Record-breaking quarterly sales push Samsung’s earnings to new heights

Samsung Electronics announced on Thursday a historic operating profit of 20 trillion won ($ 13.8 billion) for the fourth quarter, a historic win/profit that the company has never achieved before.

Chip supercycle drives growth

The robust performance was mainly driven by the boom in the global semiconductor market, which is widely known as the chip supercycle.

Quarterly revenue crosses 90 trillion won

Samsung’s sales improved significantly, up 22.7 per cent compared to last year, to reach 93 trillion won. This is also the first time the company’s quarterly sales have gone over 90 trillion won. Meanwhile, Samsung did not yet divulge the net profit figures along with its preliminary numbers.

The reported operating profit was 1.8 per cent above market expectations, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data unit of Yonhap News Agency.

Samsung has remained silent about the profits from each of the business divisions until now. The company is expected to issue its final earnings report later this month with a complete breakdown, as reported by IANS.

Semiconductor division leads performance

The analysts of the market pointed out that the primary reason for the strong performance was the better earnings of Samsung's Device Solutions (DS) division, which holds the company's semiconductor business as its key sector, and that included the latter. Korea Investment & Securities Co. reports that the global prices for DRAM and NAND flash memory chips experienced a hike of around 40 percent in Q4 when compared with Q3.

The experts are predicting that the DS division could very well be the one that has caused the operating profit in the fourth quarter to be as high as 16 to 17 trillion won. This definitely would be a steep rise from the 7 trillion won that was the case in Q3.

Mixed results from other business segments

Corroborating the findings of the analysts was the fact that the losses in Samsung's non-memory businesses were less than initially anticipated; thus, the overall results were likewise positively impacted. The mobile division of the company is thought to have realized an operating profit of approximately 2 trillion won, while the home appliances segment is believed to have incurred a loss of roughly 100 billion won.

From a yearly perspective, Samsung Electronics has made a preliminary projection of its total operating profit for 2025 at 43.53 trillion won, which marks a 33 percent growth compared to the previous year.

The total annual revenue was also up 10.6 percent, amounting to 332.77 trillion won. Just like in the case of quarterly results, the company did not share its net profit numbers.

Experts from the industry still have a positive view of Samsung's performance in the future. According to the analysts, the company would be able to make the most out of the situation in 2026, mainly thanks to its higher capacity in producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is being widely used in AI and sophisticated computing.

Researcher Kim Dong-won from KB Securities Co. estimated that Samsung's operating profit would be around 123 trillion won this year, as a result of higher DRAM prices and HBM products' increased shipments.