Headquarters of Samsung in Mountain View, California, on October 28, 2018. <\/p>\n
Smith Collection\/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Samsung Electronics reported an over threefold surge in fourth-quarter profits on Thursday, hitting a new record and beating analysts’ estimates, as a memory chip shortage and strong demand for artificial intelligence servers lifted earnings.<\/p>\n
Here are Samsung’s fourth-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:<\/p>\n
Revenue: 93.8 trillion Korean won ($65.58 billion) vs. 93.318 trillion won\u00a0expectedOperating profit: 20.1 trillion won vs. 20.018 trillion won expected<\/p>\n
The South Korean technology giant’s quarterly revenue rose\u00a0about 24% from a year earlier to hit a new record. Meanwhile, its operating profit climbed over 200% year over year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The profits surpassed Samsung’s long-standing record of 17.6 trillion won set in the third quarter of 2018, while matching Samsung’s own guidance <\/a>of around 20 trillion won.\u00a0<\/p>\n Samsung, South Korea’s largest company by market capitalization, is a leading provider of memory chips, semiconductor foundry services and smartphones.<\/p>\n The company said in its earnings report that its memory business had helped drive earnings, setting all-time highs for quarterly revenue and operating profit, driven by an overall market price surge, sales of high-bandwidth memory and other high-value-added products. <\/p>\n High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, is a type of memory used in chipsets for AI data centers, and Samsung has shifted more focus to the technology over the past year, under its Device Solutions (DS) Division.<\/p>\n Makers of AI chipsets, such as Nvidia, have been clamoring for limited supplies of HBM, with demand outpacing supply.<\/p>\n As memory companies prioritize capacity to meet that lucrative demand, it has contributed to a shortage across the broader market, pushing up prices of chips used in personal computers and mobile devices.<\/p>\n This has been a boon for memory giants like Samsung as well as its rival SK Hynix, which reported record earnings<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n “Looking ahead to Q1 2026, the DS Division expects AI and server demand to continue increasing, leading to more opportunities for structural growth,” the company said.<\/p>\n “In response, the Division will continue to focus on profitability via a strong emphasis on high-performance products,” it added.<\/p>\n