Samsung Electronics Co. reported its biggest quarterly operating profit in more than two years Thursday, boosted by robust sales of its latest premium smartphone and cost-cutting efforts.

The world's largest maker of smartphones and semiconductors earned 8.14 trillion won ($7.19 billion) in the April-June period, up 18.06 percent from the same period the year before. 

Second-quarter net profit rose 1.65 percent on year to 5.84 trillion won. Sales gained 4.94 percent to 50.9 trillion won, Samsung said in a regulatory filing.

The handsome results of Samsung were in contrast to those of Apple Inc., which reported a 15 percent drop in quarterly sales earlier this week due to slow sales of its iPhones.

The popularity of the Galaxy S7 smartphone helped Samsung enjoy its most profitable quarter in more than two years.

Samsung's smartphone business division posted an operating profit of 4.3 trillion won for the second quarter, while its semiconductor division reported an operating profit of 2.6 trillion won.

Samsung sold 16 million units of the S7 smartphone for the second quarter. In New York on Aug. 2, Samsung will begin selling the Galaxy S7 Note smartphone.

In a statement, Samsung said the second-quarter earnings results came as all of its business divisions, including smartphones, chips and displays, "did well."

Samsung expected its earnings for the second half of this year to be "solid," helped by a gain in earnings for its component business.

Lee Myung-jin, an executive director of Samsung, told a conference call that the company sold a total of 90 million mobile phones during the second quarter and smartphones accounted for about 80 percent of the shipment.

Lee said Samsung sold about six million tablet computers for the second quarter.

Looking ahead to the third quarter, Lee expected the shipment of mobile phones to be on the level seen in the second quarter.

Samsung spent 4.2 trillion won to expand facilities for the second quarter.

In a separate regulatory filing, Samsung said it would buy back and cancel 1.79 trillion won worth of shares and pay an interim dividend of 1,000 won per share.

Shares of Samsung fell 1.38 percent to 1,506,000 won in morning trade. (Yonhap)