As of 9:15 AM IST, Thursday 29 October 2026. Share price moves are intraday and may change before the close.
Samsung Electronics reported a record third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won (about $80 billion), nearly nine times higher than a year earlier, as demand for AI memory chips surged. The company said it is the first tech company in the world to exceed 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit. Despite the record, its shares fell more than 4% in Seoul on Thursday morning as investors questioned how long the AI spending boom can last.
The numbers
According to Samsung's results release for the quarter to 30 September:
- Revenue: 195.3 trillion won, an all-time quarterly high, up 14% from the previous quarter.
- Operating profit: 107.4 trillion won, up from 12.2 trillion won a year earlier, Reuters reported.
- Chips (Device Solutions): revenue of 147.1 trillion won and operating profit of 106.5 trillion won, almost all of the group total. The memory business set records for both revenue and profit.
- Consumer devices (Device eXperience): an operating loss of 0.8 trillion won, with both the mobile and TV/appliance units in the red because of cost pressures.
- Display: revenue of 8.0 trillion won and operating profit of 1.1 trillion won.
What drove the record
Samsung said strong server demand pushed up memory prices "across all applications" and that it "significantly scaled up" sales of HBM4, the high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators. It also cited demand for server SSDs. Its foundry business improved on sales of HBM base dies and advanced-node chips, with order wins from 2-nanometre high-performance computing customers, including major hyperscalers.
Looking ahead, Samsung expects AI infrastructure spending to reach "a historic level" in 2027 and said AI-driven memory demand will "far exceed" industry supply compared with 2026.
Shareholder returns and investment
- A third-quarter dividend of 4,601 won per common and preferred share, totalling 30 trillion won.
- Total 2026 shareholder returns estimated at 90 to 110 trillion won, with the remainder to include "a substantial share repurchase and cancellation program". Final details are due after a board meeting in late January 2027.
- Capital spending of 29 trillion won in the quarter, with about 84.4 trillion won expected for the full year, mostly for chips.
Why the shares fell
Samsung shares slid more than 4% and dragged South Korea's Kospi down about 2.6% after a nearly 7% surge the day before, according to a Reuters market report carried by Free Malaysia Today. Reuters said investors remained wary about the durability of AI spending. The result also came hours after Alphabet's shares fell sharply in after-hours trading in New York on concerns about its heavy AI spending and cash burn.
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