However, surging chip prices hurt Samsung's mobile division, which reported its first quarter in the red with a 700 billion won loss.
"The chips enriching one side of Samsung are now hurting the other, leaving the group more exposed than ever to memory pricing and the durability of hyperscaler demand," said analyst Josh Gilbert at eToro.
Samsung's quarterly profit surpassed its combined earnings over the past three years, helping lift net cash to 167 trillion won as of June-end and fuelling expectations for increased shareholder returns. Its stock has dropped nearly 40% over the last month but is still up 72% so far this year.
Chief Financial Officer Park Soon-cheol said Samsung is "in active discussion" over special dividends and other aspects of its shareholder return program for this year.
"We remain fully committed to delivering on the program as promised and will provide for the update very soon," he said.
"Although the management did make some positive comments on shareholder returns and demand outlook, it seems due to high volatility investors are fleeing the market," said Sanjeev Rana, head of research at CLSA Securities Korea.
The earnings represent a turnaround for Samsung as the firm gains ground on SK Hynix in supplying high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in AI processors.
Samsung, which counts Nvidia NVDA.O and Advanced Micro Devices AMD.O among its HBM customers, expects HBM4 revenue to more than triple in the third quarter. It said that would help bring its HBM market share in line with that of its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in the second half.
The company also said its foundry business, which competes with TSMC 2330.TW and Intel INTC.O, is likely to turn around "in the near future" driven by rising factory utilisation rates and chip prices.
It said it is on track to start operations at its Taylor fabricating plant in the U.S. state of Texas this year and that it aims to break ground on a second fab which could start mass production in 2030.
SK Hynix on Wednesday reported bumper quarterly results yet fell short of investor expectations. It flagged plans to raise capital spending this year by around 50% to meet AI demand.
The firm issued American depositary receipts (ADRs) and debuted on the U.S. market this month. Samsung is not considering following suit, Park said.
Samsung has little need to raise funds given the stable cash generation from its diversified business portfolio, Park said.
($1 = 1,446.2700 won)
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