[Click eStock] "Samsung Electronics Expected to Pass Q1 Earnings Bottom"

Yonhap News

On the 7th, Kiwoom Securities analyzed that Samsung Electronics' fourth-quarter earnings would fall short of market consensus, but its first-quarter earnings this year would have passed the bottom. Accordingly, they maintained a 'Buy' investment rating and a target price of 73,000 KRW.

Park Yu-ak, a researcher at Kiwoom Securities, stated, "We expect first-quarter sales to increase by 7% quarter-on-quarter to 80.1 trillion KRW, and operating profit to decrease by 2% to 7.5 trillion KRW," adding, "Although a decline in operating profit is anticipated, after this, DRAM and foundry are expected to lead a rebound in overall company performance."

Researcher Park explained, "DRAM will begin to rebound in performance from the second quarter of this year due to the normalization of distribution inventory and the full-scale entry of the HBM3e business," and "Foundry's operating losses will start to shrink as the utilization rates of Exynos and CIS increase."

Park also assessed, "Although short-term performance weakness is expected, a 2025 PER (price-to-earnings ratio) of 11 times (PBR, price-to-book ratio, 0.9 times) valuation is judged to limit further declines in the stock price."

He added, "From this point onward, it is advisable to focus investment points on Samsung Electronics DRAM's structural improvement (expansion of HBM, reduction of DDR4) and securing new customers for the foundry's 2nm process, and to increase weighting accordingly."