With Samsung Electronics announcing a "record-breaking" preliminary result of 57.2 trillion won for the first quarter of this year, some say it has proven overwhelming profitability even compared with global big tech corporations.
On the 7th, Samsung Electronics said its preliminary consolidated results for the first quarter of this year came to 133 trillion won in revenue and 57.2 trillion won in operating profit. Revenue jumped 68.06% from a year earlier, and operating profit surged 755.01%.
Samsung Electronics' operating profit is the result of a recovery in the semiconductor industry and rising memory prices moving in tandem. As capital expenditures (CAPEX) on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers expand, big tech corporations' demand for memory is soaring, and ongoing supply shortages have strengthened pricing power.
The securities industry expects the upward trend in memory prices to continue for the time being. KB Securities projected in a report that DRAM prices will rise 250% and NAND prices 187% this year.
With Samsung Electronics' profit surging, some say its profit scale does not lag behind global large technology corporations such as Apple and Nvidia. Applying the won-dollar exchange rate of 1,509.9 won, Samsung Electronics' quarterly operating profit is about $38 billion. That is about $12.9 billion less than Apple's operating profit of $50.85 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 (September settlement of account, Oct.–Dec.), when it posted a record high, and about $6.4 billion behind Nvidia's operating profit of $44.3 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 (January settlement of account, Nov.–Jan.).
There is also a higher chance it will surpass the operating profit of TSMC, the No. 1 semiconductor foundry corporation. TSMC's operating profit in the fourth quarter of last year was about 26.4296 trillion won, while Samsung Electronics' operating profit in the first quarter of this year is more than double that. The securities industry also sees a high possibility that Samsung Electronics will surpass TSMC on a first-quarter basis this year. Hana Securities presented TSMC's first-quarter revenue guidance at $34.6 billion to $35.8 billion.
Despite the record results, some project this is only the beginning of the growth phase. Meritz Securities picked the period from the fourth quarter of this year, when volume expansion is expected following rising memory prices, through the second quarter of next year as the performance improvement momentum (upward driver).
Researcher Kim Sun-woo at Meritz Securities said, "In addition to operating profit being at a record high, we should also consider that the current position of the memory cycle is only close to the mid cycle," adding, "Based on past experience, price hikes appeared around the mid cycle, and then volume expansion followed, leading to an even more explosive improvement in memory corporations' results."
Compared with the earnings growth, some analyses say the corporate value remains undervalued. Samsung Electronics' 12-month forward price-earnings ratio (PER) is under 10, which is low compared with global big tech corporations such as Apple (about 32) and Nvidia (about 36) that are receiving valuations above 30.
Kim Dong-Won, head of research at KB Securities, said, "The gap in operating profit estimates between Nvidia (357 trillion won) and Samsung Electronics (327 trillion won) is only 30 trillion won, while the current market capitalization is just 19% of Nvidia's (6,487 trillion won) and 57% of TSMC's (2,206 trillion won), making the valuation appeal very high."