Samsung Announces Second Quarter 2023 Earnings

Samsung today released its second-quarter financial report for 2023, revealing revenues of 60.01 trillion Korean Won, a decrease of 22% year-on-year from 77.2 trillion Korean Won in the same period last year, and a quarter-on-quarter decrease of 5.9% from 63.75 trillion Korean Won in the preceding quarter.

Furthermore, operating profits stood at 0.67 trillion Korean Won, a steep decline of 95.2% year-on-year from 14.1 trillion Korean Won, yet an increment from the previous quarter’s 0.64 trillion Korean Won. Gross profits were 18.36 trillion Korean Won, far short of the 30.93 trillion from the same period last year, but higher than the preceding quarter’s 17.74 trillion Korean Won. Net profits were 1.72 trillion Korean Won, also higher than the last quarter’s 1.57 trillion Korean Won, but far below the 11.1 trillion Korean Won from the same period last year.

Despite operating profits surpassing expectations, an overall decline in revenue was conspicuous. Samsung stated that ongoing adjustments by customers and continued weak demand for servers contributed to this decrease, yet inventories were reduced due to strong market demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technology, resulting in DRAM chip shipments exceeding the previous quarter’s projections, mainly involving DDR5 and HBM-related products.

Samsung revealed that the inventory of memory chips peaked in May this year, and the production of storage chips, particularly NAND flash memory, would continue to be curtailed in the second half of the year. As inventory improves, the extent of adjustments will correspondingly diminish. Samsung anticipates that global demand will gradually recover in the latter half of this year, propelled by the components business to improve profitability, but enduring macroeconomic risks may pose challenges to the resurgence of demand.