Samsung wins big.

Samsung's operating profit in the first quarter surged a record 755% year-on-year, far exceeding market estimates.

Samsung Electronics headquarters in Suwon, South Korea. Photo: Bloomberg .

Samsung Electronics has just announced that its operating profit for the first quarter reached $37.9 billion . This figure represents a 755% increase compared to the same period last year, far exceeding the average forecast of analysts ( $26.1 billion ).

According to Bloomberg , Samsung's operating profit in the first quarter of this year outperformed other quarters, exceeding the $29 billion recorded for the entire year of 2025. This reflects strong demand for AI memory chips amid a market affected by the war in the Middle East.

The company's revenue during the same period reached $88.4 billion , higher than the average forecast ( $77.7 billion ). The company expects to release its full financial report, including net profit and figures for each business segment, on April 30th.

Samsung shares, after a sharp decline in February, rose 4.9% in morning trading on April 7 (Seoul time). This dispelled market concerns that the US-Iran conflict would impact sustainable spending on energy-intensive AI hardware. For comparison, shares of rival SK Hynix rose 5.3%.

Samsung's primary customers are cloud service providers. Recently, these companies have been consistently ordering high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and AI-powered chips, helping the company increase both sales and profits.

"It's all driven by memory, and the demand is stronger than we anticipated," said Sanjeev Rana, head of research at CLSA Securities Korea.

Mr. Rana estimates that the memory segment could account for nearly 90% of Samsung's total operating profit. Supply is currently very limited for conventional HBM and DRAM products.

Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron are the three companies that dominate the global memory supply. In recent years, all three have shifted their production to HBM, used in Nvidia's AI accelerators, making the supply of conventional memory increasingly scarce.

South Korea's semiconductor exports in March reached a record $32.8 billion , a 151.4% increase. By 2026, total capital spending on AI infrastructure is projected to exceed $650 billion , based on data from Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and estimates from analysts for Microsoft and Oracle.

Samsung's profits over the last 5 years (in trillion won). Photo: Bloomberg .

Analysts from Morgan Stanley offered a positive outlook, highlighting that Samsung's profits are "recovering strongly," especially after adjusting their forecasts based on the potential for price increases due to limited production capacity.

Analysts remain optimistic about Samsung, despite the emergence of AI optimization solutions like Google TurboQuant or Anthropic's Claude Mythos.

Andrew Jackson, head of Japan equity strategy at Ortus Advisors, argues that investors are "ignoring" the threat posed by Google's resource compression technology.

The average global price of DRAM increased by 64% in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter. Analysts from Citigroup forecast Samsung's operating profit this year to reach $206 billion , mainly driven by demand for AI inference chips.

Earlier this year, Samsung became the first company to commercialize the HBM4 chip for customers. This milestone came after years of delays, creating an opportunity for SK Hynix to rise to prominence.

At the Nvidia GTC event in March, Samsung introduced the more advanced HBM4E generation. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that they would use Samsung's 4nm process to manufacture the Groq 3 processor. The South Korean company also signed an agreement to supply HBM4 chips to AMD.

Source: https://znews.vn/loi-nhuan-samsung-tang-8-lan-post1641555.html