Samsung's wearable devices are on display at a trade show in Las Vegas. [Yonhap News Photo]
Samsung Electronics Co. predicted Friday that its fourth-quarter operating profit last year may have jumped about 50 percent on-year, beating market expectations as strong sales of chips and displays appeared to help offset losses from a global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.
Operating profit is estimated at 9.2 trillion won (7.72 billion US dollars) in the October-December period last year, up 49.84 percent from the same quarter of 2015, Samsung said in a statement.
Compared with a quarter earlier, the fourth-quarter operating profit is estimated to have surged 77 percent, it said. Fourth-quarter sales are estimated at 53 trillion won, down 0.6 percent on year, Samsung said.
The result beat analysts' expectations. A survey of 17 brokerages by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency, had expected that Samsung would report a fourth-quarter operating profit of 8.4 trillion won.
It was the first time since the third quarter of 2013 that Samsung's quarterly operating profit surpassed 9 trillion won. For all of last year, Samsung predicted its operating profit may rise 10.64 percent on-year to 29.2 trillion won. Full-year sales are expected to edge up 201.5 trillion won, up 0.44 percent from 2015.
(Yonhap
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
