Samsung Electronics has issued earnings guidance for the third quarter of 2026, and the numbers are the largest the company has ever put out. Samsung expects consolidated operating profit of roughly 107.40 trillion KRW on consolidated sales of about 195 trillion KRW. The guidance was published in Korea on October 8, 2026.
What Samsung’s Q3 2026 guidance actually says
These are preliminary figures prepared on a K-IFRS basis, not final audited results. Korean disclosure rules require companies to publish the midpoint of a range rather than a single point estimate. Samsung’s stated ranges are 194–196 trillion KRW for sales and 107.3–107.5 trillion KRW for operating profit.
The release also carries the comparison periods, which is where the scale of the jump becomes clear:
- Q3 2026 (guidance): sales ~195 trillion KRW, operating profit ~107.40 trillion KRW
- Q2 2026: sales 171.5 trillion KRW, operating profit 89.49 trillion KRW
- Q3 2025: sales 86.06 trillion KRW, operating profit 12.17 trillion KRW
One thing the guidance does not include is any product or segment breakdown. There is no line for the chip business, no line for phones, and no line for appliances. Samsung’s full official segment results are due later this month.
The analyst gloss, and where it comes from
SamMobile converts the guidance to roughly $79.8 billion in operating profit on about $144.9 billion in revenue. It also calculates a profit margin near 55%, which it calls the highest in the company’s history and says surpasses Apple’s. By SamMobile’s math, profit is up 782.5% year over year and revenue up 126%.
Those percentages, margin figures and comparisons to Apple are SamMobile’s own analysis. None of them appear in Samsung’s guidance text, which is a bare two-line disclosure of sales and operating profit.
The driver is not in dispute. Memory and storage demand from the AI buildout is carrying these results. Samsung has begun shipping HBM4 chips to Nvidia. Per SamMobile, it has also received Nvidia’s quality approval for HBM4E parts destined for the Rubin Ultra AI platform. Samsung’s own release says nothing about either milestone.
Why a record quarter is not good news for phone buyers
The memory boom that produced this headline number is also what makes phones more expensive to build. SamMobile estimates that Samsung’s Mobile eXperience division will post an operating loss of about 1.5 trillion KRW this quarter, or roughly $1.11 billion. It puts the combined Foundry and System LSI loss near $743 million. The Digital Appliances and TV loss, hit by Chinese competition as well as memory costs, is estimated near $371.5 million.
Treat all of those as estimates. Samsung has not published segment figures yet, so nobody outside the company knows what MX actually earned or lost. The direction still matches what we have already seen. Samsung’s phone division posted an operating loss last quarter for the same reason, and Galaxy A-series prices went up in the US as memory costs climbed. Huawei has said the shortage adds around $200 to the cost of building a phone.
So the record print and the squeeze on buyers are the same story told from two ends. Samsung currently earns far more selling memory to AI data centres than it does selling finished phones. Separate reports today suggest the company has responded by cutting Q4 smartphone production, which would mean tighter stock on shelves. A quarter like this gives Samsung every reason to keep prioritising the chips. It gives the company very little reason to absorb component costs on your behalf.
Sources: Samsung Global Newsroom, SamMobile
