Samsung’s first-quarter operating profit and revenue beat expectations on smartphone, chip sales

Samsung Electronics’ operating profit and revenue beat analysts’ estimates Wednesday, as sales of its flagship Galaxy S25 smartphones and as well as memory chips rose.

The South Korean company posted a record quarterly revenue, up 10% from a year earlier, while its first-quarter operating profit climbed 1.5%.

Here are Samsung’s first-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

• Revenue: 79.1 trillion Korean won ($55.4 billion) vs. 78.1 trillion Korean won
• Operating profit: 6.7 trillion Korean won vs. 6.4 trillion Korean won

First-quarter revenue marginally topped Samsung’s forecast of 79 trillion Korean won, while operating profit also came in higher than the company’s expectations of 6.6 trillion Korean won.

Samsung is a leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers, and is also the world’s second-largest smartphone maker.

The company flagged macroeconomic uncertainties due to trade tensions and a slowdown in global growth. Samsung expects performance to improve in the second half of the year, “assuming that the uncertainties are diminished.”

Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of 1.1 trillion Korean won in the first quarter, up 7% from the previous three months and 68% year over year. The company’s memory revenue, in particular, nearly doubled from the same period last year. 

“For the Memory Business, revenue was driven by expanded server DRAM sales and the addressing of additional NAND demand amid a perceived bottoming out of the market price,” the company said. 

DRAM and NAND are types of semiconductor memory found in PCs, workstations and servers. Demand for such memory chips has surged on the back of the artificial intelligence boom. 

However, long a leader in memory chips, Samsung has recently been falling behind its local competitor, SK Hynix , which has been gained more from growth in AI.

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month said that SK Hynix had overtaken Samsung in overall DRAM market revenue for the first time, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%.

The report added that this had resulted, in part, from SK Hynix’s dominance in high bandwidth memory or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption.

South Korea’s SK Hynix last week topped quarterly revenue and operating profit estimates on strong demand for its high bandwidth memory offerings.

Samsung said on Wednesday that its HBM sales had been impacted by U.S.-led export controls on AI chips and deferred demand in anticipation of Samsung’s upcoming rollout of its latest HBM product.

Samsung’s memory earnings have also been impacted by eroding average selling price, it added. 

For the current quarter, Samsung anticipates continued strong demand for AI servers and will seek to strengthen its position in high-value-added products, including HBM.