Samsung Electronics’ Q3 profit falls 78% but chip loss narrows

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics (KS:) reported a 78% on-year drop in quarterly profit on Tuesday, but still managed to book its best performance so far this year as the battered memory chip market began showing signs of recovery from a severe downturn.

The world’s biggest maker of memory chips and smartphones said operating profit reached 2.4 trillion won ($1.78 billion) in July-September, versus 10.85 trillion won a year earlier.

That was in line with the South Korean manufacturer’s own estimate of 2.4 trillion won published earlier this month.

Revenue fell 12% to 67.4 trillion won.

($1 = 1,346.5000 won)