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Samsung Electronics has announced its earnings for the second quarter of the year, and it was a rough three months.
Profits down by more than half from a year earlier, but up from the previous quarter.
Our Kim Da-mi has this report.
Samsung Electronics did better than market analysts expected, although it suffered a sizable on-year drop in profits.
Samsung said on Friday that its operating profit in the April to June period was estimated at around 5-point-6 billion U.S. dollars.
That's around a 56-point-three percent drop from a year ago, but it's up four percent from the previous quarter.
The same applies for its overall sales too.
Its sales fell more than 4 percent on-year to around 48 billion dollars.
It sounds like a mixed bag, but its overall performance in the first half of 2019 is a mere 40 percent of the figures it posted during the same period last year.
Falling global demand for memory chips on weakening demand from China and falling DRAM prices really hit the company's bottom line.
Specifically, DRAM and NAND flash chips, which account for more than two-thirds of Samsung's sales really dragged down profits.
The firm predicted its earnings to recover in the second half of 2019 with stabilized inventory levels and higher demand during the peak season, but market analysts expect the memory chip business to remain on a downward trend.
"At the beginning of the year, a lot of analysts believed that the semiconductor market would recover in the later half of the year. But being at the later half of the year, it doesn't look like market will be improving any time soon. Semiconductor prices are likely to stay low for the foreseeable future."
On the same day, LG Electronics also posted an operating profit of 5-hundred fifty-seven million U.S. dollars.
From a year earlier, that's a drop of more than 15 percent, mainly due to lower sales of TVs and mobile phones.
Sales, however, rose slightly by 4 percent.
Samsung and LG are expected to release their finalized figures later this month.
KIM Da-mi, Arirang News.
