By 
SEOUL — Samsung Electronics Co. saw profits slump as prices of memory chips, its main source of income, have plunged as the semiconductor industry goes through a downturn.
The South Korean tech giant on Thursday posted a 23.6% decline in net profit in the third quarter compared with the prior year, owing to weak demand for tech products including PCs and smartphones. The weakness echoes sour results seen elsewhere this week with other tech giants like Google’s Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
-9.14%
GOOG,
-9.63%,
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
-7.72%
and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
-5.59%.
Samsung’s
005930,
+0.51%
net profit for the July-to-September quarter came to 9.39 trillion won, or the equivalent of around $6.7 billion. Revenue for the three-month period grew by 3.8% from a year ago to 76.78 trillion won.
The semiconductor industry, which enjoyed a boom during the pandemic, is now reckoning with an abrupt drop-off in demand. Memory chips, Samsung’s cash cow business, have gone into an oversupply, triggering price falls. The South Korean company also faces new U.S. restrictions on exports of chip-making equipment to China that are expected to affect operations of the firm’s China-based facilities.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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