Samsung Electronics' operating profit reached a record high of 107.4 trillion won in the third quarter. In a research report released after the earnings report, Yuanta Securities semiconductor analyst Paik Gil-hyun pointed out that Samsung's HBM4 revenue more than tripled quarter-on-quarter, but HBM's overall revenue still accounted for less than 10% of DRAM revenue. Meanwhile, DRAM shipments only increased by 3% quarter-on-quarter in the third quarter, while the average selling price (ASP) rose by 21%. Yuanta estimates that this round of profit improvement mainly came from the price increase of ordinary DRAM, rather than the HBM business. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Yuanta expects Samsung's DRAM shipments to increase by 16% quarter-on-quarter and the selling price to rise by 13%, predicting that the company's operating profit will reach 137.3 trillion won, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 27.7%. This means that the main driver of Samsung's current profit growth is still the traditional memory price cycle. Although the AI-specific HBM business is expanding rapidly, its contribution to overall DRAM revenue is still relatively limited at this stage.
