Samsung's profit recovery seen weakening in Q3

Samsung Electronics is expected to flag more than a four-fold jump in quarterly profit on Tuesday on improving demand for chips, but the pace of its recovery is weakening, as it is slow to cash in on the artificial intelligence boom.

Operating profit for Samsung, the world's top maker of memory chips, smartphones and TVs, likely stood at 10.33 trillion won ($7.67 billion) in the quarter ended Sept 30, according to an average from 29 analysts with LSEG SmartEstimate, weighted toward those who are more consistently accurate.

This is a jump from 2.43 trillion won a year earlier, but little changed from 10.44 trillion won reported in the previous quarter.

The global semiconductor market has been recovering from a downturn last year, driven by chips used in AI servers, but demand recovery for conventional chips used in smartphones and PCs is slowing, analysts said.

The South Korean company has been scrambling to catch up with smaller rivals SK Hynix and Micron in a race to supply high-end AI chips to Nvidia, while facing growing competition from Chinese rivals for commodity chips.

Samsung's bread-and-butter chip division is expected to swing to an operating profit of 5.5 trillion won from a year earlier, but this will be down 15% from the preceding quarter, also hurt by Samsung setting aside provisions for bonuses, according to estimates from 10 analysts compiled by Reuters.

Samsung's late response to the higher-margin AI chip market and its higher exposure to China and traditional mobile chips than its peers have made it more vulnerable to geopolitical risks and lacklustre demand, analysts say.

"Samsung is more likely to lose the title of number 1 DRAM vendor in case of a softer commodity DRAM market," Daniel Kim, an analyst at Macquarie Equity Research said in a recent note, referring to dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips that are widely used in computers and smartphones.

"That is, the conventional DRAM supply glut will likely hurt Samsung far more than SK Hynix."

The downbeat forecast comes as Micron last month forecast first-quarter results ahead of Wall Street estimates and reported the highest quarterly revenue in more than a decade on the back of booming demand for its memory chips used in the AI industry.

Analysts estimated that Samsung's non-memory chip operation - chip designing and contract manufacturing business - also continued to make a loss in the third quarter, as it is struggling to compete with dominant leader TSMC, which counts Apple and Nvidia among its customers.

Samsung is cutting up to 30% of its overseas staff at some divisions, Reuters reported in September, underlining challenges for the company.

Sales of premium foldable phones are also likely to disappoint, weighing on the profit of the company which faces increasing competition from Chinese rivals like Huawei, analysts said. Its mobile phone and network businesses posted an operating profit of 2.6 trillion won in the third quarter, down by one-fifth from a year earlier, according to estimates by 10 analysts compiled by Reuters.

Samsung Electronics shares fell 23% so far this year, lagging SK Hynix's 23% rise.

The South Korean firm will announce its preliminary third-quarter earnings on Tuesday before reporting full figures later this month.