Samsung Electronics on Thursday projected a record third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won (about $80 billion) — nearly nine times the figure it posted a year ago — as insatiable demand for AI memory chips kept prices climbing.
The estimate, disclosed in a regulatory filing, came in ahead of the LSEG SmartEstimate of 106.1 trillion won. Revenue likely rose 127 percent to 195 trillion won from a year earlier, Samsung said.
Both numbers would be all-time highs, marking the company's fourth consecutive quarter of record operating profit — up from just 12.17 trillion won in the same period last year.
The milestone makes Samsung the first South Korean company to cross 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit, and no technology company has ever posted a quarterly profit this large.
The memory shortage powering the boom
Soaring demand for AI infrastructure has outstripped memory chip supply growth, driving up prices for conventional DRAM and NAND chips as well as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the advanced chips essential for processing vast amounts of data for AI applications.
Samsung and Micron expect the imbalance to persist into 2028, with conventional DRAM bit shipments staying broadly flat because of limited inventories while HBM shipments rise sharply on strong demand for HBM4.
"There were uncertainties surrounding Samsung's earnings as analysts cut their estimates, but the results turned out to be better than expected," said Lee Jae-won, an analyst at Yuanta Securities. He added that investors would now be watching for details of Samsung's shareholder return policy during its earnings call later this month.
Wall Street sees even more room to run
Analysts at Shinhan Securities struck a bullish note in a note last week, writing that they expected to see "even stronger earnings" from the company next year as it ramps up production of HBM4, the next generation of high-bandwidth memory.
The transition, they said, would open up an opportunity to renegotiate prices and guarantee solid margins.
"These are solid numbers," said Neil Shah, vice-president of research at Counterpoint Research. "They've got a lot up their sleeve for next year with HBM, mostly because the full effect hasn't even landed yet." Counterpoint raised its forecast for third-quarter DRAM prices to a 10 to 20 percent sequential increase.
The risks behind the record
The longer-term outlook is not without clouds. Rising costs, Chinese competition and potential US semiconductor tariffs pose risks to earnings, and a stronger South Korean won may have offset some gains by reducing the value of dollar-denominated overseas sales.
Samsung, its rival SK hynix and US giant Micron dominate the global market for HBM, and the economics of the AI boom have swung sharply in their favour as data centre developers race to secure memory for AI servers. Samsung will release its detailed results, including a breakdown of earnings by business division, on October 29.
