Samsung said on Friday that its preliminary third-quarter operating profit declined by nearly 32 per cent from a year earlier, as the company has faced macroeconomic headwinds that weakened consumer demand for electronic devices.
The world's largest memory chip and mobile phone maker said its operating profit for the three months ending in September was predicted to come in at 10.8 trillion won ($7.7 billion), down 31.7 per cent from 15.82 trillion won from the year-ago period.
The figure was the lowest third-quarter profit since 2019, when the corresponding tally was 7.78 trillion won. It also marked the first yearly decline in Samsung's third-quarter profit in three years.
The operating profit was 8.3 percent lower than the average estimate, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.
Sales increased 2.7 per cent on-year to 76 trillion won. The data for net profit was not available.
The company will release its final earnings report at the end of this month.
Samsung's semiconductor business, which took nearly 70 per cent of its total profit in the previous quarter, is believed to have slowed down, with weakened consumer spending power leading to a cut in chip demand from electronics makers, as well as cloud computing and server companies.
Market analysts predicted Samsung's device solutions division, which overseas its chip business, to have posted around 6 trillion won in operating profit, slumping nearly 30 percent from the previous quarter.
"Customers don't seem to respond to falling chip prices due to sluggish demand," Kim Un-ho, an analyst at IBK Securities, said. "Slowing demand is expanding from server to mobile sectors," he said.
The global chip industry has entered a cyclical downturn, which has been exacerbated by key macro events around the world.
DRAM prices are estimated to have posted a quarterly decline of 10-15 percent in the third quarter.
Despite oversupply issues and falling prices, Samsung said it was not considering a cut in production of its memory chips.
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"There is no internal discussion (about a cut in memory chip production) at the moment," Han Jin-man, executive vice president and head of the memory global sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics, said at the annual Samsung Tech Day in San Jose, California.
