Samsung likely to post 60.2% cut in Q3 operating profit

Seoul:  Amid slowing demand for smartphones and continuing falls in chip prices, Samsung Electronics is likely to report a 60.2 per cent plunge in its third-quarter operating profit, an industry report showed on Sunday.
According to the report by Seoul-based financial market tracker FnGuide, Samsung is expected to post 6.9 trillion won ($5.8 billion) in the third-quarter operating profit, compared with a profit of 17.5 trillion won a year ago, Yonhap news agency reported.
Compared with a previous estimate three months earlier, the latest estimate was down 8.2 per cent.
Since late last year, Samsung has been grappling with the semiconductor industry’s downturn amid slowing demand for smartphones and other electronic gadgets.
Samsung has expressed hopes that prices of NAND, mostly used in mobile devices, will pick up in the third quarter, given a stabilizing inventory level and rising demand in the second quarter.
For computer memory chips, Samsung anticipated demand recovery in the third quarter as data centres resumed purchasing server DRAM in the late second quarter, but it cautioned there would be more volatility in the market in the wake of global trade tension.