Samsung Electronics said Thursday it expects third-quarter operating profit of roughly 107.40 trillion Korean won, the first time the company has cleared 100 trillion in a single quarter.
By the numbers: Samsung guided to about 195 trillion won of sales and 107.40 trillion won of operating profit. The same quarter a year earlier produced 12.17 trillion won of operating profit on 86.06 trillion won of sales, making the projected profit 782% higher.
- Profit rose about 20% from the second quarter's 89.49 trillion won, which was itself a company record.
The backstory: Samsung spent much of 2025 as the laggard of the memory business while rivals won the high-bandwidth memory sockets that sit beside AI accelerators. Operating profit bottomed at 12.17 trillion won. The capacity that looked like overbuild then is now the scarcest input in the industry.
Zoom in: Korean disclosure rules bar companies from publishing earnings as a range, so these headline figures are medians. Samsung put sales at 194 trillion to 196 trillion won and operating profit at 107.3 trillion to 107.5 trillion won.
Yes, but: Samsung shares slipped 0.7% Thursday morning even on the record result.
- "Samsung has delivered a record profit and still fallen short of expectations, which tells you just how demanding the AI trade has become," said Josh Gilbert, lead analyst for APAC at investment platform eToro.
What's next: Samsung releases full results with a division-level breakdown later this month, which will show how much of the gain came from memory against foundry and handsets. Gilbert said memory buyers are signing multiyear supply agreements, giving Samsung rare visibility into demand.
Why it matters: One quarter of memory profit at this scale is the clearest price tag yet on the AI buildout, and it reaches consumers through the cost of every phone, laptop and console that ships with RAM.
