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NEW YORK — Global stock markets rose slightly on Friday as investors digested a wave of corporate announcements, while the Nasdaq failed to get a major boost from the solid debut of South Korean chip titan SK hynix on Wall Street.
The supplier of advanced memory chips used for AI technology raised $26.5 billion for its mega US listing Friday, in one of the world's biggest-ever stock sales.
The chipmaker set a price of $149 for each American depositary share — slightly more than its Seoul closing price Thursday — ahead of its debut on the Nasdaq.
That meant it had raised $26.5 billion, the most for a US listing by a foreign firm.
The US listing surged nearly 13 per cent in its first day of trading, closing at $168.
SK hynix, along with Samsung and Micron, is a heavyweight in the global market for the high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers alongside other data-crunching semiconductors.
The South Korean company "got a warm reception, lessening some of the concerns around artificial intelligence and the questions that investors are having about the cyclicality of the semiconductor business and the return on investment," Angelo Kourkafas, from Edward Jones, told AFP.
The Nasdaq's composite index dipped at the start of trading and spent most of the morning in the red, and was flat as SK hynix shares began to trade, before heading into the green.
South Korea led gains in Asia, while European markets ended the day mixed.
Shares in Meta shot up six per cent after the Facebook and Intagram-parent launched Muse Spark 1.1, an AI model for computer coders, putting it in more direct competition with leaders OpenAI and Anthropic.
British mobile phone giant Vodafone saw its share price surge 12.6 per cent, topping London's FTSE 100 index, after French tycoon Xavier Niel was set to pay 5.1 billion euros ($5.8 billion) to become the group's largest shareholder.
On the second-tier FTSE 250, EasyJet shares soared 14.1 per cent after US investor Apollo swooped in with a $7.7-billion takeover offer for the British no-frills airline.
Oil prices retreated after spiking earlier in the week as the United States and Iran exchanged fire again.
"As we move to the end of the week, volatility has retreated and fears about an escalation in tensions between the US and Iran appear overdone," said Kathleen Brooks, research director at trading group XTB.
"If we do not return to a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the impact from the war in the Middle East should not leave a lasting scar on the global economy," she added.
