Chinese tech giant Huawei reports tepid consumer revenue growth for the first half of 2023

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — Chinese tech giant Huawei on Friday reported 2.2% year-on-year growth in its consumer business revenue for the first half of the year.

The modest growth comes alongside China's slower-than-expected economic rebound this year, and U.S. sanctions on the company that began in 2019. Those business restrictions have since weighed on results.

At 103.5 billion yuan ($14.27 billion) in first six months of 2023, Huawei's consumer revenue was less than half what the segment had generated during the same period in 2019 and 2020.

The 2.2% pace of growth was also slower than the company's overall revenue increase of 3.1% to 310.9 billion yuan in the first half of the year.

Huawei's ICT infrastructure business, which includes carrier and enterprise services revenue, contributed the most to overall revenue with 167.2 billion yuan for the first half of the year.

Cloud services brought in revenue of 24.1 billion yuan, while intelligent automotive solutions — whose products include tech for new energy vehicles — saw revenue of 1 billion yuan in the first six months of 2023.

Huawei has its own electric car brand, Aito, which claims to have produced 100,000 vehicles in 15 months through a partnership. Those sales are generally counted as part of the consumer business.

The consumer segment is the only unit with year-on-year comparable figures since Huawei didn't start reporting revenue breakdown by cloud and other industries until late last year.

Huawei reported a significant increase in its net profit margin of 15% in the first half of the year, up from 5% in the year-ago period. The company attributed the improvement to better management systems and gains from the sale of certain businesses, which it did not specify.

The company