Samsung's second quarter net profit hits record high

Seoul: South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a second quarter net profit of 11 trillion won ($9 billion), up 89 per cent year-on-year, the company said in a statement here.

Samsung's operating profit reached a record level of 14.1 trillion won, up 72.7 per cent. Its turnover also hit a record high, achieving 61 trillion won, up 19.76 per cent.

The numbers appear to be in line with a report on expected profit they released on July 7. This would make the South Korean company the most profitable tech firm in the world, beating the US-based Apple Inc.

In the second quarter, the divisions producing semiconductors and components boosted the company's accounts by jointly achieving 42.83 trillion won in revenue, which is 40.7 per cent more than in the same quarter of 2016.

The chip unit achieved this performance thanks to strong demand for high-density DRAMs and SSDs for servers in a low-supply environment.

The sales revenue of the company's mobile division is also up 13 per cent to 30 trillion won following the good public reception of the latest Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus high-end models, but its operating profit was reduced due to an increase in component costs.

As for Samsung's screen division, the revenue is up 20 per cent to 7.71 trillion won due to a greater sale of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for high-end smartphones and liquid-crystal display (LCD) large-format screens.