Operating profit surges 782%... Is the brokerage saying “Now is the darkest point for Samsung Electronics” diametrically opposed to global IBs?

[Financial News] Samsung Electronics announced preliminary third-quarter results on the 8th. Its quarterly operating profit topped 100 trillion won, making history for Korean companies.
Ahead of the earnings announcement, Goldman Sachs said that Samsung Electronics' share price could become more volatile in the short term amid expectations of major market-flow events. Domestic brokerages, by contrast, forecast that a memory chip shortage will begin in earnest next year and advise investors to seize the current moment, when the stock is undervalued, as an opportunity to buy aggressively.

Global investment bank (IB) Goldman Sachs said that major market-flow events—including the simultaneous rebalancing of seven semiconductor exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the expiration of single-stock options and the end of Samsung Electronics' share buyback program—would coincide that day, potentially concentrating short-term market-flow pressure on the company.
The seven semiconductor ETFs, with total assets under management (AUM) of about 19 trillion won, were all set to rebalance that day. With Samsung Electronics' weighting approaching the cap, Goldman Sachs said large volumes of mechanical sell orders were likely to hit the market during the index adjustment.
Goldman Sachs forecast that the potential for increased volatility around options expiry, combined with the effective completion of Samsung Electronics' 15-trillion-won share buyback program, could weaken the market-flow support that had been cushioning the stock's downside.
Reflecting recent foreign investor selling of Samsung Electronics shares and the earnings pressure from the decline in the won-dollar exchange rate, Goldman Sachs cut its third-quarter operating profit estimate for the company by about 5%, from 112 trillion won to 106 trillion won.

Major domestic brokerages instead see this as a turning point for clearing short-term noise and recommend aggressive buying. They expect rising selling prices in the memory business to drive results, generating 109 trillion won in operating profit. Accordingly, they raised their 2027 annual operating profit estimate by 13%, from 562 trillion won to 632.4 trillion won.
A large-scale shareholder return policy is also cited as a key factor that could drive a reassessment of the company's value. Assuming Samsung Electronics has 110 trillion won in residual funds for shareholder returns over the past three years, estimates suggest it could pay 70 trillion to 80 trillion won in cash dividends and cancel 30 trillion to 40 trillion won worth of treasury shares.
Against this backdrop, some brokerages say Samsung Electronics remains undervalued, with its shares trading at a price-to-earnings ratio (PER) of 3.7 and a price-to-book ratio (PBR) of 1.7 based on projected 2027 earnings.
They forecast that shareholder returns would grow to at least four times their previous level even if the company returned only 50% of free cash flow (FCF) under its next three-year shareholder return policy, as it has under the current one.

Samsung Electronics disclosed this morning that its preliminary consolidated operating profit for the third quarter of this year came to 107.4 trillion won.
That was a 782.5% surge from the 12.17 trillion won recorded in the same period a year earlier. It was also up 20.0% from 89.49 trillion won in the previous quarter, this year's second quarter. Samsung Electronics is the first Korean company to report quarterly operating profit exceeding 100 trillion won.
Preliminary third-quarter revenue also rose 126.59% year on year to 195 trillion won, from 86.0617 trillion won.
[email protected] Ahn Ga-eul Reporter