Huawei posts 2.4% revenue growth in first 9 months on back of Mate 60 series smartphone launch

The Shenzhen-based company said its revenue from January to September reached 456.6 billion yuan, up 2.4 per cent compared with the same period last year
The latest financial results come after Huawei made a strong comeback in the smartphone market with the surprise launch of Mate 60 series smartphones

Huawei

Iris Dengin Shenzhen

Published: 4:03pm, 27 Oct 2023

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Huawei Technologies maintained revenue growth momentum in the first three quarters of 2023, on the back of strong sales of its Mate 60 series 5G smartphones as the company continues to defy the impact of US sanctions.

On Friday, the Shenzhen-based company said its revenue from January to September reached 456.6 billion yuan (US$62.4 billion), up 2.4 per cent compared with the same period last year. However, revenue growth was slower than the 3.1 per cent increase in the first half.

Net profit margin in the first nine months was 16 per cent as Huawei recorded partial gains from the sale of businesses and improved efficiency, a slight improvement from the 15 per cent in the first half, according to the company.

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Huawei said the performance was in line with forecasts. While the company is privately held, it voluntarily discloses key financial data on a regular basis.

Although Huawei did not provide breakdowns for its main segments, the company said its consumer business, which includes smartphones and electric cars under the Aito brand, reported revenue growth, and the company highlighted the rapid growth of its enterprise-facing cloud business which includes its artificial intelligence (AI) model Pangu.

“Moving forward, we will continue to increase our investment in R&D to make the most of our business portfolio and take the competitiveness of our products and services to new heights,” Huawei’s rotating chairman Ken Hu Houkun said in a statement.

The latest financial results come after Huawei made a strong comeback in the smartphone market with the surprise launch of Mate 60 series smartphones in late August, which featured the made-in-China 5G Kirin 9000s processor, that was achieved despite US tech sanctions.

The Mate 60 series marked the US-blacklisted company’s return to the 5G smartphone market, which ignited patriotic fervour and strong local demand after years of struggling under Washington’s tech and trade sanctions.

An advertisement for the Huawei Mate 60 series smartphone in Shanghai, Sept. 17, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

Strong domestic interest in the Mate 60 series helped Huawei grow its third-quarter smartphone sales by 37 per cent from a year earlier, amid an overall decline of 3 per cent in the Chinese smartphone market, according to Counterpoint Research.

Apart from its efforts in smartphones, Huawei has also stepped up expansion in the cloud computing field to diversify its revenue streams and weather the sanctions. In September the company launched a data centre in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, to provide public cloud services for clients in the country as well as other parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

However, Huawei’s telecommunications business has come under intensified pressure in Western markets, as the European Union has called for more member states to block Huawei from their 5G networks on national security grounds.

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