Samsung Electronics will publish preliminary Q3 earnings guidance on Thursday. Analysts expect operating profit of 106.1 trillion won ($79.1 billion), which would mark a fourth straight record quarter.
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is still outrunning memory supply. However, memory price gains slowed during the quarter, leaving investors questioning whether chip margins have topped out.
What to Watch as Samsung’s Preliminary Q3 Numbers Land
Samsung’s guidance filings list only consolidated sales and operating profit. A detailed report follows in late October.
Thursday’s release will therefore answer the profit question first. The other four points rest on analyst estimates, industry data and the market’s reaction.
1. A Record Profit Built on Trimmed Forecasts
Profit is the key headline number, and it is expected to reach nearly nine times the 12.17 trillion won Samsung earned a year earlier.
That would top the record second-quarter operating profit of 89.5 trillion won ($62 billion) Samsung posted in July.
However, that figure reflects a downward revision. The LSEG SmartEstimate, based on 21 analysts, has dropped 7.7% since the end of August.
Two factors sit behind the cut.
- Slower memory price gains. Memory chip prices kept climbing in Q3, though the pace eased.
- A stronger won: The currency rallied 14.3% against the dollar in Q3, its biggest quarterly gain since early 1998. That lowers the value of Samsung’s overseas earnings when they are brought home.
2. Memory Margins Stuck at 76%
SK Securities analyst Han Dong-hee puts Samsung’s Q3 memory operating margin at 76%. That would leave it unchanged from the April to June period.
US rival Micron, meanwhile, expects its gross margin to ease to 86.3% from 87% this quarter. The company partly blamed employee compensation costs.
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3. Where DRAM Prices Head in Q4
TrendForce expects the slowdown in memory price gains to continue into Q4. It projects conventional DRAM contract prices will rise 10% to 15% over Q3, after a roughly 60% jump in the second quarter.
Avril Wu, TrendForce’s senior vice president for research, linked part of the slowdown to long-term supply deals.
“With ceiling-price mechanisms built in, the rate of price increases has slowed down…long-term agreements represent an increasingly higher proportion of suppliers’ total output. With ceiling-price mechanisms built in, the rate of price increases has slowed down,” Wu said.
Samsung said in July it aims to secure long-term contracts covering about two-thirds of its memory output.
4. Samsung Chips Away at SK Hynix in HBM
SK Hynix remains the largest supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which AI data centers depend on. Samsung has been gaining on its rival this year.
Samsung had fallen behind after delays in qualifying its products for Nvidia. This year, larger shipments of its latest HBM4 chips have helped it recover ground.
J.P. Morgan’s estimates show how far that recovery could go. The bank sees Samsung’s HBM market share rising to 34% in 2026, up from 20% last year. Over the same period, SK Hynix’s share is forecast to fall to 46% from 60%.
5. How the Samsung Stock Takes the News
Samsung’s last preliminary guidance, on July 7, showed record Q2 operating profit. Shares still fell 6.92% from the prior close to 296,000 won. CNBC linked the drop to investor worries over capital spending and demand.
After the full results on July 30, the stock slipped only 0.72% from the prior close to 207,000 won.
On October 7, Samsung traded at 271,750 won at 1:45 p.m. Seoul time, down 0.09% on the day. That leaves it about 27% below its 52-week high of 374,500 won.
Still, shares are up 111.48% so far in 2026. Thursday’s preliminary figure will show whether another record, this time against lowered estimates, meets a similar reaction.
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