Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled over a year earlier thanks to record-high earnings from its brisk memory chip business and strong smartphone sales, despite costly Galaxy Note 7 recalls.
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The South Korean company said it posted 7.1 trillion won ($6.1 billion) in net income during the October-December period, compared with 3.2 trillion won a year earlier.
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Analysts surveyed by FactSet, a financial data provider, expected 6.52 trillion won.
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Sales stayed flat at 53.3 trillion won ($45.6 billion), the company said in a regulatory filing. Operating profit surged 50 percent over a year earlier to 9.2 trillion won ($7.9 billion), in line with Samsung’s guidance earlier this month.
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The company, the world’s largest maker of smartphones, television sets and memory chips, said its earnings during the current quarter will likely decline because of weaker TV sales and higher marketing expenses for the mobile business.
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Samsung’s earnings beat the forecasts even as it reels from troubles from a political scandal and the discontinuation of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7, which has cost it at least $5 billion since the third quarter. On Monday, the company said battery design flaws and manufacturing errors by suppliers made some of the phones overheat or burst into fire.
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The biggest force behind Samsung’s forecast-beating earnings was its semiconductor businesses, which contributed more than half of the company’s quarterly operating profit. Samsung made 5 trillion won ($4.3 billion) in operating profit from its semiconductor division alone, thanks to higher demand for memory chips from mobile device makers and server operators.
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Despite the challenge it faces in restoring consumer trust, in the absence of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, consumers snapped up Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, released in spring 2016, and other cheaper Galaxy smartphones. That helped Samsung’s mobile business rebound from the previous quarter when the…