Samsung Electronics just printed one of the most jaw-dropping earnings reports in its history. And the market’s response was essentially a shrug followed by a sell-off.
The South Korean tech giant reported preliminary second-quarter operating profit of 89.4 trillion won, roughly $58.44B. That’s a 19-fold increase from the 4.7 trillion won it posted in Q2 of the prior year. Revenue clocked in at an estimated 171 trillion won, up 129% year-over-year.
But here’s the thing. Samsung shares dropped as much as 7.9% on July 7, the day the results hit.
Record profits meet a skeptical market
This quarter marks Samsung’s third consecutive period of record-breaking operating profit. The primary engine behind that streak is straightforward: surging demand and elevated prices for DRAM and NAND memory chips, the silicon workhorses that power everything from AI training clusters to the data centers that keep large language models running. Average selling prices of DRAM rose over 40% and NAND prices increased by more than 50% in recent months.
