Samsung sales and profits on fire

seoul — No leader and scorched Note 7 smartphones? No problem.

After a tumultuous year of surreal corruption scandals involving exotic horses and the jailed billionaire scion and one of the most embarrassing recalls in the consumer electronics history, Samsung stunned investors with another improbable record: the South Korean tech giant may have earned more than Apple and ended Intel’s quarter century dominance in the semiconductor industry.

Seemingly invincible Samsung Electronics appears set to log record annual profit this year as exploding use of data in mobile devices and the “memory supercycle” help it surmount the jailing of its de facto leader and sidestep losses from its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7s.

South Korea’s largest company reported on Thursday record-high quarterly profit and sales that likely will help it nudge aside Intel as the leading maker of semiconductors.

Samsung also likely outstripped Apple in quarterly earnings for the first time as soaring use of connected devices and mobile data fueled demand for computer chips.

Samsung’s bottom line is better than ever, even with its vice chairman and de facto chief Lee Jaeyong jailed as part of a corruption scandal that unseated former South Korean president, Park Geun-hye. While Lee and Park battle allegations of bribery and other charges, Samsung is thriving thanks to tiny microchips called DRAM and NAND memory chips, which are needed to store and process data in servers and mobile devices.

The unprecedented boom in the memory chip industry dubbed the “memory super cycle” helped push Samsung’s April-June net income to 10.8 trillion won ($9.7 billion), up 85 percent from 5.8 trillion won a year earlier.

Analysts had forecast 10.1 trillion won in net profit according to FactSet, a financial data provider.

Operating profit jumped 73 percent over a year earlier to 14.1 trillion won ($12.7 billion) while sales rose 20 per cent to 61 trillion won ($54.8 billion), in line with Samsung’s earlier guidance. —