Samsung Electronics Co. is on track to overachieve its 130 trillion won ($109.6 billion) domestic spending target out of its 2018 pledge to invest a total of 180 trillion won through 2020.

The South Korean tech giant released on its company website Thursday an interim report of its three-year investment and job creation plan announced in August 2018.

Jay. Y Lee, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics and Samsung Group’s de-facto leader, had then pledged to invest 180 trillion won ($151.8 billion) in new engines of growth and create 40,000 jobs over the next three years.

The company said it spent 110 trillion won in R&D in 2018-2019, meeting 61 percent of its target. Additional spending plans are underway to help it comfortably reach the 180-trillion-won goal by the end of the year, it added.

Of the 180 trillion won, 130 trillion won had been earmarked for investment at home, though industry observers expect the company to exceed this amount by about 7 trillion won. The industry estimate of Samsung’s domestic spending in 2018-2019 is 80 trillion won to 90 trillion won.

On the employment front, Samsung Electronics has already reached 80 percent of its three-year goal and is well poised to meet its target of adding 40,000 workers to its payroll by the end of 2020.

The robust investment has largely been driven by brisk sales of semiconductors, responsible for two-thirds of the company’s overall earnings. Samsung Electronics reported a 23.5-percent jump in its second-quarter operating profit, beating analyst expectations, thanks to its best chip earnings in nearly two years.

The Suwon-based chip and phone maker said its capex in the first six months of the year came to 17.1 trillion won, up from 10.7 trillion won a year ago, in response to a surge in chip demand from applications relating to remote work and online education during the pandemic.

Chip spending also expanded following Samsung’s announcement last year to invest 133 trillion won in system chips and foundry through 2030 with a goal to become the world’s top player in not only memory but also the non-memory sector. It had also vowed to employ more than 15,000 experts for the effort.

As part of this initiative, the company in May announced it would pour 10 trillion won into a new foundry line at its chip campus in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. It also agreed to spend 8 trillion won to add a new NAND flash production line.

Other Samsung affiliates are also making big investments.

Samsung Display Co. last year vowed to invest 13.1 trillion won in next-generation quantum dot display panels. Samsung Biologics Co., the drugmaking unit, announced it would spend 1.74 trillion won to build the world’s largest biopharmaceutical plant in Songdo, Incheon, a move that it said would generate 27,000 jobs and add 5.6 trillion won in production.

By Kim Gyu-sik, Chun Gyung-woon and Kim Hyo-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]