Samsung Electronics Sets Quarterly Record of 57.2 Trillion Won, Rewriting Korean Corporate History

According to The Financial News, Samsung Electronics has become the first Korean company to post quarterly operating profit in the 50-trillion-won range in the first quarter of this year. It is the highest performance since the company was founded.
Samsung Electronics announced on the 7th that, based on its preliminary earnings, consolidated sales in the first quarter came to 133 trillion won, with operating profit of 57.2 trillion won. Compared with a year earlier, sales jumped 68.06% and operating profit surged 755.01%. The figure far surpasses the market consensus of 38.1 trillion won. Until now, the previous record for quarterly operating profit was 20.1 trillion won in the fourth quarter of last year. Samsung Electronics stated, "The company achieved its highest-ever results, driven by higher sales and profit in the Device Solutions Division centered on the memory business, and stronger market competitiveness in the DX (Device eXperience) Division, which includes home appliances and mobile phones."
Operating profit in the first quarter alone has already exceeded the company’s full-year operating profit of 43.6011 trillion won last year. Quarterly sales also surpassed 100 trillion won for the first time in history. Even a result approaching 50 trillion won had been expected to qualify as an earnings surprise, but the outcome has far exceeded market expectations.

Market observers say the company has "entered a new normal range" for earnings. In a recent report, Kim Young-gun, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities, wrote that "Samsung Electronics has now entered a 'new-normal validation phase'" and noted that "a clear trend of long-term supply contracts of three years or more for memory semiconductors is emerging."
More than 90% of the overall results are believed to have come from memory semiconductors. Prices of standard DRAM memory have soared to more than ten times their level a year ago. This is seen as a 'balloon effect' stemming from expanded supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for artificial intelligence (AI). On top of that, rising HBM sales contributed to the blockbuster earnings.
Last year, Samsung Electronics supplied its fifth-generation product, HBM3E high-bandwidth memory, to global big tech companies, and this year it began the world’s first mass production and supply of sixth-generation HBM4 high-bandwidth memory (HBM4). Big tech firms are expressing strong confidence in Samsung’s technological comeback, saying, "Samsung is back." In a report titled "Entering the New Normal," Injun Son, an analyst at Heungkuk Securities, also projected that "for HBM4, Samsung Electronics is currently in the most advanced position in the industry, based on the customer qualification process that requires a pin speed of around 11.7 Gbps."

ehcho@fnnews.com Eun-hyo Cho Reporter