On July 24, Samsung Heavy Industries released its performance report for the second quarter of this year, achieving operating revenue of 2.683 trillion KRW (approximately $1.9 billion or 13.64 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 6%; operating profit reached 204.8 billion KRW (approximately $150 million or 1.04 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 56.7%. The company’s operating profit margin has risen from 5.2% in the second quarter of last year to 7.6%, an increase of 2.4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter.
Samsung Heavy Industries stated that this marks the first time since the second quarter of 2014—11 years later—that the company has achieved a single-quarter operating profit exceeding the 200 billion KRW milestone, indicating an accelerating pace of performance recovery. In the second half of this year, the company will focus on high-value-added ship types such as Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) units and LNG carriers to secure orders.
In the second quarter of this year, with increased working days and improved production efficiency, Samsung Heavy Industries saw a significant rise in operating profit despite only a slight increase in operating revenue. Industry insiders in South Korea noted that the accelerated improvement in the company’s second-quarter performance was due to a combination of factors, including reduced fixed costs from expanded revenue and a higher proportion of high-margin ship types in its revenue.
In the first quarter of this year, Samsung Heavy Industries achieved operating revenue of 2.4943 trillion KRW (approximately $1.736 billion or 12.66 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 6.2%; operating profit reached 123.1 billion KRW (approximately $85.67 million or 625 million RMB), up 58% year-on-year; net profit was 90.1 billion KRW (approximately $62.7 million or 457 million RMB), a year-on-year surge of 1055.1%.
In the first half of this year, Samsung Heavy Industries accumulated operating revenue of 5.1773 trillion KRW (approximately $3.67 billion or 26.32 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 6.1%; operating profit totaled 327.9 billion KRW (approximately $230 million or 1.67 billion RMB), up 57.2% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, Samsung Heavy Industries’ order intake this year has shown a steady and consistent trend. To date, the company has secured new orders for 19 vessels worth $3.3 billion (approximately 23.68 billion RMB), achieving 34% of its annual order target of $9.8 billion. These include 1 LNG carrier, 9 shuttle tankers, 2 Very Large Ethane Carriers (VLEC), 4 crude oil tankers, 2 container ships, and 1 FLNG unit. Among these, merchant ship orders amounted to $2.6 billion, with an order completion rate of 45%, while offshore equipment orders reached $700 million, with a completion rate of 17%.
Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Samsung Heavy Industries expressed optimism about its prospects. In the merchant ship sector, medium- to long-term demand for gas carriers such as LNG carriers and VLECs is expected to remain strong. Additionally, due to significant demand for eco-friendly upgrades of container ships above 12,000 TEU and the large number of aging tankers, new orders for these ship types are likely to increase.
At the same time, new orders in the offshore equipment sector are expected to gradually materialize. In early July, Samsung Heavy Industries announced that it had secured a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the second FLNG unit in the Coral Sul project in Mozambique for Italy’s ENI Group, worth 869.4 billion KRW (approximately $635 million or 4.55 billion RMB). The formal construction contract, valued at up to $2.5 billion (approximately 18 billion RMB), is expected to be finalized soon.
For FLNG projects with high bidding potential this year, Samsung Heavy Industries is intensively preparing to secure orders and actively participating in FEED bids for new FLNG projects.
Samsung Heavy Industries plans to focus on securing high-value-added ship orders in the second half of the year while strengthening management and improving production efficiency to sustain its performance improvement trend. A company representative stated, “We expect to successfully achieve the annual targets set at the beginning of the year: operating revenue of 10.5 trillion KRW (approximately 54.8 billion RMB) and operating profit of 630 billion KRW (approximately 3.3 billion RMB).”
In 2023, Samsung Heavy Industries achieved operating revenue of 8.0094 trillion KRW (approximately $6.033 billion or 43.2 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 34.7%; operating profit reached 233.3 billion KRW (approximately $176 million or 1.26 billion RMB), marking a successful turnaround from losses. This was the company’s first annual operating profit since 2015.
In 2024, Samsung Heavy Industries achieved operating revenue of 9.9031 trillion KRW (approximately $7.3 billion or 51.9 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 23.6%; operating profit surged to 502.7 billion KRW (approximately $370 million or 2.636 billion RMB), up 115.5% year-on-year.
Samsung Heavy Industries aims to achieve a 6% operating profit margin by 2025 through “aggressive” order-taking activities. In 2023, the company’s operating profit margin was 2.9%, rising to 5.1% in 2024.
