Huawei’s net profit dropped in 2024 due to a one-off gain a year earlier, while revenue grew across all businesses, led by strong gains in its consumer and intelligent automative units.

Net profit dropped 28 per cent to CNY62.6 billion ($8.6 billion), impacted by an extraordinary gain in 2023 from the sale of Honor and an increase in its “future-oriented investments”.

In 2023, net profit jumped 144.5 per cent to CNY86.9 billion.

In a brief statement, rotating chair Sabrina Meng noted last year the entire team at Huawei “banded together to tackle a wide range of external challenges, while further improving product quality, operations quality and operational efficiency”.

The company again noted its 2024 results were in line with its forecast.

Total revenue increased 22.4 per cent to CNY862.1 billion.

Consumer group revenue grew 38.3 per cent to CNY339 billion, while automotive-related sales jumped more than fourfold to CNY26.4 billion. The company said it shipped 23 million sets of intelligent automotive components, nearly seven times more than in 2023.

ICT infrastructure, covering network gear, increased 4.9 per cent to CNY369.9 billion; cloud computing sales rose 8.5 per cent to CNY38.5 billion; and digital power revenue was up 24.4 per cent to CNY68.7 billion.

Widening US trade restrictions, supported by many allies, forced Huawei to shift its focus outside of China away from telecoms equipment and smartphones to electric vehicles and smart manufacturing. In the domestic market, its smartphone business rebounded over the past 18 months.

Its shipments in Q4 increased 24 per cent year-on-year to 12.9 million units, closing the quarter with a 17 per cent market share, level with Apple and Vivo.

The company claimed more than 1 billion devices now run on Harmony OS.

R&D spending in 2024 rose 9.1 per cent to CNY179.7 billion, representing 20.8 per cent of total revenue, down from 23.4 per cent a year earlier.