Samsung Electronics has announced its earnings guidance for Q1 2021, and it is all good news for the company. The South Korean firm said that its profit will see a considerable jump due to strong sales of its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S21. The company's semiconductor division saw a decline in profits, though.
The consolidated sales for Q1 2021 are around KRW 65 trillion (around $58 billion), while consolidated operating profit is around KRW 9.3 trillion (around $8.3 billion). That's a 17.48% jump in sales and a 44.19% jump in operating profit compared to Q1 2020. These are not the final numbers, though, and the company will post the final figures at the end of this month.
Samsung's impressive growth was led by its mobile division. It is being reported that the sales of the Galaxy S21 were strong and it also helped that the company launched its Galaxy S series flagship phones a couple of months earlier than usual. Analysts expect the mobile division to have contributed more than KRW 4 trillion (around $3.5 billion) in operating income. The TV and home appliances division is also said to have done pretty well in Q1 2021 due to pent-up demand.
Despite record-high demand for semiconductor chips, Samsung's semiconductor division posted its lowest profits in years. It is being reported that the profitability was affected due to high running costs of the new 5nm EUV process and the cost of new facilities. Even the recent power outage at Samsung's Austin chip plant hurt the company. The prices of memory chips have improved, so the division is expected to lead the profits in the near future.
| In Korean Won | Q1 2020 | Q4 2020 | Q1 2021 |
| Sales | 55.33 | 61.55 | 65 |
| Operating Profit | 6.45 | 9.05 | 9.3 |
