Samsung

Samsung set to see huge Q1 profit decline, still expecting $5.5 billion in profit

Damien Wilde | Apr 5 2019 - 6:59 am PT

At least for now, Samsung is still the world’s top smartphone vendor, but the South Korean tech giant has its fingers in a lot more pies than just mobile devices. That said, recently released company earning forecasts point towards a dip in fortunes — specifically for Q1 2019.

Samsung has a multitude of other ventures that help it maintain market dominance in the tech space. Even despite being such a massive entity and money-making brand, Samsung appears to be hitting a bit of a bumpy road.

The company is forecasting that revenue for Q1 will reach approximately 51 to 53 trillion KRW or between $44.9 to $46.7 billion give or take. You’re probably wondering what the issue with that is, well, that represents a pretty sizable 15 percent dip compared to the previous period last in 2018.

During Q1 2018 Samsung reported a record operating profit of $13.76 billion. The problem is that the recent forecasts that profits on the potential $44.9 billion in earnings for Q1 2019 are set to dip by a mammoth 60 percent YoY. That would equate to Samsung’s biggest slump in almost four years.

Naturally, replicating a record-breaking year isn’t guaranteed or even expected, but the forecasted Q1 2019 operating profit of approximately $5.5 billion represents a 43 percent decline on Q4 2018.

It’s also worth noting that while it looks negative on the face of it, without individual breakdowns of earnings for each Samsung subsidiary, we won’t know for certain if anything has gone particularly awry for Samsung this quarter.

Almost all smartphone brands bar Huawei, Honor, OnePlus and HMD Global have seen global smartphone shipments decline over the past few quarters. The Samsung Galaxy S10 family was also released reasonably late into Q1 2019, and we are yet to see two of the devices announced at Unpacked 2019 — in the form of the Galaxy Fold and Galaxy S10 5G.

It does pose the question as to whether buyers are voting with their wallets and choosing to stick with what they have rather than opting for that tempting upgrade.

Of course, we can look at this critically, but it’s worth noting that Samsung has still posted a tentative $5.5 billion profit for Q1 2019. Looking not too far away, Sony Mobile and HTC are languishing in no-mans land casting envious glances at these Samsung earnings with such a healthy operating profit.