【英语财经】三星2015年净利润下滑19% Samsung profits sink 19% in 2015

Samsung Electronics warned that its profits could fall again this year, as it announced a 19 per cent fall in net profit for 2015.

The drop was largely driven by a 31 per cent operating profit decline for its IT & Mobile division – dominated by the mobile phone business, which has continued to lose market share to Chinese rivals, while seeing a growing portion of its sales come from lower-cost phones, writes the FT’s Simon Mundy in Seoul.

Further drags came from a sharply higher income tax bill, as well as Won2tn ($1.7bn) in non-operating expenses? – notably writedowns on the value of its stakes in sister companies Samsung Card and Samsung Display. These financial burdens pushed Samsung’s net profit growth into negative territory, cancelling out an overall increase in operating profit driven by the components business.

Amid the problems in smartphones, Samsung has been shored up by a stronger performance from its semiconductor business: it is the world’s leading producer of memory chips in terms of both technology and sales, and its logic chip division was boosted by a contract to produce processors for Apple’s latest iPhone.

But with the smartphone and PC markets stuttering, even the semiconductor business took a hit from low memory prices in the fourth quarter, Samsung warned, pushing its operating profit down 23 per cent from the third quarter.

Samsung said it was “expecting challenges in 2016 to maintain earnings due to a difficult business environment and slowing IT demand”, adding that “smartphone momentum” was likely to slow throughout the year.

Samsung’s full-year net profit fell to Won19tn from Won23.4tn a year before.

In line with guidance earlier this month, Samsung said operating profit rose 6 per cent to Won26.4tn, while revenue declined 3 per cent to Won200.7tn.

三星电子(Samsung Electronics)宣布其2015年净利润下滑19%。同时，该公司警告称，今年盈利或再次下滑。

这一下跌在很大程度上是由于其IT和移动部门（该部门以移动电话业务为主）运营利润下跌31%造成的。虽然在三星IT和移动部门的销售收入中，来自较低成本手机的比例越来越大，然而该部门的市场份额却在继续被其中国对手抢去。

而所得税的大幅提高以及2万亿韩元（合17亿美元）的非运营开支——特别是对其手中Samsung Card和三星显示(Samsung Display)这两个姊妹公司的股份估值的减记——进一步拖累了该公司的盈利。这些财务上的负担抵消了零部件业务带来的运营利润整体上的增长，促使三星的净利润进入负增长区。

尽管在智能手机方面面临种种问题，半导体业务方面的更强业绩却撑住了三星的颜面：不论在技术还是销售方面，该公司都是全球顶尖的内存芯片生产商，而为苹果(Apple)最新款iPhone生产处理器的一纸合同，也提振了该公司逻辑芯片部门的业务。

不过，三星警告称，由于智能手机和个人电脑(PC)市场的低迷，即使是半导体业务，也在第四季度受到了内存价格走低的打击，迫使该部门运营利润比第三季度减少了23%。

三星表示，该公司“预计，由于不利的商业环境和IT需求放缓，2016年要维持盈利会面临很多挑战”。该公司补充说，2016年全年“智能手机的发展势头”很可能放缓。

三星全年的净利润已从一年前的23.4万亿韩元下滑至19万亿韩元。

三星表示，其运营利润增长6%达到26.4万亿韩元，与此同时其营收则下滑3%至200.7万亿韩元，这与本月早些时候发布的指引相符。

译者/简易