Samsung Electronics Co. seeks to rake in 11.5 trillion won ($8.8 billion) in operating profit from its semiconductor business this year, swiveling from last year’s loss on a recovery in memory chip prices and demand from the output cut and artificial intelligence boom.

According to sources in the semiconductor industry on Monday, Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) has set its operating profit target for 2024 at 11.5 trillion won, accounting for about one-third of the South Korean electronics behemoth’s total operating profit estimate for this year.

Local brokerage houses project Samsung Electronics’ total operating profit for 2024 at 33.8 trillion won.

Considering that its DS division is estimated to have posted an operating loss of 13 trillion won last year, the semiconductor division should earn about 25 trillion won in profit to meet the target.  

Growing signs of the recovery in global memory chip demand are buttressing the company’s confidence in a turnaround.

Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash memory chip prices consecutively rebounded from October to December, largely thanks to chipmakers’ orchestrated efforts to cut wafer input to ease a memory chip supply glut, which also helped lower overall inventories.  

There are also signs of a recovery in memory demand from smartphones and PC makers.