Samsung's Record $80 Billion Profit Still Leaves AI Chip Investors Wanting More

Samsung Electronics just posted a number that would have sounded absurd a year ago. Preliminary third-quarter operating profit hit 107.4 trillion won, about $80.2 billion, the first time it has topped 100 trillion won in a quarter, CNBC reported.

That's up roughly 782% from a year earlier, on revenue of about 195 trillion won, up nearly 127%. Reuters noted it's the fourth straight quarter of record operating profit, driven by a deepening global memory chip shortage.

Memory is doing the heavy lifting. SamMobile calculates a record 55% operating margin, and says analysts expect even bigger results next year as AI chip demand continues.

Samsung is the world's largest memory maker and is already selling HBM4 chips to AI heavyweights like Nvidia. The prior quarter was a record too, at 171.5 trillion won in revenue and 89.5 trillion won in operating profit.

The long-run numbers are startling. SamMobile says Samsung's profit for the full year is expected to top its cumulative profit over the past 40 years, and analysts see 2027 operating profit possibly reaching 550 trillion won, about 45% above this year's estimate.

TSMC delivered a second data point the same day. September revenue came in at NT$511.86 billion ($16.03 billion), up 54.6% from a year earlier but down 0.6% from August, per CNBC, which corrected its story to say it wasn't a monthly record.

Taiwan's September exports also jumped 60.9% to a record $87.2 billion, Euronews reported, on global demand for AI hardware. TSMC's quarterly earnings report is due next week.

"Samsung has delivered a record profit and still fallen short of expectations, which tells you just how demanding the AI trade has become." — Josh Gilbert, Lead Analyst for APAC, eToro

That's the catch. Even a record can disappoint when expectations are this high. It's not new either: after Samsung's record second quarter in July, Fortune reported investors sold the stock anyway.

Demand drivers are broadening, too. Gilbert highlighted AI agents, which can consume far more memory than a chatbot answering a single question. Samsung is leaning in as well, announcing a September partnership with Mistral AI to deploy its models across its chip operations.

Gilbert still sees the bigger story as intact. He pointed to memory buyers signing multiyear supply agreements, which gives Samsung more visibility in a business long haunted by fear of the next downturn.

Not everything at Samsung is booming. SamMobile reports the foundry and System LSI units lost roughly $743 million combined in the quarter, and the phone, TV and appliance businesses are being squeezed by higher memory prices.

These are also preliminary figures. Samsung is expected to release full third-quarter results, including a breakdown by business division, later this month, so the final numbers could shift.

For U.S. investors, Samsung trades mainly in Seoul under 005930.KS, which makes Micron (MU) the more accessible way to play the same memory-pricing story. 24/7 Wall St. framed Samsung's results as independent confirmation of the pricing strength Micron already reported.

Memory stocks aren't trading on earnings alone, though. Micron fell 4.8% Thursday on the OpenAI revenue scare, and the 10-year Treasury yield has been sitting above 5.2%, which raises the bar for richly valued chip names.

Watch two dates: TSMC's earnings next week and Samsung's divisional detail later this month. Firm HBM and DRAM pricing would reinforce the thesis. Any hint of softening is where the downside lives, because the market is already priced for perfection.

Bottom line: Samsung's record profit confirms the AI memory boom is real, but with expectations this high, the stocks need more than records to keep climbing.