Seoul, Jan 8 Samsung Electronics on Wednesday estimated its fourth-quarter operating profit more than doubled from a year earlier but missed market expectations due to lacklustre performance in its high-end memory chips for artificial intelligence accelerators.
The world's biggest maker of memory chips expected an operating profit of 6.5 trillion won ($4.46 billion) for the three months ended in December, up from 2.82 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.
But the operating profit is 15.7 per cent lower than the average estimate based on a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.
On-quarter, operating profit retreated 29.19 per cent from 9.18 trillion won.
Samsung's lower-than-expected operating figure comes amid prolonged delays in securing Nvidia Corp.'s approval for its high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for AI computing.
Investors are keeping a watchful eye on whether Samsung will be able to catch up with its compatriot rival SK hynix Inc. in the HBM market.
Late last year, Samsung apologised for its disappointing results in the chip business division and conducted a major executive reshuffle to put a bigger focus on high-end technologies and overcome ongoing business challenges.
Revenue rose 10.7 percent to 75 trillion won for the October-December period from 67.78 trillion a year earlier. The company did not disclose the data for net earnings in the guidance.
For the whole of 2024, operating profit jumped nearly fivefold to 32.73 trillion won from 6.57 trillion won the previous year, the filing said.
Revenue rose 15.9 per cent to 300.08 trillion won from 258.94 trillion won over the mentioned period.
Shares in Samsung Electronics rose 1.08 pe rcent to 56,000 won, outperforming the broader Korea Composite Stock Price Index's 0.01 percent gain as of 10:00 a.m.
The company plans to release its final earnings results later this month.
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