According to the latest forecast from KB Securities analysts,Samsung Electronics' full-year operating profit is expected to reach 327 trillion won in 2026, and will further rise to 488 trillion won in 2027. By then, it will slightly surpass NVIDIA and become the company with the highest operating profit in the world.
The confidence of this prediction comes from Samsung's recent financial performance. Samsung expects operating profit to reach 57.2 trillion won in the first quarter of 2026, a year-on-year surge of 700% and an increase of 184% from the previous quarter's 20.1 trillion won.
The core driving force of such rapid growth is today's memory super cycle. The demand and prices for high value-added products such as HBM and DDR5 have both increased, bringing Samsung profit returns that far exceed expectations.
At the same time, Samsung’s advantages in the field of display panels continue to be converted into real money. According to South Korea’s The Elec, Apple has signed a three-year exclusive supply contract for folding screens with Samsung. The folding display for iPhone Fold will only be provided by Samsung.
The folding crease of iPhone Fold will be controlled to an extremely low level of only 0.15mm. This indicator places extremely high requirements on the technical capabilities of suppliers, and also means that Apple can only trust Samsung's exclusive technology accumulation in the field of folding screens.
KB Securities pointed out that Samsung's operating profit forecast of 488 trillion won in 2027 will exceed NVIDIA's expected profit for the same period "by a substantial but limited margin."
This means that in the AI wave, not only chip design companies like NVIDIA are reaping dividends, but Samsung, as the underlying hardware supplier, is also quietly making a fortune.
