Samsung Electronics celebrates a 44% profit increase over the previous year, beyond market expectations and thanks to the early launch in mid-January (instead of March) of the S21 family of top-of-the-range smartphones, as well as strong sales of gadgets , parried the blow of a blackout in Texas that shut down one of its factories.
The largest company in South Korea reported an operating profit of 9.3 trillion won ($ 8.3 billion) for the three months ended March in the preliminary results just released. The estimates were that they averaged an average of 8.88 trillion won. The company has not provided data on the net profit or performance of the various divisions of the group, which will be disclosed in the course of April. Sales for the quarter were 17% higher than the same period a year ago at 65 trillion won. Shares were down about 0.3% in Seoul on Wednesday morning (+ 5% year to date and + 86% over the past 12 months). The largest memory maker in the world had warned of a possible decline in profitability in the first quarter, but the economic recovery from the pandemic happened faster than expected and semiconductor prices are now on the rise.
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“The growing demand for DRAM (dynamic random access memory, also called volatile RAM, which uses capacitors to store information, ed) will push profits – commented Masahiro Wakasugi, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence – and the launch of the next generation of DRAM , called DDR5 (double data rate 5), will be able to stimulate demand in the second half of the year, giving new energy to sales ».
Samsung’s Austin, Texas plant was shut down for more than a month due to the freeze that shut down the entire state in mid-February, claiming about 300 billion won ($ 266 million) in losses, according to estimates analysts. Most affected auto parts and mid-range smartphones, said Greg Roh, senior vice president of HMC Securities
The Galaxy S21 family, the top of the range of the Korean house, as we said, was released before the traditional annual update deadline, giving a boost to the smartphone division in January. Samsung had been overtaken by Apple at the end of 2020 and had therefore lost its leadership among world producers. Sales of Samsung smartphones in the first quarter are estimated at 76 million, up 25% from the previous quarter, with an average price more than 20% higher, according to Eugene Investment & Securities. The S21 series outperformed its S20 predecessor by a two-to-one margin in the first six weeks after launch.