Samsung Q2 guidance: Weak memory demand

Samsung Electronics said Friday that profits for the three months that ended June more than halved from a year earlier following continued weakness in the price and demand of memory chips.

The world’s largest smartphone maker and supplier of memory chips said operating profit was at 6.5 trillion Korean won ($5.5 billion), which was slightly better than an industry estimate of 6 trillion won, but was down about 56% from a year earlier.

Memory components, which are used in mobile handsets and enterprise servers, comprise Samsung’s main profit-making business.

Experts have said that the entire semiconductor sector is undergoing a period of inventory adjustment, which is keeping demand low and causing a supply glut that’s squeezing the price. Some have predicted continued excess inventories in both DRAM and NAND memory chips, which would push back the sector’s recovery to the second half of 2020. 

DRAM chips allow computers, phones and tablets to run multiple applications at the same time whereas NAND chips function as primary storage.

Final figures for the quarter are due later this month.

If those numbers match with Friday’s guidance, as they typically do, it would be the second consecutive quarter where Samsung’s operating profit more than halved from the same period a year earlier.

In the three months that ended March, Samsung’s profits fell about 60% on-year to 6.2 trillion Korean won ($5.3 billion).

The simmering tension between Seoul and Tokyo will likely exacerbate the situation for Samsung, as well as other semiconductor rivals in South Korea like SK Hynix.

There is a growing dispute between the two countries over wartime forced labor, which resulted in Japan announcing Monday stricter restrictions on exports of crucial high-tech materials that are used by South Korean electronics companies to make…