Samsung Electronics is expected to face a challenging annual general meeting on Wednesday amidst shareholder dissatisfaction over its failure to capitalize on the artificial intelligence surge that led to it being one of the poorest-performing tech stocks last year.
Among the executives attending the meeting, Co-CEO Han Jong-hee and the chip division head, Jun Young-hyun, will be present. Contentious points on the agenda include strategies to counter the impact of U.S. tariffs and plans for future growth.
Internally, Samsung has acknowledged a loss of technological supremacy, notably in semiconductors, where it trails behind SK Hynix in high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips crucial for AI graphic processing units like those used by Nvidia.
Samsung's market performance reflected this technological setback, with its shares plummeting by almost a third in contrast to SK Hynix's 26% climb last year. The company has also ceded ground to TSMC in contract chip manufacturing and faced intense competition from Apple and Chinese competitors in the smartphone market.
The company's Chairman, Jay Y. Lee, expressed concerns about the lack of significant innovation and reluctance to embrace new challenges in a message to an internal executive seminar.
Despite these challenges, Samsung remains South Korea's most valuable firm, with a market capitalization of $235 billion, constituting 16% of the country's main bourse value. Approximately 40% of South Korean stock investors hold Samsung shares.