Samsung Electronics' preliminary fourth-quarter operating profit missed estimates by a large margin, with the South Korean tech giant hit hard by extra costs as it works towards providing high-end chips to Nvidia .

South Korea's Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it expected fourth-quarter profits to be sharply down compared with the previous quarter, falling short of expectations as the company struggled to meet robust demand for chips used in artificial intelligence servers.

Samsung Electronics forecast a two-fold increase in its fourth-quarter operating profit, signaling a continued slowdown in earnings growth that analysts largely attributed to weaker-than-expected semiconductor prices.