[Yonhap News Photo]
SEOUL -- Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday its first-quarter operating profit is presumed to have set another record by rising 57.58 percent from the previous year.
The operating profit was estimated at 15.6 trillion won (14.6 billion US dollars) for the January-March period, compared with 9.89 trillion won posted a year earlier, the South Korean tech giant said through its earnings guidance report. Sales moved up 18.69 percent to 60 trillion won, compared with 50.5 trillion won in the same three months of 2017.
Samsung did not offer performance and net profit estimate reports for each business division. The company will deliver its finalized earnings report later this month.
For the January-March period of 2018, analysts said Samsung probably posted better earnings from its chips and mobile divisions from a year earlier.
"The IT and mobile division may have posted an operating profit of 3 trillion won (in the first quarter of 2018) due to the better-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S9 smartphone, which is estimated to have sold 10 million units," DB Financial Investment said in its latest report.
"The conservative outlook for the memory chip industry, which started in the second half of 2017, is likely to become groundless, due to the weaker-than-expected supply and the rising demand from the server segment," DB Financial Investment said.
Compared with the previous quarter, however, Samsung is presumed to have posted slightly lower earnings for the chip segment, apparently due to the weak sales of Apple Inc.'s iPhone X, Leading Investment & Securities said.
(Yonhap)
reporter
Lim Chang-won
cwlim34@ajunews.com
