SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Friday flagged a 28% jump in its third-quarter operating profit to the highest in three years, driven by rising memory chip prices and display sales for new 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), below a Refinitiv SmartEstimate of 16.1 trillion won. "The mobile business' operating margin might have been lower than the market expected," said Park Sung-soon, analyst at Cape Investment & Securities. Rising memory chip prices and shipments, plus a jump in profitability at Samsung's chip contract manufacturing business, likely raised the chip division's operating profit by about 79% from a year earlier, analysts said. Semiconductors accounted for about half of Samsung's operating profit in the first half of the year.

Source: The Star October 08, 2021 00:27 UTC