By Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee
SEOUL, July 30 (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics expects AI chip demand to stay strong and supply to remain short this year, it said on Thursday, after posting a more than 250-fold rise in semiconductor profit in the second quarter.
Its shares slipped 0.5% and rival SK Hynix shares slumped 5.8% in early trading after the earnings announcement.
That follows a sharp slide in recent months, as chip stocks have lost momentum amid investor concerns about funding for the AI infrastructure buildout and competition from China that could put chip earnings under pressure.
Samsung’s semiconductor division posted an operating profit of 89.2 trillion won in the second quarter, up over 250-fold from a year earlier.
However, those surging chip prices hurt Samsung’s mobile division, which reported a 700 billion won loss, its first quarter in the red.
“In H2 2026, the Memory Business expects robust demand centered on servers stemming from continued AI infrastructure capex and broader adoption of agentic AI,” Samsung said in a statement.
“This is projected to keep the market undersupplied, despite partial demand moderation in mobile and PCs.”
The world’s top memory chipmaker reported operating profit of 89.5 trillion won ($61.98 billion) for the April-to-June period, in line with its estimate of 89.4 trillion won and up from 4.68 trillion won a year earlier.
The South Korean company’s revenue rose 130% to 171.5 trillion won in the quarter from a year earlier.
Samsung’s cross-town rival SK Hynix on Wednesday reported bumper quarterly results but fell short of lofty investor expectations. It flagged plans to raise capital spending this year by around 50% to meet surging AI demand.
($1 = 1,444.0800 won)
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Sonali Paul)