Samsung Electronics said on Oct. 29 it posted third-quarter consolidated revenue of 195.3 trillion won and operating profit of 107.4 trillion won. Samsung Electronics is the first global tech company to exceed 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit.

From a year earlier, revenue rose 127 percent and operating profit jumped 783 percent. Profit grew faster than revenue, lifting profitability. From the previous quarter, revenue increased 13.9 percent and operating profit rose 20.1 percent. The operating margin climbed to 55.0 percent, up 2.8 percentage points from the previous quarter’s 52.2 percent and compared with 14.1 percent a year earlier.

The semiconductor (DS) division led the company’s results. DS posted revenue of 147.1 trillion won and operating profit of 106.5 trillion won, accounting for most of the company’s operating profit. The memory business increased sales of HBM4, a high-performance memory that stacks DRAM in multiple layers to boost data processing speed. It also met demand for server SSDs and set a new record. Foundry operations continued improving as utilisation rose and demand for advanced processes increased.

The device (DX) division posted revenue of 52.1 trillion won but recorded an operating loss of 800.0 billion won. MX revenue rose 15 percent from the previous quarter on the impact of new foldable products including the Galaxy Z Fold8. MX and networks, and TVs and home appliances, both remained in the red due to cost burdens. Samsung Display posted revenue of 8.0 trillion won and operating profit of 1.1 trillion won. Harman posted operating profit of 600.0 billion won, helped by non-recurring factors including U.S. tariff refunds.

Net profit was tallied at 75.1 trillion won. Pre-tax profit was 98.5 trillion won, 8.9 trillion won less than operating profit. That reflected financial gains and losses swinging to a loss of 9.5 trillion won from a profit in the previous quarter. For the cumulative total from the first to third quarter, the company posted revenue of 500.6 trillion won and operating profit of 254.2 trillion won. The cumulative operating margin was 50.8 percent, more than five times the 9.8 percent a year earlier.

Samsung Electronics expects demand for memory for new GPUs and CPUs to rise in the fourth quarter as well. It also expects demand for QLC, a type of NAND flash, to surge sharply alongside the spread of personal AI agents. It plans to further increase the share of HBM and server DRAM and SSD sales.

The company forecast that next year memory supply shortages will worsen from this year as investment in AI servers accelerates. Its foundry business plans to expand supply capacity by starting operations at its first fab in Taylor, Texas.