging poll numbers, Iran has put forward seven preconditions for opening negotiations, stating it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the US lifts its blockade. Iranian President Pezeshkian flew from Tehran to New York on his official aircraft to attend the high-level week of the 81st UN General Assembly, where he is expected to deliver a speech during the general debate tomorrow evening Beijing time. Markets are now awaiting Trump's meeting with Gulf state leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly tonight to discuss next steps regarding Iran.
Where the action is shifting
Meta's personal AI agent, Muse, has taken the App Store by storm. Just six days after launch, downloads have surpassed 900,000, propelling it to the top of the US free app chart and leaving ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude in its wake. Muse's core breakthrough lies in its deep integration with user social context, reading content from Facebook Marketplace and Instagram, while also connecting to Gmail, system calendars, OpenTable, and other third-party services alongside a web browser, enabling cross-platform execution and task completion. Meta's Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang claims Muse can almost instantly save users $1,000.
Tencent Holdings Ltd (ASX: TCEHY) holds a natural competitive advantage in the consumer-grade agent space. WeChat serves as the domestic equivalent of WhatsApp, possessing the complete ecosystem of mini-programs, payments, social features, and official accounts, making it the most suitable vehicle in China for consumer-grade agents. Institutions are reassessing Tencent's Agent commercialization prospects, noting that if WeChat's "Xiaowei" can further refine persistent memory, secure authorization, and cross-service orchestration capabilities, Tencent could build a highly scarce domestic consumer-grade Agent closed loop encompassing "interaction, distribution, payment, and fulfillment." Additionally, the company spent HK$101 million on September 21 to repurchase 235,000 shares, and its stock rose 4.65% today.
DuoDuo AI (02586) began implementing AI applications as early as 2025, boasting a comprehensive retail AI application matrix including AI product selection, AI fresh-food forecasting, AI pricing, AI shelf arrangement, AI loss prevention, AI store operations, AI visual inspection, and AI replenishment. In 2026, this has been upgraded to a merchandise Agent cluster and store Agent cluster, covering the full spectrum of retail scenarios from product selection and processing estimates to dynamic pricing, transport scheduling, risk prevention, store operations, replenishment forecasting, and data insights. The company was the first to integrate with the Doubao ecosystem and recently launched "Duoduo Flash Purchase," which has completed internal testing. Shares rose over 6% today.
The Muse AI agent has ignited fresh enthusiasm in the CPU space, as Agentic AI drives up request chains and tool invocation frequencies, significantly boosting CPU load. The future ratio of CPU to AI chips is expected to gradually rise to 1:1. Yesterday, Nvidia indicated that its CPU business would reach an inflection point next year, projecting more than double revenue growth by fiscal 2028. Montage Technology (06809) has seen its PCIe Retimer chips ramp up in volume, now fully deployed across server scenarios. General-purpose servers typically carry 2-4 chips per unit, while AI server usage scales significantly with GPU configuration. The company's research into Switch chips has opened further growth headroom, with shares climbing over 8%. Another notable mover, Guanghe Technology (01989), ranked first among domestic CPU motherboard PCB manufacturers for computing servers and third globally, advanced nearly 7%.
The 2026 Yunqi Conference is underway in Hangzhou from September 22-24, with Agentic AI as its core focus, pushing the industry shift from large-model competition to deployable agents and completing the full-stack technology chain spanning "chips, cloud infrastructure, large models, and agent applications." Alibaba's T-Head semiconductor unit unveiled the strongest domestic AI chip, the Zhenwu V900, offering three times the computational power of the Zhenwu M890. A single cluster built on this chip can scale to 500,000 cards, supporting frontier model training and inference. Alibaba Group (09988) rose nearly 2%, while Lenovo Group (00992) and Legend Holdings (03396) continued their gains of over 2%.
Every day, an eligible stock takes the lead. Ying Xing Holdings (01440) has demonstrated remarkable strength, surging over 14% intraday today to a historic high, accumulating a 130% gain over the past two weeks. The stock's appeal lies in its compelling narrative on two fronts: first, its IP derivative business is genuinely profitable, and securing major top-tier IP licenses could drive significant earnings; second, its AI-driven financial strategy investments yielded a floating profit of 27.3 million in the interim report. If these investments mature into profitable AI enterprises or generate revenue from AI computing power or supply chain SaaS, the financial statements could show meaningful upside. This is a high-elasticity sentiment stock with strong imagination, rising nearly 10% again today.
Zhonghuan New Energy (01735) has positioned itself on the AI track, leveraging its clean power generation and energy storage infrastructure to plan construction of an AI computing center. At the SNEC 2026 exhibition in June, the company officially launched its "Huanxi-AIDC" specialized photovoltaic modules for AI data centers. In the first half of 2026, revenue reached approximately HK$6.33 billion, up 56.3% year-on-year, with AI computing revenue hitting RMB 1.047 billion, accounting for 16.5% of total revenue, establishing a compound growth engine combining new energy and computing power. Shares jumped over 10% today.
Meta Connect 2026 is scheduled for September 24 Beijing time, with the market closely watching for its consumer-grade AI smart glasses launch, featuring lightweight design, on-device agents, photo translation, and spatial AI. Following Muse's explosive debut, expectations are building for deep hardware-AI agent integration. Rumors suggest announcements on hardware pricing, shipment timelines, and contract manufacturing partners. A key Hong Kong beneficiary, Conant Optical (02276), is seeing rapid revenue growth in XR, with the second half of 2026 marking a critical commercialization phase. The company has accumulated over 40 projects with approximately 20 leading smart glasses manufacturers domestically and internationally. Two domestic clients have secured exclusive supply agreements, one overseas key client is in the final production preparation stage, and two other overseas major clients have completed initial validation and entered small-batch trial production. Shares rose over 9% today.
JPMorgan has issued a bullish call on China Merchants Securities (06099), noting it holds the largest exposure among Chinese brokerages to ChangXin Memory Technologies, involving approximately RMB 27 billion in unrealized gains, only partially reflected in the current share price. The bank estimates that as brokers begin recognizing related investment income following ChangXin's July listing, China Merchants Securities' third-quarter earnings could grow approximately 190% year-on-year, significantly outperforming peers. Shares rose nearly 2% today.
An article published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's media outlet on September 22 argued against the so-called "de-CATL" narrative, stating that promoting such rhetoric artificially pits leading domestic companies against the rest of the supply chain, which does not align with China's current stage of automotive industry development. A mature industry requires both the growth of more excellent companies and the continued advancement of those that have achieved global competitiveness, rather than leveling the playing field by weakening leaders. Ultimately, the market will decide. Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) (03750) rebounded modestly.
Key sector watch
Starting October 1, overseas leading computing platforms will implement their second round of across-the-board on-demand rental price increases, with B300 prices rising approximately 56% year-to-date. Domestically, billion-yuan-scale computing orders are landing in rapid succession, with long-term contracts already extending to 2028. Nebius, a major European AI computing service provider backed by Nvidia, has disclosed plans to raise GPU rental prices by 17-21% for H100, H200, B200, and B300 units starting October 1, reflecting persistently tight supply of high-end overseas GPU resources and continued premium pricing for Nvidia's Blackwell series. Key Hong Kong names to watch include GDS Holdings (09698), Sunny Vision Internet (01686), GBA AI COMP (01396), and Edianyun (02436).
Stock spotlight: China Nonferrous Mining (01258)
Copper production is growing steadily while net profit surges impressively. In the first half of the year, the company achieved revenue of $2.261 billion, up 29% year-on-year; total profit of $892 million, up 68%; net profit attributable to shareholders of $434 million, up 65%; and a comprehensive gross margin of 42%, an improvement of nearly 10 percentage points from the same period last year. The strong performance, which set a new record, was primarily driven by higher copper and sulfuric acid prices. In H1 2026, the average selling price for blister copper and anode copper reached $11,932 per tonne, up 36.0% year-on-year; cathode copper averaged $11,993 per tonne, up 38.3%; and sulfuric acid averaged $370 per tonne, up 64.4%. The sharp increases in core product prices drove gross profit up 68.12% to approximately $959 million. Due to rising copper prices, the cost of purchased copper concentrate increased, pushing the per-tonne cost of blister and anode copper to $8,888 (up 24.8% year-on-year), while cathode copper per-tonne costs rose to $4,964 (up 5.6%) mainly from higher purchased mine costs. Sulfuric acid unit costs declined 19.1% to $68 per tonne.
The company is targeting a doubling of its own copper production capacity, aiming to grow from the current approximately 140,000-150,000 tonnes to around 300,000 tonnes by 2030. Medium-to-long-term mined copper capacity is expected to increase by 193,000 tonnes. Cathode copper production at Luanshya and Gangfufu Mining is growing steadily with significantly improved profits. The Luanshya new mine shallow deposit project is expected to commence production in 2027, adding approximately 12,000 tonnes of copper capacity; the Gangfufu Msesa ore body is slated for completion by end-2028, adding approximately 15,000 tonnes; the Luanshya deep deposit, Chambishi Samba copper mine, and Bikala project are expected to come online in 2029, contributing approximately 108,000 tonnes of combined capacity; the Africa Southeast ore body Phase II is targeted for 2030, adding approximately 12,000 tonnes; and Phase III, expected after 2032, will add another 46,000 tonnes upon full ramp-up. Construction projects are progressing smoothly, with the Luanshya new mine, Gangfufu Msesa, Samba copper mine, Chambishi Southeast ore body Phase II, and Kazakhstan Bikala project scheduled for phased commissioning between 2027 and 2030. The company completed a $300 million convertible bond issuance on September 2, with all proceeds earmarked for the Luanshya No. 28 shaft sulfide ore project in Zambia, a core expansion initiative under the 15th Five-Year Plan. Meanwhile, a dividend of HK$0.087154 per share was paid on September 17, 2026, reflecting the company's commitment to rewarding shareholders and bolstering confidence.
Comments