Huawei releases its 2021 Annual Report: solid operations and investing in the future

• Huawei released its 2021 Annual Report, showing solid operations and increased investment in research and development despite challenges.

Shenzhen, China, March 2022.- Huawei released its 2021 Annual Report, which shows that the company maintained solid operations over the past year. According to the report, Huawei achieved revenue of CNY636.8 billion in 2021 and net profit of CNY113.7 billion, up 75.9% year on year. The company’s R&D expenditure reached CNY142.7 billion in 2021, representing 22.4% of total revenue and bringing its total R&D investment over the past 10 years to more than CNY845 billion. Looking ahead, the company plans to continue increasing its R&D investment.

Guo Ping, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, said at the press conference: “Overall, our performance was in line with forecasts. Our carrier business remained stable, our enterprise business saw steady growth, and our consu

mer business expanded rapidly into new areas. We also moved onto a fast track of ecosystem development.”

Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO, also spoke at the event, saying: “While revenue declined in 2021, our ability to generate profit and cash flow is growing, and we are better able to deal with uncertainty.” Thanks to the higher profitability of the company’s main businesses, cash flow from operating activities rose sharply in 2021 to a total of CNY59.7 billion. The company’s liability-to-asset ratio has also fallen to 57.8%, and its financial structure has become more resilient and flexible.

 

In 2021, Huawei’s carrier business generated CNY281.5 billion in revenue and helped carriers around the world deploy 5G networks. Third-party tests have shown that the 5G networks Huawei built for its customers in 13 countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, offer the best user experience. Working with carriers and partners, Huawei has signed more than 3,000 commercial contracts for industrial 5G applications. Such 5G applications are now in large-scale commercial use in sectors such as manufacturing, mining, iron and steel plants, ports and hospitals.

Thanks to ongoing digital transformation trends, Huawei’s enterprise business also grew rapidly, with revenue of CNY102.4 billion in 2021. Over the past year, Huawei launched 11 scenario-based solutions for key sectors such as government, transport, finance, energy and manufacturing. The company also set up several specialised teams, including a coal mining team, a smart roads team and a ports and customs team, to pool resources so they can respond more efficiently to customer needs. More than 700 cities and 267 Fortune Global 500 companies have chosen Huawei as their digital transformation partner, and the company currently works with more than 6,000 service and operations partners worldwide.

Huawei’s consumer business focused on consumers’ needs and expectations and, as part of its Seamless AI Life strategy for consumers worldwide, continued building the global ecosystem to enable a fully connected, intelligent era. In 2021, this business generated CNY243.4 billion in revenue and continued to see steady sales growth in smart wearables, smart screens, True Wireless Stereo (TWS) earbuds and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). In particular, the smart wearables and smart screens segments grew by more than 30% year on year. In total, HarmonyOS was used on more than 220 million Huawei devices in 2021, making it the world’s fastest-growing mobile device operating system.

Over the past year, Huawei also focused on developing the openEuler, MindSpore and HarmonyOS ecosystems, which are based on the principles of open collaboration and shared success. Today, more than eight million developers use Huawei’s open platforms, open-source software and development tools to explore new commercial scenarios and business models.

“Looking ahead, Huawei will continue moving forward on its path of digitalisation, intelligent transformation and low carbon emissions. Building on talent, scientific research and an innovative spirit, we will keep increasing investment to reshape paradigms in fundamental theory, architecture and software, which will ultimately allow us to build our long-term competitiveness,” stressed Guo.

All financial statements in the 2021 Annual Report have been externally audited by KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms. To download the 2021 Annual Report, visit https://www.huawei.com/en/annual-report/2021.

Note: The 2021 closing exchange rate is USD1 = CNY6.3753.

 

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About Huawei

Huawei is a provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains – telecom networks, IT, smart devices and cloud services – we are committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. Our end-to-end portfolio of products, solutions and services is both competitive and secure. Through open collaboration with ecosystem partners, we create lasting value for our customers, working to empower people, enrich home life and inspire innovation in organisations of all shapes and sizes.

At Huawei, innovation focuses on customer needs. We invest heavily in basic research, concentrating on technological breakthroughs that drive the world forward. We have more than 180,000 employees and operate in more than 170 countries and regions. Founded in 1987, Huawei is a private company fully owned by its employees.

For more information, visit www.huawei.com

 

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