Samsung SDS posts W231.8b operating profit in Q2, up 0.7% on-year

Samsung SDS reported Thursday that its consolidated operating profit for the second quarter reached 231.8 billion won ($160 million), up 0.7 percent from the same period last year.

The company released preliminary earnings showing second-quarter sales of 3.72 trillion won and operating profit of 231.8 billion won — increases of 5.9 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, from a year earlier.

Sales in the IT services segment rose 5 percent on-year to 1.76 trillion won. Cloud services, which account for the largest share of IT services revenue, grew 17 percent on-year to 779.4 billion won.

External business sales surged 75 percent on-year, driving the earnings improvement. Within cloud, the cloud service provider business grew 24 percent on-year, fueled by rising demand for Samsung Cloud Platform and expanded GPUaaS (GPU as a Service) offerings in the public and external sectors.

The managed service provider business rose 17 percent on-year, supported by growth in AI transformation projects for the financial sector and ERP work for the shipbuilding industry.

The logistics segment posted sales of 1.96 trillion won, up 6.6 percent on-year, as air forwarding and contract logistics centered on inland and warehouse operations expanded alongside growth in external business through its Cello Square platform.

Since declaring its ambition to become a global AI transformation company, Samsung SDS has been strengthening its competitiveness through an AI full-stack covering AI infrastructure, AX and AI services, and AI platforms and solutions. In the AI infrastructure space, the company was selected in June as a key operator for the Ministry of Science and ICT's GPU procurement, construction and operation support project.

In addition, following the domestic launch of Nvidia B300-based GPUaaS — the first of its kind in Korea — in March, the company released an NPUaaS product based on domestic chipmaker Furiosa AI's Renegade in July.

In the AX and AI services space, Samsung SDS was named the preferred negotiating partner in April for a project to deploy more than 175 AI agents across core operations at Woori Bank. It subsequently won an additional contract to build a generative AI system for the Export-Import Bank of Korea, expanding its AI transformation business with a focus on the financial sector.

In the AI platform and solutions space, the company is driving AI adoption across public institutions and enterprises through its generative AI solution Brity Works, while also becoming the first in Korea to establish a cooperative framework with the three leading global frontier AI companies — OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Cloud.

Meanwhile, Samsung SDS is expanding its strategic investments in digital assets and physical AI. In May, it joined Samsung Securities and Samsung Card in acquiring a combined 4 percent stake in Dunamu, the country's top digital asset exchange.

In June, the company made a strategic investment in Walden Robotics, a US-based physical AI full-stack firm, through Samsung Venture Investment. Building on that move, Samsung SDS plans to expand partnerships with global robotics firms and pursue a "robot orchestration" business that integrates and controls diverse robots in connection with manufacturing execution systems.

The company also plans to continue investing to meet growing AI infrastructure demand. It intends to expand its existing 110-megawatt AI infrastructure capacity to 230 megawatts by 2029, and further scale it to more than 800 megawatts by 2031 — including design-build-operate projects — as it works to strengthen its AI infrastructure capabilities.