quarterly figures
Samsung with significant gains in profit and sales
Thanks to the chip business, Samsung makes a profit. Photo: Lee Jin-Man/AP/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The technology group Samsung is optimistic about this year. He has every reason to do so: 2021 brought the South Koreans strong growth.
Thanks to its strong chip business, the electronics giant Samsung achieved significantly higher profits and sales in the past quarter.
The surplus rose 64 percent year-on-year to 10.8 trillion won ($8 billion), the South Korean company announced on Thursday. Revenue hit a record for the quarter at 76.6 trillion won.
Overall, Samsung Electronics looked upbeat this year. Despite uncertainties about the problems in the supply chains, the company expects a large demand for chips for data centers, growth in smartphones and wearable electronics (wearables) and an increasing demand for high-quality and particularly large televisions. Samsung is the market leader for memory chips, smartphones and televisions.
For the full year of 2021, the company posted record sales of 279.6 trillion won. Net profit increased 51 percent to 39.9 trillion won.
Sales driver smartphone
According to the company, sales growth in the final quarter was primarily driven by the finished goods business. This includes greater sales of smartphones in the upper price range, including foldable devices, as well as televisions and household appliances. Although operating profit fell across all divisions compared to the previous quarter, it increased compared to 2020. The driving force here was the semiconductors.
Samsung’s semiconductor business benefited from strong data center demand. Samsung cited delivery bottlenecks and a slight drop in sales prices as the reason for the decline in the division’s operating profit compared to the third quarter. Despite the risks, the company expects to benefit from new processors, increasing IT investments and growth in mobile devices.
In the smartphone business, problems due to the shortage of components in the fourth quarter seem to have diminished, according to experts. Samsung sold around 67 million devices during this period, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing figures from market researcher Counterpoint Research. Samsung announced on Wednesday that it would unveil its new flagship model on February 9th. Despite the corona risks, the company assumes that the smartphone market will continue to grow in 2022, it said on Thursday.