Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported fourth-quarter profit more than tripled, setting a new record and beating analysts’ expectations, as a shortage of memory chips and strong demand for artificial intelligence servers boosted earnings.

Here’s how Samsung’s fourth-quarter results compare to the LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted based on analysts’ forecasts that are more consistent and accurate:

• income: 93.8 trillion won (US$65.58 billion), expected to be 93.318 trillion won
• Operating profit: 20.1 trillion won vs expected 20.018 trillion won

The South Korean tech giant’s quarterly revenue rose about 24% year-over-year, setting a new record. At the same time, its operating profit increased by more than 200% year-on-year.

The profit surpassed Samsung’s long-term record of 17.6 trillion won set in the third quarter of 2018, while matching Samsung’s own profit. guide About 20 trillion won.

Samsung is South Korea’s largest company by market capitalization and a leading supplier of memory chips, semiconductor foundry services and smartphones.

The company said in its earnings report that the memory business helped drive earnings, with quarterly revenue and operating profit hitting record highs, driven by surging overall market prices and sales of high-bandwidth memory and other high-value-added products.

High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is a type of memory used in AI data center chipsets, and Samsung has turned more attention to the technology over the past year.

AI chipset manufacturers such as Nvidia have been calling for restrictions on the supply of HBM because demand exceeds supply.

As memory companies prioritize production capacity to meet lucrative demand, this has led to shortages across the market, driving up prices for chips used in personal computers and mobile devices.

This is good news for storage giants such as Samsung and its competitor SK Hynix. Reports record profits Wednesday.

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