Key points
- Samsung's stock fell 5.23% on July 29, a day before its own earnings came out, as the Kospi dropped 5.98% and halted trading for a second straight day, unrelated to Samsung.
- Samsung's confirmed Q2 results landed July 30: record revenue of 171.49 trillion won ($118.9B USD) and record operating profit of 89.49 trillion won ($62.1B USD), beating consensus by about 5%.
- Net profit was 71.62 trillion won ($49.7B USD), up about 1,300% from a year earlier, almost all of it from memory chips and AI demand for HBM.
- The Kospi rose as much as 5.54% on the results, then closed down 1.23%. Samsung closed down 0.72% after being up 4.56% earlier in the session.
On Thursday, July 30 in Seoul, Samsung Electronics released its confirmed results for the second quarter. Revenue came to 171.49 trillion won ($118.9 billion USD). Operating profit came to 89.49 trillion won ($62.1 billion USD). Both were the highest the company's ever reported in a single quarter. Net profit was 71.62 trillion won ($49.7 billion USD), up about 1,300 percent from a year earlier.
The numbers weren't a shock by the time they landed. Samsung had already released preliminary figures on July 7, and those put revenue and operating profit in about the same range. Thursday's confirmed release added the detail behind them, including net profit and how each division performed.
| Q2 2026, confirmed | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue | 171.49 trillion won ($118.9B USD) |
| Operating profit | 89.49 trillion won ($62.1B USD) |
| Net profit | 71.62 trillion won ($49.7B USD) |
Analysts surveyed by WiseReport had expected operating profit near 85.05 trillion won ($59.0 billion USD). Samsung beat that consensus by about 5 percent.
Almost all of the profit came from one place. Samsung's chip division includes its memory business, and it posted an operating margin near 70 percent. D-RAM and NAND prices kept rising through the quarter. High bandwidth memory, the chips used in AI servers, sold at a premium on top of that. The mobile and appliance division's sales fell 9 percent from the prior quarter. The foundry and chip design units are still expected to lose money. The chip division's operating profit alone topped Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit, about 53.5 billion dollars for the three months that ended in April, Hankook Ilbo reported.
Kim Dong-won leads the research division at KB Securities. He'd already forecast in mid July that the momentum wouldn't stop at the second quarter, putting Samsung's operating profit at 110 trillion won ($76.3 billion USD) for the third quarter and 124 trillion won ($86.0 billion USD) for the fourth. Etoday reported his comments in mid July. "2027 will be the tightest supply year in the 70-year history of the semiconductor industry," he said, pointing to AI data centers that keep buying memory chips faster than the industry can make them.
None of that was public yet on Wednesday, when Samsung's stock fell 5.23 percent anyway. The Kospi closed down 5.98 percent that day and traded as much as 12.63 percent lower intraday. Korea Exchange halted trading on both the Kospi and the Kosdaq. That was the second straight halt, something that hadn't happened before this week. The halt was tied to forced liquidations in leveraged single stock ETFs, not to any single company's results, as AIStockWire reported that day.
SK Hynix is the other big Korean memory maker, and it had already reported that same Wednesday. Operating profit rose 557 percent from a year ago, but revenue missed consensus by about 5.5 percent. The stock sold off in the same broad selloff that hit Samsung. AIStockWire covered the full numbers at the time.
The buying came back for a few hours, then left again. On the results and the conference call, the Kospi rose as much as 5.54 percent intraday and Samsung was up 4.56 percent at its best level of the day. Neither held. The Kospi closed down 1.23 percent at 5,593.56 and Samsung closed down 0.72 percent. SK Hynix fell 5.64 percent.
The buyers and sellers swapped places on the way. Foreign investors bought 1.35 trillion won ($936M USD) of Kospi shares, their first buying after four straight sessions of selling, and institutions added 66.3 billion won ($46M USD). Individual investors sold 1.43 trillion won ($991M USD), a second straight day of selling after they had spent the crash absorbing what everyone else let go.
Outside Korea the reaction held better. Nasdaq futures rose about 1 percent in after hours trading, and Micron (MU), a competing memory chipmaker, gained about 3 percent.
Won figures are converted at 1,442 won to the dollar, the July 30, 2026 rate.
