By YURI KAGEYAMA and MATT OTT (AP Business Writers)
Wall Street rebounded in off-hours trading Thursday, pulled higher by technology companies after chipmaker Nvidia posted another huge profit after the bell a day earlier.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.7%, while futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq shot up 1.1%, carried by Nvidia and other chipmakers. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked less than 0.2% higher.
Nvidia, whose chipmaking prowess has made it an icon of the artificial intelligence boom, reported that its net income in the first quarter rose sevenfold to $14.88 billion. Its revenue more than tripled, to just over $26 billion. The California company also announced a 10-for-1 stock split, helping to boost its shares 7% before the bell Thursday.
Nvidia’s performance also boosted chipmakers Micron and Advanced Micro Devices, which rose 4% and 3% respectively.
On the losing end early Thursday was Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster. The concert and event producer tumbled more than 8% in premarket on media reports that the U.S. Department of Justice is close to announcing that it will seek to break up the company for antitrust violations.
News Corp. — the owner of The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other publications — jumped more than 7% after it announced it had completed a deal that gives OpenAI access to all of its media content.
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX climbed 0.4%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 was unchanged.
In Asian trading, semiconductor related companies were also lifted by Nvidia’s profit profit report.
Taiwan’s Taiex hit a record high, gaining 0.3% to close at 21,607.43.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 1.3% to finish at 39,103.22. Semiconductor-related companies lead the advance, with tool-maker Disco Corp. jumping 8% and chip test equipment maker Advantest Corp. surging 5.4%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 sank 0.5% to 7,811.80. South Korea’s Kospi fell nearly 0.1% to 2,721.81 as the central bank kept is policy rate unchanged, as expected.
Chinese shares fell back as investors questioned whether a fresh flurry of policies to help the troubled property sector will suffice to end the industry’s crisis. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 1.7% to 18,868.71, while the Shanghai Composite shed 1.3% to 3,116.39.
In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude rose 57 cents to $78.14 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 56 cents to $82.46 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar fell to 156.59 Japanese yen from 156.80 yen. The euro rose to $1.0852 from $1.0824.
On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 0.3% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 0.5%. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2%.
The latest minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy meeting released Wednesday showed Fed officials suggesting it “would likely take longer than previously thought” to get inflation fully under control following disappointingly high readings early this year.
And even though Fed Chair Jerome Powell said after that meeting that the Federal Reserve is more likely to cut rates than to hike them, the minutes said “various participants” were willing to raise rates if inflation worsens. That rekindled hopes on Wall Street that the Fed will be able to cut its main interest rate at least once this year.
