Despite the continued expansion of Samsung’s enormous international footprint, the company’s CFO Lee Sang Hoon says second quarter earnings for 2014 are going to be “not that good.” Bloomberg reports that Samsung is expected to post an operating profit of 8.4 trillion won ($8.2 billion) for the quarter, a significant slide from the record performance of 10.2 trillion won in Q3 2013. “Strengthening competitiveness of local players in emerging markets are hurting sales of Samsung’s lower-end smartphones,” said KTB Investment & Securities analyst Jin Sung Hae. “The main reason behind the lowered earnings estimate largely stemmed from weak smartphone sales.”
SourceSamsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest smartphone maker, expects its second-quarter earnings to be “not that good,” Chief Financial Officer Lee Sang Hoon said. Lee’s comments were confirmed by the company after they were first reported by South Korean media. Samsung is expected to post operating profit of 8.4 trillion won ($8.2 billion) in the three months ending June, according to the average of 35 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Samsung’s earnings have slipped from a record 10.2 trillion won in the third quarter of 2013 as sales of its Galaxy devices are squeezed by Apple Inc. iPhones in the high-end market and inexpensive Chinese producers in the budget segment. The company is introducing new luxury televisions and investing in memory chips to reduce dependence on a telecommunications division that generates more than three-quarters of earnings. “Strengthening competitiveness of local players in emerging markets are hurting sales of Samsung’s lower-end smartphones,” Jin Sung Hae, an analyst at KTB Investment & Securities, said in a report today after cutting her profit estimate by 10 percent to 7.99 trillion won. “The main reason behind the lowered earnings estimate largely stemmed from weak smartphone sales.”
