January 31, 2024 (MLN): Samsung Electronics on Wednesday reported a 34.57% drop in operating profits for the fourth quarter of 2023, as the company struggles with weak demand for consumer devices.
The company is the flagship subsidiary of South Korean giant Samsung Group, by far the largest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate business in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, As reported by APP.
Operating profit from the October to December period was $2.82 trillion won ($2.1 billion), down from $4.31tr won a year earlier, Samsung said in a statement.
Sales for the last three months of 2023 decreased 3.8% to $67.78tr won. Its net profit of $6.34tr won ($4.8bn), was down 73.4% from a year earlier.
The firm — one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips and smartphones — blamed weak demand, but offered an optimistic outlook for 2024.
“As demand for smartphones and PCs gradually recovers in 2024, advanced processes are expected to drive an approach to 2022 levels in the foundry market,” it said.
Samsung said there were “various potential obstacles, including interest rate policies and geopolitical issues” that could hit 2024 growth, but said it was optimistic nonetheless.
“For PC and mobile, content-per-box is expected to grow due to the impact from expansion of on-device AI,” it added.
Samsung is one of the world’s two biggest memory chipmakers, and is among the few companies worldwide that manufacture premium high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips tailored for AI processors.
The company earlier this month released its latest Galaxy smartphones with new artificial intelligence features as part of its drive to win back its spot as the world’s biggest phone seller from Apple.
