As the macroeconomic situation remains unclear, Samsung Electronics, which finished its annual executive reorganization on Friday, will begin a worldwide strategy conference this week to define corporate plans for the upcoming year.
Executives from local and worldwide units assemble at Samsung’s global strategy conference, which is conducted twice a year in June and December, to analyze market circumstances in each industry and develop new growth engine plans for the following year.
Additionally, the forthcoming meeting will be the first one after Lee Jae-yong, the de facto leader of Samsung Group, assumed his position as executive chairman of Samsung Electronics on October 27. However, according to Samsung officials, the chief will not normally attend the meeting.
The meetings will be held on Thursday and Friday by the Device eXperience (DX) division of the tech giant, which is in charge of the company’s smartphone and home appliance businesses, and around December 22 by the Device Solutions (DS) division, which is in charge of the company’s chip business.
The DX and DS division meetings will be presided over by Han Jong-hee, head of Samsung’s DX division, and Kyung Ky-hyun, head of Samsung’s DS division. The biennial conference was previously held in person, but due to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, it will now be held in a hybrid format.
Samsung officials are anticipated to talk about how to deal with a number of issues, including the ongoing pandemic, pent-up consumer demand, fast-rising interest rates, geopolitical tensions, and global inflation.
Slow demand for cell phones and household appliances will probably be one of the main issues on the DX front. The division will continue to look for methods to tighten its hold on the world’s premium markets while attempting to reduce production costs.
The company’s long-term strategies to improve the competitiveness of its system chips will be discussed by the chip manufacturing unit, among other things. It will also examine the progress of the Texas foundry semiconductor chip production facility, whose completion the chipmaker hopes to achieve by 2024.
Due to the weak semiconductor industry, Samsung’s fourth-quarter prospects are bleak. The world’s top manufacturer of memory chips and smartphones had a shock in its third-quarter results as its primary semiconductor business was severely impacted by falling memory chip pricing and demand.
According to Samsung’s regulatory filings, its operating profit and net profit for the months of July through September fell 31.4 percent and 23.6 percent, respectively, year over year.
At the end of the third quarter, the company reported inventory assets of around 57.3 trillion won ($4.38 billion), an increase of 38.5 percent over the same time last year. The papers also revealed that over the given time, its semiconductor inventory increased by about 10 trillion won to 26.4 trillion won.