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The South Korean technology giant Samsung said on Tuesday it expects operating profit of about 89.4 trillion won (€51bn) for the April-June quarter, roughly nineteen times the 4.7tr won (€2.7bn) it earned a year earlier and more than it made in the previous three years combined.
The extraordinary numbers reflect the same force reshaping the memory industry worldwide: the race to build AI data centres has pushed chip prices to record highs.
According to Citi Research, average selling prices for DRAM memory rose 44% quarter on quarter, and NAND flash 53%, as AI demand spilled beyond specialised high-bandwidth memory into the conventional chips that go into phones, servers and PCs, with customers now chasing longer-term supply contracts.
The estimate beat analyst forecasts, but far from celebrating, the market sold.
Samsung shares fell by over 10% before closing nearly 7% lower, dragging rival SK Hynix and the wider Kospi index down with them.
Samsung’s stock has more than doubled this year alone, so a historic quarter was already priced in, and leveraged local ETF products tracking the shares have made them prone to outsized moves.
There was also a blemish in the numbers as revenue of 171tr won (€97.6bn), though up 129% year on year, came in slightly below forecasts.
“We believe the slight revenue miss was largely driven by more moderate DRAM price hikes than expected, which likely spooked investors who are increasingly pricing in structural strength in memory prices,” said Jing Jie Yu, an analyst at Morningstar.
Hanging over everything is durability.
Investors are increasingly asking whether the technology giants bankrolling the AI build-out can sustain their spending without piling up debt against a payoff that remains unproven, the worry behind last week’s chip sell-off across Asia.
Samsung publishes its full results, with a breakdown by division, on 30 July, a report the market will scour for clues about whether the boom is structural or simply another memory cycle nearing its peak.
Additional sources • AP