Huawei Technologies Co (華為) posted its first quarterly net loss in years after the company spent aggressively on research in areas from electric vehicles (EVs) to chips while the business as a whole slowed.
The Shenzhen-based networking and electronics leader reported a 9.5 percent annual rise in revenue to about 276 billion yuan (US$38.1 billion) in the December quarter last year, according to Bloomberg’s calculations based on annual results.
Huawei took a big step forward in chipmaking and smartphones last year, when it debuted its own fully in-house operating system and began to compete with Nvidia Corp domestically on artificial intelligence (AI) server chips.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Hit by a series of US sanctions, Huawei spent heavily on research and development (R&D).
The company posted a net loss of about 300 million yuan for the December quarter of last year, compared with a net profit of 13.9 billion yuan a year previously when the company recorded gains from previous asset sales.
Overall, the company made a net profit of 62.6 billion yuan last year, down 28 percent from 87 billion yuan in 2023.
A Huawei spokesperson in a statement said that profit slipped last year because it “continued to increase... future-oriented investment and there were no gains from the sale of businesses.”
Huawei said it plowed 179.7 billion yuan into R&D last year, up 9.1 percent from 2023 and about one-fifth of overall revenue.
Revenue last year rose 22 percent year-on-year to 862.1 billion yuan, the highest since the figure surpassed 890 billion yuan in 2020.
Most of that came from its information and communication technology infrastructure business and consumer products — which encompass handsets, wearables and laptops — followed by cloud computing and telecom business.
The results were “in line with forecast,” Huawei’s rotating chairwoman Sabrina Meng (孟晚舟) said in a statement.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, booked its first-ever profit from its Arizona subsidiary in the first half of this year, four years after operations began, a company financial statement showed. Wholly owned by TSMC, the Arizona unit contributed NT$4.52 billion (US$150.1 million) in net profit, compared with a loss of NT$4.34 billion a year earlier, the statement showed. The company attributed the turnaround to strong market demand and high factory utilization. The Arizona unit counts Apple Inc, Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc among its major customers. The firm’s first fab in Arizona began high-volume production
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: The Japanese company is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence linchpins Nvidia Corp and TSMC Softbank Group Corp agreed to buy US$2 billion of Intel Corp stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. The Japanese company, which is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence (AI) linchpins Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is to pay US$23 a share — a small discount to Intel’s last close. Shares of the US chipmaker, which would issue new stock to Softbank, surged more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Softbank’s stock fell as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo, its
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
RSS