Samsung reported the largest operating profit in its history, and one division accounted for all but KRW 0.3 trillion of it
Samsung's phone business lost money last quarter.
It did so inside the largest operating profit the company has ever reported. Samsung Electronics said on Thursday morning in Seoul that consolidated revenue for the three months to 30 June reached KRW 171.5 trillion and operating profit reached KRW 89.5 trillion, both all-time highs, with revenue 28 percent above the first quarter. Earnings per share for common and preferred shares rose 52 percent to KRW 10,849.
Then the divisional table. The Device Solutions division, which holds memory, System LSI and the foundry, reported KRW 127.5 trillion of revenue and KRW 89.2 trillion of operating profit. Against a company total of KRW 89.5 trillion, that leaves KRW 0.3 trillion for everything else Samsung does.
The consumer half
The MX and Networks businesses, which sell Galaxy phones and telecom equipment, reported KRW 33.2 trillion of revenue and an operating loss of KRW 0.7 trillion. The release says revenue grew year on year on the Galaxy S26 series and the Galaxy A range, and that earnings fell because of what it calls elevated component cost pressures across the industry.
The Visual Display and Digital Appliances businesses, which make the televisions and the washing machines, reported KRW 14.5 trillion of revenue and a slight operating loss. Air conditioner demand rose. Costs rose faster.
Samsung Display was the one unit outside memory to make money, at KRW 0.7 trillion of operating profit on KRW 7.5 trillion of revenue.
What the memory business said
The memory business set records for both quarterly revenue and operating profit, and the release credits server products, a record-high server share of the sales mix, and prices that kept rising across the industry. Samsung says it scaled up HBM4 sales during the quarter and shipped the industry's first HBM4E samples to major customers.
For the second half it expects demand for server DRAM, enterprise solid-state drives and high bandwidth memory to accelerate, and it expects the market to stay undersupplied even with some moderation in mobile and personal computers. It also expects its own supply constraints to continue. Those are forecasts and the release presents them as forecasts.
The foundry line is worth reading twice. Earnings there improved significantly, the release says, prior to incentive-related provisions. It does not quantify the provisions or the improvement.
What is not in the document
The release carries no net profit figure and no year-on-year comparison for consolidated revenue or operating profit. Every percentage in it is quarter on quarter, except the earnings per share figure, which the release gives as 52 percent without naming the base period.
Divisional revenue also sums to more than the consolidated total, which is ordinary and is what intersegment eliminations do. Harman is described but not given a number.
One reading of the whole document is that the second-quarter results of the most valuable company in South Korea now turn on the price of server memory and on very little else. The company did not put it that way. The table does.
