FILE PHOTO: Samsung signage is seen in a store in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
January 7, 2022
By Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang
SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Friday said its October-December operating profit likely jumped 52% on-year to its highest fourth-quarter profit in four years, helped by solid demand for server memory chips and higher margins in chip contract manufacturing.
The world’s largest memory chip and smartphone maker estimated fourth-quarter profit at 13.8 trillion won ($11.5 billion).
This missed a Refinitiv SmartEstimate of 15.2 trillion won, which analysts attributed to costs such as employees’ bonuses, marketing costs for its mobile business, and ramp-up costs for new display panels being reflected in the quarter.
Revenue likely rose 23% from the same period a year earlier to 76 trillion won, Samsung said in a short preliminary earnings release.
It is due to release detailed earnings later this month.
Although prices of memory chips dipped during the quarter, increased demand from server clients has lifted Samsung’s quarter-on-quarter shipments of both DRAM chips, widely used in data centres, and NAND flash memory chips, used for data storage in tech devices, analysts said.
($1 = 1,204.0400 won)
(Reporting by Joyce Lee; editing by Richard Pullin)
Source: One America News Network
