Samsung Electronics released its official second-quarter financial results on July 30, reporting sharp gains in both operating profit and revenue as demand for artificial intelligence chips supported performance.
According to the company’s latest figures, second-quarter operating profit came in at KRW 89.49 trillion, up 1,813.8% from a year earlier and in line with market expectations. Consolidated revenue rose 130% year over year to KRW 171.49 trillion, while net profit increased nearly 13 times to KRW 71.62 trillion.
Semiconductor business led by AI memory demand
Samsung said profit growth in the quarter was mainly driven by its semiconductor business, especially high bandwidth memory, or HBM, and conventional dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, used in AI infrastructure.
As global data centers continue to expand computing capacity, contract prices for memory chips have recovered sharply, helping lift operating profit by 1,813.8% from the same period last year. Even as industry capacity remains in adjustment, supply and demand in the high-performance memory market are still tight in the near term.
Mobile unit faces higher component costs
Compared with the chip business, Samsung’s Mobile eXperience, or MX, division faced pressure in the second quarter from rising component costs. To address margin compression, the company plans to expand its share of the premium segment in the second half of 2026 through the Galaxy Z8 and Galaxy S26 series.
Samsung also plans to introduce more new technologies and use a broader AI ecosystem experience to raise the share of premium products, aiming to ease the impact of higher operating costs on gross margin.
Market watches durability of AI capex
Despite the strong quarterly figures, the reaction in capital markets showed investors remain cautious about the AI supply-chain cycle. The market is mainly focused on whether large cloud operators will rein in future capital spending, which could affect demand for memory chips.
At the same time, uncertainty remains over whether chip prices can stay elevated as competition intensifies and new capacity comes online.
Samsung Electronics (005930) opened up nearly 2% on the day, outperforming SK Hynix (000660), which fell more than 5%.