Samsung Electronics said on October 8 that its preliminary third-quarter operating profit reached 107.4 trillion won. No big tech company had ever cleared 100 trillion won in a single quarter, and with memory demand showing no sign of cooling, next year's outlook also looks strong.
Samsung Electronics released preliminary third-quarter results on October 8. Consolidated revenue was 195 trillion won and operating profit 107.4 trillion won, both all-time highs. According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun, operating profit rose 782.5% from a year earlier and revenue 126.6%, for an operating margin of 55.1%, or roughly 1.16 trillion won earned every day.
광고 문의 · 300×250A new record in two quarters, double last year's full total
The pace of record-breaking stands out. Second-quarter operating profit of about 89 trillion won was a record at the time and was topped within one quarter, extending a streak of four straight record quarters since the fourth quarter of last year. Third-quarter profit alone is more than twice last year's full-year operating profit of 43.6 trillion won, and the January-September total comes to about 254.13 trillion won. The Kyunghyang Shinmun projects that full-year operating profit could land near 350 trillion won.
The yardstick has changed as well. Securities analysts put Nvidia's third-quarter operating profit at about 71 billion dollars, or roughly 95 trillion won; if so, Samsung would be the most profitable big tech company this year. The all-time quarterly record, however, remains Saudi Aramco's 86.5 billion dollars (about 115 trillion won) in the second quarter of 2022, still above Samsung.
Divisional results were not disclosed that day. Meritz Securities estimates the chip (DS) division at around 110 trillion won, with the memory business alone at 111.9 trillion won, which implies that losses in non-memory chips and in appliances and mobile shaved off part of the total. In the second quarter, DS supplied 89.2 trillion of the group's 89.5 trillion won, about 99.7%.
Memory demand with no brakes, into next year
Artificial intelligence is the engine. Data-center spending and the spread of AI agents have pushed demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), server DRAM and enterprise SSDs past supply, and prices keep climbing. DRAMeXchange data show general-purpose PC DRAM averaging 26 dollars last month, a record after six straight monthly rises, while NAND card and USB products averaged 30.6 dollars, up for 21 consecutive months. TrendForce expects general DRAM prices to rise another 10-15% and NAND 15-20% in the fourth quarter.
HBM brought a turnaround. Samsung began mass shipments of HBM4 in February, winning back share lost to SK Hynix, and booked about 1 billion dollars (roughly 1.3 trillion won) in HBM4 revenue within four months. KB Securities forecasts that next year's HBM selling price will more than double and that HBM4's share of HBM revenue will climb from 40% this year to 80%. Industry sources expect tight supply and the race for capacity to last through the fourth quarter and into next year.
There are shadows too. Non-memory businesses such as System LSI and foundry appear to be still losing money, with operating costs at the Taylor, Texas fab cited as a burden. The DX division, which covers mobile and home appliances, posted its first-ever loss in the second quarter and is believed to have stayed in the red in the third. Meritz estimates the mobile and networks business lost 1.8 trillion won.
The market reaction was restrained. On the day of the announcement Samsung shares fell 2.42% to close at 262,000 won, which some read as a sign that the good news was already priced in. With one industry now so clearly at the center of Korean corporate earnings, how long the boom lasts has become a variable for exports, the stock market and the wider Korean economy.
Korea and Taiwan are the two pillars of the global memory and foundry supply chain. For ethnic Chinese readers living in Korea, Samsung's results and the demand outlook of Taiwan's chip industry are really one story. Our next report looks at how Taiwan's stocks and exports are behaving amid the same AI demand.