Huawei shakes off pandemic, edges up in Fortune Global 500 List 2021
Tech heavyweight Huawei ranking in the global top 500 businesses has improved to 44th this year, up from 49th in 2020.
Huawei entered the Fortune Global 500 list for the first time in 2010 ranking 397th, and in 2020, the firm progressed from 72nd to 49th place, entering into the top 50 for the first time.
Fortune Global 500 annual ranking gauges the business revenue of top companies across various industries.
The companies generated revenues totaling more than one-third of the world’s GDP and employ 69.7 million people globally, however, their total revenue dipped over the past year owing to the economic fallout sparked by COVID-19 pandemic.
After attaining a record high of $33.3 trillion in the 2020 edition, total revenue for the world’s biggest 500 companies shed off 4.8 per cent to $31.7 trillion this year.
It was the first decline in five years owing to COVID-19 pandemic that slammed huge swathes of global economy as countries went into lockdown, but which was a boon for tech industry; a segment that not only demonstrated its importance to society but also managed to keep growing in 2020.
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Huawei results for the six months to June show that the firm’s net margin increased to 9.8 per cent from 9.2 per cent compared to the same stage in 2020.
Eric Xu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman stated: “We’ve set our strategic goals for the next five years. We are confident that our carrier and enterprise businesses will continue to grow steadily.”
Huawei tapped on their diverse business, global operations in different market segments from telecommunications to IT and energy, and from the surge in businesses digitizing across industries.
Huawei also benefitted from its large patent portfolio with Jason Ding, head of Huawei’s intellectual property unit, saying earlier this year that Huawei expects to record between $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion in patent and licensing fees between 2019 and 2021.
Huawei has one of the largest patent portfolios in the world and last year the firm invested over 15 per cent of its sales revenue into research and development in technologies such as 5G and Cloud.
