Huawei's launch event is held in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province on December 23, 2021. Photo: Shen Weiduo/Global Times

Chinese telecom giant Huawei is distributing tens of billions of yuan in dividends to staff shareholders for 2021, with the pre-tax amount per share expected to be 1.58 yuan ($0.25), a move expected to further inspire morale as the company fights against irrational crackdown by the US' government.

As of December 31, 2020, Huawei's outstanding shares stood at about 34.7575 billion, indicating the amount of dividends to be paid for 2021 will exceed 50 billion yuan, according to calculations by some media organizations.

Considering that the Chinese tech giant is still in a rather difficult period amid the US crackdown, the dividend level - although down 15 percent from the previous year - proves the confidence of Huawei's management in the company's prospects, observers said.

Huawei is not a publicly listed company. Instead, it adopts a unique model in which employees hold 100 percent of the shares. The firm has said several times that it is a 100-percent employee-owned private enterprise. The dividend payments are a vital part of employees' incomes, in addition to their salaries and bonuses. 

Jiang Xisheng, chief secretary of Huawei's board of directors, said that employee stock ownership helps maintain the independence of the company's decisions, noting that since Huawei's revenue comes from every employee, the staff will not allow any influence to harm their interests or the company's long-term development.

However, the company's development is tied to employees' incomes, and if the company loses money, the value of the shares will also decrease, and the employees - as shareholders - have to bear the corresponding risk of impairment, Jiang said.

A Huawei employee said in a post on the company's online community Xinsheng that he is satisfied with the pre-tax dividend since the company faced extreme suppression by some countries last year.

The dividend also comes after a decline of Huawei's revenue in 2021. Huawei's annual revenue in 2021 was about 634 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 28.9 percent, which means revenue has returned to the level of 2017.

A sharp decline in the mobile phone business revenue was one of the main reasons.

Huawei's rotating chairman Guo Ping said in his New Year's speech that in the face of continued turbulence in the external environment and challenges such as the politicization of technology in the industry of information and communication technology, the company should stick to its current strategy.

Huawei's new efforts to boost business include expanding its cloud services business in the Asia-Pacific region, helping domestic companies reduce their carbon footprints, providing more 5G base stations and core network equipment to major Chinese telecom operators, as well as setting up partnerships for its HarmonyOS mobile platform.

Global Times