Buy Samsung stock – How to buy Samsung (SSNLF) shares and what to look out for

If you are still using your fridge door to post family pictures, you must not be using Samsung appliances. The Samsung fridge door is a giant iPad that acts as your family hub by keeping your calendars, recipes, and emails in sync.

This smart fridge is one example of how Samsung’s semiconductor chips bring intelligence and interconnectivity to our lives. By making its own chips, Samsung can create more innovative features in the home appliances, smartphones, and TVs you use.

Owning production from end-to-end has made Samsung the most powerful family-owned business in South Korea. If you are considering investing in Samsung, the maker of the world’s most popular smartphone, this guide will explain how to buy Samsung stock in 5 simple steps, and evaluate the best Samsung stockbrokers.

We will also analyse Samsung’s stock price and offer expert price forecasts and predictions in order to evaluate whether it will make a good investment.

Best U.S platform to invest in Samsung

Stash Invest has our top spot as best U.S. platform to invest in Samsung. You can get started today with only $5 and their fees are one of the lowest in the market starting at $1 per month only.

Best Platform to Buy Samsung shares outside the U.S.

We’ve found that Webull is the best platform to invest in Samsung due to its reputation, safety, fees, and platform.

How to Buy Samsung Stocks in the U.S. 

Should I invest in Samsung?

South Korea has a growing middle class whose productivity, with the help of Samsung products, keeps rising. From the smart fridge to the world’s best-selling smartphone, Samsung is helping the world perform its daily tasks more efficiently.

If you invest in Samsung stock, you are investing in a company whose product sales have more than doubled to $243 billion over the decade while its stock has quadrupled. Samsung is connecting these digital products – and our lives – on the cloud.

There is a downside to being the most popular consumer products company. If you buy Apple stocks or buy Tesla stocks, you know well the ups and downs of consumer sales. Samsung did experience sales shortfalls in 2018 but still registered record revenues and profits for the year.

Pros to buying Samsung

Advanced chipmaker

Samsung makes the key building blocks for its products, starting with the most advanced chips. From the best screen resolution to longer battery life, innovation in its semiconductor chips enables innovative products.

While other smartphone makers wait for a 5G market, Samsung is making 5G wireless radio solutions to increase Sprint’s network to snappy 1.5 Gbps speeds. If you want another way to invest in Nvidia stock and the powerful graphic cards for gaming and mining, Samsung will be supplying the transistors to Nvidia.

Market leader in smart home appliances

Supplying its own chips allows Samsung to differentiate itself through design, features, and functionality. A smart refrigerator door that displays who is at the front door when the doorbell rings is an example of that innovation. This edge helped Samsung become the top home appliance seller in the US market in 2018. Impressively, Samsung only spends 5% of every dollar in sales on R&D, versus 20% for competitors Intel and Qualcomm.

5G has arrived

The rollout of 5G networks will be a revenue growth engine for Samsung. South Korea, Samsung’s largest market, is currently a front runner in deploying 5G. The Samsung Galaxy S10 series, being introduced this spring, includes its first 5G device. The show stopper will be the 7.3-inch Galaxy Fold – a smartphone that unfolds into a tablet.

The Fold will retail for $1,980. If you want to invest in the future of foldable smartphones, Huawei and Apple are also designing them. For a full-fledged foldable PC, buy Microsoft stock. A foldable Surface tablet is being developed.

Cons to buying Samsung stock

Consumer electronics and memory market downturn

Samsung‘s smartphone business is an amazing growth story. A decade ago, Samsung had a 4% market share. Today, 25% of smartphones sold are made by Samsung. But Samsung has put all its chips in one basket. The consumer electronics cycle downturn leads the chip making downturn. Tablet and home appliance sales are also down. Samsung sells the most smartphones to China.

Display sales down

The slowdown in mobile, tablet and home appliances, meanwhile, is causing a slowdown in OLED and LCD display products. Oversupply is also a concern in this market as smartphone display competition heats up.

Patent wars
Samsung settled two major patent disputes in 2018. In February, Samsung and Huawei came to an out-of-court settlement over cellular communications technology. Samsung also settled a seven-year patent dispute with Apple, which initially involved a $1 billion settlement in Apple’s favour.

Though the patent disputes weighed more heavily on investing in Apple stock, since Apple is less diversified. Other legal quagmires include tax evasion and government bribery accusations against Chairman Lee.

Samsung Stock: Current Prices and Summary

Samsung Group is the largest of South Korea’s powerful chaebols – family-controlled businesses known for their complex layers of affiliated companies. The split of the businesses in the late 1980s allows the market to fairly value each business separately. Samsung Electronics is by far the largest of dozens of subsidiaries.

About 70 percent of SEC’s profits come from the semiconductor business Device Solutions (DS) and the bulk of the rest from the smartphone business, IT & Mobile Communications (IM). Consumer Electronics (CE) is the third division. Before you invest in Samsung stock, you need to know whether the stock is fairly valued by the market compared to other tech stocks. All divisions have high exposure to the cyclical consumer electronics market.

Over the decade, Samsung Electronics’ stock has been outperforming the consumer discretionary industry group in general. Zooming in on its divisions, Samsung’s price-to-earnings ratio of 7–9 percent over the past 24 months is low compared to that of semiconductor competitors Intel at 11.7, Nvidia at 27, and Qualcomm at 34.

In smartphones, Apple and Huawei are priced at 14 and 23, respectively. This comparison shows Samsung shares are undervalued across all its business lines. Before deciding whether to buy Apple stocks, which also appear cheap or Samsung’s, also consider the dividend payouts of the two competitors.

SSNLF stock summary

A Brief Overview of the History of Samsung

Samsung was founded near the southern city of Daegu in southern Korea in 1938 as a grocery product producer and distributor by Lee Byung-chul. As the company began to grow, in 1947 Samsung relocated to Seoul — only several hundred kilometers from the now North Korean border.

A year later when Korea divided into communist North Korea and democratic South Korea, Samsung became part of the new democracy. Under the democratic system, Samsung has grown into South Korea’s largest conglomerate. South Korea’s protectionist trade policies and financing for business helped the company expand into textiles, heavy industry, and electronics, among other businesses.

After Lee’s death in 1987, Samsung was divided into four smaller conglomerates. They include electronics, heavy industries and chemicals, financial services, and trade and services.
Samsung Electronics is one of 19 listed companies under the Samsung Group, in addition to 59 non-public companies (Wikipedia). Samsung Electronics grew out of semiconductor and telecommunications businesses started in the 1960s.

In 2018, Samsung surpassed Intel as the world’s largest semiconductor company by revenues with a 15.9 percent market share (Statista). Samsung has top market share in global smartphones and TV displays. In household appliances,it is the leading brand in the US market and in the top 10 globally.

Samsung Shares Forecast 2019–2023

Long-term investors in Samsung will be less concerned about the ups and downs of the semiconductor business. While in the previous five-year period, SEC’s stock performance lagged that of the consumer electronics industry, it has outperformed it by almost 10% over the last three years with a return of 33.2 percent. Smarter chips powering smarter products will drive growth going forward.

2019 – The chips are down

The memory chip cycle runs in four-year peaks and troughs, measured by sales of the top three global memory chip makers – Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. This sales cycle, which peaked in 2017, is ready to start turning up in the second half of 2019.

A higher average selling price for the new batch of smartphones and tablets and a reduction in expenses will help profits. Though Samsung expects earnings to decline in 2019. Low-to-median stock growth is forecast.

2020 – Memory gains

The memory cycle and sales will be rebounding in 2020. Samsung will be ramping up production of its 5G radio processors as more markets build out 5G networks and start supplying transistors for Nvidia graphics chips.

In consumer electronics, foldable devices will wow consumers. Samsung will introduce new foldable phone models. What’s next? Rollable TV screens will make your tube portable. Median-to-high stock growth is forecast.

2021 – Putting the smarts in the smart home

Demand for memory and OLED products will start to peak in 2020–2021. The smart home race will be on. Do you invest in Google stock, or buy Amazon stocks or Samsung? Samsung’s edge is it also makes the connected smart home appliances.

An upgraded Bixby, Samsung’s Amazon Alexa or Google Voice, will provide new ways of connecting the smart home through artificial intelligence and the cloud. Median-to-high stock growth is forecast.

2022 – R&D ramp up 

By 2022, Samsung should be facing a cyclical downturn in its semiconductor and consumer electronics business. The growing smart consumer appliance segment and higher end chips will help cushion this downturn.

2023 – More product innovation 

During this forecast, Samsung plans to increase its R&D investment to maintain and strengthen its technology leadership. This includes investments in artificial intelligence for smart appliances and automotive applications, innovations in displays for smartphones, and advances in the components business.

Conclusion

So with triple exposure to the consumer electronics industry, will Samsung ride out this technology cycle? We think Samsung’s 10-year stock performance (17 percent versus 13–14 percent for the top performing consumer technology and semiconductor indices) shows the family-run conglomerate is adept at innovating its way through business cycles.

When you are ready to buy stock, we recommend doing so via a regulated online broker such as Webull if you’re a non-U.S. customer, and Stash Invest for U.S. customers.

FAQs

A-Z of Stocks