Samsung Electronics said its revenue will likely increase about 9 percent in third-quarter to a record 73 trillion won from the same period a year earlier.
Samsung said in a filing on Friday indicated that there will be 28 percent jump in its third-quarter operating profit, the highest in three years, driven by rising memory chip prices and display sales for flagship smartphone launches.

The world’s largest memory chip and smartphone maker estimated its July-September profit at 15.8 trillion won ($13.3 billion). It is the highest quarterly profit since the third quarter of 2018.

“The mobile business’ operating margin might have been lower than the market expected,” said Park Sung-soon, analyst at Cape Investment & Securities. “We will have to see marketing costs and what the mix of products Samsung sold was like.”

Rising memory chip prices and shipments, plus an increase in profitability at Samsung’s chip contract manufacturing business, likely raised the chip division’s operating profit by about 79 percent from a year earlier, analysts said.

Semiconductors accounted for about half of Samsung’s operating profit in the first half of the year.

Samsung will announce detailed earnings later this month.

US-based Micron Technology said its memory chip shipments would slip in the near term.

Analysts said prices for memory chips are expected to tumble this quarter as demand for personal computers drops amid an expected easing in global lockdowns that have helped power sales, while smartphone shipments may also decline.

A bright spot next year is expected to be Samsung’s chip contract manufacturing business. Samsung on Thursday announced plans to start producing cutting-edge, 3-nanometre chip designs in the first half of 2022, as it races against industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to preempt advanced technology and win clients.

For Samsung’s mobile business, estimated sales of 2 million new foldable smartphones within a month showed demand for its foldable handsets captured more of the mass market than last year, analysts said.

However, this was likely offset by marketing costs and higher component costs due to the global chip shortage.

Samsung’s display unit likely saw solid results as key customer Apple ramped up orders before its late-September launch of the iPhone 13 series, analysts said.