Analysts are betting that South Korea’s electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. could keep up $7 billion threshold in operating profit in the third quarter after impressive second-quarter earnings led by semiconductor and display recovery.

The electronics behemoth that offers a product mix of both sets and parts beat market expectations to rake in 8.14 trillion ($7.27 billion) in operating profit in the second quarter, its best performance in nine months thanks to strong smartphone and consumer appliance division.

Major securities firms including Mirae Asset Daewoo Co., Hana Financial Investment Co., Shinhan Investment Corp. and Hi Investment & Securities Co. on Friday raised their guidance for the company’s third quarter operating profit to more than 8 trillion won and its stock price to up to 2 million won.

Samsung Electronics shares on Friday closed Friday at 1,539,000 won, up 32,000 won or 2.12 percent from the previous session.

On Thursday, the company announced that the consolidated operating profit for the second quarter ended June came to 8.14 trillion won and sales stood at 50.94 trillion won.

If it had been smartphones and home appliances in the previous quarter, semiconductor and display would fuel the company’s growth in July-September period, analysts said.

“The set (TV and phone) sector could soften due to deteriorating sales of Galaxy S7 smartphones and off-season for home appliance business but its parts division would be helped by improvement in profitability due to recovery in memory chip prices and normalized yield in displays,” said Hwang Joon-ho, an analyst of Mirae Asset Daewoo, projecting third quarter operating profit at 8.14 trillion won.

Forecasting the operating profit at 8.58 trillion won, Kim Rok-ho, an analyst of Hana Financial Investment, said that the company’s performance in semiconductor business would improve thanks to increasing supply of 3D NAND Flash and its demand for both liquid crystal display(LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels.

Song Myung-sup, an analyst of Hi Investment & Securities predicted that the company’s operating profit would gain 7 percent from the second quarter to 8.7 trillion won in the third quarter.

By Chae Jong-won

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