Samsung’s Q2 earnings beat market expectations 

Samsung’s earnings for the second quarter beat market expectations thanks to stronger than expected performance from its memory business.

A one-time profit in its display business is also thought to have contributed the strong earnings.

The company said on Wednesday that it recorded 63 trillion won in sales and 12.5 trillion won in operating income.

This is a jump of 18.94% and 53.37%, respectively, from the second quarter in 2020.

South Korean analysts expected operating income of around 11 trillion won.

The earnings of Samsung’s memory business is expected to have surged. According to DRAMeXchange, DRAM prices increased 26.67% in April from the previous month. NAND prices increased 9% over the same time period.

A person familiar with the matter said as Samsung is the world’s largest memory vendor, it probably benefited more than its competitors from the memory price hike in terms of profitability.

However, the performance of Samsung’s foundry and logic units are expected to behind those of memory as the impact from halting its fab in Austin in the first quarter likely continued to the second. The units are expected to return to form in the second half of the year as the fab in Austin normalized in May.

Samsung Display is also thought to have received a one-time payment from Apple of around 500 billion won.

Appliance and TV businesses are expected to have performed solidly, while mobile’s was likely lackluster.

Samsung is accepting questions from its shareholders from Wednesday to July 29. It will answer some of these questions on July 29 during its conference call for the second quarter.