text: Original by Dongchedi Li Shuaifei
[Original by Dongchedi Industry] Recently, Samsung Electronics released its preliminary performance report for the third quarter of 2022 ended September 30, which showed that Samsung Electronics' operating profit in the third quarter was between 10.7 trillion won (approximately RMB 53.735 billion) and 10.9 trillion won (approximately RMB 54.739 billion), a year-on-year decline of nearly 32% compared with the same period last year.
This is the first time that Samsung Electronics has experienced a decline in operating profits since 2019.
Picture source: Samsung official website
From the revenue level, Samsung Electronics expects revenue in the third quarter to be between 75 trillion won (approximately RMB 376.646 billion) and 77 trillion won (approximately RMB 386.69 billion), an increase of 1.3% to 4% year-on-year compared with the same period last year - despite this, Samsung Electronics still showed a significant decline in operating profits.
Samsung Electronics did not give an official comment on this result.
However, the view from market analysis agency Daiwa Capital Markets believes that the chip business contributed 70% of the profits to Samsung Electronics, but with the shipments of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) and NAND (nonvolatile memory) chips falling by 15% and 10% month-on-month, and their price declines by 19% and 20% respectively, this led to a sharp decline in Samsung at the profit level.
Samsung NAND chip
Not only that, Samsung also expects its profits to decline in the next quarter - this also makes people worry about how Samsung's chip business will perform in the sluggish demand and a more fragile global economy. After all, Samsung Electronics' stock price has fallen by more than 28% this year due to its continued weak performance.
It is worth mentioning that although Samsung Electronics' third-quarter profit performance was not good, the company is still vigorously investing in advanced semiconductor technology.
Previously, on October 4, Samsung Electronics announced a roadmap for chip production plans, which shows that it will start manufacturing chips with 2nm processes and 1.4nm processes in 2025 and 2027.
Source: Samsung official website
Not only that, Samsung Electronics also stated that it aims to produce the world's most advanced semiconductor within five years, and to launch a direct competition with TSMC, the world's largest chip manufacturer. As the world's second largest chip foundry, Samsung Electronics announced this plan in advance, obviously hoping to receive more chip foundry production orders.
However, although Samsung Electronics is investing heavily in the advanced process process , it also said that by 2027, semiconductors for high-performance computers, automobiles and 5G applications will still account for more than 50% of its foundry business, and these are basically chips that use mature process processes.
