Samsung quarterly profits plunge to 8-year low on demand slump

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that its fourth-quarter operating profits plunged nearly 70 per cent, the biggest drop in more than eight years, as the global economic slowdown dealt a blow to electronics and chips sales.

The South Korean tech giant said operating profits for the October to December period slumped to 4.3 trillion won ($3.4 billion), a 69 per cent drop from a year earlier.

The drop is in line with the estimate Samsung released earlier this month and marks the company’s worst decline in quarterly profits since the third quarter of 2014.

“The business environment deteriorated significantly in the fourth quarter due to weak demand amid a global economic slowdown,” Samsung said in a statement. Sales fell eight percent to 70.46 trillion won from the same period the previous year.

Samsung singled out weak demand for memory chips, saying the sector had been hit hard “as prices fell and customers continued to adjust inventory amid deepening uncertainties in the external environment”.

The firm is the flagship subsidiary of the giant Samsung Group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate business in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

The fourth-quarter drop is the second consecutive margin squeeze for Samsung, which saw a 31 percent fall in operating profits in the third quarter year-on-year.

For the full year, Samsung reported 43.38 trillion won in operating profit and a record-high annual revenue of 302.23 trillion won.