A clue to Samsung Electronics’ surprise results emerged in Taiwan. Supreme Electronics, Samsung’s largest memory distributor in Taiwan, posted a quarterly record after first-quarter revenue surged 137 percent from a year earlier. The source of Samsung’s earnings surprise, which topped the highest brokerage estimate, was confirmed in reverse through the Taiwan distributor’s results.

Supreme Electronics’ March revenue reached 53.315 billion Taiwan dollars ($1.68 billion), marking the first time monthly revenue topped 50 billion Taiwan dollars, Taiwanese media including Liberty Times reported. The figure jumped 70.7 percent from February and 191 percent from a year earlier. First-quarter cumulative revenue also hit a quarterly record of 110.164 billion Taiwan dollars ($3.46 billion). That was up 56.6 percent from the previous quarter’s 70.333 billion Taiwan dollars and 137 percent from a year earlier.

Supreme Electronics is Samsung Electronics’ largest agent and distributor in Taiwan and China, handling distribution of memory products such as DRAM and NAND. More than 70 percent of its revenue comes from Samsung memory products, meaning its results reflect the scale of Samsung Electronics’ memory shipments to Taiwan.

The Taiwan data sharpened the backdrop to Samsung Electronics’ first-quarter earnings surprise. Samsung Electronics on April 7 announced preliminary results showing first-quarter operating profit of 57.2 trillion won. That was nearly 12 trillion won above even the highest brokerage estimate, 45.3 trillion won from iM Securities. Brokerages had estimated first-quarter average selling prices for DRAM would rise 60 percent from the previous quarter and NAND average selling prices would climb 55 percent.

The sharp rise in Supreme Electronics’ revenue suggests shipments themselves likely exceeded expectations, in addition to price gains. That aligns in direction with South Korean export data showing the average daily value of memory chip exports in March rose 195 percent from a year earlier to $990 million.

With demand concentrated on high-bandwidth memory packaging and AI server memory at Taiwanese chipmakers including TSMC, Samsung Electronics’ memory shipments to Taiwan also effectively surged nearly two-fold from a year earlier. Supreme Electronics also posted earnings per share of 3.4 Taiwan dollars in the fourth quarter of last year, its best profit in three years, benefiting from a memory shortage and rising prices.