Samsung expects highest quarterly profit in over 3 years, lifted by AI chip demand

SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics on Tuesday projected a 32% rise in third-quarter operating profit from a year earlier, well ahead of analysts' estimates, as demand for conventional memory chips helped offset weaker high bandwidth memory chip sales. The world's largest memory chipmaker estimated an operating profit of 12.1 trillion won for the July-September period, versus a 10.1 trillion won LSEG SmartEstimate, marking its highest quarterly profit in more than three years. Samsung’s third-quarter results reflected a gradual recovery in the memory market, as strong demand for server and AI-related chips boosted prices and shipments of conventional DRAM and NAND products. Although progress in supplying advanced high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to major clients such as Nvidia was slower than expected, gains in commodity memory, also supported by tight supplies, helped cushion the impact, analysts said. Revenue would likely rise 8.7% to 86 trillion won from a year earlier, the filing showed. Samsung is expected to release detailed results including a breakdown of earnings for each of its businesses later this month. (Reporting by Heekyong Yang, Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Chris Reese and Sonali Paul)

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