TECH NEWS: The South Korean giant has issued surprising earnings guidance. Profit looks strong, but revenue failed to meet the market’s expectation of a completely flawless quarter.

A Samsung executive previously caused a stir by saying that the company’s 2026 profit could exceed the combined profit of the previous forty years. That made it almost certain that Samsung’s second-quarter guidance would feature extraordinary numbers.

The picture turned out to be mixed nonetheless. Samsung released preliminary expectations for the second quarter of 2026, estimating consolidated revenue of approximately 171 trillion South Korean won.

That falls short of the roughly 172.181 trillion won consensus expected by market analysts. The difference may not look dramatic at first glance, but for a company from which investors expected a flawless quarter, it can still represent a serious disappointment.

Operating profit, by contrast, is expected to be exceptionally strong. Samsung forecasts approximately 89.4 trillion won in operating profit for the second quarter.

For comparison, Samsung guided for approximately 133 trillion won in revenue and 57.2 trillion won in operating profit in the first quarter of this year. The second-quarter profit outlook again demonstrates how dramatically the memory boom has reshaped the company’s results.

The semiconductor-focused Device Solutions, or DS, division is benefiting from massive demand for memory capacity. Artificial-intelligence infrastructure, the server market, and rising memory prices are creating an extremely favorable environment for Samsung.

The outlook for the mobile business is much darker. The segment is reportedly expected to post an operating loss of approximately 1 trillion won, or around $653 million.

Kim Yong-kwan, president and chief business strategy officer of Samsung Electronics’ DS division, reportedly said at an open forum on July 3 that the business would meet the market’s operating-profit expectations for this year.

Analysts are currently estimating that Samsung’s annual operating profit could reach around 300 trillion won, or roughly $200 billion. That is an extraordinary figure, even if the revenue line did not entirely meet expectations this time.

Samsung is also negotiating with buyers of DRAM materials. The aim is reportedly to raise prices by as much as 20% quarter over quarter during the third quarter.

This follows a reported 90% increase in DRAM prices in the first quarter versus reference prices from the fourth quarter of 2025, followed by a further 50-60% quarterly increase in the second quarter.

Samsung may therefore look less impressive to investors not because it had a weak quarter, but because the market expected even more from a company currently benefiting from the memory shortage and the artificial-intelligence boom at an almost unprecedented scale.

Source: WCCFTech, Samsung