Samsung Electronics reported record third quarter revenues of 76.8 trillion won ($54.2 billion), up 4% from a year earlier, but profits dived 31%.
The South Korean company is the world’s largest producer of memory chips and smartphones.
In earnings announced Thursday, the company said uncertainty over global geopolitics will likely hurt demand for its products until early 2023. Other companies are noticing similar difficulties and some have reported the need for layoffs.
PC and smartphones shipments have dropped and even storage for data centers has declined, as Seagate reported earlier this week.
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Operating profit at Samsung fell to 10.85 trillion won ($7.7 billion) for the September quarter, down from 15.8 trillion a year earlier. That was the first decline in almost three years.
Profit in the chip business declined by an even larger percentage to 5.12 trillion won from 10.07 trillion won a year earlier. Profit for mobile fell just slightly, to 3.24 trillion won from 3.36 trillion won.
With the chip supply in constant flux globally for two years, attention has focused on some of the biggest players, including Samsung and Intel. Revenues were 23.02 trillion won for Samsung’s semiconductor business.
In 2023 for semiconductors, Samsung said in a statement, “geopolitical uncertainties are likely to dampen demand to some degree in the first half” while “demand may recover later next year, driven by resumed installations of data centers and the adoption of DDR5 for new CPUs.”
Samsung shares were up slightly to 59,500 won Thursday.
Chip toolmaker KLA reported $2.72 billion in revenues for the July to September quarter, nearly 5% above projections. The company, based in Milpitas, California, makes process control and yield management systems for use in chip fabs.
A year earlier, KLA reported nearly $2.1 billion in revenue. Net income for the latest quarter was $1.026 billion, down from $1.068 billion a year earlier.
“Despite signs of weakness across a broad set of electronics end markets and an increasingly challenging macro-economic backdrop, our December quarter outlook for sequential growth underscores the resilience of our business and the strong demand for our critical products and services,” said CEO Rick Wallace in a statement.
Shares of KLA were trading at $307.68 Thursday, up slightly.