Seoul, October 31 (IANS). Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that the company’s net profit rose in the third quarter, but its semiconductor business was negatively impacted by weak demand for artificial intelligence chips.
Samsung Electronics reported a net profit of 10.1 trillion won ($7.3 billion) for the July-September quarter, up 72.8 percent from the same period last year, the company said in a regulatory filing, according to Yonhap news agency.
Samsung Electronics’ operating profit reached 9.18 trillion won, an increase of 277.4% from 2.43 trillion won a year earlier. The company’s revenue rose 17.3% to 79.09 trillion won, setting a new quarterly record. This revenue also exceeds the previous high of 77.8 trillion won, achieved in the first quarter of 2022.
However, operating profit was 10.8% below analysts’ average estimate, according to a Yonhap Infomax survey. Samsung Electronics reported that the company’s profit declined due to the strong won, which led to a 500 billion won decline in operating profit compared to the previous quarter.
The company’s chip business posted an operating profit of 3.86 trillion won in the third quarter, compared with a loss of 2.18 trillion won in the same period last year. However, this profit is much lower than the profit of 6.45 trillion won achieved in the previous quarter.
Analysts had predicted Samsung’s chip division would perform better, with a profit of about 4.2 trillion won for the three-month period.
“Our performance declined due to a recap of inventory value compared to the previous quarter, one-time expenses such as incentives and foreign exchange fluctuations due to the weak dollar,” the company said.
Despite challenging conditions, Samsung Electronics’ memory division recorded growth driven by increased artificial intelligence applications and data center investments. Surging demand for high-speed memory chips, such as HBM, DDR5 and SSDs, pushed the division’s profit to 7 trillion won in the third quarter, more than offset by losses in the foundry and system LSI segments.
Samsung Electronics announced that the company’s devices division (smartphones, televisions and home appliances) recorded revenue of 45 trillion won and operating profit of 3.4 trillion won in the third quarter.
The mobile segment recorded steady growth driven by the launch of new foldable smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. Higher-end TVs (Neo QLED and OLED models) also contributed to profit growth in this division. Samsung Electronics invested 12.4 trillion won in the third quarter, of which 10.7 trillion won was for semiconductor production.
–IANS
SKT/ABM
