[Kwangsoo's Take] The Dog-and-Owner Metaphor for Samsung's Earnings-Stock Price Gap
Lee Kwang-soo noted he had pre-estimated Samsung's Q2 operating profit at 90 trillion won, arguing that the market's ability to forecast Samsung's earnings within a predictable range is itself a sign that volatility could ease — implying the market now views this earnings level as sustainable rather than one-off.
He pointed to Samsung's quarterly operating profit chart since 2015, where the last two quarters (57 trillion and 89 trillion won) stand out sharply, arguing the market is split between viewing this as temporary or as the start of a new era. He cautioned that such interpretations tend to be retroactively justified by whichever direction the stock happens to be moving that day, making them unreliable.
He then compared the relationship between earnings and stock price to walking a dog: earnings act as the owner and the stock price as the dog, which can temporarily stray but ultimately converges with its owner. What's unusual now, he argued, is that Korean semiconductor earnings — the 'owner' — are moving far ahead of the stock price — the 'dog' — leaving the market unable to digest the pace.
Annualizing Samsung's quarterly operating profit and comparing it to market cap, he noted Samsung trades at roughly a fifth of the multiple of global tech giants like Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, implying significant undervaluation. He also highlighted that Samsung's cash and short-term financial assets, at 147 trillion won at the end of Q1, could reach 200 trillion won after this quarter's earnings and potentially exceed 300 trillion won by year-end — capital that, as seen in its Anthropic investment, could fund further AI value-chain investments and reshape the company's profile.
He closed by likening the stock market to a voting machine in the short run but a weighing scale in the long run, arguing that current price action reflects distorted, leverage-driven voting rather than a true weighing of fundamentals. The fact that hyperscalers continue paying premium prices for memory chips, he said, is itself evidence that AI investment remains credible, and urged investors to maintain a long-term perspective.