Samsung Electronics said on Jan. 29 it posted 2025 fourth-quarter revenue of 93.84 trillion won and operating profit of 20.1 trillion won. Revenue rose 23.82 percent from a year earlier and operating profit jumped 209.17 percent. It was the biggest quarterly result on record.

Revenue in the DS (Device Solutions) semiconductor division rose 33 percent from the previous quarter, leading the improvement. The company cited expanded sales of high value-added products including HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and rising memory prices. Revenue in the DX (Device eXperience) division fell 8 percent from the previous quarter as the effect of new smartphone model launches faded.

For 2025, the company posted revenue of 333.61 trillion won and operating profit of 43.6 trillion won. Revenue rose 10.88 percent from a year earlier and operating profit increased 33.23 percent. It spent 37.7 trillion won on research and development for the year.

By division, the DS unit posted fourth-quarter revenue of 44 trillion won and operating profit of 16.4 trillion won. Memory logged its best quarterly performance on record. The company said this reflected a response to strong demand for commodity DRAM and expanded HBM sales. Sales of high value-added products such as server DDR5 (Double Data Rate 5) and enterprise SSDs (Solid State Drive) also rose.

Foundry operations began full-scale mass production of a first-generation 2-nanometre new product. Revenue rose on strong demand from clients in the United States and China, but profitability improvement was limited due to provisioning costs. System LSI also posted a decline from the previous quarter due to seasonal demand changes. Image sensors, however, saw revenue grow on expanded sales of new 200-megapixel and 50-megapixel Big Pixel products.

The DX division, including mobile and home appliances, posted revenue of 44.3 trillion won and operating profit of 1.3 trillion won. MX (Mobile eXperience) saw fourth-quarter shipments fall, but it posted annual double-digit profitability on growth in flagship product revenue and steady sales of tablets and wearables.

VD (Visual Display) increased revenue from the previous quarter on solid sales of premium products including Neo QLED and OLED TVs and by meeting peak-season demand. Home appliances performance declined due to a continued seasonal off-peak period and the impact of global tariffs.

The display business posted revenue of 9.5 trillion won and operating profit of 2 trillion won. The company said small and mid-sized panels achieved solid results on higher smartphone demand from major customers and expanded sales of IT and automotive products. Large panels increased sales by meeting year-end peak-season market demand.

Foundry to mass-produce second-generation 2-nanometre products in the second half, push growth centered on advanced processes

Samsung Electronics expects the semiconductor business to continue growing in the first quarter, driven by demand for AI and servers. It plans to respond to the market through mass production shipments of HBM4, including 11.7 Gbps (gigabits per second) products. MX plans to launch the Galaxy S26 to expand sales focused on flagship products and to strengthen leadership in the AI smartphone market based on an agentic AI experience.

Samsung Electronics plans to pre-empt the AI semiconductor market based on its strength as the world's only semiconductor company capable of a one-stop solution spanning logic, memory, foundry and packaging in 2026. It also plans for its foundry business to mass-produce new products using second-generation 2-nanometre processes in the second half and to continue strengthening technological competitiveness by optimising performance and power at 4 nanometres.

A Samsung Electronics official said, "We plan to continue a stable management stance centered on securing profitability while closely watching uncertainties in the macro environment such as global tariffs."