Samsung Electronics has posted an operating profit of 107.4 trillion won for the third quarter of this year, opening the era of a 100 trillion won quarterly operating profit for the first time in South Korean corporate history.

This is a record that no other company in the world, aside from Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco, has ever reached.

Amid a semiconductor super-cycle and the recovery of its technological competitiveness, Samsung Electronics reached the 100 trillion won milestone after maintaining a record-breaking streak for four consecutive quarters starting from the fourth quarter of last year.

Samsung Electronics announced in a regulatory filing today (October 8) that its preliminary consolidated operating profit for the third quarter of this year was 107.4 trillion won, a 782.5% increase compared to the same period last year.

Revenue rose 126.6% year-on-year to 195 trillion won.

This operating profit exceeded the market consensus of 105.7533 trillion won compiled by Yonhap Infomax by 1.6%.

This marks the first time a South Korean company has surpassed 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit.

It is also a first even when including global big tech firms such as Apple and Nvidia.

Only Saudi state-owned enterprise Aramco previously recorded an operating profit of 86.5 billion dollars (approx. 116 trillion won) in the second quarter of 2022 during the Ukraine war.

With this, Samsung Electronics has been breaking its all-time records for both revenue and operating profit for four consecutive quarters, starting from the fourth quarter of last year when it posted record highs of 93.8 trillion won in revenue and 20.1 trillion won in operating profit.

The operating profit for this single quarter alone is close to 2.5 times last year's total annual operating profit (43.6 trillion won).

It is also close to the combined operating profit (126.3 trillion won) over the four years of 2022 (43.4 trillion won), 2023 (6.6 trillion won), 2024 (32.7 trillion won), and 2025 (43.6 trillion won).

Cumulative operating profit up to the third quarter of this year has reached 254.1 trillion won, turning on a green light for achieving 350 trillion won in annual operating profit this year.

Although performances by sector and business division have not been disclosed, it is analyzed that the Device Solutions (DS) division, particularly the memory business unit, single-handedly drove the company-wide performance this quarter as well.

This is the result of relentless demand for memory driven by the global hegemony race aimed at achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, capable of performing like humans across all tasks).

Industry insiders estimate that the DS division's operating profit was similar to or slightly higher than the company-wide operating profit.

Weight is being given to projections within the industry that this trend will continue not only in the fourth quarter but also into next year.

Market research firm TrendForce projected that general-purpose DRAM prices will rise by 10 to 15%, and NAND prices by 15 to 20%, in the fourth quarter.

HBM4, which Samsung Electronics began mass-producing for the first time in the world, is also expected to begin contributing in earnest to earnings improvement starting next year.

While next year's operating profit forecasts for Samsung Electronics are forming around 550 trillion won, Meritz Securities has raised its forecast range from 562 trillion won to 632 trillion won.

However, observations suggest that non-memory business units within the DS division, such as LSI and foundry, likely continued to suffer losses of around 1 trillion won.

While business recovery has continued alongside improved fab utilization rates, the analysis is that costs related to the operation of the Taylor fab in Texas, USA, acted as a burden.

The Device Experience (DX) division is also analyzed to have continued its first-ever quarterly operating losses for a second consecutive quarter due to cost burdens from soaring component prices.

The securities industry estimates that the Mobile eXperience (MX) and networks business units recorded losses exceeding around 1.5 trillion won.

The Visual Display (VD) and Digital Appliances (DA) business units may also have recorded losses of around 500 billion won.

Samsung Display is estimated to have achieved an operating profit of around 1 trillion won, and Harman around 200 billion to 400 billion won.

(Photo: Yonhap News)