Samsung Electronics shares fell nearly 5% to around ₩230,000 today despite reporting a record third-quarter operating profit of ₩107.4 trillion (about $80 billion). The KOSPI index dropped roughly 2.7% into the 5,800s, reversing earlier gains above 6,000 and weighed down by the heavyweight stock. Chips drove nearly all of Samsung’s profit, while other divisions lagged. Investors appear disappointed that further shareholder returns beyond the announced ₩30 trillion cash dividend were deferred to a January decision, even as the company outlined large AI-related capital spending. The sell-off highlights how high expectations around returns can outweigh strong earnings.

Samsung Electronics Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Record Profits, AI Boom Visibility to 2027, and Massive Shareholder Returns. [Complete Summery] Memory. On the Q3 2026 call it reported consolidated revenue of 195.25 trillion won and operating profit of 107.44 trillion won. Fourth straight all-time records. Revenue up 126.9 percent year-on-year. Operating profit up 783.1 percent. Operating margin roughly 55 percent. Device Solutions did the work. It delivered 147.1 trillion in revenue and 106.5 trillion in operating profit. That is about 99 percent of the entire company’s profit. Memory revenue alone jumped 427% to 140.7 trillion, driven by HBM and server DRAM as hyperscalers kept building. It sees the tightness lasting. Prolonged AI investment plus supply constraints should keep conditions tight into 2027. It expects 2027 results to beat 2026. Demand is forecast to far outpace supply. The response is more HBM4, mass production of HBM4E, and a shift toward high-performance DDR5. HBM4 revenue more than tripled quarter-on-quarter. It now makes up about 60 percent of total HBM sales. It has hit its goal of HBM share matching its overall DRAM share. For 2027 it has already locked full planned volumes with customers at target prices. Sold out. Customers still want more. Foundry is moving too. It expects 2-nanometer order wins this year to more than double. New projects from large cloud and AI/HPC customers in Q2 and Q3. AI and HPC products are projected to be more than half of foundry revenue next year. Growth includes the Taylor plant ramp in Texas. Then the contrast. Device eXperience (phones and appliances) saw sequential revenue rise to 52.1 trillion. It still posted an operating loss of about 800 billion. Second straight quarter of losses that size. Higher memory and component costs kept squeezing the margin. On capital expenditure, Samsung plans to spend 84.4 trillion won on production facilities this year. Of that total, 76.8 trillion won is allocated to the Device Solutions semiconductor division and 3.9 trillion won to Samsung Display. The board approved a Q3 cash dividend of 4,601 won per share, about 30.03 trillion total. That brings executed or confirmed returns this year to roughly 35 trillion of the 90-to-110-trillion program. The rest goes to more dividends plus buybacks and cancellations. It will actively consider preferred shares in the buyback mix. Next multi-year policy expected at the late-January board meeting. The same memory boom that is generating almost all the cash is also the reason finished-product margins stay under pressure. Visibility runs through 2027. The phone line is still paying for it.

Samsung Electronics announced that it has completed preparations for mass production of 10th-generation V-NAND products with bonding technology in the third quarter, and plans to commercialize a 256-terabyte (TB) SSD with 32-layer stacking technology applied to 9th-generation V-NAND-based QLC products early next year.