Huawei revenue growth plummets due to US ban and COVID-19

Economic and political headwinds take toll on Chinese vendor's topline

Huawei's Q1 revenue growth slowed sharply as the US trade ban and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on its quarterly results.

For the first three months of 2020, the Chinese tech giant's turnover was CNY182.2 billion ($25.7bn), a slight year-on-year growth of 1.4 per cent. In comparison, Q119 revenue grew 39 per cent to CNY179.7bn.

Net profit margin was 7.3 per cent, down from eight per cent in the same period last year.

Despite this, VP Victor Zhang described the results as "robust" and continued the pattern seen in Q1 2019.

"While our growth rate has slowed, this is a resilient performance in the face of both the entity list and coronavirus," stated Huawei VP Victor Zhang.

"[These results] demonstrate that the company has adopted the right strategy and has shown resilience through what has been a challenging time."

Zhang added that its employee ownership structure, its business continuity planning and ongoing investment in R&D were key to the revenue growth and "will remain key" for its global growth.

"These three combined mean we will keep enhancing the competitiveness of our products and services," he added.

"Promoting open innovation and creating greater value both for our customers, be they the telecoms operators or individual consumers, and of course for society as a whole."