Samsung Electronics reports 17% rise in Q4 net

Samsung Electronics reports 17% rise in Q4 net

Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest maker of computer memory chips, said Friday that its fourth-quarter earnings rose 17 percent from a year earlier, fueled by strong sales of smartphones. Net profit amounted to 4 trillion won (US$3.56 billion) in the October-December period, compared with a net income of 3.42 trillion won the previous year, the company said in a regulatory filing. The fourth-quarter figure was less than a median forecast of 4.37 trillion won from a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency. Sales expanded 13 percent to an all-time high of 47.3 trillion won in the fourth-quarter and operating profit jumped 75.8 percent on-year to a record 5.3 trillion won. The results are largely in line with Samsung's earnings guidance released earlier this month. For all of 2011, the company logged a net income of 13.7 trillion won, down 15 percent from the previous year. Its sales rose 6.7 percent on-year to 165 trillion won and operating profit inched down 6.05 percent to 16.2 trillion won. Analysts said Samsung's strong bottom line mainly stemmed from brisk sales of its smartphones and a one-off profit by selling its money-losing hard drive disk unit. Market watchers said the trend of healthy earnings is likely to continue into the current quarter on the back of strong shipments of its flagship Galaxy lineup of products. (Yonhap)