Huawei revenues increase in region despite global fall in profits

Huawei's revenues have increased in the Americas and in TT, despite the global company showing a decrease in profits by more than half, amid heavy US sanctions and restrictions.

Huawei officials revealed its financial position, globally and regionally, during the launch of its financial results for 2022 on Friday.

Tudor John, enterprise business group account director, said in TT Huawei has actually seen an increase in revenues over the past two years coming out of the covid19 pandemic, particularly through an increase in private-sector partners.

“Our business is two-fold. We have direct customers and we engage partners as well. We have seen an increase in terms of the number of partners engaged in Huawei,” John said. “We are responsible for not only managing the end-customers like Ministry of Digital Transformation and Ministry of Education, but we also have internet service providers (ISPs) – TSTT, Digicel and other private-sector partners.”

Huawei has also seen an increase in demand for WiFi products, storage products and smart boards.

While they did not disclose its earnings for TT, Huawei’s 2022 financials indicated that it saw a 9.1 per cent increase in revenue to 31.8 billion Chinese yuan (CNY), as compared to 29.2 billion CNY in 2021.

Huawei’s financial report said its carrier business saw steady growth as data traffic increased, and rollouts of 5G and optical network continue to progress. In TT, it has already completed its roll-out of a 5G network at Phoenix Park, geared towards improving capacity, communication and latency for customers in the Couva-based industrial park.

Huawei added that in TT there has been no lay-offs over the past three years. Additionally, with the expansion in demand for products there was also an increase in the demand for talent from Huawei.

The company’s global position is not as bright, as the 2022 annual report would indicate.

Huawei’s net profits plummeted 68.7 per cent to 35.6 billion CNY as compared to 113.7 billion CNY in 2021, signifying the biggest decline for the company since 2011.

The company, however, still saw increases in revenue (642.3 billion CNY in 2022 as compared to 636.8 billion CNY in 2021). Its carrier business which includes products geared toward telecommunications service providers saw a 0.9 per cent increase in revenue to 283.9 billion CNY, as compared to 281.4 billion CNY in 2021.

The reduction in profits were attributable to what rotating chairman Eric Xu described as “a challenging external environment and non-market factors.”

“In the midst of this storm, we have kept racing ahead, doing everything in our power to maintain business continuity and serve our customers,” Xu said.

Since 2019 and 2020 Huawei fell victim to the US and China’s battle for technological supremacy as the company faced heavy sanctions, cutting it off from key US technology such as Google’s Android operating systems. This essentially crippled Huawei’s smart phone business, once considered number one in the world.

Huawei launched its own operating system, HarmonyOS, and has continued to launch other devices for domestic use, such as smartwatches.