Huawei sneaks out its 2024 revenue number and it’s impressiveHuawei sneaks out its 2024 revenue number and it’s impressive

It seems to be Liang Hua’s turn on the Huawei rotating Chair, even though it was apparently occupied by Meng Wanzhou at the start of the year. But who are we to question Huawei’s M.O. when it yields such good results? Speaking at a conference in Guangzhou yesterday, Liang announced that Huawei’s revenues topped 860 billion yuan last year which, as ever, met expectations.

While Huawei rarely accused of financial transparency, this was still an odd way to make such an important datapoint public. Sometimes we get a preview from in the new year speech, but it usually takes Huawei a few months to make sure its public accounts meet expectations are fully audited. Perhaps this method was preferred as a signal of Huawei’s gratitude to its domestic market, on which it is increasingly dependent.

It looks like Reuters was the first non-Chinese media to spot the announcement, having noticed it in the Chinese-language Shenzhen Business Daily. The 860 billion number (~$118 billion) is an impressive 22% up on last year’s total and close to its peak before the US started sanctioning the company in earnest.

A lot has changed since then, as Huawei has been forced to diversify its areas of business but double-down on its domestic market. Since Huawei isn’t a publicly traded company, it’s hard to know how literally to take its public numbers. Additionally, it will almost certainly have received a lot of help from the Chinese government, which has all the incentives it needs to create the impression that America’s trade aggression is failing.

But, those caveats aside, these are strong numbers. For context, Ericsson brought in around $23 billion last year and Nokia around $20 billion. Of course, neither of them can be bothered with handsets anymore and it looks like Huawei is experiencing a renaissance in its domestic smartphone market.

"Huawei continues to build a solid digital infrastructure foundation, solidly promotes the development strategy of artificial intelligence, empowers thousands of industries through technological innovation and scenario innovation, and promotes the integrated development of the digital economy and the real economy," said Liang, according to Google Translate.

As well as networks, Liang flagged up AI, software, and EVs as important areas of business in 2024 and onwards. He didn’t reveal any other datapoints so we’ll probably have to wait another month or two for a bit more granularity. If smartphones were a major reason for the revenue jump, that should have a negative effect on margins as they’re less profitable than networking kit. Let’s see.