SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co Ltd reported a likely 32% drop in quarterly operating earnings on Friday as demand for electronic devices, and the memory chips that power them, shrank due to an economic downturn.
The world’s largest memory-chip and smartphone maker estimated its profit fell to 10.8 trillion won ($7.67 billion) in July-September – its first year-on-year decline in nearly three years – from 15.8 trillion won a year earlier.
The profit fell short of an 11.8 trillion won SmartEstimate from Refinitiv.
Revenue likely rose 3% from the same period a year earlier to 76 trillion won, Samsung said in a short preliminary earnings release.
Samsung is due to release detailed earnings on October 27.
($1 = 1,407.6400 won)
(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Richard Pullin)
