The Kospi and other indexes are displayed on a board at Hana Bank's dealing room in Jung-gu, Seoul, on Thursday. [Yonhap]
The Kospi and other indexes are displayed on a board at Hana Bank's dealing room in Jung-gu, Seoul, on Thursday. [Yonhap]

The Kospi reclaimed the 7,000 mark during intraday trading Thursday, driven by improved investor sentiment toward semiconductor stocks after Alphabet disclosed plans to expand its capital spending.

As of 9:23 a.m., the benchmark index was up 211.94 points, or 3.12 percent, at 7,010.07.

The index opened 165.65 points, or 2.44 percent, higher at 6,963.35 and extended its gains through the morning session.

Foreign investors led the rally with net purchases of 592.7 billion won ($400 million) on the main Kospi market, marking their fourth consecutive session of net buying. Individual and institutional investors were net sellers of 503.8 billion won and 79.4 billion won, respectively.

Semiconductor stocks surged after Alphabet raised its capital expenditure outlook, with analysts saying the move signals stronger memory chip demand driven by growing AI investment.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced Wednesday that it was raising its full-year capital expenditure guidance for fiscal 2026 to between $195 billion and $205 billion, up from a previous range of $180 billion to $190 billion.

"Alphabet's strong earnings and the upward revision to its capex guidance helped ease concerns surrounding the domestic semiconductor sector, particularly fears of a memory cycle peak-out," said Han Ji-young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities.

Samsung Electronics was trading up 3.26 percent at 269,000 won, while SK hynix gained 4.15 percent to 1.906 million won.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics surged more than 7 percent after disclosing a large-scale supply deal. The company announced Thursday that it had signed a contract worth around 300 billion won to supply multilayer ceramic capacitors for AI servers to a major global corporation.

Most large-cap stocks were also in positive territory, with Hyundai Motor up 2.75 percent, LG Energy Solution up 3.12 percent and Samsung Biologics up 2.70 percent.

The Kosdaq was up 26.07 points, or 3.47 percent, at 777.16 at the same time.

The index opened up 12.42 points, or 1.65 percent, at 763.51 and also widened its gains through the session.

On the Kosdaq market, foreign and institutional investors were net buyers of 54.1 billion won and 33.3 billion won, respectively, while individual investors were net sellers of 87.8 billion won.

Among top Kosdaq stocks by market capitalization, Alteogen rose 7.09 percent, Ecopro gained 5.32 percent and Wonik IPS advanced 4.03 percent.


moon@heraldcorp.com