Samsung Electronics expects 208% growth in operating profit for Q4 2025

A Samsung flag waves at Samsung Electronics' office in Seocho District, Seoul, Dec. 16, 2025. Yonhap

Samsung Electronics on Thursday estimated its operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 at 20 trillion won ($13.8 billion), up about 208 percent from a year earlier, driven by skyrocketing memory chip prices due to surging global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

According to the company’s earnings guidance, Samsung is expected to post 93 trillion won in sales and an operating profit of 20 trillion won. This marks sales growing 22.71 percent and operating profit surging 208.2 percent from a year earlier.

The figures outpace brokerages' consensus estimates of 90.6 trillion won in sales and a 17.8 trillion won operating profit.

If finalized, the fourth-quarter numbers would be a new quarterly earnings record for Samsung Electronics. It would mark the first time for the company's quarterly operating profit to reach 20 trillion won, and the sales would also surpass the previous quarterly record of 86 trillion won set three months earlier.

As the figures are part of an earnings guidance released ahead of a detailed earnings call, the company did not provide a breakdown of business divisions' performances. However, brokerages widely assume that a recovery in its chipmaking Device Solutions (DS) division lifted overall profitability.

Korea Investment & Securities analyst Chae Min-sook estimated that the DS division’s operating profit for the fourth quarter would stand at 17.2 trillion won, accounting for nearly 80 percent of the company’s overall operating profit.

“The biggest driver of Samsung’s strong earnings was the rise in memory chip prices,” she said. “We estimate that the average selling prices of both DRAM and NAND rose by roughly 40 percent from the previous quarter.”

The bullish momentum of Samsung Electronics’ DS division is expected to extend beyond memory chips to its foundry business as well.

According to industry officials, Qualcomm has begun talks with Samsung Electronics to produce its new application processor using Samsung’s 2-nanometer process.

If the talks result in an actual deal, Samsung Electronics would resume production of Qualcomm’s new chip for the first time in five years. Qualcomm had contracted Samsung's foundry with the production of its application processors through 2021, but later shifted orders to Taiwan’s TSMC, reportedly because Samsung failed to fully meet the company’s technical requirements.

Qualcomm’s move is interpreted as a signal that Samsung Electronics is regaining market trust in its cutting-edge foundry process, especially after it won a $16.5 billion order last July from Tesla to produce its next-generation AI6 chips.

The sharp rise in memory prices is believed to have increased the costs for Samsung’s TV and home appliance businesses. Analysts expect the Mobile eXperience division to post an operating profit of about 1.9 trillion won for the fourth quarter, down roughly 8 percent from a year earlier. The TV and home appliance division is also expected to have logged an operating loss of around 100 billion won.

Samsung Electronics is expected to disclose its detailed earnings during its earnings call slated for Jan. 29.