Huawei Could Hand Out 40 Billion Yuan in Cash Dividends to Staff: Report

Huawei Technologies will reward employee shareholders in cash dividends that could be worth at least 40 billion yuan ($6.2 billion), state-owned Securities Times reported. The calculation is based on a previous announcement according to which the company had held a total of 22.2 billion shares in 2018.

Huawei’s rotating Chairman Hu Houkun (Ken Hu) announced in an internal email that the cash dividend per share for 2020 is expected to be 1.86 yuan, according to Chinese news outlet Jiemian. That would represent a drop from 2019, when it was 2.11 yuan, the report added.

“With the US sanctions, we originally expected this year’s dividend to be below 1.5 yuan per share, so I’m quite satisfied,” one Huawei employee was quoted as saying. Huawei was put on a U.S. export blacklist known as the Entity List in 2019.

Pandaily has reached out to Huawei for comment.

In addition to the dividend payout, an internal notice from founder Ren Zhengfei dated Feb. 3 announced that technical teams and individuals who “managed to overcome challenges such as insufficient resources and persisted in moving forward,” as well as those who “helped the company avoid detours” will be rewarded with cash bonuses, promotions and honorary titles.

Huawei, China’s largest producer of telecom equipment, has a unique shareholding structure where more than 104,000 employees hold 100% of the company. Founder Ren Zhengfei owns 1.14% of the holding company.

Huawei has more than 190,000 staff members globally and the shareholder scheme is open to employees after three years of strong performance.

SEE ALSO: Huawei Rewards Staff For Staying With the Company Following US Blacklisting

In 2019, when Huawei was hit by US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, it paid out 2 billion yuan ($309 million) in extra bonuses and doubled almost all employees’ monthly salaries for October for helping the company minimize the impact through research and development and finding new suppliers.

For the first nine months of 2020, Huawei posted a total revenue of 671.3 billion, a 9.9% increase year-on-year from 610.8 billion yuan.