EquitiesMarket noteThursday 8 October 2026, 08:25
Samsung earnings: third-quarter profit rose almost ninefold to 107.4tn won
Samsung earnings guidance puts third-quarter operating profit at 107.4tn won, about $76bn, almost nine times last year's, as AI demand keeps memory chips short.
By The Notebook Desk
Samsung Electronics expects operating profit of about 107.4tn won for the three months to September, almost nine times the 12.17tn won it made a year earlier. Sales rose to about 195tn won, from 86.06tn won, Samsung said in its earnings guidance on Thursday.
In dollars the profit comes to about $76bn, at the won’s average rate against the dollar over the quarter, by our calculation from Federal Reserve data. It is Samsung’s fourth record quarter in a row, and the reason is the same as in the last three: data centres for artificial intelligence want more memory chips than the industry can make.
Samsung earnings, quarter by quarter
Korean rules do not let a company give a range as its main estimate, so Samsung gives one number, the middle of its range. It puts operating profit between 107.3tn and 107.5tn won, and sales between 194tn and 196tn won.
The climb has been steep. Operating profit was a record 20.1tn won in the last quarter of 2025, and Samsung made 43.6tn won in the whole of that year, its results show. In the first quarter of 2026 it made 57.2tn won, and in the second 89.5tn won. The third quarter alone brought in about two and a half times the profit of all of 2025.
Memory chips made almost all of it
The guidance gives no breakdown by business. The second-quarter results do. In those three months the Device Solutions division, which makes memory and other chips, earned 89.2tn of the 89.5tn won of operating profit, Samsung reported in July. Its memory business set records for revenue and profit, helped by rising prices across the industry.
The rest of the group made about 0.3tn won between them. The phone and networks businesses lost 0.7tn won, and Samsung blamed higher component costs. TVs and home appliances made a small loss. Expensive memory, in other words, helps Samsung’s chip business and hurts its phone business, and the chip business is far larger.
Samsung said in July that it expected the memory market to stay undersupplied in the second half of the year, with demand for server memory, data-centre storage and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) growing faster. It also said supply constraints would continue despite its efforts to make more. Its American rival said the same: we wrote last week that Micron expects the memory shortage to get worse, not better.
Is Samsung now more profitable than Nvidia?
On the latest figures, yes, but the quarters do not line up. Nvidia made operating income of $63.7bn in the three months to 26 July, it reported in August. Samsung’s roughly $76bn covers July to September. In the quarter that overlaps most with Nvidia’s, April to June, Samsung’s 89.5tn won came to about $60bn at that quarter’s average rate, by our calculation, less than Nvidia’s.
Nvidia still keeps more of each dollar it sells. Its operating income was 66% of revenue. On its guidance, Samsung’s operating profit is about 55% of sales, by our calculation, because the group also sells phones, TVs and appliances on thin margins.
The won and what to watch
The exchange rate moves the dollar figures a lot. The won averaged about 1,417 to the dollar in the third quarter, but it ranged from 1,551 on 1 July to 1,340 on 9 September, and it stood at 1,346 on 2 October. A stronger won means fewer won for each dollar of chips sold abroad.
The full results will show how much of the profit came from memory, and whether the phone business is still losing money as chip costs rise. Samsung published its first- and second-quarter results at the end of the month after the quarter, on 30 April and 30 July; if it keeps that timetable, the third-quarter results will come at the end of October.
Disclosure
This is analysis and opinion, not investment advice.