Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s leader in memory chips and flat displays, posted record sales last year, making the company the world’s largest electronics and information technology firm. Samsung said yesterday its sales grew 15.1 percent to 136.29 trillion won ($117.6 billion) last year from the previous year while its operating profits soared 91.2 percent to 10.92 trillion won.
This puts Samsung ahead of Germany-based Siemens and the U.S.-based Hewlett-Packard, which recorded $109.8 billion and $114.6 billion in sales respectively in 2009. HP and Siemens saw their sales slide by 3 percent and 1 percent respectively in that period while Samsung’s jumped.
In the Fortune 500 company list of world firms published in 2008, only Siemens, ranked 30th, and HP, 32nd, were ahead of Samsung, which came in 40th. With its 2009 performance Samsung now ranks higher than those electronics and IT companies.
Samsung’s quarterly sales between October and December also set a record of 39.24 trillion won with an operating profit of 3.70 trillion won. This is a rebound from an operating loss of 740 billion won a year earlier as its semiconductor and liquid crystal display divisions swung back into the black. Samsung said its four major businesses all fared well. The sales of its major products - semiconductors, liquid crystal displays, mobile phones and flat screen television sets - all increased to new highs.
“With increasing prices for memory chips and liquid crystal displays, the earnings from these two products will be even better in the first quarter this year than the fourth quarter of last year,” said Lee Ga-geun, an analyst at IBK Securities.
Samsung is considering additional investments to increase its memory chip production capacity.
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