Samsung Electronics Q4 profit misses forecast on lackluster performance in AI chips

SEOUL, Jan. 8 (Yonhap) -- Samsung Electronics Co. on Wednesday estimated its fourth-quarter operating profit more than doubled from a year earlier but missed market expectations due to the lackluster performance of its high-end memory chips for artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators.

The world's biggest maker of memory chips expected an operating profit of 6.5 trillion won (US$4.46 billion) for the three months ended in December, up from 2.82 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

But the operating profit is 15.7 percent lower than the average estimate based on a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.

On-quarter, operating profit retreated 29.19 percent from 9.18 trillion won.

Samsung's lower-than-expected operating figure comes amid prolonged delays in securing Nvidia Corp.'s approval for its high bandwidth memory chips for AI computing.

Revenue rose 10.7 percent to 75 trillion won for the October-December period from 67.78 trillion a year earlier. The company did not disclose the data for net earnings in the guidance.

The company plans to release its final earnings results later this month.

kyongae.choi@yna.co.kr
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