Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies flagged record profits for 2019 on Tuesday, despite a tumultuous year that has seen the U.S. and its allies blacklist the firm.
“Despite concerted efforts by the U.S. government to keep us down, we’ve made it out the other side and continue to create value for our customers,” said rotating chairman Eric Xu is a New Year message pushed across Huawei’s social media accounts.
Xu boasts that Huawei sales revenue will top 850 billion yuan in 2019 (122 billion dollars), representing a year-on-year increase of roughly 18 per cent.
“These figures are lower than our initial projections,” Xu admitted, adding that they “stand strong in the face of adversity.”
In 2018, Huawei’s annual revenue grew 19.5 per cent.
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Huawei, the world’s largest maker of telecommunications network equipment and the second-biggest smartphone manufacturer, was placed on the U.S. “entity list” in May, blocking the Shenzhen-based firm from doing business with U.S. companies and disrupting their ability to source key components.
Washington maintains that Huawei hardware poses a national security threat to networks globally, as they could be used by the Chinese government to spy on users. Huawei has repeatedly denied this.
In his message, Xu said he did not expect to remove from the blacklist in 2020, and cautioned that a “difficult year” lay ahead.