Is Samsung considering the separation of chip production?

The Foundry division does not perform well on modern nodes, and in this form it is a money sink for the company.

A Business Korea published a recent report on the July publication of Samsung Securities, which runs under the title “Geopolitical Paradigm Shift and Industry” and evaluates the current situation of the South Korean giant. Within this, the spin-off of the Samsung Foundry, i.e. the chip manufacturing department, is on the table, because the nodes using the GAAFET transistor structure are having a hard time getting started, and even now the output is relatively low. Because of the latter, Samsung did not acquire too many partners, despite the fact that there is an interest in modern production technology.

Samsung Securities predicts that Samsung Foundry and the LSI division will post a loss of roughly $385 million this year. This makes it difficult to maintain, although the loss itself is not so massive, it may be more about when the production for hire on modern nodes can become profitable.

Currently, there is also the possibility that Samsung could get rid of the chip manufacturing business, either by organizing it into a separate company or by selling it to another party. The advantage of this would be that the company would get rid of the loss-making business, the future of which does not look completely spotless in the short term, while a separate chip manufacturing company alone would attract investors more easily. The latter is also a realistic alternative because Samsung is one of three contract manufacturers still present in the field of cutting-edge chip production, despite TSMC’s hard-to-get lead.