Samsung to Release Fourth Quarter Earnings Tomorrow

Global smartphones shipper Samsung is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday this week, before markets in South Korea’s capital Seoul open. After studying the figures and evaluating the company’s market performance in recent times, analysts have projected that the South Korean electronics leader is likely to garner total earnings of 4.5 trillion won, equivalent to $4.2 billion. This projection was published by the Wall Street Journal and encompasses the estimates of eight analysts. This survey also comes after Samsung signaled an operating profit decline of as much as 40% of 5 trillion won for the fourth quarter from 8.3 trillion won recorded a fiscal year earlier.In the same report, the company’s projected revenue stands at 52 trillion won, equivalent to $48.3 billion. This figure apparently is the median of the guidance earlier provided by the company, which highlighted between 51 trillion won to 53 trillion won. This compares considerably well with the revenue of 59.3 trillion won reported a year earlier.Samsung’s operating profit on its crucial mobile unit is likely to have dropped by 65% to 1.9 trillion won from a year earlier, as Apple’s new iPhones sold like hotcakes across the globe. South Korean analysts estimate Samsung to have shipped about 74-77 million smartphones in the quarter ended December 31^st. Apparently this is a drop from the 86 million devices that were recorded shipped during the same quarter one year earlier. However, this drop is not as steep as the third quarter’s fall when the unit’s profits dropped by 74% to 1.75 trillion won. This loss of profits can be attributed to the emergence of cheap Chinese brands.Prospects for Samsung’s chip business are sparkling this year. According to analysts, Samsung is expected to post an estimated 40% increase in chip profits to 2.8 trillion won (4^th quarter). This is due to a combination of robust memory-chip demand and strong pricing. This trend is expected to continue throughout the year. As the company makes adjustment to better adapt to the market, it’ll be interesting to see how the figures go this year.