Samsung Electronics expects tenfold jump in Q1 profit as chip demand rebounds
SEOUL, April 5 (Yonhap) -- South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday its operating profit for the first quarter is estimated to have shot up more than tenfold on rebounding demand for memory chips, beating market expectations.
The world's biggest maker of memory chips expected a first-quarter operating profit of 6.6 trillion won (US$4.9 billion), up 931.3 percent from a year earlier, Samsung Electronics said in a regulatory filing.
The operating profit was 20.5 percent higher than the average estimate, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.
Sales increased 11.4 percent to 71 trillion won for the January-March period. It marked the first time the company's quarterly revenue had topped the 70 trillion-won level since the fourth quarter of 2022. It did not provide its estimate for net income.
For 2023, Samsung Electronics posted 258.93 trillion won in sales, down 14.3 percent from a year earlier.
Its annual operating profit dived 84.9 percent on-year to 6.56 trillion won, and net profit tumbled 72.2 percent to 15.48 trillion won.
Samsung did not release detailed performances of its key business divisions, but market watchers expect that its semiconductor unit, which oversees its cash cow chip business, will swing to a profit for the first time in five quarters.
Samsung Electronics is set to release its final first-quarter earnings report soon, providing further insights into its performance across key business divisions.
Analysts noted that Samsung Electronics' semiconductor unit was behind the remarkable performance, especially with its focus on high-value-added products, such as high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for artificial intelligence (AI) systems, amid rising DRAM and NAND prices.
At an earnings call for the fourth quarter held in January, the company said it would actively respond to the recent booming demand for HBM chips and solid-state drive (SSD) for servers in the coming future in a bid to improve its balance sheet.
In line with its strategic vision, Samsung Electronics has actively pursued the development of fifth-generation HBM chips, featuring 12 layers of DRAM chips with the industry's largest capacity of 36 gigabytes.
HBM chips, integral components used for AI computing, have garnered increasing attention across the world with the rise of applications such as generative AI, exemplified by models like ChatGPT.
SK Securities Co. predicted Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business will earn 1 trillion won in operating profit for the first quarter and its mobile division will rack up 3.7 trillion won.
Eugene Investment & Securities Co. said in a report that Samsung Electronics is projected to post 900 billion won in operating profit from semiconductors and 3.8 trillion won from mobile.
Han Dong-hee, an analyst from SK Securities, said Samsung Electronics' larger-than-expected first-quarter earnings estimate came from "its profitability-oriented strategy" targeting HBM chips and rebounding NAND prices.
brk@yna.co.kr
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