China’s Huawei Technologies said this morning its 2022 revenue had remained flat, but that signalled a halt to a decline after the US put sanctions on the company’s products.
In the trading update, revenue for the year is expected to be 636.9 billion yuan ($91.50 billion).
That is a tiny increase from 2021, when revenue reached 636.8 billion yuan, and which also marked a 30% year-on-year sales fall as US sanctions on the company’s products took effect.
Huawei chairman Eric Xu said: "US restrictions are now our new normal, and we're back to business as usual.”
The profitability of the firm was not mentioned in the trading update. The full annual results are expected to be posted during the first quarter of next year.
Although Huawei is upbeat about its future, its record revenue was achieved in 2019, when it managed to generate around $122 billion – before the sanctions.
That year, the Trump administration cited “national security concerns” for bringing in planned trade sanctions, and preventing Huawei access to US chip technology and the native Google Android mobile OS.
The firm is still a leader in smartphone sales in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe though, and its network infrastructure competes successfully in the same regions, against the likes of Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and NEC.
Its business cloud is also generating new sales, as are its business units covering IoT smart cities and electric vehicles.
"The macro environment may be rife with uncertainty, but what we can be certain about is that digitisation and decarbonisation are the way forward, and they're where future opportunities lie," added Xu.
