Samsung Electronics announced preliminary results on October 8, 2026, showing consolidated operating profit of 107.4 trillion won (about 12.5 trillion yen) for the July–September quarter. That is up 782.5% from a year earlier, with revenue of 195 trillion won and a calculated operating margin of 55.1%. Rising prices are a tailwind for the memory-selling semiconductor business, while the businesses that buy components to build smartphones and home appliances face heavy cost pressure. That gap was already visible in the confirmed results for the previous quarter. To read this record profit properly, it helps to look not only at HBM4 sales growth and company-wide profitability, but also at how profitable the device side is.
Roughly nine times the profit, driven by a shift in margins
According to Samsung's October 8 announcement, operating profit is up 782.5% year on year, and revenue is up 126.6%. Profit growth far outpaced revenue growth.
To put the comparison on a common basis, we lined up the company-wide consolidated figures from the same announcements. All amounts are in trillions of won, under K-IFRS.
| Period | Revenue | Operating profit | Operating margin (calculated) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul–Sep 2025 | 86.06 | 12.17 | 14.1% |
| Apr–Jun 2026 | 171.5 | 89.49 | 52.2% |
| Jul–Sep 2026 (preliminary) | approx. 195 | approx. 107.4 | approx. 55.1% |
Samsung's company-wide operating margin went from 14.1% in July–September 2025 to 52.2% in April–June 2026, and reached 55.1% in the preliminary July–September 2026 figures.
Margins are calculated as operating profit ÷ revenue × 100 for each period, rounded to one decimal place. For this quarter, that is 107.4 ÷ 195 × 100, or about 55.1%. At this level, more than half of revenue is left as operating profit, so the result is not simply a matter of comparing against a weak prior-year figure. The margin also rose about 2.9 percentage points from the previous quarter, which was already highly profitable.
Compared with the previous quarter, revenue rose 13.7% and operating profit rose 20.0%. That is less dramatic than the year-on-year jump, but profitability improved further. However, these calculations do not show how many trillions of won each of price, shipment volume and product mix contributed to the increase.
The figures are also not final results. Samsung presented the midpoints of estimated ranges—revenue of 194–196 trillion won and operating profit of 107.3–107.5 trillion won—as its preliminary figures, and it has not disclosed results by division or HBM4 revenue and profit on their own.
HBM4 sales growth and rising prices for conventional DRAM
HBM4 is not a product that only began selling this quarter. Samsung announced the start of mass production and commercial shipments on February 12, and in its first-quarter results it said it had begun selling mass-produced units for NVIDIA's Vera Rubin. It expanded HBM4 sales further in April–June.
HBM is high-bandwidth memory that stacks DRAM vertically to feed large volumes of data to the compute chips in AI accelerators. Adding more compute units doesn't help if data can't be delivered to the model fast enough; processing just waits. To cut that wait, HBM4 doubles the number of input/output lines that move data simultaneously, from 1,024 in HBM3E to 2,048.
Samsung's stated specifications are stable operation at 11.7 Gbps per pin, with support up to 13 Gbps. The core DRAM uses 1c-generation manufacturing technology, and the logic base die that controls signals beneath the stacked DRAM uses Samsung's own 4nm process. This setup ties demand for high-speed memory to logic manufacturing as well as DRAM manufacturing.
HBM is not the only thing lifting memory market conditions, though. In its September 7 research release, research firm TrendForce cited a sharp surge in conventional DRAM contract prices as the main reason industry-wide DRAM revenue rose 59.5% quarter on quarter in April–June. Over the same period, growth in bit shipments—the total memory capacity shipped—was only modest, it said.
The effect of selling a lot and the effect of selling at high prices are different things. AI servers need server DRAM and SSDs in addition to HBM for GPUs, so AI demand reaches multiple memory products. Samsung's enormous profit is probably better explained by combining the sales mix of server-oriented products with higher conventional memory prices than by the generational shift to HBM4 alone. Still, the individual contributions in July–September will have to wait for more detailed divisional disclosure.
Chip profits and device losses coexist
Samsung's confirmed April–June results, published July 30, show differences between businesses that are hard to see from company-wide high profitability alone. The Device Solutions (DS) division, which handles semiconductors, posted operating profit of 89.2 trillion won, while the combined Mobile eXperience (MX) and networks business, which includes smartphones, recorded an operating loss of 700 billion won. The TV and home appliance business also posted a small operating loss.
These are not divisional results for July–September, but confirmed figures for the immediately preceding quarter. DS also includes businesses other than memory, and the combined MX and networks loss cannot be treated as a loss on smartphones alone. Even so, it shows that record company-wide profit and strength in the device business do not necessarily happen at the same time.
According to the company, sales of the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy A series were solid, and MX and networks revenue rose from a year earlier. Even so, industry-wide rises in component costs squeezed profit. Even when products sell, profitability can worsen.
When memory makers can sell limited supply at high prices, device makers that use those components absorb higher purchasing costs. The burden is easier to absorb if it can be passed on in product prices, but if price increases dampen sales, companies must either cut margins or change their product mix. Samsung, which has both semiconductors and finished products, sees the benefits and burdens of market conditions at the same time.
For this reason, the company-wide operating profit of 107.4 trillion won alone cannot tell us whether profitability is recovering at Galaxy or home appliances. How far the device business absorbed higher component costs in July–September will be something to check again in the confirmed results.
Even with decisions to expand output, shortages won't ease quickly
In the public summary of its September 30 DRAM market report, TrendForce said HBM production is squeezing conventional DRAM capacity and keeping supply-side inventories low. Cloud providers are procuring additional server DRAM, while PC and smartphone makers face pressure on both cost and supply.
Even if PC and smartphone demand weakens, memory as a whole will not necessarily be in surplus right away. If manufacturers redirect limited production capacity toward AI and server uses, the supply going to consumer products is squeezed. Prices are shaped not only by buyer demand but by where supply is headed.
In its own April–June results, Samsung also gave a second-half outlook in which mobile and PC demand partly cools while server-centered demand stays strong, and supply constraints continue even as output is increased. Even if strong memory profitability encourages expansion, it takes time to build out factories, ramp up manufacturing processes and increase the volume that can be shipped.
Competitor Micron's September 30 earnings prepared remarks illustrate that time lag. Under its plan, the ID1 fab in the US will begin wafer production in mid-calendar 2027, and the DRAM fab being expanded in Japan will begin production in late 2028. The company also explained that production from the new fabs will take effect in earnest several quarters after output begins.
This is Micron's plan and does not indicate the timing of Samsung's capacity expansion. Still, it conveys that an announcement of capital spending cannot be equated with the time when enough memory reaches the market. Micron expects supply to remain short in 2027 and 2028, so device makers cannot expect component prices to normalize anytime soon.
In the final results, watch for recovery by division
If HBM4 sales grow, Samsung gains demand for base die manufacturing as well as for memory. In its April–June results, the foundry business also improved substantially before bonus-related provisions were booked, and the company cited demand for HBM base dies and orders from US customers as factors. This explanation, however, does not establish that the foundry has turned profitable, or what HBM4's profit is on its own.
In the July–September details, we want to see how much the growth in HBM shipments translated into revenue, and whether earnings from higher conventional DRAM prices are continuing. For the device business, the question is not just whether sales rose but whether it kept profit amid higher component costs. Even if enormous semiconductor profits continue, Samsung's results will remain heavily dependent on memory market conditions if losses on the finished-product side grow.
As of July, Samsung said it was pursuing measures to limit the impact of higher costs, such as increasing high-end products among its devices. If such measures also restore profitability in the device business, the company's record profit would move closer to one driven by a broader range of businesses, rather than a record propped up by rising memory prices.