Chinese tech giant Huawei on Monday reported its first quarterly net loss in years.
"Operating results were in line with expectations," Huawei said in its 2024 annual report.
The latest report shows that Huawei realized sales revenue of 862.072 billion yuan ($118.162 billion) in 2024, up 22.4% year-on-year, while it recorded a net profit of 62.574 billion yuan ($8.577 billion) during the period, a year-on-year decline of 28.03%.
Huawei disclosed that its R&D expenditure in 2024 amounted to 179.7 billion yuan, accounting for about 20.8% of the annual revenue, an increase of 9.11% over 2023.
At the end of October last year, Huawei disclosed that the first three quarters of operating income was 585.9 billion yuan, and net profit attributable to owners of the parent company was 62.9 billion yuan.
Based on this, Huawei recorded revenue of 276.172 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of 11.55% from the 247.574 billion yuan in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Notably, according to the net profit of the first three quarters of 2024 and the full-year net profit data, Huawei recorded a net loss of 326 million yuan last quarter, the first quarterly net loss in many years.
In contrast, Huawei recorded a net profit of 13.894 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023, combining past data.
Nonetheless, thanks to the rapid popularization of electric vehicles in China, Huawei's smart car solutions business turned profitable for the first time in 2024, recording sales revenue of 26.353 billion yuan, up 474.4% year-on-year.
In addition, Huawei's consumer terminals business, which includes cell phones, wearables and laptops, grew 38.3% in 2024.
According to industry consulting firm International Data Corporation (IDC), the share of Huawei in China's smartphone market grew more than 20% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, while Apple's share slipped 9.6%.
Meanwhile, Huawei's cloud computing business grew by 8.5% in 2024 as demand for artificial intelligence drove growth. This follows news that Ant Group used domestically produced chips, including Huawei's, to train its AI models.
Huawei's core ICT infrastructure business, realized revenues of 369.903 billion yuan last year, up 4.9% year-on-year.
Apparently, the 862.072 billion yuan in sales revenue means that in 2024, Huawei has regained the level of revenue it had before U.S. sanctions.
