SEOUL, Samsung Electronics Co. said Tuesday its chip business shifted to the black for the first time in five quarters on rebounding prices of DRAMs and rising demand for high-performance memory chips for artificial intelligence. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of smartphones and memory chips, said its operating profit reached 6.6 trillion won (US$4.8 billion) for the January-March period, compared with 640.2 billion won a year ago. Its sales jumped 12.8 percent to 71.9 trillion won, and net profit soared 329 percent to 6.75 trillion won, the company said in a regulatory filing. The earnings beat market expectations. The average estimate of operating profit by analysts stood at 5.6 trillion won, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency. Samsung Electronics said it has invested 7.82 trillion won in research and development for the quarter ending March, marking the largest quarterly investment. Samsung Electronics said its chip business earned 2 3.1 trillion won in sales for the three-month period through March, with an operating profit of 1.91 trillion won. It is the first time that the company's semiconductor segment has posted profit since the fourth quarter of 2022. It logged an operating loss of over 15 trillion won last year amid a downturn in the global chip market. Strong demand for memory chips lent support to the better-than-expected performance of the company's chip business on rising DRAM and NAND flash prices, with steady sales of double data rate 5 (DDR5) products and massive solid state drives (SSDs). The company said it has pulled off the quarterly growth in the sector by a timely response to demand for high-value-added products, including high bandwidth memory, DDR5 and SSD servers, turning its memory business profitable. In order to keep up with the booming demand for generative AI, Samsung Electronics said it will start mass producing its latest 12-layer HBM3E products within the second quarter. "We continue to increase our HB M supply for this year by more than three times on-year in terms of bits and we've already completed discussions with our customers," Kim Jae-joon, vice president of Samsung Electronics' memory business, said during an earnings call. "In 2025, we plan to supply at least twice as much as this year, and we are in smooth discussions with our customers." He said mass production of the 8-layer HBM3E started in early April and is expected to start generating revenue from the end of the second quarter. At the same time, the official noted Samsung Electronics' chip business focus will be moved to HBM3E starting in the second half as part of its plan to take the lead in the HBM market, which is reportedly topped by its local rival SK hynix Inc. "HBM3E will account for more than two-thirds of our HBM sales by the end of the year," he added. Its foundry, or contract chip manufacturing, businesses saw its sales remain sluggish but operating losses narrow thanks to effective management. "The development of advanced 3 nanometer (nm) and 2nm technologies is progressing smoothly, and 4nm technology yields have stabilized," it said. "This improvement in advanced technology competitiveness helped the foundry business achieve its highest-ever order backlog in the first quarter." The chipmaker said its foundry business is expected to post a double-digit on-quarter growth in the second quarter after bottoming out in the first quarter as customer inventory adjustments have been finalized and line utilization improved. Samsung Electronics plans to complete the development of 2nm design infrastructure and prepare infrastructure for various applications in mature processes, such as 14nm and 8nm, to secure customers. Samsung Electronics' mobile and other devices business posted 47.3 trillion won in sales and 4.1 trillion won in operating profit in the first quarter. In particular, sales of 33.5 trillion won and an operating profit of 2.5 trillion won came from the smartphone sector. Its latest Galaxy S24 series model, the company 's first AI-powered smartphone, led the stellar first-quarter earnings despite a slowdown in the global smartphone market. The company said shipments of smartphones and tablets amounted to 60 million and 7 million units in the first quarter, respectively, with the average selling price of smartphones reaching $336. Its earnings will likely get a fresh boost in the second half as the company's upcoming foldable models, including the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Galaxy Z Flip 6, are scheduled to hit the market in the summer, along with the Galaxy Ring, a ring-type digital health care device. Insiders anticipated that Samsung Electronics will hold an Unpacked event for the new Galaxy Z series in Paris in early July ahead of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Earnings from its TV business fell from the previous quarter, but demand for large QLED and OLED TVs remained strong. Samsung Electronics said it has set aside 11.3 trillion won for facility investment, spending 9.7 trillion won in the semiconductor sector. S ource: Yonhap News Agency
Myanmar Clears Path for Junta Leader to Become President
March 30, 2026