Despite the months-long global coronavirus pandemic, Samsung announced that it only anticipates a 7.4% decline in sales this quarter and a 23% rise in overall operating profit.

The world’s top memory-chip and smartphone maker handily beat analysts’ estimates on solid chip sales and data centers that received a boost from the quickly growing work-from-home economy amid the pandemic.

“Chip demand was stronger than expected due to the COVID-19,” Park Sung-soon, an analyst at Cape Investment & Securities, told Reuters.

This helped offset weak demand for the company’s usual heavy-hitters smartphones and televisions. There were also one-off gains from its display business, which counts Apple as a customer, that also lifted profits, the company noted.

“The last few days, Samsung’s been doing quite well as more and more expectations were that the numbers were going to be pretty good,” Mark Newman, managing director and senior analyst at Bernstein, told CNBC.

However, one “large reason” for the beat was the one-off gain in the display business—specifically a payment from Apple, which is “making up for them not buying enough displays last year,” Newman said.

“That’s really a one-time benefit that doesn’t really help the fundamental story so much,” he added.

The payment was estimated to be 1 trillion won ($840 million), larger than a similar 800 billion won payment a year ago.

Analysts said the handset and TV business performed better than expected due to lower marketing costs and as stores and factories resumed operations worldwide as countries lifted their respective stay-at-home directives.

“The damage from the pandemic was less severe than the market had expected,” CW Chung, Nomura head of research in Korea, told Reuters.

Sanjeev Rana, a senior analyst at CLSA, said on CNBC that he anticipates another strong quarter for the Korean tech giant in the three months that end in September, partly driven by rising smartphone shipments in the second half of the year.

Samsung’s display unit will also likely benefit from supplying parts to Apple for the upcoming iPhone 12.

Rana, though, warned that there could be some short-term weakness—perhaps lasting for two quarters at the most—in the global memory market.

“In the second half, we are expecting some mild correction,” Rana said, referring to the average selling prices of memory chips.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s crosstown rival LG Electronics announced that its second-quarter operating profit likely fell 24%.

Full earnings numbers from Samsung are due later this month.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.