Partitioning external SSD

I am running OS Ventura on an M1 MacBook Air. I connected an external Samsung portable SSD T7 and tried to partition it using Disk Utility. I can erase the SSD but only format it as MAC OS Extended, it does not allow formatting as APFS. But the real issue is I would like to partition the SSD, and partition is grayed in Disk Utility. Any ideas?

Thanks.