Samsung Record, TSMC Beat: Investors Stay Cautious
TSMC's September revenue jumps 54.6% and Samsung books 107.4T won profit. Why the market stays cool despite the AI boom.
Key Takeaways
- Samsung posts its biggest quarterly profit ever at 107.4 trillion won, yet the stock turns lower.
- TSMC's September revenue is up 54.6 percent year over year, and its quarter beats estimates.
- Rising memory prices support the industry, but investors distrust the cycle.
A record is no longer enough for the market. Thursday in Asia shows it: Samsung Electronics reports the highest quarterly profit in the company's history, and its shares still slip in Seoul, by as much as 2.1 percent at one point. The reason is expectations, which had been set even higher.
When a record is only half the story
Samsung puts its preliminary operating profit for the September quarter at 107.4 trillion won, about $80.1 billion. A year ago it was roughly one-ninth of that. Revenue comes in at 195 trillion won. According to Finanzmarktwelt, citing Bloomberg, both profit and revenue fell short of the analyst average. Josh Gilbert of eToro sums it up by saying the AI trade has become demanding.
A look at the segments explains part of the gap: analysts expect roughly 110 trillion won in operating profit from the chip business, while the electronics division is likely to post a loss. Samsung publishes its full results on October 29. Until then the stock remains about a quarter below its June high, even after the record results in July.
Memory is the bottleneck of the AI wave
The price side shows why profits are climbing so fast. Counterpoint Research now expects DRAM prices to rise 10 to 20 percent quarter over quarter in the third quarter, up from a previous 5 to 10 percent, as buyers pull purchases forward. For next year, Citigroup sees a possible price increase of 100 to 150 percent for 12-layer HBM4, the high-bandwidth memory used with Nvidia and AMD accelerators. South Korea's chip exports also more than tripled in September.
AMD CEO Lisa Su used her visit to Seoul to send a clear signal: shipments of HBM4 systems are starting, supply has been tight so far, and partners should deliver faster. Samsung is gaining ground on SK Hynix in HBM, which supports hopes for more market share. That is exactly why both makers are expanding capacity, which reminds skeptics of earlier boom-and-bust phases.
TSMC delivers where others disappoint
The contract chipmaker gets a friendlier verdict. Monthly reports add up to third-quarter revenue of about 1.49 trillion Taiwan dollars, against a Bloomberg estimate of 1.46 trillion. September itself brings 511.86 billion Taiwan dollars, down 0.6 percent from August but up 54.6 percent from a year earlier. Over nine months, TSMC has grown 41.1 percent to 3,898.73 billion Taiwan dollars.
What momentum says
Our snapshot from this morning puts TSMC (TSM) at $472.20. Momentum signals a bullish regime on the daily timeframe (1D) and likewise on the weekly (1W). There is no data for 1h and 4h on stocks. The broader trend is therefore intact.
Scenarios
If Samsung confirms a chip profit near 110 trillion won on October 29, that could ease doubts about the memory cycle.
If record numbers still fail to lift the shares, the roughly 25 percent gap to the June high stays in place, and the market rewards higher expectations before it rewards records.
If debt financing for the AI buildout comes under pressure, orders at TSMC and the memory makers would be the first to feel it.