South Korean billionaire Lee Jae-yong Marks Four Years as Samsung Chairman With Record Profit

Samsung’s $80 Billion Quarter Caps Lee Jae-yong’s Fourth Year as Chairman

Lee Jae-yong marked four years as executive chairman of Samsung Electronics on October 27 with the company on course for the most profitable year in its history. Preliminary results for the third quarter showed operating profit of about 107.4 trillion won, roughly $80 billion, up 783% from a year earlier, on revenue of about 195 trillion won. No South Korean company had previously exceeded 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit. Final results are due on October 29.

Lee held no ceremony. He spent the anniversary at Samsung’s robotics office in Seoul, reviewing plans to show humanoid robots at CES in January. The setting was telling. Samsung’s current earnings come almost entirely from memory chips. The businesses Lee hopes will sustain the company beyond the AI memory boom remain early-stage or loss-making.

For executives and investors, the anniversary invites a straightforward question with a complicated answer: how much of Samsung’s recovery reflects Lee’s leadership, and how much reflects a market cycle that will eventually turn?

From trough to record in three years

The scale of the turnaround is striking. In 2023, the year after Lee became chairman, Samsung’s semiconductor division lost more than 14 trillion won and the company’s full-year operating profit fell to 6.57 trillion won, its weakest in more than a decade. Samsung also lagged its domestic rival SK hynix in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized chips that sit alongside AI processors.

Three years later, Samsung earned more in a single quarter than in roughly 16 years of 2023-level profits. In the second quarter of 2026, its quarterly operating profit of 89.4 trillion won exceeded that of any company worldwide, including Nvidia’s in its most recent quarter. Analysts expect full-year operating profit of about 370 trillion won, which would place Samsung in contention with Nvidia for the world’s largest annual operating profit, although the two companies report on different fiscal calendars.

The drivers are clear. Samsung began mass shipments of HBM4 in February and is supplying Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI platform. Conventional DRAM prices have also risen at double-digit rates as AI data centers absorb capacity. A growing share of sales under long-term agreements has helped stabilize earnings.

A record built on one business

The composition of the profit matters as much as its size. Analysts estimate that Samsung’s memory business earned about 110 trillion won in operating profit in the third quarter, more than the company’s total. The device division, which includes smartphones, televisions and appliances, is expected to report a second consecutive quarterly loss, estimated at between 1.1 trillion and 2.6 trillion won. Higher memory costs and weaker smartphone demand are squeezing margins there.

That concentration makes Samsung’s results highly sensitive to the memory cycle. Memory has historically been one of the most cyclical segments of the technology industry. Prices rise sharply when supply is tight, then fall as manufacturers add capacity. HBM is more specialized and contract-based than commodity DRAM, which may moderate the cycle, but it has not abolished it.

Investors are already pricing that risk. Samsung’s shares reached a record intraday high of 380,000 won in mid-June, then fell sharply in July after a Morgan Stanley report warned that memory price growth was slowing and upward earnings revisions had peaked. The stock remains far below that peak despite successive record quarters. Bullish analysts argue that memory supply will trail demand through late 2027. Skeptics see a familiar pattern of peak earnings arriving alongside peak prices.

What Lee’s leadership has changed

Separating Lee’s contribution from the cycle is difficult, but several decisions stand out. Samsung kept investing through the 2023 downturn, spending 53.1 trillion won on capital expenditure that year, 48.4 trillion of it on chips. Research and development spending rose to 37.7 trillion won in 2025. That counter-cyclical investment positioned the company to supply HBM4 at volume when demand surged.

Lee’s tenure has also been shaped by the end of his legal troubles. In July 2025, South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld his acquittal on stock manipulation and accounting fraud charges related to the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, ending nearly a decade of proceedings. His fourth year as chairman is the first full year without a criminal case pending. That has allowed him to focus on strategy and to strengthen his ownership position. This month he agreed to buy 7.19 million Samsung Electronics shares from his mother, Hong Ra-hee, for about 1.9 trillion won, lifting his direct stake to 1.58%.

The tests ahead

Lee faces three challenges that will determine how his chairmanship is judged once the memory boom cools.

The first is HBM leadership. SK hynix held about half of the HBM market by revenue in 2025, against about a third for Samsung. Winning repeat orders for next-generation HBM4E and successor products will decide whether Samsung’s recovery in this segment is durable.

The second is foundry. Samsung’s contract chipmaking business remains far behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Making it competitive would reduce dependence on memory and give Samsung a larger role in producing AI processors themselves.

The third is restoring profitability in consumer devices and building new businesses. Samsung has created a robotics office reporting to its chief executive. It is pursuing humanoid and service robots and aims to make its factories AI-run by 2030. These initiatives are promising, but they will take years to produce material earnings.

An annual executive reshuffle, expected at the end of November, will offer an early signal of how Lee intends to balance those priorities.

Why this matters for business leaders

For investors, Samsung’s record shows how AI demand is redistributing profits across the technology supply chain. Memory makers, once viewed as commodity suppliers, are now among the most profitable companies in the world.

For corporate buyers of technology, the boom means higher memory costs and tighter supply, pressures already visible in Samsung’s own device division. Companies dependent on memory-intensive products should plan for elevated prices until new capacity arrives.

For boards and governance specialists, Lee’s tenure illustrates how the resolution of legal uncertainty can free a controlling shareholder to commit to long-term strategy, and how a family’s ownership position can be reinforced during periods of strength.

Executive Takeaways

• What changed: Samsung recorded the largest quarterly operating profit in South Korean history, driven by AI memory demand, as Lee completed four years as chairman.
• Why it matters: Samsung’s earnings are now concentrated in memory chips, making the company highly exposed to a cyclical market even as it approaches the top tier of global corporate profitability.
• What leaders should do next: Treat Samsung’s results as evidence of AI-driven memory scarcity, plan procurement for continued tight supply, and judge the company’s long-term strength by its progress in HBM share, foundry and devices.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, the indicators to watch are DRAM and HBM pricing, Samsung’s share of next-generation HBM orders, foundry customer wins, the device division’s return to profit and the leadership changes expected in November. The principal uncertainty is the duration of the memory cycle. Lee has presided over an extraordinary recovery. His legacy will depend on whether Samsung uses the profits of this boom to build businesses that can withstand the next downturn.

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