The Chinese telecoms giant Huawei announced on Friday March 31 a sharp decline in its profits in 2022 against the backdrop of American sanctions and appointed the daughter of its founder to the rotating presidency of the group.
Born in 1972, Meng Whanzou had been at the heart of serious diplomatic tensions a few years ago between China on the one hand and the United States and Canada on the other. His appointment was expected. She succeeds Eric Xu at the head of a company strongly penalized by the economic context and the American sanctions.
Huawei has been blacklisted by the US administration since 2019 in the context of technological rivalry with China and suspicions of espionage on behalf of the Chinese authorities. “ US restrictions are our new normal “, underlined the new president of the group shortly after her appointment.
This measure cuts the group off from global component supply chains, but also from Google’s Android operating system, present on the vast majority of smartphones in the world. A situation that heavily weakens the telephone branch from Huawei, pushed in 2020 to separate from its entry-level brand, Honor.
A group still largely profitable
In this context, Huawei announced on Friday a net profit down nearly 69% year on year for the year 2022. The group posted a profit of 35.6 billion yuan (about 4.7 billion euros) , against 113.7 billion yuan a year earlier (about 15.2 billion euros). It was then his best historical performance. On the other hand, the group’s turnover is slightly up over one year (+0.9%), at 642.3 billion yuan (85.8 billion euros). In 2021, it was down more than 28%.
“ In 2022, a difficult business environment and non-market factors continued to weigh on Huawei’s business “Admitted at a press conference the group’s current president, Eric Xu. “ Significant investments in research and development “Also explain this drop, said a spokeswoman for Huawei.
(With AFP)
Diplomatic-judicial saga in Canada around Meng Wanzhou
On December 1, 2018, the discreet executive suddenly found herself at the heart of a diplomatic-judicial saga, exacerbated by a technological rivalry between the United States and China. Huawei’s number two was thus arrested at the request of Washington during a stopover at Vancouver airport in Canada. Charged for “ bank fraud Meng Wanzhou was accused of lying to circumvent US sanctions against Iran. An offense punishable by more than 30 years in prison in the United States, to which she was threatened with extradition.
A few days later, two Canadians, Michael Spavor, a businessman, and ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig, were arrested in China, causing a crisis between Beijing and Ottawa.
After nearly three years of proceedings, Meng Wanzhou finally regained freedom in September 2021 and returned to China. American justice definitively closed its proceedings against her in December 2022.
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