Huawei on Tuesday announced that its sales in 2019 increased by 19.1 percent as compared with 2018 to 858.8 billion yuan ($123 billion), in sync with the 19.5 percent gain.
Profits, however, surged just 5.6 percent to 62.7 billion yuan ($9 billion), in comparison with 2018’s 25 percent growth level.
Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu emphasised that despite “enormous outside pressure”, the company’s business “remains solid”.
At the same time, he predicted that “the external environmental will only get more complicated going forward”.
Senior WH Officials Reportedly Agree to Cut Huawei From Global Chip Supply
Eric Hu’s statement comes after CNBC cited unnamed sources as saying last week that senior officials in the Trump administration had agreed to new measures to cut Huawei from the global chip supply industry.
If adopted, the restrictions could specifically target Taiwan-based TSMC, a major supplier of chips to Huawei’s semiconductor subsidiary HiSilicon.
Huawei chief executive and founder Ren Zhengfei, for his part, told the South China Morning Post last Tuesday that the US “will continue to increase sanctions on us, and we will have to complete [the new technologies] before that happens”.
He underscored that surviving as a company is not a problem for Huawei but that “it’s questionable whether we can keep our leading position”.
“We won’t be able to lead the world in the next three to five years if we cannot develop our own technology”, Ren pointed out.
He pledged that Huawei will continue to boost investment in research and development, noting that Huawei's 2020 budget had jumped from $15 billion to $20 billion. Even so, a complete decoupling from the American economy would be "impossible", he said, adding that "US firms will also need [Huawei as a client] to survive as globalisation becomes increasingly important.
US Clampdown on Huawei
US authorities tightened the screws on Huawei in May 2019, when the US Department of Commerce put the Chinese tech giant on its blacklist, barring the company from trading with US companies and suppliers.
Washington levelled accusations that the Chinese tech behemoth poses a threat to the country's national security, allegations that both Huawei and Beijing vehemently deny.
Washington also began a campaign of discouraging countries from allowing the firm to build national 5G networks using similar claims, despite rejections from the UK, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and some Canadian telecom providers.