Market-leading smartphone maker suffers share price slide following cut in sales forecasts as suppliers report scaled-back orders. There is a familiar ring to this, yet it is not Apple but Samsung Electronics which has just suffered its worst week in over a year. The fall was predictable, but it is hard to justify.
The culprits were JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, which cut their estimates for sales of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone by a quarter and almost a sixth, respectively, to about 60m for 2013, and cut their price targets for the stock by 6 per cent and 3 per cent in the process. The company’s shares have fallen almost 10 per cent in a week. Any report that ponders whether a phonemaker is a Nokia (down 90 per cent from its peak) or an Apple (off more than a third in nine months) is likely to spook investors, whether or not they had noted Samsung’s own cautious smartphone outlook five weeks ago. Phones matter to Samsung: they will account for about two-thirds of its operating profits over the next two years.
As competition grows, margins will of course come under pressure. But this is not new, and there is no sign of collapse. There is also a case to be made that offering phones at different prices, as Samsung does, is a better cushion against eroding profitability than relying on one model which is aimed solely at the high end of the market.