“Last year felt gloomy and unsettling, but this year, I am grateful to the management for lifting the share price three to four times in just one year.”

At the 57th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Samsung Electronics held on the 18th at Suwon Convention Center in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, one shareholder made this remark in a public statement, and other shareholders followed with similar words of praise. It was a complete change from last year, when sharp questions such as “What was management doing while the share price was falling?” poured in. The share price of Samsung Electronics, which was KRW 57,600 on 18 March last year, rose to KRW 208,500 on this day, an increase of 262% in one year.

Jun Young-hyun, head of the Device Solutions (DS) Division and Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics, said, “Samsung Electronics became the first Korean company to surpass a market capitalization of KRW 1,000 trillion (on 4 February this year),” adding, “We are receiving evaluations from our clients that ‘Samsung is back.’” He stressed, “Exactly one year ago at this venue, I promised to develop and mass-produce the world’s highest-performance HBM4 to restore the competitiveness of the memory business and address shareholders’ concerns,” and added, “It seems we have kept that promise.”

● Even middle school students attended…crowds packed the AGM

This year’s Samsung Electronics general meeting drew about 1,000 shareholders, nearly double last year’s roughly 600. Interest was high enough that it earned the nickname “national general meeting,” in the sense that a large share of the public holds Samsung Electronics stock.

From 7:30 a.m., an hour and a half before the meeting’s 9:00 a.m. start, a considerable crowd had already arrived at the venue. Yoon Bo-won (49), met at the meeting hall that day, came with his wife and second-year middle school son. All three family members are shareholders of Samsung Electronics. Yoon said, “My son also owns 290 shares of Samsung Electronics stock,” adding, “I wanted to show him firsthand what kind of company Samsung is.” Kim Jenny (35), who is expecting to give birth in June this year, said, “I want to keep accumulating Samsung Electronics shares and pass them on to my child later.” However, the total number of Samsung Electronics shareholders declined from 5,160,297 at the end of 2024 to 4,196,025 at the end of last year. It appears that a considerable number of shareholders sold their shares as the share price rose.

This Samsung Electronics general meeting showcased a range of the company’s products, including next-generation semiconductor lines such as Exynos 2600, the Galaxy S26 series, and Bespoke artificial intelligence (AI) home appliances. In particular, semiconductor products that drove last year’s strong performance were placed at the center of the exhibition area. For the first time this year, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) was introduced in the AGM exhibition hall, drawing many visitors. They focused on HBM4E (7th generation), Samsung’s next-generation HBM. HBM4E is a product that Samsung Electronics unveiled for the first time at NVIDIA’s developer conference “GTC 2026,” held in San Jose, United States, on the 16th (local time).

● “To solidify position as an integrated AI semiconductor solutions company”

Samsung Electronics plans to further accelerate semiconductor investment and the strengthening of technological competitiveness this year as well. Vice Chairman Jun stated, “In memory, we have restored profitability, quality, and mass production competitiveness, but we still must meet shareholders’ expectations.” Regarding shareholder return policies, he announced, “In addition to the regular dividend of KRW 9.8 trillion, we plan to pay an additional dividend of KRW 1.3 trillion.”

At the Samsung Electronics general meeting that day, agenda items such as appointing Kim Yong-kwan, Head of Business Strategy for the DS Division, as an inside director and appointing Huh Eun-nyung, a professor at Seoul National University’s College of Engineering, as an audit committee member were approved.

Samsung SDI and Samsung Electro-Mechanics also held general meetings on the same day. Choi Joo-sun, CEO of Samsung SDI, said, “We will make this year the first year of a performance turnaround,” and added, “For all-solid-state batteries, we are aiming for mass production next year and are pushing plans to supply them to humanoid robots and other applications.”

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