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SEOUL, Jan. 6 (Yonhap) -- Samsung Electronics Co. predicted Friday that its fourth-quarter operating profit last year may have jumped about 50 percent on-year, beating market expectations as strong sales of chips and displays appeared to help offset losses from a global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.
Operating profit is estimated at 9.2 trillion won (US$7.72 billion) in the October-December period last year, up 49.84 percent from the same quarter of 2015, Samsung said in a statement.
Compared with a quarter earlier, the fourth-quarter operating profit is estimated to have surged 77 percent, it said.
Fourth-quarter sales are estimated at 53 trillion won, down 0.6 percent on year, Samsung said.
The result beat analysts' expectations. A survey of 17 brokerages by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency, had expected that Samsung would report a fourth-quarter operating profit of 8.4 trillion won.
It was the first time since the third quarter of 2013 that Samsung's quarterly operating profit surpassed 9 trillion won.
For all of last year, Samsung predicted its operating profit may rise 10.64 percent on-year to 29.2 trillion won.
Full-year sales are expected to edge up 201.5 trillion won, up 0.44 percent from 2015, Samsung said.
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