Samsung Electronics has projected the largest quarterly profit in its history — and one of the largest any technology company has ever reported — as the artificial intelligence building boom turns memory chips into the industry’s scarcest commodity.
In preliminary guidance released Thursday, the South Korean company estimated third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won, or about $80.2 billion, for the July–September period, Reuters reported. That is nearly nine times the 12.17 trillion won Samsung earned in the same quarter a year earlier, and it edges past a 106.1 trillion won consensus estimate compiled by LSEG.
The numbers
- Operating profit: ~107.4 trillion won ($80.2 billion), up from 12.17 trillion won a year ago
- Revenue: ~195 trillion won (about $145 billion), up 127% year over year
- Streak: a fourth consecutive record quarter, after 89.49 trillion won in Q2
- Milestone: the first South Korean company to clear 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit
The figures are preliminary, reported as midpoints of the company’s guidance ranges (194–196 trillion won in sales; 107.3–107.5 trillion won in operating profit) under Korean accounting rules, and are subject to confirmation in Samsung’s full results later this month.
Put together, the guidance implies an operating margin of roughly 55% — an extraordinary figure for a company that also sells phones, televisions, and home appliances, and a measure of how completely memory pricing now dominates Samsung’s results.
Memory is the story
Samsung is the world’s largest maker of memory chips, and the quarter is a story about pricing power. Demand for AI infrastructure has outstripped the growth of memory supply, Reuters reported — a gap analysts expect to persist into 2027. The squeeze is tightest in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized chips stacked beside AI processors in data centers, but it has also lifted prices for conventional DRAM and NAND as capacity shifts toward AI products.
Analysts estimate Samsung’s HBM shipments rose by roughly half from the previous quarter, according to Douglas Kim of Douglas Research Advisory — a sign the company is closing ground on SK Hynix, its hometown rival that has led the HBM market. Those divisional details, however, are estimates: Samsung’s preliminary release contains no breakdown by business unit.
What the guidance doesn’t say
Preliminary Korean guidance is deliberately thin — two numbers and nothing else. It does not show how much of the profit came from memory versus foundry, phones, or displays, nor whether the company’s contract chipmaking business narrowed its losses. Analysts broadly expect semiconductors to have carried the quarter, offsetting softer consumer businesses, but any split quoted before the full report is a forecast, not company data.
The timing is notable. Samsung’s guidance landed in the same news cycle in which US tech stocks sold off over questions about whether AI revenue can justify the industry’s spending. Samsung’s answer, at least for the hardware side of the trade, is that the spending is very real — and that it is currently pooling in the bank accounts of the companies that make the chips AI runs on.
What to watch
Samsung’s detailed results, due later this month, will put numbers on the HBM race and on how long management expects the supply shortage — and the pricing that comes with it — to last. For the wider AI trade, the quarter is another data point cutting against bubble worries: the companies selling the picks and shovels are converting AI demand into record cash earnings, at least for now.
