Samsung Electronics headquarters in Seoul. (Yonhap)
Samsung Electronics posted record-breaking quarterly earnings that far exceeded market expectations, driven by surging demand for AI memory chips.
The company said Tuesday its preliminary operating profit reached 57.2 trillion won ($42.5 billion) on revenue of 133 trillion won, according to a regulatory filing.
Operating profit jumped 755 percent from 6.69 trillion won a year earlier, while revenue rose 68.1 percent from 79.14 trillion won.
The results also surpassed the company’s previous record set in the fourth quarter of last year, when Samsung logged 93.8 trillion won in revenue and 20.1 trillion won in operating profit.
Quarterly revenue topped the 100 trillion won mark for the first time, while operating profit for the period alone exceeded Samsung’s full-year earnings of 43.6 trillion won in 2025.
The figures came in well above market expectations, which had been raised to around 120 trillion won in revenue and 50 trillion won in operating profit, marking one of the company’s largest earnings surprises on record.
While Samsung did not disclose divisional breakdowns, analysts view the performance was driven by its semiconductor business, particularly memory, as tight supply across end markets pushed prices up by double-digit rates.
Brokerages estimate operating profit from the chip division could range between 37 trillion won and 48 trillion won.
Samsung has been expanding shipments of high-end memory, including fifth-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM3E), to major technology companies such as Nvidia, Google and AMD.
The company has also begun mass production of next-generation HBM4 this year, with the chips expected to be used in Nvidia’s upcoming AI accelerator platform Vera Rubin.
herim@heraldcorp.com