Huawei reported a 24 percent spike in revenue and a 30 percent jump in net profit for 2010, according to its audited full-year results. The Chinese vendor, which has drawn criticism in the U.S. for not being transparent enough, also disclosed for the first time the names and biographies of those on its board of directors.
Huawei reported revenues of about $27.36 billion, based on the average exchange rate for the Chinese yuan to the dollar last year, according to Bloomberg. The company posted net profit of $3.64 billion, up from $2.8 billion in 2009. The figures are largely in line with the ones Huawei provided in late January when it released unaudited results for 2010.
According to Huawei's 2010 report, the company received 65 percent of its revenue from international markets in 2010, up from 60 percent in 2009. Huawei's revenue figures put it slightly below market leader Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), which still commands a wider market share than Huawei. What has made Huawei's rise even more impressive is that it has climbed the ranking without landing contracts from Tier 1 operators in the United States.
"What's still missing for Huawei is the U.S.," Duncan Clark, the chairman of BDA China, a Beijing-based technology consultancy, told Bloomberg. "It's pretty impressive the company can almost become a global leader without the U.S. market. Huawei is in the top tier now and with free access to the U.S., it would become very much the top dog."
Indeed, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) passed over Huawei and its smaller Chinese rival ZTE for a multibillion-dollar network modernization contract in favor of Alcatel-Lucent (NASDAQ:ALU), Ericsson and Samsung. U.S. lawmakers have urged the government to investigate Huawei's alleged ties to the Chinese government and military, ties that Huawei denies. Huawei in February invited the U.S. government to open an investigation into any security concerns it may have with the Chinese vendor in a bid to knock down what it deems as unsubstantiated claims that it poses a threat to U.S. national security.
In a bid to bolster transparency, Huawei began providing more information on its board, which has 13 members. The company said the board includes Chairwoman Sun Yafang, four deputy chairmen and four executive directors, including CFO Meng Wanzhou, who has been named in Chinese media as the daughter of the company's founder, Ren Zhengfei. Sun's biography does not mention that she once worked for the Ministry of State Security in China, which has been reported in Chinese media and led to suspicions of ties between the company and the Chinese government.
For more:
- see these two separate Bloomberg articles
- see this Reuters article
- see this FT article
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