Asian shares gave up earlier gains on Thursday as AI-related earnings announcements prompted wildly mixed responses, raising the stakes for Amazon and Intel results due later in the day.

In Hong Kong, the benchmark Hang Seng Index opened down six points, or 0.03 percent, at 23,088.

The tech index slipped 19 points, or 0.5 percent, to 3,834 while the China Enterprises Index inched down six points, or 0.08 percent, to 7,797.

Up north, the Shanghai Composite Index opened down four points, or 0.13 percent, at 3,676.

The Shenzhen Component Index fell 94 points, or 0.82 percent, to 11,379 while the ChiNext Index lost 38 points, or 1.46 percent, to open at 2,596.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei opened 172 points, or 0.27 percent, at 64,126 but regained ground to be 11 points off the pace at one stage before noon.

In Seoul, the Kospi inched up four points, or 0.08 percent, to open at 6,017, gained ground before slipping into loss territory to the tune of 182 points at one stage before lunch.

The opening losses for Asian markets came as a hefty cash burn at Alphabet sent its shares 10 percent lower in after-hours trading, wiping nearly US$400 billion off its market value. That drove Nasdaq futures one percent lower. Microsoft, by contrast, beat forecasts with better-than-expected cash flows that lifted its shares by three percent.

Overnight, the US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady as widely expected, but two committee members voted for a hike. Chairman Kevin Warsh struck a more confident note on the inflation outlook during his press conference, sparking a rally in Treasuries.

However, the bigger test came from earnings. Samsung Electronics said on Thursday its operating profit rose nearly ninefold to a record high in the third quarter, driven by robust demand for AI chips. Its shares still slid more than four percent.

"The reason why Alphabet is down is because their traditional revenue service of ad generation has been impacted by the very thing which is the AI boom. So it's causing a mix of results for Google," said Jamie Hannah, deputy head of investments at VanEck.

"Both of Alphabet and Microsoft confirmed that the AI revenue generation is still solid. We saw that through the data centre growth, the cloud services. So that part of the business is solid, which then flows into a lot of the information coming out of Asia with SK Hynix yesterday as well in Korea." (Reuters & Xinhua)


Edited by Aaron Tam