Samsung expects a profit jump of more than 1400 %
Samsung Electronics, the flagship unit of the South Korean giant Samsung Group, expects its profit to grow 14 times in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. The artificial intelligence boom has pushed up the prices of advanced chips, prompting the company to raise its forecast for the second quarter.
The South Korean tech giant is the world's largest manufacturer of memory chips, smartphones and televisions. The company reports a more than 10-fold increase in profits in the first three months of this year, so the forecast for the second quarter is most likely realistic.
In this quarter, the profit is expected to increase to more than 6 billion euros. For comparison, last year in the same period they made a little more than 400 million euros in profit.
"We're currently seeing skyrocketing demand for AI chips in data centers and smartphones," said Marc Einstein, principal analyst at Tokyo-based research and consulting firm ITR Corporation.
Optimism about artificial intelligence is one of the reasons for the broader market rally over the past year, which sent the S&P 500 and Nasdaq in the US to new records on Wednesday.
Chip-making giant Nvidia's market value topped $3 billion last month, briefly taking the top spot as the world's most valuable company.