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Samsung Electronics‘ operating profit and revenue beat analysts’ estimates Wednesday, as sales of its flagship Galaxy S25 smartphones as well as memory chips rose.
The South Korean company posted a record quarterly revenue, up 10% from a year earlier, while its first-quarter operating profit climbed 1.5%.
Here are Samsung’s first-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
- Revenue: 79.1 trillion Korean won ($55.4 billion) vs. 78.1 trillion Korean won
- Operating profit: 6.7 trillion Korean won vs. 6.4 trillion Korean won
First-quarter revenue marginally topped Samsung’s forecast of 79 trillion Korean won, while operating profit also came in higher than the company’s expectations of 6.6 trillion Korean won.
Samsung is a leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers, and is also the world’s second-largest smartphone maker.
The company flagged macroeconomic uncertainties due to trade tensions and a slowdown in global growth. Samsung expects performance to improve in the second half of the year, “assuming that the uncertainties are diminished.”
“Due to the rapid changes in policies and geopolitical tensions among major countries, it’s difficult to accurately predict the business impact of tariffs and established countermeasures,” a Samsung executive said during Wednesday’s earnings call.
The executive noted that while Samsung’s flagship products, such as semiconductors, smartphones and tablets, are exempt from U.S. President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, Washington is conducting a product-specific tariff probe into these categories.
“There are a lot of uncertainties ahead of us … we are communicating with related countries to minimize negative effects,” Samsung said.
South Korea-listed shares of Samsung Electronics were trading down about 0.6%.
Memory business
Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of 1.1 trillion Korean won in the first quarter, down from the previous quarter and the same period last year, though revenue rose year on year.
“For the Memory Business, revenue was driven by expanded server DRAM sales and the addressing of additional NAND demand amid a perceived bottoming out of the market price,” the company said.
DRAM and NAND are types of semiconductor memory found in PCs, workstations and servers. Demand for such memory chips has surged on the back of the artificial intelligence boom.
However, overall earnings were impacted by a decrease in average selling prices and sales were affected by U.S. export controls on AI chips, Samsung said.
Long a leader in memory chips, Samsung has recently been falling behind its local competitor, SK Hynix, which has been better positioned to benefit from AI development.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month said that SK Hynix had overtaken Samsung in overall DRAM market revenue for the first time, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%.
High bandwidth memory
The Counterpoint report added that SK Hynix’s ascension in the DRAM market had resulted from its dominance in high bandwidth memory or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption.
SK Hynix last week topped quarterly revenue and operating profit estimates on strong demand for its high bandwidth memory offerings.
Samsung is actively working to catch up with SK Hynix in HBM by improving its products and increased research and development expenditure, MS Hwang, a research director at Counterpoint, told CNBC. “It’s been slow going, but progress is expected,” she added.
Samsung said its R&D expenditure increased 16% in the first quarter from a year earlier.
Samsung said in the first quarter it also experienced deferred HBM demand from customers anticipating the rollout of its latest HBM products.
For the current quarter, the company anticipates continued strong demand for AI servers and will seek to strengthen its position in high-value-added products, including HBM.
Speaking on the earnings call, Jaejune Kim, executive vice-president of Samsung’s memory business, also noted preemptive purchasing activities in the second quarter ahead of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
Smartphones
Samsung’s mobile experience and networks businesses, tasked with developing and selling smartphones, tablets, wearables and other devices, reported an increase in sales and profit from the prior year and quarter.
Sales grew by 10% year-over-year and 43% quarter-over-quarter.
The company credited the growth to the launch of its latest Galaxy S25 smartphone series, which includes enhanced AI features from previous models. Samsung added that it achieved cost reductions in the segment.
In the current quarter, the company plans to sustain sales through the launch of a new Galaxy S25 Edge smartphone and said it will continue to expand the AI-powered features offered on its smartphone lineup.
Correction: This story has been revised to reflect that operating profit in the chip segment declined both on a quarter-on-quarter as well as year-on-year basis.
