Lenovo hails FY14 growth spurt
Chinese vendor appears to have drowned Superfish woes as it sees uptick in revenue for its latest financial year and bucks a 'seasonally slow' Q4 trend
PCs are still a strong performer for Chinese vendor Lenovo, showing record annual shipments, after the firm posted 20 per cent growth for its latest financial year.
Revenue stood at $46.3bn (£30bn) for the year ended 31 March, with pre-tax profit (before any charges) standing at $1.14bn, up 12 per cent year on year.
For the fourth quarter revenue stood at $11.3bn, up 21 per cent year on year. Gross profit for the quarter rocketed 43 per cent to $1.8bn.
Lenovo appears to have dodged a bullet after its massive Superfish adware blunder earlier this year, seeing growth in all its business units in all territories.
The company shipped a record 60 million PCs over the last year, and managed to cling on to its number one slot in the market for the eighth consecutive quarter.
With smartphones, the company remained number three in the charts and its Mobile Business Group (incorporating Motorola) shipped 76 million mobile phones, tablets and smart TVs in total for the year.
Its Enterprise Business Group, which includes its recent IBM server acquisition, saw sales of $1.1bn for the year.
In terms of geographies, the US was the star performer, with revenue up 85 per cent year on year, mainly due to the inclusion of Motorola and IBM’s x86 business in the figures.
EMEA also saw revenue growth of 15 per cent, and the vendor slipped into the top spot in PCs across 17 countries. In its home territories the firm put in a solid performance with flat growth year on year, and Asia-Pac saw operating margin increase 1.9 points when compared with last year.
Yang Yuanquing, CEO of Lenovo, said: “[We] continue to deliver strong and balanced performance. Building on our newly acquired businesses and consistent organic growth of our core operations, three growth engines have been formed. While our Mobile Business Group and Enterprise Businesses Group grew rapidly, our PC business delivered even stronger results, with record market share and increased profitability. The integrations of Motorola Mobility and System x businesses are on track and realising good growth momentum, although further time will be required to develop them before they become core businesses like PCs.”
He added: “In view of the opportunities and challenges of the new internet+ era, we are ready to transform ourselves from making mostly hardware to a combination of hardware and software services. This will spur a new wave of growth for Lenovo in the coming years.”