Under pressure on multiple fronts Samsung Electronics has announced a 29.9% fall in profits in the last quarter, with the business now moving to better control costs.

In the last fourth quarter in the South Korean business that is under pressure in the TV and appliance market from Chinese brands, and multiple manufacturers in the processor market delivered A$7.25 billion, this was short of expectations with the Company moving to cut costs at subsidiaries around the world.

Revenues also fell5.2% during the same period the Company reported in an earnings guidance on the second day of CES 2025.

The business that is pushing into software powered by AI will announce its full earnings data later this month.

The biggest problem for Samsung that saw their shares climb yesterday following Nvidia’s press conference at CES, is in the DRAM and NAND chip market.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told a jam-packed audience at his CES keynote that Samsung Electronics was facing difficulties producing a new type of memory chip for AI systems, but he expressed confidence that the partner company would overcome the challenges, this saw the stock climb 3.43% this morning.

Right now, as demand for AI processing explodes high-bandwidth memory, HBM — is a vital part of any data centre systems that feature Nvidia chips.

Bloomberg claims that Samsung has been slower than rivals such as SK Hynix Inc. in producing HBM that meets Nvidia’s standards, and Huang acknowledged those challenges during a press briefing at the CES.

Analysts claim that Samsung may have been hit by the memory chip downturn as well as increasing labor and research costs.

“Our lowered forecast is partly attributable to lower [average selling prices] from expanded low-end DRAM and NAND commodity sales, but the biggest factor, in our view, is company-specific increased costs,” CW Chung, a senior Nomura analyst, said in a note last week.

“We estimate a significant increase in costs for the semiconductor division, including higher bonus payouts to match those of competitors both in memory and foundry, and larger R&D expenses to close the overall technology competitiveness gap in semiconductors.”

Year on year, the company’s operating profit jumped 130.5%, with its revenue increasing 10.7%.

For all of 2024, Samsung’s operating profit jumped 398.2% to A$36 billion dollars.

Revenue rose 15.9% to A$330.41 billion.