삼성 파운드리의 고독한 진군: 2028년 흑자 전환을 향한 험난한 여정 > K-wave Trends

The most eye-catching part of this briefing was the management's honest and conservative outlook on the timing of turning a profit. President Han explained that, with the existing performance bonus system, there was a visible possibility of turning into a surplus next year, but the recently introduced 'special management performance bonus' system acted as an accounting variable, increasing the possibility of continued deficit. This suggests that not only is it simply a matter of business operation efficiency, but the new compensation system that shares the performance of the entire DS division is placing a significant financial burden on low-profit divisions. As the performance of the memory semiconductor division improves, the cost burden on the foundry division increases. Despite being aware of this, the management, as the person responsible for management, made it clear that they will achieve a breakthrough on their own by improving the business structure.

Management's diagnosis of the root cause of the foundry division's slump was very sobering. President Han cited the slow pace of breaking away from the concentrated mobile-centered business structure, struggles in the process of improving technological perfection, and the remnants of contracts awarded in the past under low-profitability conditions as factors holding back performance improvement. In particular, the company acknowledged that its operation strategy for the legacy process, called the mature process, was inadequate, and made a winning move to phase out the 8-inch foundry business, which had lost its competitiveness. This can be interpreted as an expression of a strong will to reallocate resources to front-end processes through selection and concentration and to completely change the company's structure with a profitability-oriented order-taking strategy.

Unrest among internal members and conflict with the union are also urgent tasks that Samsung Foundry must resolve. The fact that some of the remarks made by a CEO during the briefing session incited public outrage from members and led to a situation where the large enterprise union demanded an official apology shows the serious level of low morale within the organization. In particular, the relative deprivation felt by members of loss-making divisions in relation to the distribution method of special management performance bonuses is acting as a factor that undermines organizational solidarity. In response, management emphasized that restoring business competitiveness is a prerequisite for improving compensation levels and appealed for cooperation from members, but the union is maintaining a strong stance, demanding a transparent expression of its position on how labor costs are distributed. This incident clearly revealed that it is difficult to overcome strong external waves without harmony within the organization.

Nevertheless, the reason why the future of Samsung Foundry cannot be viewed as gloomy is because of its clear order performance. Cooperation relationships with global big tech companies are becoming more solid as Tesla's next-generation AI chips, Groc's language processing devices mounted on the NVIDIA platform, and even the possibility of receiving orders to produce next-generation TPUs from Google are being discussed. In particular, once the 2-nano cutting-edge process at the Taylor plant in the U.S. begins full-scale operation, we will have the opportunity to narrow the technological gap and maximize production efficiency. It is also a positive sign that, unlike in the past, new customers we have recently secured have signed contracts with conditions that guarantee high profitability. This technological superiority and improvement in the order-taking environment prove that the goal of turning a profit by 2028 is not just a wishful thinking.