[2nd report] Samsung Electronics' third quarter operating profit was 107.4 trillion won... New record for 4 consecutive quarters

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Cho Seong-heum = Samsung Electronics recorded an operating profit of 107.4 trillion won in the third quarter of this year, opening the era of quarterly operating profit of 100 trillion won for the first time in Korean company history.

Samsung Electronics announced on the 8th that its consolidated operating profit in the third quarter of this year was provisionally calculated to be KRW 107.4 trillion, an increase of 782.5% from the same period last year.

Sales amounted to 195 trillion won, an increase of 126.6% compared to the same period last year.

This operating profit exceeded the market forecast of 105.7533 trillion won compiled by Yonhap Infomax by 1.6%.

This is the first time that a Korean company has exceeded 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit.

As a result, Samsung Electronics has set new sales and operating profit records for four consecutive quarters since setting record highs of KRW 93.8 trillion in sales and KRW 20.1 trillion in operating profit in the fourth quarter of last year.

Operating profit in this one quarter alone was close to 2.5 times that of last year (KRW 43.6 trillion).

Although performance by division and business unit was not disclosed on this day, it is analyzed that the semiconductor division (DS), especially the memory division, alone led the company's performance this quarter.

This is the result of the continued competition for global supremacy aimed at achieving general-purpose artificial intelligence (AGI, capable of performing like humans in all tasks), which has not dampened demand for memory.

The industry believes that the DS division will be similar to or slightly exceed the company's operating profit.

Within the DS division, it is estimated that the memory division achieved an operating profit of 80 trillion won and the NAND division achieved an operating profit of close to 30 trillion won.

The industry is hopeful that this trend will continue not only in the fourth quarter but at least until next year.

Market research firm Trend Force predicted that general-purpose DRAM prices in the fourth quarter would rise by 10-15% and NAND prices by 15-20% compared to the previous quarter.

HBM4, which Samsung Electronics began mass producing for the first time in the world, is expected to contribute to performance improvement starting next year.

While Samsung Electronics' operating profit forecast for next year was formed at around 550 trillion won, Meritz Securities raised its forecast from 562 trillion won to 632 trillion won.

However, the finished product (DX) division is expected to have suffered its first deficit since its founding in the previous quarter for the second quarter due to the cost burden of a sharp increase in component prices.