Huawei grows Aussie revenues to nearly $500m

Huawei Australia has enjoyed a $76.2 million boost in revenue on the back of spectacular growth from its channel-only enterprise business.

The Huawei Technologies (Australia) group, which consists of carrier, consumer and enterprise operations, racked up $484 million of sales for the year ending 31 December 2014, growth of 18 percent over $407.8 million the previous year.

The Australian arm of the multinational vendor made $3 million of net profit in 2014, down from $7.7 million in 2013.

Huawei Australia boasted that the enterprise arm increased its sales by 419 percent year-on-year, although the private company declined to reveal what that meant in dollar terms.

While best known as a manufacturer of telecommunications technology, Huawei's global enterprise ICT portfolio includes a bevy of data centre gear, including switches, routers and servers, as well as unified communications, contact centre technology, video surveillance and more. 

Huawei Australia chief financial officer Luke Austin admitted the enterprise business' eye-catching rise was coming off a smaller base than the other divisions.

"Enterprise is definitely still in the investment phase. Maybe too harsh to call it a start-up – it's beyond that stage – but definitely in its early days," he told CRN.

The more traditional carrier (11 percent) and consumer (40 percent) businesses also enjoyed healthy rises in Australian sales.

Speaking to CRN last year, Austin had singled out the consumer business as the expected performer in 2014, on the back of several new high-profile mobile phones. The 40 percent growth in the Australian market outpaced Huawei's global growth of 33 percent.

Head count has also grown from 550 to 630 in the past year, with new staff "mainly" going to the enterprise business, according to a company spokesperson. Huawei also opened a branch in Perth mid-last year, primarily dedicated to enterprise operations.

Austin predicted that enterprise's growth in Australia would continue this year, in good news for channel partners.

"[Last year's growth] from enterprise will happen again in 2015. We're still looking at a substantial growth," said the CFO. "And enterprise is a 100 percent channel business. We'll definitely be growing the channel."

"This year Leo Lynch was appointed as our channel director and signed on both Synnex and iCITA as new distributors in recent months, so the channel is a big part of our growth plans."

Huawei's local resellers include ASG Group, Brennan IT, BT Global Australia, Astron Technology, New Era, Nexon, R-Group, The Frame Group and SureBridge IT.

Globally, the private company announced in March that revenue went up 20 percent to hit $58.8 billion in 2014, harvesting $5.7 billion in net profit.