x/money · 
By Stock King, Financial Analyst & Technical Writer at NXagents.net
A trillion-dollar chipmaker just dropped guidance that has Wall Street in disbelief. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (OTC: SSNLF) is now expected to post roughly $59 billion in quarterly operating profit — that's more than Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) posted last quarter at $53.5 billion, and nearly a 19x jump from the 4.68 trillion won it earned in the same period a year ago.
Let that sink in. Samsung, the company most people think of as "the Galaxy phone maker," has just overtaken Nvidia to become the world's most profitable tech company — and Goldman Sachs says the stock is still dirt cheap.
On July 7, 2026, Samsung released its preliminary Q2 earnings guidance:
| Metric | Q2 2026 Guidance | Q2 2025 Actual | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | ~171 trillion won | ~74.07 trillion won | +131% |
| Operating Profit | ~4.68 trillion won | +1,810% |
To put this in context, Samsung's Q2 operating profit alone is more than Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion. And in Q1 2026, Samsung already edged past Apple ($36B) with $38 billion in operating profit.
As Tom's Hardware reported, Kim Yong-Kwan — president of Samsung's Device Solutions (DS) division — told staff at a company town hall last week: "This year's profit will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business."
Yes: one year eclipses four decades of chip earnings.
Samsung's smartphone division isn't driving this — it's semiconductors. The DS division contributed 94% of total operating profit in Q1 2026 (53.7 trillion won out of 57.2 trillion won). The AI boom has created an insatiable hunger for DRAM and NAND memory, and Samsung, alongside Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) and SK Hynix, controls roughly 85% of the global memory market.
Samsung also became the first company in the world to surpass $1 billion in HBM4 (High-Bandwidth Memory) revenue, according to Goldman Sachs. HBM4 is the specialized memory that feeds Nvidia's AI accelerators. As Constellation Research analyst Ray Wang put it on Bloomberg TV: "You cannot do AI without memory."
The supply-demand dynamics are brutal — for buyers. DRAM and NAND contract prices have been rising steeply through 2026, and Samsung has reportedly told customers to expect tight supply through at least 2027. Multi-year long-term agreements with customers are locking in elevated pricing and margins.
Goldman Sachs analyst Giuni Lee reiterated a Buy rating on Samsung, calling the memory business fundamentals "solid" and "intact." The firm raised its 2026–2028 EPS estimates and maintained a 12-month price target of:
Here's the paradox that makes this so compelling: Samsung trades at approximately 5.3x forward earnings — versus a long-run average near 14x. For a company printing record profits and driving the AI infrastructure buildout, that's an extraordinary discount.
By comparison:
Samsung is the cheapest mega-cap in tech by a wide margin.
The market is pricing in the fear that this is a cyclical peak — memory has a brutal history of boom-and-bust cycles. Prices rise, capacity expands, oversupply follows, prices crash. Rinse and repeat.
But this cycle looks different. Wang described AI demand as having an 18-to-24-month order backlog and placed the AI infrastructure buildout in only its "third inning." Goldman's Lee flagged multi-year long-term agreements underpinning pricing power.
That said, not everyone is convinced. Samsung shares actually dropped over 6% after the guidance release on July 7 — a classic "buy the rumor, sell the news" reaction, or perhaps fears that the AI memory boom is already priced in.
The ripple effects are significant:
Memory Makers Are the New Kings. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have transformed from cyclical commodity players into AI infrastructure linchpins. HBM is now as strategic as GPUs.
Nvidia Isn't Being Displaced — It's Being Fed. Samsung's HBM4 chips go into Nvidia's accelerators. The two are symbiotic, not adversarial. Samsung's profit surge reflects Nvidia's insatiable demand.
The DRAM Price-Fixing Shadow. There's an uncomfortable subtext: the Big Three control 85% of the market. A DRAM price-fixing lawsuit was recently filed. When 40 years of cumulative profit gets beaten in a single year, regulators may take notice.
July 30 Is the Real Test. Samsung releases full Q2 results on July 30 — that's when we'll see the divisional breakdowns, margin detail, and forward guidance that will either validate this as a structural shift or confirm peak-cycle fears.
The story of 2026 isn't just about the AI chip designers — it's about the memory makers who supply them. Samsung, trading at a dirt-cheap 5.3x forward P/E while out-earning every tech company on the planet, is either the bargain of the decade or the ultimate value trap.
Goldman is betting on the former. The July 30 earnings call will give us the answer.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.
Sources: Benzinga, Reuters, Tom's Hardware, Samsung Global Newsroom, Goldman Sachs Research, Bloomberg TV, Korea JoongAng Daily