Huawei Revenue Dips 16 Per Cent To $23.5bn. Bosses Aren't Worried Because Decline Was A Matter Of (selling Smartphone Brand) Honor

Huawei has posted its Q1 2021 results – and the headline figure is a 16.5 per cent year-on-year revenue drop to CNY152.2bn ($23.5bn).

The Chinese comms equipment giant nonetheless characterized its business as “resilient,” and pointed to the sale of the mid-range smartphone brand Honor as a reason its consumer business dipped, while its network business continued to grow.

Huawei is not a public company and so it doesn’t disclose much about its finances. Markets were told its net profit margin rose 3.8 percentage points year-on-year to reach 11.1 per cent, thanks to “ongoing efforts to improve quality of operations and management efficiency.” A $600m wedge of patent revenue helped, too.

Rotating chairman^* Eric Xu nodded to the company’s geopolitical challenges in a canned statement, adding that the electronics giant remains “committed to technological innovation and investing heavily in R&D as we work to address supply continuity challenges caused by restrictions in the market.

"We will continue making breakthroughs in basic science and pushing the frontiers of technology."

Perhaps a little more investment in security could be worth consideration, too, considering a newly disclosed bug that allows attackers to knock out Huawei’s ManageOne unified data centre management suite. This bug is a mere 4.7 on the ten-point CVSSv3 vulnerability-rating scale. ®

^*Huawei has three chairpersons. Each has a six-month stint in the big chair, then steps aside for a year.