Samsung company-wide meetings plan for tough Q2

Samsung Electronics headquarters in Seocho District, southern Seoul [NEWS1]

Samsung Electronics is holding company-wide biannual global strategy meetings to discuss the risks and breakthroughs in its chip, mobile, and appliance businesses from Tuesday to Thursday.

Over 200 senior executives in Korea and overseas will participate in the three-day conference to tackle uncertainties in the macroeconomic business environment, the chipmaker said Tuesday.

Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong did not attend the event as Lee is accompanying President Yoon Suk Yeol as part of the 205-member business delegation to France and Vietnam.

The Device eXperience Division, which oversees smartphones, televisions, and home appliances, had a strategy meeting for the mobile communications business at Samsung's headquarters in Suwon, presided by Roh Tae-moon, head of the mobile business segment.

Meetings for the visual display and home appliance units followed on Wednesday. Thursday’s meetings will cover other divisions in the company — human resources, marketing, and more.

The Device Solutions (DS) Division in charge of semiconductors held its senior talks at the Hwaseong campus in Gyeonggi that were led by DS CEO Kyung Kye-hyun Tuesday.

Samsung’s biannual strategy meetings are held in June and December to gather executives from across the world to review business conditions, study pending issues and chart the path ahead. The meetings are held both on and offline.

The focus this week was on how to break through the global economic slump that led to a 95.75 percent on-year decline in Samsung Electronics' operating profit in the first quarter.

The ramifications of a memory chip production cut and the outlook for the second-half semiconductor market were reportedly deliberated on by the DS Division as Samsung looks to increase its presence in the high bandwidth memory (HBM) market. HBMs are high-end memory chips used in training generative AI.

Ways to increase the company’s competitive edge with Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology to increase Samsung’s foundry market share were on the agenda as well. The chipmaker was the first to implement the GAA technique that enhances chips’ transistor density and improves energy efficiency in chip manufacturing in June last year.

Samsung is struggling to close the market share gap with TSMC, which widened to 47.7 percentage points in the first quarter, up 5 percentage points from the previous quarter.

Marketing strategies for the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5 are scheduled to be showcased at the Unpacked event in Seoul next month and plans to boost appliance sales were discussed by the respective segments.

Experts say Samsung is likely to have had a tough second quarter.

“Second quarter earnings will be worse than expected as a weak global demand remains unchanged,” said Lee Min-hee, an analyst at BNK Securities.

“But results will be better in the second half as key businesses such as memory are hitting rock bottom and the only way is up,” she added.

BY LEE HEE-KWON [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]