Samsung Electronics is expected to report third-quarter operating profit of about 108.1 trillion won ($80.2 billion), which would be its first quarter above 100 trillion won, The Korea Herald reported Monday. The estimate, compiled by market data firm FnGuide, implies a nearly ninefold increase from a year earlier, driven by surging memory chip sales.

What Happened

FnGuide's consensus as of Monday also puts quarterly revenue at 201.7 trillion won, up 134.4% from the same period last year. Samsung is scheduled to release preliminary earnings guidance Thursday.

If the estimates hold, Samsung would top the records it set just one quarter earlier, when it reported 171.5 trillion won in sales and 89.4 trillion won in operating profit. The projected third-quarter profit alone would be roughly twice what the company earned in all of 2025.

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The Korea Herald said a profit of that size would rank among the largest quarterly totals reported by any company worldwide. For comparison, it cited Saudi Aramco's $86.5 billion in operating profit in the second quarter of 2022.

Why It Matters

The surge comes almost entirely from memory. Demand for AI servers has tightened supply of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the stacked DRAM that sits beside AI accelerators, and has also lifted prices for conventional DRAM such as DDR5 and for enterprise solid-state drives used in data centers.

Samsung has been regaining ground in HBM after trailing SK hynix for much of the AI boom. Its share of the HBM market rose to 33% in the second quarter from 21% in the first, according to Counterpoint Research cited by The Korea Herald. Further gains are expected as its sixth-generation HBM4 chips go into Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI accelerators late this year.

Margins in the chip business are exceptional. The Device Solutions division, which houses memory, is expected to post an operating margin of 72% to 75%, and DRAM margins may exceed 80%, according to the report. Those figures are far above historical norms for a memory business that has typically swung between booms and steep downturns.

Context

Not every part of Samsung is sharing in the gains. The foundry business, which manufactures chips for outside customers, and the System LSI chip design unit are both expected to remain in the red. Foundry President Han Jin-man has set 2028 as the target for returning that business to profit.

The Device Experience division, which makes smartphones and home appliances, is expected to report a wider operating loss as demand weakens and material costs rise, The Korea Herald said. Higher memory prices, a windfall for the chip division, also raise component costs for device makers.

What to Watch

Samsung's preliminary figures Thursday will show whether the company meets or beats the consensus, though the guidance typically includes only headline revenue and operating profit. Full results with a breakdown by division follow later in October.

Investors will look for signs of how long memory pricing can stay at these levels, the pace of HBM4 shipments to Nvidia and whether foundry losses narrow. The results will also offer a read on rival SK hynix, which reports later in the month and is exposed to the same memory cycle.