Korean firm beats Covid-19, smiles to bank with mega profit
.Renews sponsorship deal with IOC
Worldwide Olympic sponsor Samsung has published encouraging financial data for the April-June period, in spite of the blight cast by coronavirus over many leading economies.
The South Korean smartphone and computer chip company offered guidance suggesting that consolidated operating profit would reach approximately KR₩8.1 trillion (£5.3 billion/$6.8 billion/€5.9 billion) in the second quarter.
Consolidated sales for the same period were projected at around KR₩52 trillion (£34 billion/$43.5 billion/€37.8 billion).
The latest guidance would amount to a more than 22 per cent advance in operating profit compared with a year-earlier, in spite of a seven per cent-plus decline in sales.
This would be significantly better than what was expected by financial analysts and a positive sign for the robustness of Asian economies as a whole, with Samsung seen as in some ways a proxy for the performance of the regional tech sector.
The early suggestion seems to be that resilient sales of the company’s memory chips, buoyed by the shift to home-working, more than offset the impact of lower spending on consumer electronics.
Further details are expected later this month.
The 14 current The Olympic Programme (TOP) sponsors have enjoyed mixed fortunes amid the disruption sparked by COVID-19, with Airbnb and Toyota among those seemingly struggling, while P&G have reported a cleaning product sales bounce.
Samsung extended its international partnership with the International Olympic Committee until 2028 in December 2018.
The company has the wireless communications equipment and computing equipment category.
