Quote:As you might have noticed, the second quarter of 2020 recently ended, and so companies are preparing to share their earnings results for the period. Today, South Korean giants Samsung and LG shared their preliminary results for that quarter, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the numbers are down compared to the same period as last year.
 
On Samsung's side, the company is expecting sales revenue between 51 trillion won ($42.59 billion) and 53 trillion won ($44.26 billion), with somewhere between 8 trillion won ($6.68 billion) and 8.2 trillion won ($6.85 billion) in profit. Compared to the same period of 2019, sales are down from 56.13 trillion won ($46.87 billion), but profits have seen a very significant jump for Samsung - in the second quarter of 2020, it had only posted 6.60 trillion won ($5.51 billion) in profit.
 
Compared to the first quarter of 2020, the the trend is somewhat similar. Revenue is down from 55.33 trillion won ($46.2 billion), but profit is up significantly from 6.45 trillion won ($5.39 billion). Since these are preliminary numbers, the company hasn't shared potential reasons for the increased profit margin.
 
For LG, the news is less positive. Like Samsung, the company saw less revenue compared to last year, with 12.8 trillion won ($14.42 billion) in revenue in the second quarter of 2020, down from 15.6 trillion won ($13.03 billion) in the same period of last year. However, LG's profits plummeted 24.4% from 652.2 billion won ($544.65 million) in 2019 to 493.1 billion won ($411.79 million) in 2020. The 2019 figures were already 15.4% lower than the year before that, which makes LG's results seem all the more bleak.