Lenovo third-quarter profit tops expectations, posting all-time-high revenue and profit

SHANGHAI: China's Lenovo Group, the world's biggest maker of personal computers, posted on Wednesday a bigger-than-expected 53per cent rise in third-quarter profit, helped by robust demand from people working from home as COVID-19 restrictions persisted. Net profit jumped to US$395 million for the October-December quarter. That beat an average estimate of US$293.7 million from eight analysts, according to Refinitiv data. Revenue increased 22per cent to US$17.25 billion.

"The strong performance has been fueled by Lenovo's robust growth across business groups as well as structural changes in lifestyle and work habits since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic," Lenovo said in a statement.

The all-time-high revenue and profit came as Lenovo said last month it plans to issue Chinese Depository receipts (CDRs) representing up to 10per cent of its total stock for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the latest in a line of companies looking for a mainland listing.

Pandemic-fuelled buying of laptops and other personal gadgets, as well as televisions, have propped up sales of companies including Samsung Electronics and Panasonic Corp.

According to research firm Gartner, worldwide shipments of personal computers rose 10.7per cent in the December quarter.

Lenovo strengthened its lead in PCs with 27.1per cent of the market, ahead of HP Inc with 19.8per cent and Dell Technologies with 16.6per cent.

(Reporting by Pei Li and Brenda Goh; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)