PER, EPS, PBR and BPS are calculated in-house from the last 4 quarters (2025Q3–2026Q2) · Dividend yield is based on ₩3,190 per share · Prices as of the 2026-10-02 close
Samsung SDS has shifted its growth axis toward cloud and AI infrastructure, lifting second-quarter 2026 revenue to a record quarterly level, yet heavy upfront investment and tougher competition kept the operating margin in the low 6% range, leaving the balance between top-line growth and profitability as the central issue.
Second-quarter 2026 revenue reached KRW 3.7178 trillion with operating profit of KRW 231.8 billion, a record quarterly top line but only a marginal profit increase.
Operating profit collapsed to KRW 78.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026 before returning to the KRW 230 billion range in the second, suggesting the first-quarter hit was one-off in nature.
At its second-quarter briefing the company disclosed a roadmap to expand AI infrastructure from about 110 megawatts today to 230 megawatts by 2029 and over 800 megawatts by 2031.
Cloud drives growth while logistics swings with the freight cycle; consolidated revenue has been stuck in the KRW 13 trillion range since 2023.
With new pillars such as the National AI Computing Center groundbreaking and the Dunamu stake purchase, both the pace of investment recovery and rising depreciation deserve close monitoring.
Samsung SDS operates along two axes: IT services and logistics. According to a January 2026 report by Korea Logistics News, 2025 IT services revenue rose 2.2% to KRW 6.5435 trillion while logistics fell 0.5% to KRW 7.3864 trillion, with logistics operating profit down 6.2% to KRW 130 billion.
The same report showed cloud revenue up 15.4% to KRW 2.6802 trillion, leading IT services growth. The cloud business splits into a CSP arm that supplies infrastructure directly through in-house data centers and the Samsung Cloud Platform, and an MSP arm that migrates and operates client environments.
In the second quarter of 2026 the company said IT services revenue rose 5% to KRW 1.7625 trillion and cloud revenue rose 17% to KRW 779.4 billion, with cloud revenue from non-Samsung-affiliate customers up 75%.
Logistics is centered on the Cello Square digital forwarding platform, with expansion in air forwarding and inland and warehouse contract logistics; second-quarter 2026 logistics revenue rose 6.6% to KRW 1.9553 trillion.
Group affiliates including Samsung Electronics remain a large revenue base, but broadening into financial, public-sector and manufacturing clients outside the group has been the consistent direction in recent years.
In domestic infrastructure cloud the company competes with global providers: The Bell reported in April 2026 that, per IDC, Samsung SDS held a 15.3% share of Korea's infrastructure-as-a-service market in 2024, second to Amazon Web Services at 52.6%.
It also competes with large domestic IT services firms in systems integration and with global software vendors in enterprise AI.
| Quarter | Revenue | Operating profit | Op. margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025Q2 | ₩3.5T | ₩230.2B | 6.6% |
| 2025Q3 | ₩3.4T | ₩232.3B | 6.8% |
| 2025Q4 | ₩3.5T | ₩226.1B | 6.4% |
| 2026Q1 | ₩3.4T | ₩78.3B | 2.3% |
| 2026Q2 | ₩3.7T | ₩231.8B | 6.2% |
| Year | Revenue | Operating profit | Net income (parent) | Op. margin | ROE | Debt-to-equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | ₩17.2T | ₩916.1B | ₩1.1T | 5.3% | 13.4% | 41.2% |
| 2023 | ₩13.3T | ₩808.2B | ₩693.4B | 6.1% | 8.0% | 37.3% |
| 2024 | ₩13.8T | ₩911.1B | ₩757B | 6.6% | 8.1% | 36.4% |
| 2025 | ₩13.9T | ₩957.1B | ₩759.5B | 6.9% | 7.7% | 31.1% |
Consolidated basis (financial statements including subsidiaries) · Final figures from DART filings · Net income attributable to owners of the parent · Data as of 2026-09-04
On an annual basis, revenue plunged from KRW 17.2347 trillion in 2022 to KRW 13.2768 trillion in 2023 and has since stayed in the KRW 13 trillion range at KRW 13.8282 trillion in 2024 and KRW 13.9299 trillion in 2025.
Even as revenue shrank, operating profit recovered from KRW 916.1 billion in 2022 to KRW 808.2 billion in 2023, KRW 911.1 billion in 2024 and KRW 957.1 billion in 2025, lifting the operating margin from 5.3% to 6.9%.
That pattern reflects higher-margin IT services and cloud filling the gap left by the disappearance of the low-margin freight-rate windfall.
Net profit attributable to owners fell from KRW 1.0997 trillion in 2022 to KRW 693.4 billion in 2023, then recovered gradually to KRW 757.0 billion in 2024 and KRW 759.5 billion in 2025.
Quarterly operating profit was steady at KRW 230.2 billion in the second quarter of 2025, KRW 232.3 billion in the third and KRW 226.1 billion in the fourth, before collapsing to KRW 78.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026 and rebounding to KRW 231.8 billion in the second.
Because first-quarter revenue held up at KRW 3.3529 trillion while only profit broke down, a one-off cost item appears to have been at work, and the specifics should be checked against company filings and conference-call materials.
Second-quarter 2026 revenue of KRW 3.7178 trillion was a record quarterly level, yet the operating margin was only around 6.2%, which the company attributed to investment in new external business and intensifying competition.
Over the latest four quarters, from the third quarter of 2025 to the second quarter of 2026, revenue totaled roughly KRW 14 trillion and operating profit about KRW 768.5 billion, an aggregate margin near 5.5%, a figure that includes the first-quarter 2026 profit slump.
The balance sheet showed total equity of KRW 10.2629 trillion and total liabilities of KRW 3.1908 trillion at end-2025, a debt-to-equity ratio of 31.1% versus 41.2% in 2022, while operating cash flow stayed above KRW 1 trillion at KRW 1.4608 trillion in 2023, KRW 1.2380 trillion in 2024 and KRW 1.2033 trillion in 2025.
The center of gravity in Korea's IT services industry is shifting rapidly from traditional systems integration toward cloud and AI infrastructure.
The government is pursuing the National AI Computing Center as core infrastructure for its ambition to become a top-three AI nation; the Ministry of Science and ICT and KOACC said the KRW 2.5 trillion project broke ground in Haenam, South Jeolla Province on August 3, 2026.
In heavily regulated areas such as finance and the public sector, demand skews toward customized and private builds rather than public cloud, opening opportunities for domestic vendors with large-scale integration track records.
Conversely, the infrastructure cloud market itself is dominated by global providers, so even the second-ranked domestic player faces a wide absolute gap.
Power procurement is the practical bottleneck for AI data centers, and at the Solaseado site in Haenam the timing of substation and transmission construction has been under discussion, meaning infrastructure conditions dictate project pace.
The logistics cycle runs the other way: falling ocean freight rates and tariff-driven volume declines weighed on 2025 results, while the second quarter of 2026 showed recovery led by air forwarding and contract logistics.
The company therefore sits at the intersection of logistics normalization and the early investment phase of AI infrastructure, and the timing of the shift into a payback phase will shape its relative industry position.
Affiliate capital spending cycles in semiconductors and batteries are another external variable tied directly to smart-factory and systems-build demand.
On its second-quarter 2026 earnings call the company outlined a plan to expand AI infrastructure from roughly 110 megawatts today to 230 megawatts by 2029 and more than 800 megawatts by 2031.
Expansion runs through three parallel models: direct capital spending, equity investment, and design-build-operate work on client-owned data centers; a company official noted the 2031 target includes not only confirmed orders but volumes under discussion and targets management considers achievable.
The opening schedule runs from the west wing of the Dongtan data center in 2026 to the Korea AI Computing Center in Haenam in 2028 and the Gumi AI data center in 2029.
A modular AI data center in Chuncheon with Samsung C&T, reported in July 2026, involves about KRW 60 billion for 2.4 megawatts with completion targeted for the second half of 2028.
On compute, the company launched Nvidia's B300 in Korea for the first time in March 2026 and set a goal of peak utilization in the second half, and in July it added FuriosaAI's second-generation neural processing unit to its cloud platform to address the inference market.
In enterprise AI, it was named preferred bidder for Woori Bank's project to build more than 175 AI agents and won a generative AI system project for the Export-Import Bank of Korea, signaling expansion across financial clients.
In digital assets, in May 2026 it resolved with Samsung Securities and Samsung Card to acquire a combined 4% stake in Dunamu for KRW 612.8 billion, of which Samsung SDS takes 1%, and the company has flagged stablecoin infrastructure and crypto-linked financial system integration as candidate new businesses.
On spending, management said 2026 capital expenditure would rise 37% from the prior year, so future results will hinge on whether incremental revenue outpaces rising depreciation and operating costs.
The price-to-earnings figure shown on the data card is computed on the sum of the latest four quarters, a window that includes the one-off profit slump of the first quarter of 2026, so the multiple screens higher than it would on normalized earnings.
Against historical bands cited by brokers, Samsung Securities noted in a December 2025 report that the ten-year average price-to-earnings multiple sat in the low 20s and judged the then-prevailing multiple to be below that average.
The price-to-book ratio sits above one, implying a premium to book equity, which reflects both the roughly KRW 6 trillion in net cash reported in the press and market expectations for the AI infrastructure expansion plan.
For fiscal 2025 the board raised the dividend 10% year on year and the company said it met the criteria for high-dividend company status, though the yield itself moves daily with the share price.
On targets, Hanwha Investment and Securities said in an August 31, 2026 report that it raised its target price to KRW 300,000 from KRW 290,000, and LS Securities said on August 19, 2026 that it lifted its target to KRW 307,000 from KRW 263,000.
These are the brokers' own views, and whether the prevailing multiple is warranted will only be settled after the fact by the pace of investment payback and margin recovery.
PER, EPS, PBR and BPS are all calculated in-house (the same method as Naver and Toss) · Dividend yield = cash dividend per share from DART filings (supplemented by KRX) ÷ current price · As of 2026-09-04
The company said second-quarter 2026 cloud revenue rose 17% to KRW 779.4 billion, with cloud revenue from customers outside Samsung affiliates up 75%. A larger external share works to loosen the revenue structure's dependence on the group's investment cycle.
Management cited AI transformation projects in banking and enterprise resource planning builds in shipbuilding as drivers. Reducing affiliate dependence has been a stated objective for several years.
The company laid out a phased plan to grow infrastructure from about 110 megawatts to 230 megawatts by 2029 and more than 800 megawatts by 2031. The National AI Computing Center in Haenam broke ground in August 2026, targets completion in 2028 and will house roughly 15,000 AI chips.
The Gumi data center, at about 60 megawatts, is slated to anchor the GPU-as-a-service business. Running capital-expenditure, equity-investment and design-build-operate models in parallel also spreads the capital burden.
The debt-to-equity ratio fell to 31.1% at end-2025 from 41.2% in 2022, with total equity of KRW 10.2629 trillion. Operating cash flow stayed above KRW 1 trillion for three straight years at KRW 1.4608 trillion in 2023, KRW 1.2380 trillion in 2024 and KRW 1.2033 trillion in 2025.
That gives the company capacity to fund large data center investments and strategic moves such as the Dunamu stake from internal resources. Financial capacity, however, does not by itself guarantee investment returns.
Consolidated revenue held in the KRW 13 trillion range at KRW 13.2768 trillion in 2023, KRW 13.8282 trillion in 2024 and KRW 13.9299 trillion in 2025. That remains far below the KRW 17.2347 trillion posted in 2022.
Even with double-digit cloud growth, a logistics business accounting for more than half of revenue dilutes overall growth when the freight cycle turns down. Whether the growth narrative translates into higher consolidated revenue still needs verification.
Second-quarter 2026 revenue grew 5.9% but operating profit rose only 0.7%, and the operating margin slipped to around 6.2% from a year earlier. Management attributed this to investment in new external business and intensifying competition.
Capital expenditure in the quarter was reported at KRW 148.9 billion, up 88.7% quarter on quarter. As data centers come online, depreciation charges can hit the income statement ahead of the associated revenue.
Reports indicate 2025 logistics revenue fell 0.5% and operating profit dropped 6.2% to KRW 130 billion amid weaker ocean freight rates and tariff-driven volume declines. Cello Square's customer count kept rising, but uncontrollable variables such as freight rates and cargo volumes dominate outcomes.
The second-quarter 2026 rebound may also contain temporary factors such as shifts from sea to air freight. Because logistics contributes relatively little profit, its recovery has limited effect on company-wide margins.
AI data centers are long-payback assets requiring heavy upfront capital plus power and cooling facilities. The company said the 800-megawatt target for 2031 includes volumes under negotiation and internal goals alongside confirmed orders, leaving a gap between plan and execution.
If utilization falls short, depreciation will weigh on margins. Progress should be cross-checked against quarterly capital spending and cloud revenue growth.
The Dunamu stake sits alongside ongoing debate over combining financial firms with virtual asset operators, and the timing of stablecoin and tokenized securities legislation will determine when these new businesses open up.
The National AI Computing Center depends on government budgets, public-private equity and policy financing, making it sensitive to policy shifts. Delays in power infrastructure construction remain a project-level risk. Slower institutionalization could push back the payback horizon for related investments.
With Samsung affiliates forming a large part of the revenue base, swings in the group's capital spending cycle feed directly into IT services orders. External expansion is under way, but the share gap versus global providers in infrastructure cloud remains wide.
In enterprise AI, global software vendors and domestic IT services firms are entering simultaneously, sharpening price and technology competition. Internal cost variables such as labor relations also warrant monitoring.
Third-quarter results and the earnings call. Key items are cloud revenue growth, the external revenue share, whether the company-wide operating margin holds in the 6% range, and whether the logistics peak season shows up in revenue.
Utilization of the Dongtan data center's west wing and whether the Nvidia B300-based GPU subscription service meets its stated goal of peak utilization in the second half. This is the first gauge of how quickly infrastructure investment converts into revenue.
Full-year 2026 results, the dividend resolution and the 2027 capital expenditure plan. This will show the annual margin excluding the one-off first-quarter 2026 item and whether the aggressive investment stance continues.
The scheduled February 2027 completion of the Korea Securities Depository's tokenized securities operating platform and progress on digital asset legislation. These provide the basis for judging whether businesses tied to the Dunamu stake generate actual revenue.
Whether the Haenam National AI Computing Center holds to its 2028 completion date, progress on power and transmission infrastructure, and any filings revising the Gumi AI data center investment amount. This period tests the credibility of the capacity roadmap.
Samsung SDS has been stuck in the KRW 13 trillion revenue range since the freight windfall faded in 2023, yet its profit structure improved as the operating margin rose from 5.3% in 2022 to 6.9% in 2025.
In 2026, operating profit collapsed to KRW 78.3 billion in the first quarter before rebounding to KRW 231.8 billion in the second, while second-quarter revenue of KRW 3.7178 trillion was a record quarterly level.
The growth axis has moved to cloud and AI infrastructure, evidenced by 17% cloud revenue growth and a 75% jump in external cloud revenue in the second quarter of 2026.
At the same time, the roadmap from 110 megawatts to more than 800 megawatts by 2031 and a capital expenditure plan up 37% year on year will add depreciation and operating costs over the next several years.
The bullish case rests on external customer expansion and confirmed projects such as the National AI Computing Center and the Gumi data center; the bearish case rests on flat top-line growth, compressed margins and logistics exposure to exogenous factors.
The balance sheet, with a 31.1% debt-to-equity ratio and annual operating cash flow above KRW 1 trillion, supports the investment program, though financial capacity is not the same as investment success.
From here, assessment depends on tracking quarter by quarter how quickly infrastructure spending converts into revenue and margin.
Report written 2026-09-05 · Data as of 2026-09-04
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