Samsung Electronics announced on Thursday that its first-quarter net profit was 47.22 trillion won (approximately US$31.8 billion), a year-on-year increase of 474.3%. The company said in a regulatory filing that operating profit in the first quarter was 57.23 trillion won, a year-on-year increase of 756.1%. Revenue increased by 69.2% to 133.87 trillion won.
That was broadly in line with preliminary unaudited results the company reported earlier this month, but it did not release net profit figures at the time.
Samsung's record profit was mainly due to the strong performance of its chip business. South Korea's most valuable company is a major producer of memory chips, semiconductor foundry services and smartphones.
The company has become a major beneficiary of the global boom in artificial intelligence data centers, which has also limited the supply of memory chips used in devices such as smartphones, PCs and game consoles.
Samsung said in its financial report that despite limited supply, its memory business "still set a quarterly sales record, mainly due to strong growth in demand for high value-added artificial intelligence, and a general increase in industry memory prices was also one of the factors that contributed to this performance growth."
The company expects server memory demand to remain strong in the second half of the year as hyperscale data centers continue to promote artificial intelligence applications and demand for intelligent artificial intelligence accelerates.
Samsung’s strong performance growth comes at a time when its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) business is expanding. HBM is a key component of artificial intelligence data center chips.
Chipmakers such as Nvidia (the world's most valuable company) are driving demand for HBM amid limited supply.
Supply constraints have pushed up the price of memory used in consumer electronics as manufacturers prioritize products for higher-margin artificial intelligence applications.