Samsung Electronics, the South Korean tech giant, reported a net profit of 9.78 trillion won ($7.1 billion) for the third quarter, surpassing analysts' expectations of 9.14 trillion won. Despite challenges in its semiconductor division, other parts of Samsung's vast business are helping to offset these difficulties.
This year, Samsung's market value has dropped by about one-fourth. The company's memory chips, once dominant, have struggled to gain NVIDIA's certification for use in AI accelerators. This has provided competitors like SK Hynix and Micron Technology an unusually long window to dominate the lucrative high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sector.
Samsung's semiconductor division, typically a major profit driver, posted an operating profit of 3.86 trillion won for the quarter, below expectations and down from 6.45 trillion won in the previous quarter. In contrast, SK Hynix reported record operating profits of 7.03 trillion won last week.
Samsung's semiconductor head, Jun Young-hyun, recently apologized for the disappointing performance, acknowledging delays in certifying their most advanced HBM3E chip series. The company had predicted these products would enter mass production by the end of the third quarter.
Meanwhile, SK Hynix confirmed plans to begin supplying its 12-layer stacked HBM3E chips in the fourth quarter.
