Samsung displayed spectacular performance last year as it posted record operating profits for consecutive quarters. The company said that it was on track to post its highest yearly operating profit ever as well as another record quarterly profit in Q4 2017. Its earnings guidance for the quarter revealed that much and Samsung has now posted the full Q4 2017 earnings. As expected, the company raked in record profits.
Samsung Q4 2017 earnings
Samsung Electronics announced today that its earnings for the October-December 2017 quarter were 66 trillion won or $61.6 billion, a 24 percent increase compared to the same period in 2016. It posted 15 trillion won or $14.13 billion in operating profit which is a 64 percent increase year-over-year.
The company has reported full-year revenue of 239.58 trillion won or $222 billion and a record full-year operating profit of 53.65 trillion won or $50 billion. It has been several years since Samsung posted a record full-year profit. The last it did that was in 2013 when it raked in 36.8 trillion won or $33 billion in profit.
As expected, the company's fourth quarter earnings have largely been driven by its components business. Samsung's components division has been a veritable cash cow this past year. The largest contribution to its Q4 earnings came from the memory business that manufactures DRAM and NAND memory products.
Samsung expects this momentum to continue in the new year as well because it expects demand for NAND to remain strong. The company says that it will expand 64-layer V-NAND production at its Pyeongtaek plant to meet demand. It also expects solid demand growth for DRAM due to new datacenter builds and will increase product competitiveness by expanding 10nm-class process migration.
