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Huawei growth weakens as COVID-19, politics bite to make carriers its slowest-growing segment

(2020/07/14)


Huawei has posted its results for the first half of 2020 and the news is mixed.

The headline result - CNY454 billion (US$65bn) with 13.1 percent year on year growth – is a lovely number.

However in the first half of 2019 Huawei grew by 23.2 percent. So this year’s number is something of a slowdown.

Profit margins, however, improved from 2019’s 8.7 percent to 9.2 percent in 2020.

The company’s controversial carrier group, which is trying to fund customers despite western governments banning it from 5G builds, grew by just under nine percent year on year. The nascent enterprise group grew by a tick under 15 percent and the consumer group scored reported almost 16 percent of revenue growth.

Huawei’s brief [1]announcement of its finances noted the complexities of doing business during a plague, and said the company “has promised to continue fulfilling its obligations to customers and suppliers, and to survive, forge ahead, and contribute to the global digital economy and technological development, no matter what future challenges the company faces.”

That’s surely a nod to both the supply chain disruptions caused by viral economic turmoil and the geopolitical forces shaping Huawei’s ability to find customers.

The former is a common problem, the latter unique to Huawei. But with 13 percent growth despite both issues, plenty of other businesses will be wishing their problems produced similar results. ®

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[1] https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2020/7/huawei-announces-2020-h1-business-results

[2] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/

Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.