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Samsung is the world’s biggest maker of memory chips.

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Samsung Electronics on Tuesday said it expects to post a 35% drop in operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2023, missing expectations by a wide margin as a rebound in semiconductor prices likely narrowed losses in the South Korean company’s biggest profit-driving segment.

Samsung said that for the October-December quarter, operating profit is likely to be 2.8 trillion South Korean won ($2.13 billion), down 35% from the same period a year ago where the firm reported an operating profit of 4.31 trillion won. Operating profit was 2.43 trillion won in the previous quarter.

The profit guidance fell far short of LSEG’s SmartEstimate of 3.7 trillion won, which is weighted more heavily toward expectations of analysts who have been consistently more accurate.

'Huge miss': Samsung's operating profit expected to drop 35% in fourth quarter, missing earnings consensus

Fourth-quarter revenue likely fell 4.9% from the same period a year ago to 67 trillion won, the firm said in a preliminary earnings statement.

Samsung is the world’s largest maker for dynamic random-access memory chips which are found in consumer devices such as smartphones and computers.

“[Samsung is] very good at making some of the best semiconductors in the world, at least in making them and getting them done. But their yields are so much worse than competitors like TSMC,” said Cory Johnson, chief market strategist at The Futurum Group, on Tuesday.

Samsung's yields for semiconductors are 'so much worse' than competitors like TSMC, says analyst

“… so bad yields can turn into really bad earnings results,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” after Samsung’s earnings preview.

The company is set to announce detailed earnings on Jan. 31, according to a filing.

Memory prices rebound

The demand for AI across all major applications will drive the overall semiconductor sales market to recover in 2024.

Galen Zeng

IDC

In late October, Samsung and SK Hynix – the world’s second-largest DRAM memory chip maker – signaled during their third quarter earnings calls that weak demand may have finally bottomed out following production cuts.

“We expect further price hikes in 1H24 and a marked rebound in earnings for memory makers in 2H24 and 2025,” said Kim of Daiwa Capital Markets, referring to the first and second half of this year.

“As such, we anticipate tailwinds for share prices in the near term.”

Memory chip prices have started increasing since the start of November, thanks to “memory manufacturers’ strict control of supply and output,” according to Galen Zeng, senior research manager of semiconductor research at IDC.

“The demand for AI across all major applications will drive the overall semiconductor sales market to recover in 2024,” said Zeng in a Dec. 21 report.

“The semiconductor supply chain, including design, manufacturing, packaging, and testing, will bid farewell to the downturn in 2023.”

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.

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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.

The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.

“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.

He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.

Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.

“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”

Undecided on location

Fundraising plans

ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.

Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.

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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday. 

“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement

The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China. 

The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.

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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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