Samsung says Q2 profit up 108 percent

Technology / Business

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday that second-quarter profit jumped 108 percent year-on-year, what it called a "relatively solid" performance despite missing market forecasts.

Operating profit for the April-June period was 1.89 trillion won (1.88 billion dollars), while net income surged 51 percent to 2.14 trillion won, it said.

Revenues increased 24 percent from a year earlier to 18.1 trillion won.

But the results were shy of a consensus forecast for 2.07 trillion won in operating profit and 18.4 trillion won in revenue, which were made by seven securities houses polled by Yonhap news agency.

"Samsung demonstrated relatively solid performance thanks to its competitive LCD business and profitable memory business, overcoming challenging conditions," the company said in a press statement.

Woosik Chu, executive vice president of investor relations, said challenges included stagnant demand, price drops in the memory market and growing competition in the mobile and LCD TV markets.

Chu said it would be "difficult to expect a great improvement" in earnings in the second half of 2008 because of a global economic slowdown.

Š 2008 AFP

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