[Click eStock] "Samsung Electronics, Q2 Surprise... Target Price Up"

Kiwoom Securities raised the target price for Samsung Electronics from 110,000 KRW to 120,000 KRW on the 8th, citing a second-quarter earnings surprise. The investment rating was maintained at 'Buy.'

Earlier, Samsung Electronics announced its preliminary second-quarter earnings, reporting sales of 74 trillion KRW, a 23% increase compared to the same period last year, and an operating profit of 10.4 trillion KRW, a 1456% increase.

Researcher Park Yu-ak stated, "This significantly exceeds our expectations," adding, "The improvement in profitability in the semiconductor sector surpassed expectations due to the greater-than-expected impact of rising memory prices and the KRW-USD exchange rate in the latter part of the quarter."

He also noted, "The non-memory sector, which had been recording large operating losses, saw a significant reduction in losses and is expected to turn profitable in the second half of the year."

He further predicted, "Third-quarter sales will increase by 12% from the previous quarter to 83 trillion KRW, and operating profit will rise by 35% to 14 trillion KRW," forecasting that this will significantly exceed the market consensus level of 11.8 trillion KRW in operating profit.

He explained, "The expansion of sales of 128GB server DIMMs targeting the artificial intelligence (AI) inference market and 9th-generation QLC-based eSSDs will drive substantial profitability improvements in the memory sector." He also considered the possibility of upward revisions to DRAM earnings forecasts as mass production sales of HBM3e for Nvidia become visible.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.