By Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee
SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics released on Wednesday a fourth-quarter operating profit estimate that missed analyst estimates by a large margin, as it lagged behind rival SK Hynix in supplying high-end chips to Nvidia.
The world’s largest memory chip, smartphone and TV maker estimated an operating profit of 6.5 trillion won ($4.47 billion) for the three months ended Dec. 31, versus a 7.7 trillion won LSEG SmartEstimate.
The estimated result was 131% higher than the same period a year earlier, but down 29% from the third quarter. Samsung shares were down 1% in early trading, while the broader South Korean market was up 0.1%.
Samsung said in a statement that amid slowing demand for conventional memory chips used in PCs and mobile phones, its memory chip earnings for the fourth-quarter were dented by rising research and development costs and investments in manufacturing capacity for advanced chip processes.
It also said earnings fell in its non-memory chip business, which spans contract chip manufacturing and logic chip design, due to lower utilisation rates at its factories and higher research and development costs.
Earnings for its devices business, which includes mobile phones, TVs and household appliances, fell due to the fading effect of sales of new mobile phone models and rising competition, Samsung said.
In October, the South Korean company made a rare apology for its disappointing third-quarter performance and said it was making progress in supplying artificial intelligence chips to Nvidia.
But it has not provided any update since, and delays to providing Nvidia with high-end chips have continued to weigh on its earnings, analysts said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Las Vegas on Tuesday that Samsung has to “engineer a new design” to supply high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to Nvidia, adding that “they can do it and they are working very fast,” Korea JoongAng Daily reported.
Samsung’s statement on Wednesday did not include any update on its progress in supplying HBM to Nvidia.
($1 = 1,454.6000 won)
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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