Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co. on Tuesday estimated its first-quarter operating profit to have surpassed 50 trillion won (US$33.1 billion) for the first time, driven by strong demand for premium memory chips from the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The South Korean tech giant projected an operating profit of 57.2 trillion won for the January-March period, surging from 6.61 trillion won a year earlier.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the operating profit was 36.7 percent higher than the average estimate, based on a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency. For the entirety of 2025, Samsung Electronics reported an operating profit of 43.6 trillion won. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the company posted an operating profit of 20 trillion won, marking a new quarterly high at that time.
Revenue for the first quarter rose 68.1 percent year-on-year to 133 trillion won. However, net earnings data was not available. While Samsung Electronics did not provide a detailed breakdown of earnings by business division, its device solutions unit, which includes the semiconductor segment, is believed to have accounted for a dominant share.
Samsung Electronics has been focusing on expanding the supply of sixth-generation high bandwidth memory, or HBM4, this year, to meet the growing demand for AI infrastructure. The company plans to release its final earnings report later this month.