Samsung’s third-quarter profit more than doubles, beating estimates as chip recovery gathers pace

Samsung Electronics reported a rebound in earnings on Thursday, with operating profit more than doubling from the previous quarter on a rebound in its chip business. 

Here are Samsung’s third-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

• Revenue: 86.1 trillion Korean won vs. 85.93 trillion won 
• Operating profit: 12.2 trillion won vs. 11.25 trillion won

The South Korean technology giant’s quarterly revenue was up 8.85% from a year earlier, while its first-quarter operating profit climbed 32.9% year-over-year. 

Samsung shares popped over 5% in early trading in Asia.

The earnings represent a bounce back from the June quarter, which had been weighed down by a massive slump in Samsung’s chip business. Operating profit increased by 160% compared to June, while revenue increased by 15.5% over the same period. 

Samsung Electronics, South Korea’s largest company by market capitalization, is a leading provider of memory chips, semiconductor foundry services and smartphones.

Samsung’s chip business reported a 19% increase in sales from the June quarter, with its memory business setting an all-time high for quarterly sales, driven by strong demand from artificial intelligence.

The third-quarter operating profit also beat Samsung’s own guidance of around 12.1 trillion Korean won. 

Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of 7.0 trillion Korean won in the third quarter, up from 3.86 trillion in the same period last year. 

Chip revenue increased to 33.1 trillion won, compared to 29.27 trillion last year. 

Samsung’s chip business, also known as its Device Solutions division, encompasses its memory chip, semiconductor design and foundry business units. 

The division achieved record-high quarterly revenue on expanded sales of its high-bandwidth memory chips — a type of memory used for artificial intelligence computing. 

Once the undisputed leader in memory chips, Samsung has been dealing with increased competition as it falls behind rival SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM.

However, Samsung reportedly passed Nvidia‘s qualification tests for an advanced HBM product last month.

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month found that Samsung had reclaimed the top spot in the memory market ahead of SK Hynix in the third quarter after falling behind its competitor for the first time the quarter prior.