Samsung Electronics shares rose 7.1 per cent to a record high in Seoul on Friday amid signs of a rebound in the memory-chip market and off the back of a surge in earnings.[SEOUL] Samsung Electronics shares rose 7.1 per cent to a record high in Seoul on Friday amid signs of a rebound in the memory-chip market and off the back of a surge in earnings.
South Korea's biggest company posted a 26 per cent increase in operating income to nine trillion won for the three months ended December in preliminary results. That compares with a 9.52 trillion won average of analyst forecasts. Sales for the quarter were 61 trillion won. The company didn't provide net income or break out divisional performance, which it will report later this month when it releases final results.
Hours earlier, fellow memory chipmaker Micron Technology issued a bullish forecast, predicting that the need for dynamic random access memory will likely exceed supply this quarter. The tightness of supply in DRAM is already driving up prices, according to chief executive officer Sanjay Mehrotra.
"We believe memory pricing recovery will take place not only for DRAM but also for NAND" this year, Citi analysts wrote in response to Samsung's results, citing limited supply growth, low inventories and tight capacity. Galaxy smartphone sales were weaker over the past quarter as Apple released its first 5G-compatible iPhones and Chinese rivals launched aggressive campaigns to secure the market share vacated by Huawei Technologies's sanction-stricken consumer business. Samsung shipped 41 million 5G devices in the past year, according to Strategy Analytics estimates, lagging behind Apple's 52 million and Huawei's 80 million sold largely at home in China.