[Photo by Yoo Dae-gil = dbeorlf123@ajunews.com]
Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday its first-quarter net profit shot up 46.29 percent from a year earlier, aided by a robust chip business which posted record-high performance.
Net profit came to 7.68 trillion won (6.78 billion US dollars) in the January-March period, Samsung said in a regulatory filing. Operating profit reached 9.89 trillion won, also up 48.27 percent from a year earlier. Sales increased 1.54 percent on-year to reach 50.5 trillion won over the cited period.
Samsung's operating income came in line with its estimate announced earlier this month. It marked the second-highest quarterly operating profit ever posted by the tech giant. The company posted an all-time high operating profit of 10.1 trillion won in the third quarter of 2013.
The company attributed its strong performance mostly to expanded sales of premium memory chips.
By sector, the device solution (DS) business posted an operating profit of 7.59 trillion won, with the semiconductor sector accounting for 6.31 trillion won by increasing 3.68 percent on-year. It marks the highest performance ever posted by the chip sector.
Samsung said the improved performance of the chip business came on the back of strong sales of high-capacity SSDs and other premium DRAM chips. The company said it expects the robust earnings for the chip sector in the second half on seasonal demand and the release of new mobile products.
"In the second half, overall supply and demand in the memory market will be stable amid peak seasonality and new mobile devices being released in the market. However, tight supply-demand conditions may change due to the possible expansion of industry supply," Samsung said in a release.
As for the mobile business, the tech giant said its shipment of smartphones actually increased slightly despite the earnings decline on the back of rising sales of budget smartphones.
Samsung said the second-quarter performance of the mobile business will improve following the full-fledged sales of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. The company said the global demand of smartphones is expected to rise this year, but the release of rival models is expected to fuel competition.
Lee Myung-jin, head of Samsung's investor relations team, said Samsung sold 93 million units of handsets and six million units of tablet PCs in the January-March period. Smartphones accounted for around 80 percent of its handset sales.
(Yonhap)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
