Samsung Electronics suffers wost earnings in 10 quarters

Samsung Electronics 1st quarter earnings for past 5 years

Samsung Electronics 1st quarter earnings for past 5 years

Samsung Electronics bore out predictions of an “earning shock” with its weakest performance in 10 quarters.

The company announced on Apr. 5 that it had registered 52 trillion won (US$47.71 billion) in sales and 6.2 trillion won (US$5.45 billion) in operating profits during the first quarter of 2019. The numbers were respectively down 14.1% and 60.4% from the same quarter last year. Samsung Electronics previously took the unusual step of announcing its predictions of an “earning shock” on Mar. 26.

The drop was the combined result of a stagnant semiconductor memory market and falling prices for display panels. In addition to Samsung Electronics, performance has been declining for the other two big semiconductor companies – SK Hynix in South Korea and Micron Technology in the US – amid shrinking global semiconductor memory demand since the latter half of 2018.

The sales slump for semiconductors, which comprised 20.9% of South Korean exports last year, has had a major impact on the decline for exports as a whole. While many are predicting the semiconductor market will rebound by the second half of the year, critics have also continued to insist that the South Korean economy and Samsung Electronics needs to move past their excessive dependence on semiconductor memory.

By Shin Da-eun, staff reporter

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