Equity investors are scouring Southeast Asia for alternatives to play the artificial intelligence theme as tech giants pour billions of dollars in infrastructure spending over the next few years.
While the earnings contribution from AI remains to be seen given that the technology is in its early days, the upside potential is huge, analysts said. The region is poised to become the world’s second-largest non-US data center provider behind China by 2027, according to Morgan Stanley, which sets the stage for a multiyear growth cycle for firms in the supply chain.
As the only new data centre operator in the Southeast Asian country with a captive 500MW solar power supply, the firm “should stand out to customers who want clean energy and capacity fast,” Macquarie Group Ltd. analysts, including Charles Yonts wrote in a note, last month. The firm in March expanded its manufacturing capacity for electronic products and is building new factories to produce components for the automotive, cloud-computing, data center and AI segments. While that may help earnings growth, the stock lags the Thai equity benchmark, suggesting there is room to catch up.