SHENZHEN, China - Huawei Technologies of China saw its fastest growth in four years in 2023, with a rebound in its consumer segment and income from new businesses like smart car components accelerating its recovery from US sanctions.
Revenue rose 9.6% from a year earlier to 704.2 billion yuan ($97.5 billion), with the consumer business contributing the most to that figure, growing 17.3% to 251.5 billion yuan.
While Huawei did not break down the consumer figure, the segment includes its handset business, which saw a renaissance last year as the company returned to the mainstream 5G smartphone market with the Mate 60, apparently overcoming US restrictions.
Since 2019, the US has restricted Huawei’s access to US technology, accusing the company of being a security risk, which Huawei denies.
Last year marked the third consecutive year of growth for the company after revenue plummeted by almost a third in 2021 when it started to exhaust chip reserves, though revenue remains below its 2020 peak of 891.3 billion yuan.
Huawei was relatively muted about its achievement, doing away with the launch event it has held every year at least since the US restrictions began.
In a press release, chairman Ken Hu said the results were in line with forecasts.
“We’ve been through a lot over the past few years,” he said. “But through one challenge after another, we’ve managed to grow.”
At a launch event last year, Meng Wangzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, announced that Huawei was no longer in crisis mode.
Net profit in 2023 rose by 144.5% to 87 billion yuan, with the net profit margin more than doubling on a year earlier to 12.35%.
Some of that came from ongoing payment from the sale of the Honor smartphone brand, which Huawei sold in November 2020, a company spokesperson said.
While the company’s core information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure business remained stable, its cloud business grew by more than a fifth, generating revenue of 55.3 billion yuan.
Huawei’s four-year-old smart car software and components business also saw major growth albeit from a lower comparison base, up 128% year-on-year to 4.7 billion yuan.
Last year Huawei announced it would spin off the smart car unit into a new company.