Samsung Electronics guided to second-quarter operating profit of about 89.4 trillion won ($58.4bn) on Tuesday, roughly 19 times what it made in the same period a year earlier and, by most counts, the largest quarterly operating profit any technology company has ever reported.
It is Samsung’s third consecutive record quarter, and it came in ahead of the roughly 84 trillion won analysts had pencilled in, a jump TNW had already flagged as an 18-fold leap when the estimates were still forming.
Revenue reached about 171 trillion won, more than double the 74.57 trillion won of a year earlier, though it landed a touch below the 173 trillion won some analysts had modelled.
Operating profit rose about 56% on the first quarter and close to 1,810% year on year, measured against a base of just 4.68 trillion won in the second quarter of 2025, back when the memory business was still a drag rather than the engine it has become since AI rewired the memory market.
The driver is pricing. Contract prices for DRAM rose about 44% quarter on quarter and NAND flash by roughly 53%, according to Citi Research, as demand for the chips inside AI servers kept outrunning what the three big memory makers can supply.
