Samsung slashes capex, calls an end to chip boom after record third quarter

By Ju-min Park and Heekyong Yang

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd slashed 2018 capex by more than a quarter on Wednesday and warned of lower profit until early next year, calling an end to a two-year boom in memory chips that fuelled record third-quarter profit.

The downbeat forecast by the world's biggest maker of memory chips and smartphones adds to investor jitters over waning global demand for mobile and other electronics devices that roiled world stock market this month.

The South Korean technology giant said it expected a quarter-on-quarter earnings decline in the fourth quarter due to weak demand for memory chips and higher smartphone marketing spend during the year-end holiday season.

"Looking further ahead to 2019, earnings are forecast to be weak for the first quarter due to seasonality, but then strengthen as business conditions, particularly in the memory market, improve," Samsung said in a statement.

Analysts said the capex cut should ease concerns over further supply growth and price declines, as prices of some memory chips have already fallen to over two-year lows and rivals are set to start new production lines next year.

Samsung, one of the industry's biggest buyers of chip-manufacturing tools, said its capital spending this year would drop by 27 percent to 31.8 trillion won ($28 billion) from a record 43.4 trillion won last year.

"NAND (flash memory) chip prices will further decline through the first half of next year ... (as) Toshiba's new production line will start and Hynix starts mass production of one of its NAND lines," said Song Myung-sup, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.

"Oversupply is expected to continue."

Samsung reported a record 17.6 trillion won operating profit in the July-September quarter, in line with the company's estimate.

With chip prices weakening after years of stellar growth, analysts expect Samsung's fourth-quarter profit will decline by 4 percent from the third quarter's record, according to Refinitiv data.

That will be still up 11 percent from a year ago, helped by efficiency improvements and cost-cutting in the chip business, which accounts for nearly four-fifths of Samsung's operating profit.

"Since Samsung continues to reduce the costs of (semiconductors), it is not very likely to witness a so-called hard-landing situation," said Avril Wu, senior research director at DRAMeXchange.

Samsung said the memory chip market would regain stability after the first quarter of next year on higher server demand, chiming with the outlook given by South Korean peer SK Hynix last week.

The semiconductor business booked a 37 percent rise in operating profit to 13.7 trillion won, while the mobile business posted a 33 percent fall to 2.2 trillion won.

Squeezed by competition with Apple Inc in the premium segment and with Chinese rivals in other segments, Samsung's smartphone business saw profit fall to the lowest level since the first quarter of 2017.

It plans to share details of its development of foldable smartphones at a conference early next month, hoping the model will help revive its premium cache.

Samsung said third-quarter revenue rose 5.5 percent to 65.5 trillion won, slightly ahead of its guidance.

Shares in Samsung, which has $265 billion in market value, traded flat. The stock has fallen 16 percent so far this year.

($1 = 1,139.1000 won)

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Ju-min Park; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates)