Samsung Electronics stock dropped early Tuesday despite forecasting a huge surge in profit. South Korean investors look to be locking in some of the huge gains made on memory-chip stocks.
Samsung said in a preliminary earnings report Tuesday that its operating profit came to about 89.4 trillion won ($58.47 billion), for the three months ended June. That would be a 56% jump from the previous quarter's record profit and a 19-fold increase from the same period a year earlier.
Quarterly revenue is forecast to have more than doubled from the prior year to a record 171 trillion won ($111.96 billion), Samsung said.
However, Samsung shares fell 6.9% in local trading. The company's memory-chip peer SK Hynix dropped 6.1% and South Korea's benchmark KOSPI Composite fell 4.9%.
It wasn't that the figures were disappointing. In fact Samsung's profit outstripped Wall Street expectations. But a 382% run up in the past 12 months has left Korean investors looking for excuses to take profits.
"Results were 'only' 6% ahead of estimates and it seems to have brought in a bout of profit-taking," wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid in a research note on Tuesday.
Samsung is set to release full quarterly results, including a breakdown of earnings by business segment, later this month. Meanwhile, SK Hynix is set to launch a $28 billion listing of American depositary receipts later this week.
Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com
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July 07, 2026 03:39 ET (07:39 GMT)
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