Samsung Posts Record Operating Profit in Q3

By Jun Ji-hye

Samsung Electronics posted a record operating profit in the third quarter, on the back of a strong performance by its memory chip unit, despite sluggish smartphone sales, the company said Wednesday.

In its earnings report for the July-September period, the company said sales stood at 65.

46 trillion won ($57.5 billion) with an operating profit of 17.

57 trillion won.

The sales increased by 55 percent from a year earlier and 11.

9 percent from the previous quarter, while operating profit rose by 20.9 percent from previous year and 18.

2 percent quarter-on-quarter

The operating profit was higher than the market consensus of 17.17 trillion won.

Samsung's chip business remained as the major contributor to the robust quarterly earnings with the unit posting 24.77 trillion won in sales and 13.

65 trillion won in operating profit. The operating-profit-to-sales ratio reached 55.

1 percent.

The display panel business posted an operating profit of 11 trillion won, up from 970 billion won last year

The company said it has continued to improve the performance of the memory chip unit as it 'has expanded cutting-edge manufacturing processes and focused on sales of premium products.

'

Samsung also noted that increasing sales of flexible OLED panels delivered the significant performance improvement in the display panel business.

However, the firm's smartphone segment had unsatisfactory results despite the release of the Galaxy Note 9 in August.

Operating profit for that unit stood at 222 trillion won, down from 267 trillion in the previous quarter

The company already posted weaker-than-expected sales of its Galaxy S9 smartphones in the second quarter It has been generally assessed that the Galaxy S9 series, unveiled in...