The good performance of the Galaxy S23 series seems to have saved Samsung from incurring a loss. Picture: Samsung Samsung
Samsung said in its earnings guidance on Friday that it recorded 63 trillion won in revenue and 600 billion won in operating profit for the first quarter of 2023.
Operating profit fell 96% year-on-year and is the South Korean tech giant’s lowest profit figure in 14 years since the first quarter of 2009 during the global financial crisis. Revenue also fell 19% from a year ago.
South Korean analysts expect Samsung’s chip business to have suffered heavy multibillion-dollar losses in the first three months of the year. Other memory chip makers Micron and SK Hynix also posted heavy losses in recent quarters.
The slowdown started last year in the second half of the year, but so far it has only gotten worse as chipmakers warned earlier this year that the situation was worse than expected and that they were reducing their chip production __ an extremely rare move that reflects just how serious the situation is.
However, Samsung’s mobile business is expected to have performed well in the first quarter thanks to the launch of the Galaxy S23 series.
The South Korean tech giant said on Thursday that the series performs better than the Galaxy S22 in all regions since launchthe Galaxy S23 Ultra being particularly popular and accounting for 60% of sales.
Analysts expect the chip market slowdown to continue at least until the second quarter of this year, when Samsung’s chip business is expected to post losses again.
Samsung is expected to announce its full results at the end of the month.