Preamble – Huawei little recognised or understood in western circles
of power
Huawei is not very well-known in
the U.S. for many historical and political reasons and yet it is already a
major, and sometimes the leading, player in most geographical and sectoral
electronics equipments markets outside of the U.S. Moreover, if it meets the
targets it has set itself (and it has a very good record in that respect) it
could be close to becoming the world’s largest electronics company within the
next five years. There are several reasons for this possibly rather dangerous
state of ignorance or denial in the U.S. including the following.
Very low level of business in the U.S.
In its latest 2016 report published
March 31st Huawei says that geographical sales last year for a region described
as The Americas were just over RMB 44 billion, which is roughly $6.35 billion
and only about 8% of its global total. Given that all the countries involved in
the Americas, other than the U.S., i.e. Canada, Central America, South America
and the Caribbean, contribute almost 14% of global GDP it is easy to see that
the figure is quite low even for those countries and sales in the U.S. must
indeed be very small, probably just a few hundreds of millions of dollars.
Preamble – Huawei little recognised or understood in western circles
of power
Huawei is not very well-known in
the U.S. for many historical and political reasons and yet it is already a
major, and sometimes the leading, player in most geographical and sectoral
electronics equipments markets outside of the U.S. Moreover, if it meets the
targets it has set itself (and it has a very good record in that respect) it
could be close to becoming the world’s largest electronics company within the
next five years. There are several reasons for this possibly rather dangerous
state of ignorance or denial in the U.S. including the following.
Very low level of business in the U.S.
In its latest 2016 report published
March 31st Huawei says that geographical sales last year for a region described
as The Americas were just over RMB 44 billion, which is roughly $6.35 billion
and only about 8% of its global total. Given that all the countries involved in
the Americas, other than the U.S., i.e. Canada, Central America, South America
and the Caribbean, contribute almost 14% of global GDP it is easy to see that
the figure is quite low even for those countries and sales in the U.S. must
indeed be very small, probably just a few hundreds of millions of dollars.
2016 financial results
Core numbers from the Huawei 2016 report
(RMB millions) except first column in US$ millions:
| 2016 ($m) | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | |
| Revenue | 75,103 | 521,574 | 395,009 | 288,197 | 239,025 | 220,198 |
| Operating Profit | 6,842 | 47,515 | 45,786 | 34,205 | 29,128 | 20,658 |
| Net profit | 5,335 | 37,052 | 36,910 | 27,866 | 21,003 | 15,624 |
| Cash flow from ops | 7,087 | 49,218 | 52,300 | 41,755 | 22,554 | 24,969 |
| Cash/short term inv | 20,973 | 145,653 | 125,208 | 106,036 | 81,944 | 71,649 |
| Working capital | 16,736 | 116,231 | 89,019 | 78,566 | 75,180 | 63,837 |
| Total assets | 63,880 | 443,634 | 372,155 | 309,733 | 244,091 | 223,348 |
| Total borrowings | 6,451 | 44,799 | 28,986 | 28,108 | 23,033 | 20,754 |
| Owner’s equity | 20,178 | 140,133 | 119,069 | 99,985 | 86,266 | 75,024 |
| Liability ratio | 68.40% | 68.40% | 68.00% | 67.70% | 64.70% | 66.40% |
(NB: it is worth noting that
while the Huawei 2016 accounting results use the standard practice of
converting from local currency to dollars at the average rate on December 31,
2016 (defined as RMB 6.9448 to the dollar), the average monthly exchange rate
for all of 2016 was actually about RMB 6.643 to the dollar and at that rate
Huawei’s sales for the year in dollars would have been $78.51 billion, only
slightly behind IBM’s revenue for the year of $79.9 billion.)
