The world’s largest maker of memory chips and smartphones estimated its fourth quarter profit to be 13.8 trillion won ($ 11.5 billion).
This is not in line with Refinitiv’s SmartEstimate estimate of 15.2 trillion won. Analysts attributed it to costs such as employee bonuses, marketing costs for its mobile business and ramp-up costs for new billboards, which spilled over into the quarter.
Revenue is likely to have increased 23 percent from the same period a year earlier to reach 76 trillion won, Samsung said in a brief preliminary statement on its results.
The company is expected to release detailed results later this month.
Although memory chip prices declined during the quarter, increased demand from server customers drove Samsung’s quarter-to-quarter shipments for both DRAM chips, which are widely used in shopping centers. data, than for NAND flash memory chips, used for data storage in technology devices, analysts said. ($ 1 = 1,204.0400 won) (Reporting by Joyce Lee; editing by Richard Pullin)