Global chip giants’ losses expand in first quarter
Global TimesMay 15, 2023
Samsung Electronics, the world's leading memory chip and smartphone maker, reported on Friday a likely 96% decline in second-quarter profit — the lowest for any quarter since 2009 — as the chip glut persists despite a supply cut.
Largely in line with a $427M Refinitiv SmartEstimate, the tech giant estimates that operating gains fell to $458M from April to June, down from $10.8B a year earlier.
Samsung is among the major international chipmakers facing successive losses mainly due to the reckless US chip export restrictions on China, which is the world's largest single-market consumer of semiconductors. Aimed at containing China's rise, such measures to exclude the PRC from the global semiconductor industry chain have backfired and are hurting global chipmakers, not China.
Despite Samsung's Q2 profit falling to a 14-year low, this result was much better than market expectations and showed signs that the company will indeed have a six-fold increase to $2.8B in the third quarter as forecast. Additionally, its operating profit is expected to be $3.8B in the fourth quarter, up from $3.3B in Q4 2022. Things are still looking up.
There's a 5% chance that chips covered by the 2022 US export controls will be exported to China before 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community.