Samsung sees profits jump by more than 900%

Samsung Electronics says it expects its profits for the first three months of 2024 to jump by more than 10-fold compared to a year earlier.

It comes as prices of chips have recovered from a post-pandemic slump and demand for artificial intelligence (AI) related products booms.

South Korea-based Samsung is the world's largest maker of memory chips, smartphones and televisions.

The company is scheduled to release a detailed financial report on 30 April.

The technology giant estimated that its operating profit rose to 6.6 trillion won ($4.9bn; £3.9bn) in the January-March quarter, 931% higher than the same period in 2023. That beat analysts' expectations of around 5.7 trillion won.

Its earnings are expected to be boosted by a rebound in semiconductor prices on the global market after a severe downturn a year earlier.

Global memory chip prices are estimated to have risen by around a fifth in the last year.

Samsung's semiconductor division is usually the biggest revenue earner for the firm.

Demand for semiconductors is also expected to remain strong this year, helped by the boom in AI technologies.

The earthquake that hit Taiwan on 3 April may also tighten the global supply of chips, which could allow Samsung to raise prices further.

Taiwan is home to several major chipmakers, including TSMC - which is a supplier to Apple and Nvidia.

While TSMC has said the earthquake did not have a major impact on its production it saw some disruption to its operations.

Samsung is also expected to get a boost from sales of its new flagship Galaxy S24 smartphones, which were launched in January.