A gauge of Chinese stocks listed in Hong Kong capped its best day in a month, as optimism over earnings drove strong gains in technology shares.
Food delivery behemoth Meituan’s stock jumped 7.4% to be the biggest contributor to the advance on the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, which closed up 2.5%. The company’s results released after Thursday’s market close showed its revenue surged 33% in the second quarter.
Baidu Inc.’s shares climbed 4.7%, extending their rally after the company earlier this week reported sales that rose the most in more than a year. The search-engine operator joined China’s largest internet firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in rediscovering growth.
The gains are coming “on the back of solid earnings from Chinese companies lately,” said Redmond Wong, a market strategist at Saxo Capital Markets.
READ: Meituan Outperformance May Gather Pace as Sales Bump Expected
The Hang Seng Tech Index rose 3.7%, the biggest gain since July 25. The rally came on the heels of a stellar set of results from Nvidia Corp., the standard bearer of the artificial intelligence theme, which sparked gains in technology shares across Asia. The CSI 300 Index, a benchmark of onshore Chinese stocks, rose 0.7%.
Foreign funds boosted holdings of mainland shares after a record selling streak of 13 sessions.
GQG Partners Emerging Markets Equity Fund, one of the world’s biggest fund investing in developing-nation stocks, is slowly rebuilding its exposure to Chinese internet firms, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.
READ: GQG Fund That Exited China Internet Stocks Is Making a Comeback
“We are seeing growth coming back in terms of the quarterly results, and the crackdown is likely coming towards an end, like we saw some high-profile announcements made about the importance of the Internet platform sector,” Sudarshan Murthy, one of the fund’s portfolio managers, said in an interview. “We are slightly more optimistic on China than we were three months ago.”
