Huawei's Revenue Growth Continues Despite U.S. Sanctions
Huawei Technologies said on Tuesday revenue in the first half of the year grew 23.2% despite the U.S. trade ban.
The Chinese company said revenue in the first half rose to 401.3 billion yuan ($58.28 billion) from 325.7 billion a year ago, with smartphone shipments reaching 118 million units, up 24%.
Huawei’s 23% revenue growth for the first half compared with the 15% growth in the same period of last year.
Huawei’s supply chain was disrupted when it was put on a trade blacklist by Washington in mid-May. The U.S. government alleges it is a national security risk as its equipment could be used by Beijing to spy, which Huawei has repeatedly denied.
It has since been given a 3-month reprieve till August 19, and U.S. President Trump signaled Washington would be relaxing the sanctions on Huawei, though details are unknown.
Huawei’s founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei told reporters last month that the impact of the blacklisting could cost the company $30 billion in revenue, and that Huawei’s revenue this year and in 2020 could stay roughly the same as 2018 at around $100 billion.
Huawei’s chairman Liang Hua on Tuesday acknowledged "some impact on our business," from the U.S. blacklisting, "such as intelligent computing and on our server and consumer business in non-China markets— but generally, in the first half the impact has not been large."
There has been speculation that the company would lose access to software and hardware suppliers within the Android ecosystem—the likes of Google, Intel, Qualcomm, ARM and Facebook. Liang acknowledged this in his remarks but said that the international smartphone business had now recovered to around 80% of its pre-blacklist levels.