Samsung Electronics is forecast to post the smallest operating profit since 2016 in the first quarter of this year, according to its preliminary earnings report Friday.
The report said the tech titan would record 52 trillion won ($45.77 billion) in sales and 6.2 trillion won in operating profit during the January to March period.
(Yonhap)
While Q1 sales dropped 14.1 percent from a year earlier, the company’s operating profit plunged 60.4 percent.
The 6.2 trillion won operating profit marks the smallest since the third quarter of 2016, when the company posted 5.2 trillion won.
It will be the first time since the first quarter of 2017 that the quarterly operating profit will have fallen below 10 trillion won.
Last month, Samsung said in a rare announcement that its Q1 earnings would be worse than expected, citing falling memory chip prices and low demand for displays.
The preliminary report didn’t reveal the earnings figures for each business division.
However, the financial market forecasts that Samsung’s semiconductor division, including the display segment, will record around 4 trillion won, barely more than half the 7.7 trillion won it posted in the previous quarter and far lower than its all-time high of 13.6 trillion won in the third quarter of last year.
Meanwhile, the mobile division is expected to post about 1.5 trillion won in the first quarter, owing to the launch of the Galaxy S10 series and a favorable market reaction.
The consumer electronics division is forecast to achieve 400 billion to 500 billion won in operating profit.
By Song Su-hyun (
song@heraldcorp.com)