Kiwoom Securities said on the 23rd that for Samsung Electronics, it expects first-quarter operating profit this year to come in at 31 trillion won, beating market expectations, and it raised its full-year operating profit estimate to 170 trillion won.
At the same time, it maintained a "Buy" investment opinion and lifted its target price to 200,000 won from 170,000 won in about two weeks. The previous day's closing price of Samsung Electronics was 152,300 won.
Park Yu-ak, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, said, "Reflecting the surge in commodity memory prices, an upward adjustment to high bandwidth memory (HBM4) prices, and a recovery in foundry earnings, we are raising Samsung Electronics' expected operating profit for this year to 170 trillion won, up 290% year over year."
Park added, "Samsung Electronics' share price remains the most undervalued among memory companies," and noted, "Rather than worrying about valuation, a strategy of focusing on earnings and share price momentum is desirable."
Park predicted that Samsung Electronics will post a first-quarter earnings surprise. He forecast first-quarter operating profit at 31 trillion won, which is well above the market consensus of 2.76 trillion won.
Park explained, "Because we judged that commodity DRAM and NAND prices will surge 45%–50% from the previous quarter," and added, "Samsung Electronics' DRAM node migration, the transition to 9th-generation NAND, and rising server DRAM demand are working favorably in memory price negotiations."