Samsung defied the coronavirus to somehow boost its overall Q2 profit
While there are still plenty of question marks surrounding the spread, fatality rate, and the best ways to treat and contain the deadly COVID-19 virus, one thing that seems crystal clear is the negative impact of the pandemic on most economic activities around the world.
Of course, different industries, companies, and businesses have been affected in different ways and to varying degrees, with the smartphone market, for instance, badly harmed by declining sales of "non-essential" goods in the last few months, but Samsung standing tall, largely impervious to all the recent consumer behavior shifts.
Granted, that might be because the world's number one smartphone vendor (as of Q1 2020 but not April or May) just so happens to derive a significant chunk of its earnings from non-consumer activities. Although it's too early to know for sure, many analysts believe the company's surprisingly strong financial showing during the year's second quarter is primarily connected to "strong chip demand from data centers."
Until Samsung will fully detail and break down its results for the April - June timeframe by business unit, all the chaebol is ready to share are its overall 52 trillion Korean won consolidated sales and 8.1 trillion Korean won consolidated operating profit estimates. While the former represents a fairly significant and entirely predictable drop from more than 55 and 56 trillion won earned in total in Q1 2020 and Q2 2019 respectively, the latter number marks an unexpected boost from 6.45 and 6.6 trillion won recorded during the same time periods.
That 6.45 trillion won profit score from the first three months of 2020 was down quarter-on-quarter, mind you, and only marginally up compared to Q1 2019, so Samsung managed to somehow make great financial progress with a bunch of factories closed and millions of potential customers stuck inside their homes with no way to earn a paycheck.
It remains to be seen if the memory chip department was the only one capable of defying the coronavirus, as multiple recent reports hinted at poor Samsung smartphone sales numbers... without taking rising prices and profit margins into consideration. In other words, there's a good chance the company's mobile division also performed surprisingly well during Q2 2020 in terms of operating profit, but we'll obviously have to wait a few more weeks to find out if that's indeed the case.
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