Samsung Electronics has projected a quarterly operating profit above 100 trillion won — about $80 billion — for the first time, estimating a nearly nine-fold jump in third-quarter earnings as booming demand for artificial-intelligence chips drives memory prices sharply higher.
The world’s largest memory chipmaker put July-September operating profit at 107.4 trillion won, slightly ahead of analyst estimates, with revenue expected to rise about 127 percent to roughly 195 trillion won. It is Samsung’s fourth consecutive quarter of record operating profit, up from about 12 trillion won a year earlier. Analyst estimates suggest the chip division alone accounted for effectively all of the total, with average selling prices for DRAM up about 20 percent and NAND flash up about 19 percent from the previous quarter.
The driver is a deepening global memory shortage. AI data centers are absorbing enormous volumes of conventional memory and high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, while supply expansion lags. Samsung’s share of the HBM market is expected to climb from about 20 percent toward 34 percent during 2026, narrowing the gap with its main rival, and the company expects the supply-demand imbalance to persist into 2028.
Investors, notably, did not celebrate. Samsung shares slipped after the announcement, extending a slide of more than 25 percent from a June record high, as analysts questioned how long the AI boom can sustain this pace and trimmed forecasts on currency effects. Detailed results, including divisional breakdowns, are due October 29.
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