Huawei clocks 34% revenue hike for first half of year

Huawei generated CNY417.5 billion in revenue for the first six months of the year, representing a year-on-year increase of 34.3% and a net profit margin of 13.2%. Huawei says this was about what it expected to see for the period.

"Our overall performance was in line with forecast," said Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman. "Moving forward, we'll continue driving high quality across all business processes, optimizing our portfolio to enhance business resilience, and building thriving ecosystems. Ultimately, our goal is to provide customers with even more competitive products and solutions."

You don’t get much more detail than that from the release this time, but having contacted Huawei we were told during this period the firm’s consumer and intelligent automotive solution (IAS) businesses grew rapidly, and its ICT infrastructure, cloud, and digital power businesses remained steady.

According to Counterpoint analysis for Q1 2024, China’s overall smartphone sales grew 1.5% YoY, and Huawei was the biggest winner among the OEMs with a 69.7% YoY growth in market share. Counterpoint largely attributed this to the successful launch of the 5G-capable Mate 60 series, as well as its ‘enduring brand reputation’, helping Huawei to make gains in the $600+ premium segment.

Huawei announced some more detailed figures for its full year 2023 financial announcement back in April, in which revenues were up 10% and operating margin more than doubled, resulting in that 144% net profit jump.

Nearly all of that revenue growth came from Huawei’s domestic Chinese market, which accounted for two thirds of its business. EMEA was Huawei’s biggest international region though it declined, as gains Middle East and Africa were presumably dragged down by the continued process of outlawing Huawei network kit from Europe.

As we reported at the time, discounting 2021’s profits, which were inflated by one-off asset sales, 2023 was possibly Huawei’s most profitable year ever with operating margin of 14.8% being over 60% higher than even in 2019, before the US led restrictions on its equipment kicked in.

The overall story then was one of strong growth in its native Chinese market – which is just as well as so much of its foreign business has been cut off. While we don’t have the same level of detail into its financials for the first half of 2024, it’s probably safe to assume this trend is a continuing one.