Stefan Mileschin

Smallest increase in three years but not bad given the circumstances

Huawei Technologies reported its smallest annual profit increase in three years, hurt by weak overseas sales amid an intensifying US campaign to shut it down.

Net profit for 2019 came in at $8.9 billion, up 5.6 percent compared with a 25 percent jump a year earlier.

Its carrier business, which includes 5G mobile network equipment, saw sales rise just 3.8 percent.

It could be a lot worse. The US has been doing its best to shut down the company with an allegation that it is spying for the Chinese. The claims require you to take Donald Trump’s word for it but he is “really smart” so it must be true.

Trump’s administration is also preparing further measures that will seek to restrict the supply of chips to the company as it appears that not enough people in the world believe that that the company is spying, so the next best way to harm it is to cut off its chip supply.

Meanwhile, Huawei is having to adapt to the long-standing restrictions imposed by the Entity List, while also addressing the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Liang Hua, chairman of the board, said.

Overall revenue rose 19 percent helped by a 34 percent jump in sales for its consumer business unit which includes smartphones.

That was driven by China, where sales surged 36.2 percent. In contrast, revenue from the Asia-Pacific region excluding China fell 13.9 percent while in Europe and the Middle East sales grew just 0.7 percent.

Huawei dominated smartphone sales in China, taking a 38.5 percent share of the market in 2019 compared with 27 percent last year, according to research firm Canalys. This was in part due to a boost in nationalist sentiment after the company came under increasing pressure from the United States.

https://fudzilla.com/news/50565-huaw...in-2019-profit