Despite scandals, explosions, Samsung has highest quarterly earnings in 3 years

By Lulu Chang Published January 24, 2017

Samsung

Proving that every action really does have an equal and opposite reaction is Samsung, which has bounced back from its seemingly disastrous Galaxy Note 7 recall with its best quarter in three years. On Tuesday, the South Korean phone maker posted its fourth quarter earnings, announcing that it had posted around $7.2 billion in profits on sales of $45.8 billion. That represents a 50-percent increase from the fourth quarter of last year. Clearly, you just can’t keep Samsung down.

“Fourth quarter earnings were driven by the components businesses, mainly the Memory business and the Display Panel segment, which manufactures OLED and LCD screens,” Samsung noted in its own announcement. “Robust sales of high-end, high-performance memory products and expanded process migration in V-NAND, plus strong shipments of OLED and large-size UHD panels contributed to profitability.” The company also mentioned that the strength of the U.S. dollar helped with operating profits.

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While Samsung wasn’t immune to its Note 7 debacle (its third quarter earnings in 2016 took a related hit), it has been able to recover quite nicely. It’s unclear if this good luck will continue, however. After all, Samsung has only recently released findings on its investigation into the cause of the Note 7’s spontaneous combustibility.

Moreover, the firm is currently embroiled in a political scandal that could have an impact on its finances, especially considering the people involved in the scandal are all high-ranking executives.

This, in fact, is something the company has readily admitted to in a related statement, “The uncertain business environment such as the changing political landscape in Korea and overseas poses a challenge to the execution of mid- to long-term business strategies, such as M&A and investment decisions and developing new growth engines.”

But at least for now, it looks as though Samsung is doing quite well.

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