Samsung to See $130 Billion for Shareholder Returns Next Year on Chip Boom

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.

1. Dividend Expansion Also Enters 'Megacycle'... 188 Trillion Won Projected Next Year on Surging Profit

- Key Summary: Samsung Electronics confirmed at a board meeting on the 21st that it will return up to 110 trillion won to shareholders, combining dividends with share buybacks and cancellations. The decision carries out its principle of returning 50% of cumulative free cash flow (FCF) over three years. Adding the 90 trillion to 110 trillion won announced this time to the regular dividends of 19.6 trillion won and special dividends of 1.3 trillion won paid out in 2024–2025, along with 8.4 trillion won in share buybacks and cancellations, brings the three-year cumulative return to between 120 trillion and 140 trillion won. Accordingly, Samsung Electronics plans to first carry out a cash dividend of about 30 trillion won in the third quarter, and to decide how to use the remaining 60 trillion to 80 trillion won once its earnings are finalized in January next year. Based on FnGuide estimates and assuming the 50%-of-FCF return policy is maintained, the calculation shows that funds available for returns would jump to about 188.1 trillion won next year and about 171.8 trillion won in 2028.

2. Tank Inspection That Took a Month Done in Four Days... Why 97% of the World's Humanoids Are Chinese

- Key Summary: China's humanoid robot shipments surpassed 40,000 units in the first half of this year, accounting for 97% of the global total. The China Humanoid Robot Committee of 100, under the Chinese Institute of Electronics, said in a report released at the World Robot Conference (WRC) that Chinese robots are being deployed in earnest on industrial sites on the back of a mass-production system. Zhejiang-based startup RobotPlus said that inspecting a 3,000-cubic-meter spherical tank takes a person up to a month, including setting up scaffolding, but a robot completes the grinding and inspection in just four days, while DEEP Robotics unveiled DR02, an industrial humanoid that withstands temperatures from minus 20 to 55 degrees Celsius. The report also explained that China has built a supply chain spanning core chips and components through to finished products, laying the foundation to carry out design and production on its own.

3. Samsung, SK in Race to Secure Chip Production Hubs... Investing Across Korea, U.S. and Japan

- Key Summary: Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are stepping up their competition to secure production bases in major countries. Samsung Electronics is said to have effectively confirmed an expansion of its 1.4-nanometer (nm) process at its Taylor foundry (contract chip manufacturing) plant in Texas and to be hurrying its execution. The plan is to invest a total of $37 billion (about 51 trillion won) in Taylor to lock in AI chip demand from nearby Big Tech. Meanwhile, SK hynix is reviewing the possibility of building a new memory fab in Japan, which has an ecosystem of materials, parts and equipment, while also weighing the construction of its first front-end fab following a $3.87 billion (about 5.3 trillion won) packaging (back-end) fab in West Lafayette, Indiana. The two companies' expansion of bases is seen as a move to block market encroachment by Chinese firms such as CXMT and YMTC and to gain an early lead in new technologies such as custom high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

4. [Exclusive] Stealing Data Through an App Without Hacking the Server... A Hole in 'API Security'

- Key Summary: APIs (application programming interfaces), the channels through which websites and mobile apps exchange information with servers, have emerged as a blind spot in personal data security. According to materials the Personal Information Protection Commission submitted to the National Assembly, an unidentified attacker created an account on the Sampro TV mobile app early this month, logged in normally, and then repeatedly called the API without authorization, illicitly viewing the names, phone numbers, account details and credit card information of about 460,000 integrated members. In response, the commission launched an on-site investigation on the 10th of this month and is examining how the leak occurred and whether the company violated its obligation to take safety measures under the Personal Information Protection Act. In a report published this May by Akamai Technologies, based on a survey of 1,840 security experts across six industries in 10 countries, 87% of respondents said they had experienced an API-related security incident within the past year, with average damage per company reaching $700,000. This has prompted calls for urgent strengthening of API access management and abnormal-activity detection systems.