三星利润暴增难掩隐忧，股价重挫拖累KOSPI指数大跌6%

Odaily Planet Daily News: South Korea's stock market leader Samsung Electronics released its preliminary second-quarter results this morning, with operating profit surging 19 times year-on-year, surpassing the total profit of the past three years combined. Specifically, Samsung guided an operating profit of 89.4 trillion Korean won for the second quarter (up 1810.2% year-on-year), against a market expectation of 87.3 trillion Korean won. However, the company's share price fell sharply, as the results failed to alleviate market concerns about the sustainability of the AI-driven chip boom.

Samsung's stock plummeted over 8% in early trading, and rival SK Hynix's shares also fell 7.3%, dragging South Korea's KOSPI index down by 6%. Analysts attribute Samsung's weak stock performance partly to excessively high expectations in some parts of the market – after accounting for employee bonus provisions, profit driven by record-high memory chip prices could have exceeded 90 trillion Korean won. Additionally, there are concerns that the construction of AI data centers may slow down.

"Samsung's strong results were already widely anticipated by the market and were largely priced into the stock's rally ahead of the earnings release," said Albert Yong, Managing Partner at Petra Capital Management. "Investors remain concerned about the sustainability of the AI boom and the potential risk of a slowdown in AI infrastructure spending by major US tech companies." (Jinshi Data)