Samsung's quarterly operating profit tops 100 trillion won for the first time on demand for AI memory

Samsung Electronics said early Thursday in Seoul that it made about 107.4 trillion won in operating profit in the third quarter, the first time a South Korean company has reported more than 100 trillion won in a single quarter. That is nearly nine times what it earned a year earlier, and analysts say nearly all of it came from memory chips.

The figures are preliminary. Samsung put third-quarter sales at about 195 trillion won, within a range of 194 trillion to 196 trillion, and operating profit within a range of 107.3 trillion to 107.5 trillion. Korean disclosure rules do not allow the estimates to be published as a range, so the single figures it gave are the midpoints. The company gave no breakdown by business, no net income and no outlook; those come with its full third-quarter results later this month.

How the quarter compares

A year earlier Samsung had sales of 86.06 trillion won and operating profit of 12.17 trillion. Sales have more than doubled since then, up about 127%. Compared with the second quarter, when sales were 171.5 trillion won and operating profit 89.49 trillion, sales rose about 14% and operating profit about 20%.

The company is now keeping more of each won it sells. Operating profit came to about 55% of sales, up from about 52% in the second quarter and about 14% a year earlier.

This is the fourth quarter in a row in which Samsung has reported its highest-ever sales and operating profit. Adding the first quarter's 57.2 trillion won and the second quarter's 89.5 trillion, operating profit for the first nine months of 2026 is about 254 trillion won. For all of 2025, Samsung made 43.6 trillion won, so the third quarter alone is about two and a half times last year's total.

Where the profit comes from

Samsung did not split the quarter by business, but the second quarter shows the pattern. Its chip division, Device Solutions, made 89.2 trillion won of the company's 89.5 trillion won operating profit. The phone and networks business lost 700 billion won, and the TV and appliance business had a small loss, as the rising price of components, memory included, squeezed the company's own devices.

Analysts expect the third quarter to look similar, with DRAM contributing about 80 trillion won of profit, flash memory about 30 trillion and the consumer devices business losing money for a second straight quarter. Those are estimates; Samsung's own split will come later this month.

When it reported second-quarter results on July 30, the company said it expected the memory market to stay undersupplied through the second half of the year, as spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure kept demand for server memory high, and that supply constraints would continue despite efforts to increase production. On its earnings call the same day, a Samsung executive said revenue from HBM4, its newest high-bandwidth memory for AI processors, would more than triple in the third quarter from the second.

Why forecasts had come down

The result landed slightly above expectations that had been falling for weeks. Average analyst forecasts compiled just before the release ranged from about 105.5 trillion to 106.6 trillion won, down from roughly 114 trillion in August. Much of the cut came from the currency: Samsung is paid in dollars for much of its chip sales, and the won strengthened from more than 1,500 per dollar in the second quarter to the 1,300s in September, which shrinks those sales once they are converted back into won.

What the stock faces

Samsung shares were little changed at 268,500 won at 9:20 a.m. on Thursday in Seoul, or 8:20 p.m. Wednesday in New York. Brokers had warned of mechanical selling pressure in Thursday's session. Several large semiconductor exchange-traded funds are rebalancing that day, and Samsung's 27.1% weight in one of the largest is above that fund's 25% cap for a single stock. Index options also expire, and the company's 15 trillion won share buyback, which had supported the price, was 97% complete by value as of Oct. 6. Korean markets are closed on Friday for a holiday.