Samsung Forecasts 107.4 Trillion Won Profit As AI Memory Booms

Samsung Electronics has put an extraordinary figure on the AI memory boom. In preliminary guidance released Thursday, the company estimated third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won on sales of 195 trillion won. A year earlier, it reported 12.17 trillion won in operating profit and 86.06 trillion won in sales. Those comparisons imply profit rose roughly 783% and revenue about 127%.

The numbers are guidance, not final audited results, and Samsung has not yet provided a breakdown by business. That matters. It would be tempting to assign the entire jump to high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers, but today’s filing does not say how much came from memory chips, foundry work, phones or other products. The more defensible reading is that Samsung is forecasting another historic quarter against the backdrop of unusually strong AI infrastructure demand.

Even with that caveat, the scale is striking. Samsung’s second-quarter operating profit was already 89.49 trillion won on sales of 171.5 trillion won. The new estimate suggests sequential growth of about 20% in profit and 14% in revenue, on top of an exceptionally strong base. The company gave ranges of 107.3 trillion to 107.5 trillion won for operating profit and 194 trillion to 196 trillion won for sales, publishing the midpoint to comply with Korean disclosure rules.

The memory business is the obvious focus for investors because AI systems need more than powerful processors. Servers also need fast, high-capacity memory to move data through those processors, and demand for advanced products has tightened supply. In its last full earnings report, Samsung said its chip division benefited from AI demand, rising memory prices and a stronger mix of server products. It also warned that supply constraints could continue. That history helps explain the market’s interest in today’s guidance, but the third-quarter divisional numbers still have to be disclosed.

This is also a reminder that Samsung is not just a smartphone company. Its chip and device businesses can be moving through very different cycles at the same time. The gap was already visible earlier this year, when memory demand was doing much of the work while consumer-device margins faced pressure. A final breakdown will show whether that divergence widened again.

The next questions are practical ones: how much of the quarter was driven by selling more advanced memory, how much by higher prices, and whether the company can keep supplying customers at this pace. Investors will also want to see cash flow and spending plans. Rapidly rising profit can fund new capacity, but adding capacity takes time and can alter the balance between supply and prices later on.

For now, Samsung has confirmed only its preliminary group estimates. They are large enough to make this one of the clearest signs yet of where AI infrastructure spending is landing. The full results will determine how much of that momentum belongs to memory and how durable management thinks it will be.