Korean investors are said to be backing off a bit from their hopes that Samsung’s latest Galaxy S6 Edge handsets would be enough to slow the South Korean firm’s recent financial plunge.
“After the first-quarter results the consensus for second-quarter earnings was somewhere in the high 7 trillion won ($6.2 billion), but now I think so long as the first digit doesn’t start with a six it won’t be a shock,” HDC Asset Management fund manager Park Jung-hoon told Reuters. Samsung is expected to announce its second-quarter earnings guidance on Tuesday.
20 of 39 investment analysts surveyed by Reuters say they has reduced their forecasts for Samsung’s second quarter within the last 30 days. Economic woes in Europe, as well as the constrained supply of the more expensive S6 Edge model have led to their pulling back on their forecasts.
Analysts believe that Samsung will guide an operating profit above 7 trillion won, with a full-year profit of 27.8 trillion won in 2015. 7 trillion won would still represent a nice increase from the 5.98 trillion won profit the company posted in the first quarter.
While Samsung sells everything from appliances to electronics to heavy industry, its mobile division is its core business, and has suffered in recent years from the explosion of low-cost “white box” competitors, and the explosion in popularity of the Apple iPhone.
