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Samsung hits seven-month high
SEOUL, South Korea -- Stock in Samsung Electronics climbed to a seven-month high on Tuesday as it benefited from positive comments from brokerages. Samsung, the largest listing trading in Seoul by market capitalization, closed up 1.55 percent to 393,000 won. That helped the Kospi up 0.88 percent. The shares crested to 395,000 won during the day, its highest level since April 29. The move came after positive comments from two major Wall Street brokerages. Merrill Lynch raised its forecasts both for the company's net profit and its handset sales. Merrill increased its estimate of Samsung's handset shipments by 5 percent to 43 million phones in 2002 and by 18 percent to 60 million phones in 2003. Samsung, the world's largest memory chipmaker, is also the fastest-growing cell-phone producer in the world. Profit boostAs a result, the brokerage boosted its forecast of Samsung's net profit by 0.1 percent for 2002, to 7.18 trillion won ($6.0 billion) and by 4.3 percent for 2003, to 9.29 trillion won ($7.8 billion). Lehman Brothers also gave a positive forecast for the chip and wireless industries. After what the chip industry considers its worst year last year, chip prices have stabilized and even risen in 2002. Samsung shares have more than doubled since the start of the year as a result. But its phone business has now surpassed its chip business as its largest generator of profits. The Seoul Economic Daily said this week that the electronics company would help lift Samsung Group's results for the year, with the group due to post a pretax profit of 15 trillion won ($12.5 billion) on 135 trillion won ($112.7 billion) in sales.
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