Huawei posts fourth straight sales slump as US sanctions bite

Huawei Technologies Co.’s sales shrank for a fourth straight quarter as the Chinese technology giant’s overseas smartphone and telecom-equipment businesses continued to struggle following a U.S. blacklisting.

Revenue fell 38% to 135.4 billion yuan ($21.2 billion) in the three months ended in September, according to Bloomberg calculations based on nine-month and first-half figures provided by Huawei. Sales for the January-September period reached 455.8 billion, with a profit margin of 10.2%, the Shenzhen-based company said. Third-quarter net income was 15.1 billion yuan based on that profit margin.

The pace of the sales decline was on par with the previous quarter, signaling the slide isn’t accelerating. The results were in line with Huawei’s forecast, Rotating Chairman Guo Ping said in the statement. The performance of Huawei’s business-to-business units remain stable, while the consumer divisions have been “significantly impacted,” according to Guo.

Years of U.S. sanctions have strained Huawei’s smartphone business, which was once the biggest source of revenue before a series of Trump-era trade bans cut the company off from key chipsets made by an array of suppliers from Qualcomm Inc. to Skyworks Solutions Inc. One of the bans also forbids contract semiconductor plants from making silicon designed by Huawei.

Huawei, a privately-held company founded more than 30 years ago, didn’t disclose detailed financial information.

The company is exploring emerging opportunities in areas from smart mining to electric vehicles. In software, Huawei expects its in-house operating system HarmonyOS to connect as many as 200 million devices by the end of this year, a senior executive said last week.

Last month, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, was released by Canadian authorities after a nearly three-year house-arrest during which she battled extradition to the U.S. on fraud charges.