(Yicai) Aug. 8 -- Shares of ZTE stopped diving after the Chinese telecoms giant said it is operating normally despite rumors of alleged plans to lower its second-quarter performance numbers and rumors of headwinds in Germany.

ZTE [SHE: 000063] rose 2.6 percent to CNY37.72 (USD5.20) as of 1.21 p.m. after closing 10 percent lower yesterday. Meanwhile, the company's Hong Kong-listed shares [HKG: 0763] dropped 0.2 percent to HKD26.90 (USD3.40).

The Shenzhen-based firm did not say to Yicai yesterday whether it will trim its performance estimation for the quarter ended June to be lower than the preview.

The downturn began as online rumors started spreading, purporting that the company's second-quarter performance will be more modest than predicted. Other rumors claimed that the German government is evaluating and might ban some of ZTE’s products from its telecoms networks. Last year, the business of carrier networks made up 65 percent of ZTE's revenue, rising by 6 percent year-over-year.

In the first two quarters of this year, ZTE's equity had been surging as Xie Junshi, chief operating officer, said earlier that the firm will strengthen its investment in server and data storage resources amid the artificial intelligence boom. Xie said that in the fourth quarter, ZTE will launch a graphics processing unit that supports ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, with large bandwidth.

Editor: Emmi Laine