Asia-Pacific markets fell Wednesday as traders assessed July business activity data from Japan and Australia, and tech earnings from the U.S.
Tech and EV stocks largely slumped in the region after U.S. tech giants Alphabet and Tesla reported their second-quarter earnings, with Tesla falling short of estimates.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.14%, reversing earlier gains, while mainland China’s CSI 300 slipped 0.69%. EV stock Li Auto fell 4%, while counterparts Nio and Xpeng lost over 5%.
Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — will invest 1 billion yuan ($138 million) for a new business headquarters in China, Reuters reported. Trading in Taiwan was suspended due to a typhoon.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.11% to close at 39,154.85, dragged by utilities and real estate stocks, while the broad-based Topix was down 1.42% to end at 2,793.12. Flash data from the au Jibun Bank showed that the country’s business activity returned to growth.
Japan’s composite purchasing managers’ index for July was at 52.6, up from 49.7 in June. This was “indicative of solid growth” among Japanese private sector firms, the report said.
Late Tuesday, automaker Toyota said it will buyback 806.85 billion yen ($5.17 billion) of its shares from major Japanese banks and insurers, including Tokio Marine, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.
The company said this was part of “ongoing efforts to reduce cross-shareholdings in order to build a lean balance sheet. Shares of Toyota rose 0.13%.
South Korea’s Kospi was 0.56% lower at 2,758.71, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.26% and finished at 814.25, the only major Asian benchmark in positive territory.
Heavyweight Samsung Electronics plunged 2.26%. The South Korean electronics company is still grappling with a strike from its largest workers union, with talks on Tuesday yielding no results, according to the National Samsung Electronics Union, which has about 30,000 members.
Separately, Reuters reported that chip giant Nvidia had cleared Samsung chips for use in a processor for the China market.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was little changed at 7,963.7, after the country saw its private sector activity expand at a slower pace in July, with the composite purchasing managers’ index dropping to a six-month low of at 50.2 compared to 50.7 in June, according to Juno Bank.
Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 dipped 0.16% to close at 5,555.74, a day after it notched its best performance in more than a month.
The Nasdaq Composite inched down 0.06%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.14%.
