Prelim Samsung Memory results exceeded by even bigger actuals

Samsung’s confirmed first quarter results exceeded its preliminary results as memory pricing punched revenue and profit higher.

The initial overall revenues of ₩133 trillion ($88.5 billion) rose to a record high ₩133.9 trillion ($91.1 billion), a 69.2 percent year-on-year increase, whole preliminary operating profit of ₩51 trillion ($37.9 billion) became the all time high ₩57.21 trillion ($38.9 billion), a gigantic 755 percent rise.

In contrast to the Device eXperience (smartphones, etc.) division’s quarter-on-quarter 19 percent revenue rise, the Device Solutions (memory, foundry, LSI business) business unit’s revenues rose 226 percent to ₩81.7 trillion ($55.6 billion). The DS unit’s operating profit was ₩53.7 trillion ($36.5 billion), which, compared to the year-ago ₩1.1 trillion ($778 million), is an altogether staggering rise of c48x; 4,782 percent.

THe DS division’s profit represented 94 percent of Samsung Electronic’s entire operating profit.

As part of this, the memory segment reached its own all-time revenue high. Samsung commented: “The Memory Business surpassed its quarterly sales record by addressing high-value-added AI demand despite limited supply availability, with industry-wide memory price increases also a contributing factor.” You don’t say.

This increase was driven by sales to Nvidia of HBM for GPUs and DRAM for CPUs. General NAND and SSD sales also contributed. 

The top three memory makers; Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, have all reported rocketing memory sales jumps.

This memory-driven revenue flood tide is set to continue with Samsung saying its next quarter’s memory demand should "remain strong amid AI infrastructure expansion.” It’s delivering HBM4 and SOCAMM2 chips for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin systems, and also “expects server memory demand to remain strong as hyperscalers accommodate enterprises’ increasing adoption of AI and LLM services. Additionally, "agentic AI is expected to accelerate growth in demand.”

On top of that, Samsung says that its memory business “plans to lead the initial PCIe Gen6 eSSD market with high-performance products focused on KV cache storage demand.”

We think that, absent an unlikely fall in demand, Samsung is set to exceed its Q1 records in the second quarter. AI is the gift that keeps giving.