Samsung Electronics Q2 net falls 7.97 pct

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's top maker of smartphones, said Thursday its second-quarter net profit fell 7.97 percent from a year earlier.

Net income came to 5.75 trillion won (US$4.95 billion) in the April-June period, compared with 6.25 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Sales fell 7.29 percent on-year to 48.53 trillion won in the second quarter. Samsung's operating profit came to 6.89 trillion won, down 4.03 percent from the previous year.

The figures were in line with Samsung's guidance released earlier this month that estimated the second-quarter operating profit at 6.9 trillion won and sales at 48 trillion won.

The net profit, however, advanced 24.35 percent on-quarter, while the operating profit also climbed 15.36 percent, apparently pushed by improved seasonal demand. Sales moved up 3.01 percent over the cited period.

Industry watchers said Samsung's dull earnings are attributable to lackluster returns from its mobile business.

Samsung said operating profit of its IT and mobile business division, one of the company's main revenue sources, fell 37.5 percent on-year to 2.76 trillion won in the second quarter.

The tech giant had raked in 6.7 trillion won in operating profit solely from the mobile segment in the third quarter of 2013, but its operating profit tumbled to 4.4 trillion won in the second quarter of 2014 and 1.7 trillion won in the following three-month period. It managed to push up the mobile division's operating profit to 2.7 trillion won in the first quarter this year.

Samsung took up 21.7 percent of the world's market for smartphones in the April-June period, down from the 24.8 percent posted a year earlier, the data compiled by industry tracker IDC showed. Other data also implied its market share stood flat on-year over the cited period.

Samsung's handset business suffered due to the rise of Chinese players rolling out price-competitive models, while sales of the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge remained weak, analysts said.

Samsung's device solution division, which covers the chip business logged an operating profit of 3.87 trillion won, up 85.16 percent from the previous year, helping the tech giant offset a decline in its mobile business.

Shares of Samsung Electronics closed at 1,263,000 won on Wednesday, up 2.68 percent from the previous session, when the KOSPI edged down 0.07 percent. The second-quarter results were released before the market opened Thursday. (Yonhap)