Samsung Electronics recorded an operating profit of KRW 107.4 trillion in the third quarter of this year, becoming the first domestic company ever to surpass KRW 100 trillion in quarterly operating profit. Driven by a super-boom in semiconductors, its memory business led performance, enabling the company to set record quarterly earnings for four consecutive quarters since the fourth quarter of last year.

Samsung Electronics announced in a regulatory filing on the 8th that, on a consolidated basis, its operating profit for the third quarter of this year was tentatively estimated at KRW 107.4 trillion, up 782.5% from the same period a year earlier. Sales came to KRW 195 trillion, an increase of 126.6% year-on-year.

The operating profit beat the market consensus of KRW 105.7533 trillion by 1.6%. This is the first time a Korean company has exceeded KRW 100 trillion in quarterly operating profit. Among global companies, Saudi Arabian state-owned oil company Aramco recorded an operating profit of about KRW 116 trillion in the second quarter of 2022.

Samsung Electronics set an all-time record in the fourth quarter of last year with sales of KRW 93.8 trillion and operating profit of KRW 20.1 trillion, and has continued to renew quarterly records since then. Operating profit for the third quarter of this year alone is about 2.5 times last year’s annual operating profit of KRW 43.6 trillion. Cumulative operating profit for the first to third quarters of this year also increased to KRW 254.1 trillion.

Although results by business division have not yet been disclosed, it is assessed that the Device Solutions (DS) division, which is responsible for semiconductors, and especially the memory business, led overall performance. This was driven by continued growth in demand for high bandwidth memory (HBM) and commodity DRAM, following expanded investment in artificial intelligence (AI).

The market is focusing on the possibility that the upward trend in memory prices will continue through the fourth quarter and into next year. Market research firm TrendForce forecasts that prices of commodity DRAM in the fourth quarter will rise by 10–15% from the previous quarter, while NAND will climb by 15–20%. HBM4, which Samsung Electronics began mass-producing as the world’s first, is also expected to start contributing in earnest to earnings from next year.

In contrast, the non-memory and finished-product businesses are estimated to have been relatively sluggish. Foundry and LSI are believed to have continued to post losses due to costs related to operating the Taylor plant in the United States, while the mobile, TV and home appliance businesses are analyzed to have faced cost pressures from higher component prices.

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