Hong Kong stocks close higher after AI share lockups end: CGTN analyst

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed higher on Monday as share lockups in two major tech companies come to an end, said Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN).

The benchmark Hang Seng Index gained 1.14 percent in Monday trading to finish at 23,616.32 points.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index rose 1.46 percent to 7,812.35 points, while the Hang Seng Tech Index edged up 0.94 percent to 4,541.23 points.

Two of China's leading AI companies, Knowledge Atlas (Zhipu) and MiniMax, joined the Hang Seng Tech Index in early June.

Pope said that the two newly-listed companies slid sharply from recent highs as lockups of their shares come to an end this week.

"It's going to be a pretty interesting week in Hong Kong. The Hang Seng advanced 1.1 percent today but we saw two of its biggest recent additions sliding pretty sharply. These are both AI companies - MiniMax was down 3.4 percent and Knowledge Atlas Technologies fell 14.7 percent. That's because this week is going to be a real test for the stock price and market cap of these two firms. Both of them are down off their recent highs but MiniMax stocks are up 53 percent since they listed on January 9. Knowledge Atlas shares are up 1,253 percent since they listed on Jan 8 and the reason that this matters this week is that the share lockups are ending. For Knowledge Atlas, 6 percent of outstanding shares will become tradable, while for MiniMax a whopping 45 percent are going to leave lockup. That's shareholders who are looking at some very respectable gains since listing and who've been unable to cash in until now," he said.

Pope also highlighted some new IPOs this week on the Hong Kong market.

"Also this week in Hong Kong we've got IPO action. I did say it was a big week. On Wednesday we'll see Chinese autonomous-driving and robo-taxi company Momenta Global start trading. It raised 750 million US dollars in an IPO which valued the firm at around 9 billion. And one of Apple's contract iPhone manufacturers, Luxshare Precision, is also coming to Hong Kong. This one is a secondary listing as Luxshare already trades in Shenzhen. It’s going to finalize its offering price tomorrow, make allocations on Wednesday and it will start trading on Thursday," he said.

The U.S. dollar was almost flat in late trading on Monday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, added 0.01 percent to 100.853 at 15:00 (1900 GMT).

In late New York trading, the euro was up to 1.1443 dollars from 1.1439 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound climbed to 1.3395 dollars from 1.3356 dollars in the previous session.

The U.S. dollar bought 162.06 Japanese yen, higher than 161.36 Japanese yen in the previous session. The U.S. dollar rose to 0.8050 Swiss francs from 0.8035 Swiss francs, and it added to 1.4209 Canadian dollars from 1.4198 Canadian dollars. The U.S. dollar fell to 9.6255 Swedish kronor from 9.6436 Swedish kronor.