Lenovo's annual revenue up 20% but profits miss target

[HONG KONG] China's Lenovo said Thursday revenue rose 20 per cent in its past fiscal year, helped by its purchase of Motorola last year as the PC maker diversifies into the smartphone market, but net profit growth slowed to just one percent.

The world's biggest personal computer maker said revenue reached US$46.30 billion for the year ending March 31.

Revenue from the company's mobile business including Motorola increased 71 percent year-on-year to US$9.14 billion, making up about a fifth of the revenue total.

But net profit was up only one percent at US$829 million owing to increased operating expenses, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

That was slightly below the expected net average of US$830.2 million by 26 analysts polled by Bloomberg News, which said it was the slowest net profit growth in five years.

The PC maker had seen its net profit rise 29 per cent in the previous financial year, driven by record smartphone sales.

"The rise of new technology and market trends, particularly the social mobile Internet, has posed market opportunities and challenges as consumer behaviour is changing," the company said in the filing.

Smartphone shipments worldwide grew more than 50 percent year-on-year to 76 million "driven by aggressive business expansion in emerging markets outside of China from Lenovo brand products and strong growth of the Motorola brand products", it said.

The group's non-PC revenue contribution rose to 28 per cent from 18 per cent in the same period last year, while operating expenses were up almost 40 per cent at US$5.57 billion.

In its third quarter results published in February, Lenovo said mobile phone shipments had surged almost 80 per cent thanks to its US$2.9 billion purchase of Motorola from Google in October.

That buyout happened soon after Lenovo paid US$2.3 billion for IBM's low-end server business as it looked to diversify beyond PCs.

AFP