By Che Pan and Brenda Goh
BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese tech giant Huawei reported a 32% drop in first-half net profit on Friday as it continued to spend heavily on research and development to offset the impact of U.S. sanctions.
Net profit for January to June dropped 32% year-on-year to 37 billion yuan ($5.17 billion), the company reported, but revenue rose 4% to 427 billion yuan, its highest first-half revenue since 2020.
It spent 96.9 billion yuan on research and development in January-June, up from 88.9 billion yuan in the first six months of last year.
Huawei has faced a blanket U.S. ban on access to advanced chips since 2020, and has made heavy investments in chips and chipmaking equipment to counter that.
It jumped back into the 5G premium smartphone market in 2023 with its Mate 60 series, mostly sold in China.
The company did not give an earnings breakdown for individual units in the first half of this year.
Huawei shipped 26.6 million smartphones globally in the first half, up 1.7% from a year earlier, with 95% of all shipments headed to the China market, according to data from IDC.
($1 = 7.1529 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Che Pan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Susan Fenton)
