SEOUL, January 08 (AJP) - Samsung Electronics’ record fourth-quarter results may mark the start of a two-digit, billion-dollar earnings run, as AI infrastructure — from data centers to humanoid robots — drives memory prices into uncharted territory.
In preliminary earnings guidance released Thursday, the South Korean tech giant said operating profit for the October–December period reached 20 trillion won ($14 billion), more than tripling from a year earlier and surpassing the market consensus of 19.6 trillion won compiled by FnGuide.
Revenue rose 22.7 percent to 93 trillion won, also an all-time quarterly high.
For the full year, Samsung posted 43.53 trillion won in operating profit and 332.8 trillion won in revenue, up 33 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively.
Samsung will release final figures with divisional breakdowns on Jan. 29, but based on headline numbers and prevailing market conditions, analysts estimate that semiconductors accounted for more than 70 percent of fourth-quarter earnings.
Investment banks put operating profit at Samsung’s chip division at roughly 17 trillion won, reflecting sharp gains in average selling prices — about 36 percent quarter-on-quarter for DRAM and 15 percent for NAND.
Memory prices enter a “hyper-bull” phase
The earnings surge coincides with a rapid acceleration in memory prices toward year-end.
Market tracker TrendForce said mass-market DRAM prices jumped 45–50 percent in the fourth quarter, while overall DRAM prices — including high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — rose 50–55 percent. NAND flash prices climbed 33–38 percent over the same period.
Research firm Counterpoint described the market as entering a “hyper-bull” phase, forecasting that memory prices, after rising 40–50 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, are likely to increase another 40–50 percent in the first quarter of 2026 and around 20 percent in the second quarter.
“The current memory rally is eclipsing the 2018 peak,” Counterpoint said in a recent report. “Demand for AI infrastructure is fundamentally reshaping supply dynamics, giving suppliers unprecedented pricing power.”
The rally reflects a strategic shift by major chipmakers toward products servicing AI accelerators and data centers, tightening supply across the board — from legacy DRAM to NAND flash — amid aggressive stockpiling by customers.
A late start in HBM turns strategic
Samsung, which initially lagged behind rivals such as SK hynix and Micron in the HBM race, is now finding that late start strategically opportune.
Unlike SK hynix, whose HBM output is heavily committed to Nvidia, Samsung can serve a broader client pool — including Broadcom for Google’s tensor processing units used in AI inference, AMD, and other challengers to Nvidia’s dominance in AI accelerators.
Losses in Samsung’s foundry business are also narrowing, helped by rising demand for customized AI chips and advanced packaging solutions.
CES spotlight: memory as the “robot brain”
The importance of memory was underscored this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where “physical AI” — robots and humanoids capable of perceiving, reasoning and acting in the real world — took center stage.
“We finally have the core ingredient to build the missing piece of robots, which was the robot brain,” said Rev Lebaredian, vice president of Omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia.
“Once we had that, it started making sense to build the robot bodies.”
Robotics producers put 2028 to 2030 as the window for mass commercialization.
“We think you need to start on industry first,” said Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, robotics arm of Hyundai Motor. “We think it’s going to be 2028 or 2030 when robots are deployed in factories, and probably another five years before they’re really affordable in the home.”
Humanoid robots are semiconductor systems in disguise
What often looks like an AI miracle is, at its core, a semiconductor system packaged in humanoid form. Each robot requires multitude packages of HBM, DRAM and NAND chips to support human-like sensors and motor movements.
As mass production approaches, demand is converging on just three global suppliers — Samsung, SK hynix and Micron — making it increasingly unlikely that supply can keep pace in the near term.
That imbalance helps explain the surge of investor enthusiasm for Korean chipmakers during CES week, which pushed the KOSPI to record highs.
Chae Min-sook, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, said the earnings boom reflects a structural shift in the memory market.
“Conventional DRAM is entering a phase where profitability could exceed that of high-bandwidth memory from early 2026,” Chae wrote in a report on SK hynix. “Tight memory supply will be difficult to resolve in the short term.”
She forecast that SK hynix’s operating profit this year could reach 128 trillion won, up 58 percent from her previous estimate, citing accelerating price gains across both DRAM and NAND.
Analysts say the same dynamics underpin Samsung’s outlook.
FnGuide projects Samsung’s full-year operating profit at around 106.7 trillion won, while Citi has put the figure as high as 155 trillion won, citing accelerating HBM shipments, expanding foundry capacity and a pipeline of new flagship products including the Galaxy S26 and next-generation foldables.
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