Samsung Electronics Co. posted stronger-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter ended December last year despite its debacle with ill-fated Galaxy Note7 thanks to surge in memory chip prices.

The Korean tech behemoth announced in a regulatory filing on Friday that its preliminary operating profit for the October to December period last year soared 76.92 percent on quarter and 49.84 percent on year to 9.2 trillion won ($7.77 billion), beating the market expectations of 8.2 trillion won. It was the highest figure since the third quarter 2013 when it posted 10.16 trillion won in operating profit.

The biggest contributor to this staggering performance was the recovering demand and prices of memory chips. The company was estimated to have earned around 4.5 trillion won to 5 trillion won from semiconductor business in the fourth quarter last year, about 60 percent higher from the same period of the previous year. Prices of memory chips for PCs, of which half of the global supplies are provided by Samsung Electronics, have gained nearly 40 percent from the levels of November and are expected to grow another 30 percent in the first quarter.

Despite major setback from the failure of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7, increasing sales of its other flagships such as Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge sustained its IT & Mobile (IM) division which was estimated to have recorded about 2 trillion won in profit.

Market analysts predict the Korean electronics giant would record more than 10 trillion won in operating profit in the first quarter this year.

Its sales in the fourth quarter last year rose 10.83 percent on quarter to 53 trillion won, but down 0.6 percent on year, the company said.

For full 2016, the company estimated that its operating profit would reach 29.22 trillion won, up 10.64 percent from 2015, and sales would increase 0.44 percent on year to 201.54 trillion won.

Shares of Samsung Electronics closed Friday at 1,812,000 won, up 1.91 percent or 34,000 won from the previous session.

By Lee Dong-in

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