Samsung Electronics on April 8 reported first-quarter sales of 79 trillion won and operating profit of 6.6 trillion won in its preliminary earnings report, beating market expectations.
The company’s sales rose 9.84% from a year earlier, while operating profit edged down 0.15%. For the first three months of the year, brokerages had projected 77.1 trillion won in sales and 4.96 trillion won in operating profit, according to market tracker FnGuide.
Analysts attributed the strong performance to robust sales of the Galaxy S25, Samsung’s latest artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smartphone. The market had expected profit in the 3 trillion won range, but strong demand for the S25 pushed it into the 4 trillion won range. A tech industry insider said, “Despite concerns over higher costs from using Qualcomm chips across all models, sales were much higher than the previous version.”
In the chip business, both sales and profit declined from the fourth quarter of last year. Still, demand for server DRAM remained strong due to the ongoing AI boom, while China’s consumer stimulus program helped boost demand for mobile and PC DRAM and NAND. However, the non-memory chip business, including foundry, continued to post losses due to weak customer demand and lower factory utilization.
The home appliance and TV division performed in line with seasonal trends, but demand for high-end products like large-screen TVs helped slightly improve results from the previous quarter.
Many in the market had expected Samsung to bottom out in the first quarter, with a rebound beginning in the second, led by demand for AI-related chips like high-bandwidth memory (HBM). At a shareholder meeting last month, Jun Young-hyun, head of the chip division, said Samsung could begin mass production of 12-layer HBM3E products as early as the second quarter.
However, the outlook has become uncertain due to new U.S. tariff policies under the Trump administration. Nearly half of Samsung’s smartphones are made in Vietnam, which now faces a 46% reciprocal tariff from the U.S. The company is also considering shifting home appliance production from Mexico to the U.S. to avoid further duties. Additional tariffs on semiconductors have also been signaled, making previous forecasts increasingly unreliable.
