Samsung On Its Way to Become World’s Most Profitable Company

Samsung expects to generate more profit in 2026 than it earned during the past 40 years combined since entering the semiconductor business.

Kim Yong-kwan, President and Head of Business Strategy at Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions division, reportedly made the statement during a town hall meeting on July 3.

World’s Most Profitable Company

Samsung is expected to report an operating profit of 84.5994 trillion won, or $55.1 billion, for the second quarter of 2026.

If Samsung meets this estimate, it will surpass Nvidia’s first-quarter operating profit of $53.54 billion. This would make Samsung the world’s most profitable company.

$200 Billion Profit

Kim said the Device Solutions division expects its annual operating profit to meet current market expectations.

Analysts currently expect Samsung to report an annual operating profit of around 300 trillion won, or approximately $200 billion, in 2026.

The executive added that Samsung’s profit this year could surpass the total profit it generated during roughly four decades in the semiconductor industry.

Samsung is preparing to release its preliminary financial results for the second quarter of 2026. Analysts are closely following statements from the company’s senior executives ahead of the announcement.

BofA: Memory

> Concerns that the South Korean government's planned ₩800tn memory fab cluster signals a peak in the memory cycle are premature. Meaningful production volumes from this cluster are not expected until 2033, and enterprise chip demand (HBM, eSSD, etc.) remains… pic.twitter.com/UTy7aIplxp

— P Equity Research 📰 (@pequityresearch) July 5, 2026

DRAM Price Increases

Samsung is currently negotiating with commodity DRAM customers as it seeks to raise prices by as much as 20 percent quarter-over-quarter during the third quarter.

The company increased commodity DRAM prices by 90 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared to reference prices from the fourth quarter of 2025.

Samsung then introduced another sequential price increase of between 50 and 60 percent during the second quarter.

LPDDR5X 12GB contract prices have tripled since the first quarter of 2025. Prices remained close to $120 toward the end of the first quarter and into the second quarter of 2026.

Since the start of the year, prices have increased by $68.8 and recently reached $145 per unit.

Capacity Expansion

Samsung and SK Hynix are undertaking an $800 billion initiative to expand memory chip production capacity.

However, the investment is not expected to produce meaningful additional volumes until 2033. Memory prices could therefore remain elevated as long as demand for DRAM and NAND, driven by artificial intelligence, remains strong.

Samsung is also reportedly changing the design of the Exynos 2700 by keeping its RAM and system-on-chip components separate instead of using on-package memory. The design is intended to improve thermal performance.