SEOUL, October 08 (AJP) - An unprecedentedly long crop year for memory makers under the AI windfall has fueled the red-hot earnings streak to new heights, pushing Samsung Electronics’ three-month operating profit above the 100 trillion won ($80.2 billion) milestone in the quarter ended September, according to the chipmaker’s earnings guidance Thursday.
The world’s largest memory chipmaker estimated operating profit at 107.4 trillion won, up 20.01 percent on quarter and nearly nine times the 12.17 trillion won recorded a year earlier. Preliminary revenue came to 195 trillion won, up 13.70 percent on quarter and 126.59 percent on year.
The result extended Samsung's record earnings streak to four consecutive quarters.
The figure slightly beat market expectations, although revenue fell short. Financial data provider FnGuide’s latest consensus had put third-quarter revenue at 200.64 trillion won and operating profit at 106.64 trillion won. An LSEG SmartEstimate based on 21 analysts stood at 106.1 trillion won for operating profit.Samsung, whose operations span chips and display components to smartphones and home appliances, will provide a full business breakdown when it releases finalized results later this month.
Samsung’s semiconductor business, known as the Device Solutions, or DS, division, is broadly expected to have led the surge, benefiting from higher DRAM and NAND prices as strong AI infrastructure investment continued to strain global memory supply.
The DS division accounted for nearly all - or 99.7 percent - of Samsung's total operating profit in the second quarter, underscoring how heavily the company's earnings have swung back toward semiconductors.
AI data centers have boosted demand beyond high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, to conventional server DRAM and enterprise solid-state drives. At the same time, memory makers have shifted more production capacity toward advanced AI products, further tightening supplies of conventional chips.
Samsung’s expanding HBM business is also expected to have played a greater role. The company said during its second-quarter earnings call that HBM4 revenue was expected to more than triple sequentially in the third quarter as volume shipments expanded.
The gains came despite headwinds from a stronger Korean won and rising component costs in Samsung’s consumer businesses. The won strengthened sharply during the quarter, reducing the value of overseas earnings, while soaring memory prices that benefited its semiconductor division also raised costs for its smartphone and home appliance businesses.
Those pressures prompted analysts to lower their forecasts ahead of the results. Citi cut its third-quarter operating profit estimate to 104.1 trillion won from 115.5 trillion won, citing an estimated 5 trillion won impact from currency movements and another 5 trillion won from additional employee incentive provisions. Kiwoom Securities projected operating profit of 107 trillion won, down from an earlier 122 trillion won estimate.
Still, memory remained overwhelmingly the biggest earnings driver. Conventional DRAM prices were expected to rise 10 percent to 15 percent quarter-on-quarter in the third quarter, supported by persistent supply constraints, although the pace slowed sharply from the previous quarter.
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