Samsung guides record Q3 profit as memory prices climb

Samsung guides to record 107.4 trillion won quarterly profit as memory prices squeeze buyers

The preliminary third-quarter figure is up 782.5% from a year earlier. TrendForce expects DRAM contract prices to climb another 10% to 15% this quarter.

Sayer Staff

Published October 12, 2026 at 3:19 AM UTC · 1 min read · Sources below

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Five officials and executives in dark suits and face masks pose outside a glass-and-steel building at Samsung's Pyeongtaek chip campus.

Samsung's Pyeongtaek campus, shown during a 2022 visit by President Biden, is one of the company's main memory-chip production sites. Samsung expects about 107.4 trillion won in third-quarter operating profit.Credit: Photo: The White House (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons; cropped · U.S. government work · commons.wikimedia.org

Samsung Electronics expects to report about 107.4 trillion won in third-quarter operating profit, according to preliminary earnings guidance the company posted Oct. 8. The Korea Times put that at $80.28 billion and said it makes Samsung the first Korean company to top 100 trillion won in a single quarter.

Samsung guided consolidated sales to about 195 trillion won. The company compared those figures with 12.17 trillion won in operating profit and 86.06 trillion won in sales a year earlier, which works out to increases of 782.5% and 126.6%. Operating profit was also up about 20% from the second quarter's 89.49 trillion won. Samsung said the figures are K-IFRS estimates, and it reports full results Oct. 29.

The guidance does not break out results by division. The Korea Times reported that analysts estimate the memory business alone earned about 110 trillion won, and that sales of HBM4 chips for Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI platform are believed to be reflected this quarter. The paper said profit beat the brokerage consensus of 106.64 trillion won, while sales fell short of the 200.64 trillion won forecast.

The other side of that windfall is what buyers pay. Market researcher TrendForce said Sept. 30 that conventional DRAM contract prices are projected to rise another 10% to 15% from the previous quarter in the fourth quarter, and NAND flash prices 15% to 20%. It said suppliers keep steering advanced capacity to server chips for AI, which leaves the market undersupplied.

TrendForce said PC makers keep buying aggressively because they expect DRAM to stay tight in 2027, even as higher component costs weigh on notebook sales. For phones, it said rising memory costs are suppressing smartphone production, though mobile DRAM's price uptrend "remains firmly in place."

*Sources: Samsung Electronics earnings guidance for Q3 2026 (Samsung Global Newsroom); The Korea Times; TrendForce. Dollar conversion per The Korea Times. Year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter changes calculated from Samsung's published figures.*

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