Samsung’s Q4 net profit rises over 20 pc despite waning chip demand

Seoul:  Samsung Electronics said on Friday its fourth-quarter net income rose more than 20 per cent from a year earlier despite the waning global demand for memory chips, beating market expectations.

Its net income totalled 7.75 trillion won ($5.4 billion) for the October-December period, up 22.2 per cent from 6.34 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Operating profit soared 129.9 per cent on-year to 6.49 trillion won, while sales rose 11.8 per cent to 75.78 trillion won.

The earnings exceeded market expectations. The average estimate of net profit by analysts stood at 5.69 trillion won, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.

However, its operating profit missed the market’s estimate by 15.7 per cent due to sluggish sales of traditional memory chips for personal computers and IT devices, as well as lower-than-expected performance of artificial intelligence (AI) products, such as high bandwidth memory (HBM).

The company’s flagship semiconductor business earned 2.9 trillion won in operating profit for the three-month period ended in December on 30.1 trillion won in sales.

Sales of memory chips in the fourth quarter hit a record high on higher dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) prices driven by increased sales of HBM chips and high-density Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5) products.

Still, operating profit fell slightly from the previous quarter due to a rise in research and development (R&D) expenses and in initial ramp-up costs for facility expansion.

The company saw its operating profit from the fabless division, or System Large Scale Integration (LSI), and foundry dwindle in the quarter.

The two non-memory businesses of Samsung Electronics are expected to post more than 2 trillion won in operating loss in the fourth quarter in sharp contrast to a 5 trillion-won operating profit earned by the memory business.

Samsung Electronics’ device division, covering mobile, TV and home appliances businesses, recorded 40.5 trillion won in sales and 2.3 trillion won in operating profit for the fourth quarter.

Quarterly operating profit from its mobile business dropped slightly from three months earlier, led by sluggish sales of its flagship smartphones.

Its TV and home appliances sectors experienced a decline in quarterly profit amid intensifying competition and rising costs.

In the mobile business, Samsung Electronics expects its newly launched Galaxy S25 series will drive sales growth for the coming quarters and help the company lead the AI smartphone market.

Analysts pointed out that sales of HBM products will be the key to a further expansion in the company’s performance in the future.

—IANS