Asian Hedge Fund Manager, Long Short Equity, Macro

David Mudd

Cross Asset Strategy

<ul>
<li>The Hong Kong Alpha portfolio gained 9.7% in May, outperforming its benchmark by 10.57%.  The portfolio has outperformed Hong Kong indexes by 57% to 75% since its inception in 10/2024.</li>
<li>The portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 1.37 since its inception, with a mean excess annualized return of 21% and a beta of 1.2.  </li>
<li>At the end of May, we sold our remaining positions in the mining and materials sectors and added positions in the power, consumer and property sectors.</li>
</ul>


The Hong Kong Alpha portfolio gained 9.7% in May, outperforming its benchmark by 10.57%.  The portfolio has outperformed Hong Kong indexes by 57% to 75% since its inception in 10/2024.
The portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 1.37 since its inception, with a mean excess annualized return of 21% and a beta of 1.2.  
At the end of May, we sold our remaining positions in the mining and materials sectors and added positions in the power, consumer and property sectors.


<ul>
<li>Hong Kong is on track to complete $40 billion in IPOs this year, with demand coming from unicorn tech companies and A-share firms seeking dual listings. </li>
<li>AI, new energy technology, and healthcare will be the leading IPO sectors.  There are 450 companies that have filed for IPOs in Hong Kong in 2026.</li>
<li>With IPO oversubscriptions extremely high, investors are buying peer companies in the same industry, benefiting from spillover or halo effects.  </li>
</ul>


Hong Kong is on track to complete $40 billion in IPOs this year, with demand coming from unicorn tech companies and A-share firms seeking dual listings. 
AI, new energy technology, and healthcare will be the leading IPO sectors.  There are 450 companies that have filed for IPOs in Hong Kong in 2026.
With IPO oversubscriptions extremely high, investors are buying peer companies in the same industry, benefiting from spillover or halo effects.  


HONG KONG IPO WATCH: Follow the Leader Strategy (April 2026)

Equity & Credit Research

Duncan Chan

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

<ul>
<li>AI investment has shifted to infrastructure buildout, where growth is driven by rising content per server rather than unit volumes, supporting more stable system-level demand.</li>
<li>Value is concentrated at the server board level, with interconnect offering standardised, architecture-linked exposure, while PCB provides direct but execution-dependent leverage to system complexity.</li>
<li>Earnings visibility depends on alignment between hyperscaler capex and order momentum; divergence signals a shift from expansion to a more volatile digestion phase.</li>
</ul>


AI investment has shifted to infrastructure buildout, where growth is driven by rising content per server rather than unit volumes, supporting more stable system-level demand.
Value is concentrated at the server board level, with interconnect offering standardised, architecture-linked exposure, while PCB provides direct but execution-dependent leverage to system complexity.
Earnings visibility depends on alignment between hyperscaler capex and order momentum; divergence signals a shift from expansion to a more volatile digestion phase.


AI Infrastructure: Value Shifts to the Server Board Level

External broker reports(aggregated public sources), CMB International

CMB International

External broker reports(aggregated public sources)

Incorporated in Hong Kong, supported by the mainland and targeting in global market, CMB International Capital Corporation Limited (“CMBI”) is an integrated financial institution providing comprehensive and professional services. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Merchants Bank ("CMB"), by leveraging on the Group’s synergy and coordination in domestic and overseas markets, as well as CMB’s strong resources and outstanding social reputation, CMBI and its subsidiaries have been actively implementing diversified business strategies and set up an overall layout of main business segments including Corporate Finance, Asset Management, Wealth Management, Global Markets and Structured Finance, etc. Adhering to the philosophy of “being clients oriented and increasing our own values by the way of creating value for clients”, CMBI endeavors to provide quality and integrated financial services to institutional, corporate and individual customers both domestic and overseas including Hong Kong IPO sponsorship and underwriting, share placement and rights issue for listed companies, financial advisors, bonds issuance services, asset management, direct investment, wealth management, equity sales and trading, etc.

Equity Bottom-Up

<ul><li>We initiate coverage on Shanghai Iluvatar CoreX Semiconductor at BUY, with TP at HK$694.</li><li>We think the key change in China’s AI compute market is no longer just faster localization, but a deeper shift in how compute is deployed and monetized: As AI infrastructure becomes more system-driven, software compatibility, workload specialization, and deployment readiness are beginning to matter as much as peak silicon performance.</li><li>In that context, the Company stands out as a well-positioned domestic GPGPU (general-purpose computing on graphics processing unit) challenger, with 1) dual product lines across training and inference, 2) a mature hardware-software co-design platform, and 3) growing commercial adoption across multiple industry verticals. </li></ul>Content is external broker report sourced from online content aggregator through publicly available sources and is displayed below for general informational purposes only. Refer full disclaimer below.

We initiate coverage on Shanghai Iluvatar CoreX Semiconductor at BUY, with TP at HK$694.We think the key change in China’s AI compute market is no longer just faster localization, but a deeper shift in how compute is deployed and monetized: As AI infrastructure becomes more system-driven, software compatibility, workload specialization, and deployment readiness are beginning to matter as much as peak silicon performance.In that context, the Company stands out as a well-positioned domestic GPGPU (general-purpose computing on graphics processing unit) challenger, with 1) dual product lines across training and inference, 2) a mature hardware-software co-design platform, and 3) growing commercial adoption across multiple industry verticals. Content is external broker report sourced from online content aggregator through publicly available sources and is displayed below for general informational purposes only. Refer full disclaimer below.

Iluvatar CoreX (9903 HK) - A System-Level Challenger in China’s Evolving AI Compute Stack Space

Pan-Asia Index Rebalances/ Events/ Delta One, Periscope Analytics

Brian Freitas

Pan-Asia Index Rebalances/ Events/ Delta One

Periscope Analytics

Periscope Analytics focuses on event-driven trades across Asia Pacific and provides comprehensive, timely and systematic coverage of index changes to major Asia Pacific indices in a structured manner.

The analysis includes forecasted inclusions and exclusions to all major Asian indices that have significant amount of tracking assets, including estimates of passive buy/sell flow on the stocks. The service also provides commentary and impact of market consultations, ground rule changes, and other events (IPOs, spin-offs, M&A) that could lead to index changes and passive flow.

Periscope Analytics works with multi-strategy hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, stat arb trading groups and long-only investors that invest and trade in the Asia Pacific region with the data being used to trade index rebalances, avoid pre-positioning and passive flow, and to time entry into and exit from stocks.

Event-Driven Trades Across Asia Pacific

Index Rebalance

<ul>
<li>The June rebalance of the Hang Seng family of indices will use today's closing prices to cap the index constituent weights.</li>
<li>The net round-trip trade across all stocks across the five indices is estimated at HK$49.6bn (US$6.33bn). There is size to trade in a lot of stocks.</li>
<li>The stocks with forecast inflows marginally outperformed the stocks with forecast outflows prior to announcement of the changes, but there has been underperformance since announcement.</li>
</ul>


The June rebalance of the Hang Seng family of indices will use today's closing prices to cap the index constituent weights.
The net round-trip trade across all stocks across the five indices is estimated at HK$49.6bn (US$6.33bn). There is size to trade in a lot of stocks.
The stocks with forecast inflows marginally outperformed the stocks with forecast outflows prior to announcement of the changes, but there has been underperformance since announcement.


HSI, HSCEI, HSTECH, HSIII, HSBIO Index Rebalance: US$6.3bn of Flows Post Capping (June 2026)

China

Iluvatar CoreX designs high-performance semiconductor chips, specifically general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPUs), and provides AI computing solutions. Its product portfolio includes GPGPU chips and accelerators for both training and inference scenarios, along with customized AI computing solutions such as GPGPU servers and clusters. The company was founded in December 2015 and is headquartered in Shanghai, China.

Price Gauge
52-week Range	0.00 - 0.00
Market Cap (USDm)	0.00
P/E	0.00
Dividend (Yield)	0.00

Iluvatar CoreX (9903 HK)

HONG KONG ALPHA PORTFOLIO: (May 2026)

The Hong Kong Alpha portfolio gained 9.7% in May, outperforming its benchmark by 10.57%. The portfolio has outperformed Hong Kong indexes by 57%...

David Mudd

HONG KONG IPO WATCH: Follow the Leader Strategy (April 2026)

KB Laminates (1888 HK) has gained 90% since our April report on the following-the-leader strategy. Kingboard Holdings (148 HK) holds a 70% stake...

David Mudd

AI Infrastructure: Value Shifts to the Server Board Level

Re-sharing as recent AI infrastructure spending and deployment trends continue to reinforce the discussion around where value capture is becoming...

Duncan Chan