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Samsung is facing headwinds from a global slump in deamand and prices for its memory chips, sales of which make up a large part of the South Korean technology giant’s business.

Olly Curtis | Future | Getty Images

Samsung said Friday its operating profit likely plunged 32% in the third quarter of the year as weaker memory pricing and demand hit the technology giant.

The South Korean firm said it expects operating profit to be between 10.7 trillion ($7.57 billion) and 10.9 trillion South Korean won. It is the first decline in operating profit since 2019.

Samsung reported a revenue rise of between 75 trillion and 77 trillion Korean won, a 1.3% to 4% year-on-year rise.

Samsung’s chip business, which includes selling chips for laptops, servers and storage, as well as manufacturing semiconductors, accounts for 70% of its profits.

The company sells NAND and DRAM chips which are used in devices such as laptops and smartphones, through to data centers. It also has a semiconductor manufacturing business. Samsung did not release any commentary alongside its third-quarter forecast but analysts said a weakening of memory chip prices and demand was likely behind the profit fall.

Daiwa Capital Markets said in a note on Friday that DRAM and NAND shipments declined by 15% and 10% quarter-on-quarter, while prices fell 19% and 20% respectively quarter-on-quarter, “which led to a sharp decline in earnings.”

The predicted profit fall adds further concerns about the chip sector which is facing softer demand amid a weaker global macroeconomic environment.

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday reported preliminary revenue estimates for the third quarter that were well below its initial guidance. The U.S. firm cited “weaker than expected PC market and significant inventory correction actions across the PC supply chain.”

Micron, a rival to Samsung, warned last month that “consumer demand and inventory-related headwinds” were impacting memory makers.

Samsung’s profit fall forecast sent shockwaves through other chip stocks. In Europe, companies such as Dutch equipment maker ASML and Apple supplier STMicro were lower in morning trade.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, was down in Taiwan trade. However, after the market close in Taiwan, the company reported a 42.6% year-on-year rise in revenue, bucking some of the bearishness among semiconductor firms. TSMC is perhaps the world’s most important chipmaker, manufacturing components for the world’s largest electronics makers including Apple.

Many companies, including Micron, are cutting their capital expenditure and reducing inventory, which could help companies like Samsung recover and signal the bottom of the current semiconductor downturn.

“That is kind of the signal of bottoming,” SK Kim, analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Friday.

Kim said he expects memory prices will rebound in the first half of the next year, adding that Samsung’s share price “is also bottoming out soon.”

Samsung shares are down more than 28% year-to-date.

Despite the recent slump, Samsung has laid out a roadmap for its semiconductor business, in which it aims to start manufacturing the most advanced chips in five years time.

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin miner that announced plans this week to make ETH its primary treasury reserve asset, jumped about 20%. It’s gained more than 1,000% since the announcement. Betting platform SharpLink Gaming, which has also initiated an ETH treasury strategy, added more than 11%. Bit Digital, which last week exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans, jumped more than 6%.

“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.

On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.

The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.

Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.

The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee on being named chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.

Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.

The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.

Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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China’s Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

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China's Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.

Honor

Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.

The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.

The company, which spun off from Chinese tech giant Huawei in 2020, is looking to stand out from rivals with key features of the Magic V5, like artificial intelligence, battery and size.

Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.

In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.

Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.

Honor vs. Samsung

Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.

Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.

Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.

“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.

“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.

The thinness of a foldable phone has become a battleground for smartphone makers to appeal to consumers who want the large screen size the device has to offer without extra weight.

At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.

“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.

“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.

Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.

Honor talks up AI

Smartphone players, including Honor, have also looked to stand out via the AI features available on their device.

In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.

Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.

The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.

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