Samsung Electronics published early estimates for its third quarter on October 8. Operating profit was about 107.4 trillion won, or about $80 billion, up from 12.17 trillion won a year earlier. Sales more than doubled to about 195 trillion won. Reports link the jump to AI demand for memory chips and higher memory prices.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- Samsung’s profit for July to September was about 107.4 trillion won.
- That is about $80 billion, up from 12.17 trillion won a year earlier.
- AI needs a lot of memory chips, and their prices went up.
- These are early figures; full results come later in October.
- HBM
- High-bandwidth memory: stacked memory chips that feed data very quickly to AI processors.
- Operating profit
- What a company earns from its business, before interest and taxes.
- Earnings guidance
- An early estimate of results that a company publishes before its full report.
The numbers
Samsung estimates its operating profit for the third quarter at about 107.4 trillion won. A year earlier, it was 12.17 trillion won, so profit rose by about 782%. It also rose 20% from the second quarter.
Sales were about 195 trillion won, against 86.06 trillion won a year earlier. These are early estimates, and Samsung gave no figures for each of its businesses.
Outlets converted the profit to between $79.8 billion and $80.3 billion. Yonhap, The Korea Herald and The Korea Times report that no Korean company had passed 100 trillion won of operating profit in one quarter before.
Operating profit in trillion won, from Samsung’s earnings guidance; the latest quarter is an early estimate.
Why memory made the difference
The reports agree that AI demand for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, drove the jump. Prices for ordinary DRAM and NAND memory chips also rose.
Analysts quoted by The Korea Herald and The Korea Times estimate that the memory business alone earned about 110 trillion won. That is more than the company’s total, because analysts estimate losses elsewhere.
They expect losses in the phone and home appliance business, partly because memory became more expensive to buy. Yonhap reports an estimated loss in the contract chipmaking business too.
A stronger Korean won also lowered the result, reports say. The Korea Herald notes that some forecasts were above 120 trillion won before the currency rose.
Above or below expectations
The profit was slightly above the 106.1 trillion won that 21 analysts expected on average, by LSEG’s count before the release. Investing.com compares it with a higher Bloomberg forecast of 108.67 trillion won, which it missed.
The Korea Times reports that sales fell short of a forecast of 200.64 trillion won. Samsung shares closed 1.86% lower on October 8, The Korea Herald reports.
Samsung will publish its full results, with figures for each business, later in October. The Korea Times gives the date as October 29.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Primary source · October 8, 2026Samsung Electronics Announces Earnings Guidance for Third Quarter 2026 Samsung
- 2
- 3Research · October 8, 2026Samsung becomes first tech giant to top W100tr quarterly profit The Korea Herald
- 4Research · October 8, 2026Samsung Electronics 1st Korean firm to top $80 bil. in quarterly operating profit The Korea Times
- 5Research · October 7, 2026Samsung’s Q3 profit seen jumping nine-fold, but chip margins may be flat Reuters via The Korea Herald
- 6Research · October 8, 2026Samsung Q3 profit surges to record high, but misses lofty expectations Investing.com
The profit and sales figures are Samsung’s own early estimates; audited results come later. The memory profit and the losses in other businesses are analysts’ estimates, not Samsung’s figures.
Samsung’s quarterly profit rose almost ninefold to a Korean record on AI memory demand, though sales missed forecasts and shares fell. How we rate the mood