Samsung Shares Hit Fresh Record Amid AI Chip Boom

Samsung Electronics Co. shares reached a new record high after the company reported its biggest quarterly profit in more than three years, driven by surging AI-related demand for memory chips, Yoolim Lee reported for Bloomberg News.

Samsung will release full financial results, including net income and divisional breakdowns, on Oct. 30. (Photo: Samsung)

South Korea’s largest company said it earned an operating profit of around 12.1 trillion won ($8.5 billion) in the September quarter, beating analysts’ projections of 9.7 trillion won, according to a preliminary earnings report.

Revenue rose roughly 9% to 86 trillion won.

Its shares extended gains, climbing as much as 3.1% Tuesday morning in Seoul. Samsung will release full financial results, including net income and divisional breakdowns, on Oct. 30.

The results may boost investor confidence in the durability of demand for AI servers and memory chips, as well as Samsung’s prospects of regaining ground lost to smaller rival SK Hynix Inc. after years of setbacks.

“Samsung’s operating profit was much bigger than anyone was expecting,” said Sanjeev Rana, head of research at CLSA Securities Korea.

“Its high-bandwidth memory shipments have recovered, rising 70% to 80% from the previous quarter, and there is a possibility that the writedowns in the foundry business were much smaller than expected.”

Samsung aims to ride the anticipated AI boom in the coming years. It has made progress with its latest HBM chips, securing an order from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and awaiting final approval on its HBM3E chips from Nvidia Corp.