Samsung posts worst quarterly profits in 14 years from chip downturn

Samsung said on Friday in its earnings guidance that it recorded 63 trillion won in revenue and 600 billion won in operating profit for the first quarter of 2023.

Operating profit nosedived by 96% year-on-year and is the South Korean tech giant's lowest profit figure in 14 years since the first quarter of 2009 during the global financial crisis. Revenue also dropped by 19% from a year ago.

South Korean analysts expect Samsung's chip business to have posted heavy losses of billions of dollars during the first three months of the year. Other memory chipmakers Micron and SK Hynix have also recorded heavy losses in their latest quarters.

The downturn started last year during the second half but so far only worsened as chipmakers have warned early this year that the situation was worst than they expected and they were lowering their chip production output __ an extremely rare move that reflects how dire the situation is.

However, Samsung's mobile business is expected to have performed strongly during the first quarter thanks to the launch of the Galaxy S23 Series.

The South Korean tech giant said on Thursday that the series was performing better than the Galaxy S22 across all regions of the world since the launch, with the Galaxy S23 Ultra being especially popular and accounting for 60% of sales.

Analysts expect the downturn of the chip market to continue for at least up to the second quarter of this year when Samsung's chip business is again expected to record losses.

Samsung is expected to announce its full earnings at the end of the month.