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Samsung Electronics on Friday reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue, though its operating profit dropped sharply from the previous three months due to higher R&D expenses in its chips segment.

Here are Samsung’s fourth-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

  • Revenue: 75.8 trillion Korean won ($52.2 billion) vs. KRW 75.4 trillion
  • Operating profit: KRW 6.5 trillion vs. KRW 6.8 trillion

Revenue rose about 12% from the same period from last year, while operating profit grew about 130%, year on year. However, operating profit fell nearly 30%, and revenue slipped by over 4%, quarter on quarter, amid soft market conditions and an increase in company expenditures.

Samsung shares fell 2.2% in South Korea on Friday morning.

Fourth-quarter revenue beat Samsung’s own guidance of KRW 75 trillion, while operating profit came in line with the company’s forecast.

Samsung is a leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers, and is also the world’s second-largest player in the smartphone market.

“Although fourth quarter revenue and operating profit decreased on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis, annual revenue reached the second-highest on record, surpassed only in 2022,” Samsung said in its statement.

For the full year, Samsung reported KRW 300.9 trillion in revenue and KRW 32.7 trillion in operating profit. In 2023, the company posted an annual revenue of KRW 258.94 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 6.57 trillion.

For the current quarter, Samsung said that earnings might be limited due to weakness in its semiconductor business but that it would pursue growth through AI smartphones and other premium devices. 

“For 2025 as a whole, the Company plans to enhance technological and product advantages in AI, continue to meet future demand for high-value-added products and drive sales growth in premium segments,” it added.

Memory business

Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of KRW 2.9 trillion in the fourth quarter, down over 25% from the three months ending in October, while its annual numbers came in below that of SK Hynix.

This was despite Samsung’s memory business achieving a record-high fourth-quarter revenue of 30.1 trillion helped by demand for its advanced memory products used for AI applications. 

“[O]perating profit decreased slightly compared to the previous quarter as a result of increased R&D expenses to secure future technology leadership, as well as the initial ramp-up costs to secure production capacity for cutting-edge nodes,” Samsung said. 

Samsung and SK Hynix both provide DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, products — a type of semiconductor memory needed for data processing. 

However, SK Hynix has left Samsung behind in HBM, or high bandwidth memory, a type of DRAM, in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption. 

According to Samsung, its memory business is cutting down legacy products to better align with market demand and increasing its proportion of high value-added products, such as HBM. 

“In 2025, overall memory market demand is expected to recover from the second quarter,” Samsung said, warning that its earnings are expected to remain weak in the current quarter.  

Smartphones

Samsung’s Mobile eXperience and Networks businesses, tasked with developing and selling smartphones, tablets, wearables and other devices, reported a quarter-over-quarter decrease in sales and profit.

Samsung said the performance was in part due to the fading effects of new flagship smartphone model launches.

The segment saw a consolidated revenue of KRW 25.8 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 2.1 trillion in the fourth quarter.

“However, on a full-year basis, flagship sales saw robust growth on the back of double-digit growth of the Galaxy S24 series featuring Galaxy AI, with tablets and wearables also increasing in both value and shipments,” Samsung said. 

In the current quarter, Samsung plans to drive sales growth with new flagship models, particularly its newly launched Galaxy S25 series and will continue to push into the AI smartphone market.

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Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage

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Oracle's Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage

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Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage on Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to CNBC.

The agency said “all users” of the company’s Federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were impacted. Six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites experienced disruptions, the agency said.

“Affected VA medical facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the outage to ensure continuity of care for Veterans,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.

An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care.

Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to it’s $28 billion acquisition of the medical records giant Cerner in 2022. 

The company’s Federal EHR initially started experiencing issues at around 8:37 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software froze and they were unable to access applications. Access was restored and cleared by 2:05 p.m. Eastern that day after Oracle restarted the system.

Oracle is carrying out an investigation to determine what caused the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The outage marks Oracle’s latest stumble in a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the VA, which has been marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.

Four VA facilities in Michigan are slated to deploy Oracle’s Federal EHR in 2026.

In October, Oracle unveiled a brand-new EHR equipped with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adopter program for the software begins this year, though it’s not clear if the VA has plans to utilize it.

Oracle is slated to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings on Monday.

Watch: Oracle CEO Safra Catz: Being number one is very important

Oracle CEO Safra Catz: Being number one is very important

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Broadcom shares soar 16% as earnings top estimates on demand for custom AI chips

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Broadcom shares soar 16% as earnings top estimates on demand for custom AI chips

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.

Lucas Jackson | Reuters

Broadcom reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that topped analysts’ expectations, and the chipmaker offered strong guidance for the current quarter. The stock jumped 16% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings per share: $1.60 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
  • Revenue: $14.92 billion vs. $14.61 billion expected

Broadcom said it expects about $14.9 billion in second-quarter revenue, higher than the $14.76 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts. Revenue in the last quarter rose 25% from $11.96 billion a year earlier.

The company said net income increased to $5.5 billion, or $1.14 per share, from $1.33 billion, or 28 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Broadcom’s artificial intelligence business is at the center of the company’s recent boom, which saw its stock price more than double last year. The company is one of the primary data center infrastructure vendors for AI, working both on Google’s custom AI chips as well as providing essential components for networking thousands of other chips together to develop advanced AI software.

Prior to the after-hours pop, the stock was down about 23% so far in 2025, as investors rotate out of risk partly due to concern about President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Broadcom said it recorded $4.1 billion in AI revenue during the first quarter, which is 77% higher on a year-over-year basis. Those sales are reported as part of Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions business, which grew 11% on an annual basis to $8.21 billion during the quarter.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said in a statement that the company expects “continued strength in AI semiconductor revenue,” reaching a projected $4.4 billion in the second quarter.

In December, Broadcom said it was developing custom AI chips with three large cloud customers. Tan said on Thursday that in addition to those customers, it had “deeply engaged” with two other hyperscalers, and are working with four other potential customers to develop their own custom AI chips.

Tan said that Broadcom closely chooses partners for developing custom AI chips who can deploy the resulting product in large quantities. “To put it bluntly, we don’t do it for startups,” Tan said.

The other major part of Broadcom’s revenue comes from its infrastructure software division, which includes software from the company’s acquisition of VMware in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. Broadcom said it saw $6.7 billion in software sales during the quarter, a 47% increase on an annual basis.

WATCH: Chip stocks see strong performance punished by markets

Chip stocks see strong performances punished by markets

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HPE to cut 2,500 employees as stock slides 19% on weak earnings outlook

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HPE to cut 2,500 employees as stock slides 19% on weak earnings outlook

Antonio Neri, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, October 20, 2023.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares slid 19% in extended trading on Thursday as the data center equipment maker issued quarterly and full-year guidance that came in below consensus.

Here’s how the company did in the fiscal first quarter in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: 49 cents adjusted vs. 49 cents expected
  • Revenue: $7.85 billion vs. $7.82 billion expected

HPE’s revenue rose 16% year over year in the quarter ending on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company was left with profit of $598 million, or 44 cents per share, up from $387 million, or 29 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The adjusted earnings per share excludes stock-based compensation.

“We could have executed better,” CEO Antonio Neri said on a conference call with analysts. The company had higher than normal inventory for artificial intelligence servers because of a shift to next-generation Blackwell graphics processing units from Nvidia.

The backlog for AI systems rose 29% quarter over quarter to $3.1 billion. Total server revenue totaled $4.29 billion.

HPE dealt with extensive discounting in the market while selling traditional servers during the quarter, finance chief Marie Myers said. As the quarter progressed, HPE moved to limit travel and discretionary spending, she said.

“We expect pricing adjustments may negatively impact top-line growth in the near term,” Myers said.

The company said it would implement a cost-cutting program involving layoffs over the next 18 months that will lead to $350 million in gross savings by the 2027 fiscal year. Around 2,500 employees will be affected, a spokesperson said, representing about 5% of the workforce when also factoring in expected attrition. At the end of October, HPE employed 61,000 people, according to its most recent annual report.

In January, the U.S. Justice Department filed in a federal district court to stop HPE from acquiring Juniper Networks. HPE announced the proposed $14 billion deal in January 2024. The court expects a trial to begin in July, according to the statement. The deal should close by October 2025, HPE said. In December, the company had said the transaction would be done in early 2025.

HPE called for 28 cents to 34 cents in adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal second quarter, with revenue coming in between $7.2 billion and $7.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had looked for 50 cents per share on $7.93 billion in revenue.

For the 2025 fiscal year, HPE sees $1.70 to $1.90 in adjusted earnings per share. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted $2.13 per share.

HPE expects to update its prices to reflect higher expenses from U.S. tariffs, Neri said, adding that he has not perceived any business deterioration from President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

As of Thursday’s close, HPE shares were up about 2% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index was down 2%.

WATCH: HPE shares fall more than 10% after mixed earnings, layoff plans

HPE shares fall more than 10% after mixed earnings, layoff plans

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