Samsung Electronics experienced a sharp 6.3% decline in its stock price on Wednesday, despite reporting record preliminary second-quarter earnings that saw operating profit surge to 89.4 trillion won ($58.4 billion) — a 19-fold increase from the same quarter last year. The drop erased early session gains and dragged South Korea’s KOSPI index down 5.4%, pushing it into a technical bear market at 22.8% below its June 22 peak.
The market reaction came even as the company announced the mass production of its PM1763 enterprise SSD, built for Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin AI platform. The drive, which uses PCIe 6.0 to deliver read speeds up to 28,400 MB/s — double the previous generation — is part of Samsung’s push to supply a full-stack memory solution for AI servers. Samsung also holds a 35% share of the enterprise SSD market, which hit a record $18.46 billion in revenue in Q1 2026.
Analysts from Mizuho noted that the results, while strong, failed to beat already elevated Street expectations for a company at the “epicenter” of the AI memory boom. The selloff was not isolated to Samsung; SK Hynix fell 5.7%, LG Innotek dropped over 6%, and Micron slid 4.7% on Tuesday, with a further 6.6% premarket decline on Wednesday. The broader semiconductor sector faced pressure across Asia, though Taiwan’s market held modest gains.
The KOSPI remains up 72% year-to-date, and Samsung stock has gained 147% in 2026, reflecting the powerful rally in AI-related names that had priced in sustained outperformance. The sudden reversal suggests investors are reassessing whether the earnings can continue to surprise a market that has already run up sharply.
