Huawei’s 2025 revenue and net profit will see moderate growth, with a 72% surge in intelligent vehicle revenue.

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Against the backdrop of “uncertainty in the macro environment continuing to increase,” Huawei delivers a report card of “steady growth, profit recovery, and significant improvement in cash flow.”

On Tuesday, Huawei released its 2025 annual report showing the company achieved total sales revenue of 880.9 billion yuan, up 2.2% year-over-year; operating profit of 96.9 billion yuan, up about 22%, with operating profit margin rising back to 11.0%; and net profit of 68 billion yuan, up 8.7%.

More notably, cash flow recovery is highlighted. In 2025, operating cash flow reached 127.4 billion yuan, a 44% increase year-over-year, the highest in the past five years.

At the business level, growth momentum is more clearly directed toward AI and automotive: smart vehicle solutions revenue reached 45 billion yuan, a 72.1% increase; digital energy revenue was 77.3 billion yuan, up 12.7%. In comparison, the two main segments—ICT infrastructure and terminals—maintain slight growth; cloud computing revenue slightly declined to 32.1 billion yuan, indicating a rebalancing phase in capability building and commercialization of “AI black land.”

Strategically, management defines “artificial intelligence” as one of the most certain strategic opportunities for the next decade, emphasizing strategic focus, open ecosystems, and “winning through quality.”

In the annual report, Huawei’s rotating chairman Meng Wanzhou stated:

Artificial intelligence may be the last technological revolution in human history, destined for ups and downs, but also bound to be magnificent. We firmly believe this will be the greatest development opportunity in the next ten years or even longer, and the most certain strategic opportunity.

The macro environment remains severe, and uncertainty continues to grow. Navigating through fog, more important than speed is the accuracy of the compass. While seizing certain opportunities, strategic focus is essential. We must maintain strategic resolve, proceed steadily, stick to hardware as the main profit model, restrain development boundaries, strengthen core competitiveness, and build a “silicon-based black land.”

Core Financials: Moderate Revenue Growth, Profit Margin Recovery, Cash Flow Surge

According to the annual report (based on IFRS standards), Huawei’s profit elasticity in 2025 outperformed revenue:

• Sales revenue: 880.9 billion yuan (+2.2%)
• Operating profit: 96.9 billion yuan (2024: 79.4 billion yuan), operating profit margin 11.0% (2024: 9.2%)
• Net profit: 68 billion yuan (+8.7%)

Cash flow improvement is a “hard indicator” change for the year: operating cash flow reached 127.4 billion yuan (2024: 88.4 billion yuan). Meanwhile, the company’s cash and short-term investments totaled 361.4 billion yuan, a slight decrease from the previous year but still sufficient; total borrowings fell to 239.3 billion yuan, with an asset-liability ratio of 55.0%, further down from 57.8% in 2024, reflecting the implementation of “profit with cash flow” operational principles on the financial side.

Segment Breakdown: Automotive “Explosion,” Energy Acceleration, Cloud Business Under Short-term Pressure

From a segment perspective, Huawei in 2025 shows a structure of “stable main business, two major growth engines accelerating”:

Two structural changes stand out:

1. Smart vehicle solutions become the fastest-growing segment. During the industry’s shift from “electrification” to “high-level intelligence,” Huawei leverages the scale effect through products like Qian Kun Intelligent Driving, HarmonyOS Cockpit, vehicle control, and smart components.

2. Digital energy continues to benefit from certain trends: the demand driven by low-carbon power generation, transportation electrification, and AI data center energy consumption challenges makes it a candidate for the “second curve” of profit and growth.

Cloud computing revenue slightly declined, but the company emphasizes ongoing efforts to “solve industry problems with AI,” develop CloudMatrix AI Infra, Token services, and industry intelligence platforms, indicating it remains in an investment and structural adjustment phase focused on capabilities and ecosystems.

Regional Structure: Overseas Support for Growth, EMEA and Asia-Pacific Contribute More

From a regional perspective, Huawei’s 2025 growth is increasingly driven by overseas markets:

• China market: 616.2 billion yuan, +0.2% YoY, stable but limited growth.
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa): 161.4 billion yuan, +8.8% YoY.
• Asia-Pacific: 50.1 billion yuan, +15.7%, one of the key high-growth regions.
• Americas: 37.2 billion yuan, +2.4%.
• Others: 16 billion yuan, -14.9%.

This aligns with the report’s description of regional drivers: EMEA benefits from digitalization, intelligence, and decarbonization investments; Asia-Pacific benefits from 5G infrastructure and industry transformation; China’s growth is more driven by AI industry chain opportunities, with overall scale large and growth stabilizing.

AI Foundation: From 5G-A to “Super Nodes,” Betting on the Certainty of Computing Power and Connectivity

Huawei divides AI deployment into two “main channels”: connectivity industry and computing industry, emphasizing “embedding AI and security into every product and network.”

On connectivity, 5G-A and F5G-A are repeatedly highlighted: by the end of 2025, global 5G-A users will surpass 60 million; Huawei’s 5G-A network experience remains “industry-leading,” promoting operators to shift from traffic management to experience management and innovate with new AI-powered calls. For home scenarios, global gigabit users exceed 450 million, with over 50 operators launching FTTR packages, making the path toward 10-gigabit home networks clearer.

On computing, Huawei focuses on “cluster + super node” systems: Ascend 384 super nodes have served industries like internet, finance, telecom, and power; Kunpeng launched TaiShan 950 SuperPoD for general computing. Ecosystem indicators are prioritized: by 2025, over 3.8 million Kunpeng developers and over 4 million Ascend developers; openEuler installed over 16 million times, openGauss downloaded over 5.5 million times, providing data support for a “sustainable ecosystem.”

Huawei Cloud: From “Large Model-Centric” to “Agent-Centric,” Commercialization Still Climbing

The annual report clearly positions Huawei Cloud as “the black land of industry intelligence.” Capability-building paths include:

• CloudMatrix AI Infra: intelligent computing cloud service launched, providing a massive cloud-based computing resource pool; by the end of 2025, over 1,800 global customers use Huawei Cloud intelligent computing services.
• Token services and model strategies: Huawei’s self-developed Pangu large model is fully open-sourced, with over 160 SOTA models available out-of-the-box, and enhanced post-training and Ascend operator optimization, aiming to differentiate between “cost-effectiveness and engineering.”
• Industry intelligence platform: covers the entire development, operation, and maintenance process, with disclosed success rates of long-term tasks around 80% and SLA of 99.95%, deployed in finance, coal mines, transportation, manufacturing, and power industries.

However, from financial results, cloud revenue still has not entered an acceleration phase, indicating a time lag between “platform capability building” and “external revenue growth.” The report also discloses coverage across 34 regions and 101 availability zones globally, implying ongoing cost pressures and the pace of scale effect realization will continue to influence cloud profitability.

Terminals and HarmonyOS Ecosystem: Crossing the “Experience Threshold,” Using Ecosystem to Elevate User Lifecycle Value

Terminal business revenue in 2025: 344.5 billion yuan, +1.6%, representing “steady progress.” The report attributes the core logic of terminals to: enhancing cross-device collaboration and user stickiness through HarmonyOS’s unified base, thereby increasing user lifecycle value.

Ecosystem indicators are key variables: by 2025, the number of devices running HarmonyOS 5/6 exceeds 36 million; HarmonyOS registered developers surpass 10 million; app stores offer over 350k applications and services. For PCs, the first HarmonyOS foldable computer and HarmonyOS commercial office computers were launched, seen as important milestones in “completing the HarmonyOS terminal puzzle” (over 15k HarmonyOS computer applications).

In hardware, product lines including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and wearables emphasize “high-end and innovative forms”; retail and service networks continue to expand: 16 flagship stores, 480 smart life stores worldwide, covering 70 countries and regions, with over 3,100 authorized service centers, serving over 100 million people annually, strengthening brand loyalty and high-end user engagement.

Smart Vehicles: Launching Commercialization Platforms, Qian Kun Intelligent Driving Accelerates to High-speed L3

Automotive is Huawei’s largest growth driver in 2025. The report states that in January 2025, Yiwang Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. began operations, with Huawei injecting its automotive solutions assets as a strategic platform for commercialization, while maintaining its role as an “incremental component supplier.”

Product-wise, Qian Kun Intelligent Driving ADS 4 is defined as “the industry’s first high-speed L3 commercial solution,” with the launch of full-coverage collision avoidance CAS 4.0. Cumulative data shows that by the end of 2025, Qian Kun Intelligent Driving solutions have been provided to over 1.4 million passenger vehicles; it ranks first in market share among luxury models over 350k yuan in China; vehicles equipped with Qian Kun Intelligent Driving have accumulated over 7 billion km of assisted driving, and 440 million assisted parking instances.

Meanwhile, HarmonyOS Smart Driving, as a consumer-facing “scenic brand,” continued to expand: 585,000 units delivered in 2025, a 32% increase, with cumulative deliveries surpassing one million in 43 months. For Huawei, this represents both a spillover of technological branding and a “stress test” for industry chain collaboration and quality systems.

Digital Energy: Photovoltaic Storage, Ultra-fast Charging, and AI Data Centers Capture Three Certainty Curves

Digital energy revenue in 2025: 77.3 billion yuan, +12.7%. The report emphasizes that growth stems from three certain trends in the new energy industry: low-carbon power generation, transportation electrification, and comprehensive intelligence.

On the power generation side, Huawei disclosed that in 2025, global inverter shipments reached about 185 GW, and it is promoting grid-connected energy storage from technical validation to large-scale commercial use; on transportation, the “Super Charging Alliance 2.0” expands the ecosystem from passenger cars to commercial trucks, deploying ultra-fast charging networks nationwide and overseas; on AI infrastructure, digital energy packages “power supply + cooling + energy efficiency” into AI data center solutions, with a typical case being Huawei Cloud Wuhu data center’s liquid cooling achieving an annual PUE as low as 1.1.

An implicit point here is that as AI computing power demands create bottlenecks in data center power and cooling, digital energy has the opportunity to upgrade from “new energy equipment supplier” to “energy infrastructure provider for the AI era,” with sustainable growth depending on project delivery, quality systems, and ecosystem efficiency.

R&D Investment and Capital Structure: R&D Intensity Maintains >20%, Asset-Liability Ratio Continues to Decline

Huawei’s R&D expenses in 2025: 192.3 billion yuan, accounting for 21.8% of revenue; over the past decade, cumulative R&D investment exceeds 1.382 trillion yuan. R&D personnel number about 114k, representing 53.7% of total employees. As of 2025, Huawei holds approximately 165k valid patents, with over 260 licensing agreements signed, demonstrating its “core technology” monetization capability remains strong.

Financially, while cash flow has improved significantly, the company continues to reduce leverage: total borrowings decreased by about 25.6 billion yuan from 2024, and the asset-liability ratio dropped to 55%. Under the statements of “focusing on hardware as the main profit model” and “strategic focus, restraining development boundaries,” this more prudent balance sheet management may become a key foundation for Huawei to navigate cycles and counter external uncertainties.