Semiconductor shares extended gains in Monday trading after Taiwan's Foxconn, which assembles Apple (AAPL) iPhones and Nvidia (NVDA) products, posted record fourth-quarter revenue—driven by the boom in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
SOXL up 12%; Micron up 10%; ASML rose 5.5%; TSMC up 4%; Nvidia rose 3.3%; Broadcom up 3.2%; AMD rose 3%.
Foxconn, whose formal name is Hon Hai Precision Industry, said Sunday that its fourth-quarter revenue gained 15% year-over-year to 2.132 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($65.09 billion). Its December sales rose 42% to NT$654.83 billion.
"With strong demand from AI servers, revenue experienced strong growth YoY," the company said.
As Wall Street analysts head to Sin City to meet with management from top tech companies, all eyes are on Nvidia. Nvidia typically makes important product announcements at the CES trade show — such as last year’s debut of new desktop graphics chips for gaming and AI — while Huang’s commentary is expected to give investors a preview of what’s ahead for the artificial intelligence giant and the burgeoning artificial intelligence market.
Huang will deliver his keynote.
His address comes as investors eagerly await the rollout of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell AI chips, which analysts have said will drive a massive new cycle of demand for the company’s products, despite fears of a slowdown in AI spending. After a design flaw pushed back the rollout of its Blackwell lineup and rumors of overheating problems in servers using those chips circulated, Nvidia confirmed in a November earnings call that Blackwell production is ramping up in the current quarter, with the chips shipping to customers ahead of expectations. Stifel analyst Ruben Roy has suggested that the Blackwell AI chips represent a $100 billion market opportunity for Nvidia.
In another potential tailwind for Nvidia shares, Truist Securities analyst William Stein said in a note Monday that he believes Nvidia will announce a standalone CPU, or central processing unit — the “brain” of a computer, distinct from Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell GPUs, or graphics processing units — at CES. Stein has said in past notes that such an announcement could open up another $35 billion market opportunity for the company.
