Samsung Electronics Co. on Wednesday reported net income for 2002 of $5.98 billion, a 160% increase over the 2001 net profits. Sales for last year totaled $34.39 billion, up 25% from 2001.
Fourth quarter operating income was $1.27 billion on sales of $9.08 billion. The fourth quarter net income was not immediately available, nor did Samsung provide a comparison with the previous quarter or year-ago period.
A breakdown by business segments showed that the semiconductor and LCD group had operating income for 2002 of $3.24 billion on sales of $10.87 billion. The telecommunication networks group had operating income for the year of $2.53 billion on sales of $10.52 billion. The digital media unit had operating income of $327 million on sales of $8.44 billion, and the digital appliances unit income of $109 million on sales of $3.15 billion.
The operating income of digital media and digital appliance groups were negatively affected by unidentified one-time expenses, such as special marketing outlays, the firm said.
Samsung said its memory chip business was profitable even though so many competitors lost money last year. "Samsung had a greater focus than other companies on specialty devices that commanded high prices. Also there was steady growth in demand for flash memory," it claimed.
The firm said its loans at the end of 2002 were $915 million lower than at the close of the previous year. The debt-to-equity ratio was in negative range at minus 24%.
Samsung also reported that it plans to spend $3.56 billion in semiconductor-only capital investment in 2003, up a whopping 90% from the $1.87 billion capex for last year. This doesn't include capex for the TFT-LCD portion of the group. Capital spending for all of Samsung Electronics including the telecommunications and digital appliance units is projected in 2003 at $5.09 billion, up 43% over $3.56 billion for 2002.
