Samsung Electronics said on July 7 that preliminary operating profit for the second quarter of 2026 will come in at approximately 89.4 trillion won (about $58.4 billion), a roughly 19-fold jump from the 4.68 trillion won it reported for the same period last year.
The guidance, issued ahead of Samsung’s full earnings report on July 30, put consolidated sales at approximately 171 trillion won, more than double the 74.57 trillion won recorded a year earlier. Profit also rose about 56% from the first quarter of 2026, when Samsung posted 57.23 trillion won in operating profit.
AI Demand Reshapes the Memory Market
The surge is being driven almost entirely by Samsung’s chip division, and specifically by DRAM and NAND flash — the memory chips used in servers — rather than by smartphones or consumer electronics. According to estimates from Citi Research, average DRAM selling prices rose about 44% quarter-over-quarter in the April-to-June period, while NAND flash prices climbed roughly 53%.
Analysts say the increases reflect AI spending broadening beyond the specialized high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators into ordinary DRAM and NAND chips, tightening supply across the whole memory market as data center operators stock up for AI workloads. Rivals SK Hynix and Micron have reported similar pricing tailwinds in recent quarters.
Samsung’s figures are preliminary guidance, disclosed under South Korean securities rules and based on K-IFRS accounting standards; they represent the midpoint of a guided range of 170–172 trillion won in sales and 89.3–89.5 trillion won in operating profit. The company will report a full divisional breakdown — including how much of the profit came from memory chips versus its foundry, mobile and display businesses — on July 30.