Telecommunications firm Huawei’s ranking in the global top 500 enterprises has moved up five places to 44th this year.

The private employee-owned firm entered the list for the first time back in 2010 with a ranking of 397th, and by 2020, it leapt from 72nd to 49th place, making its way into the top 50 for the first time.

The Fortune Global 500 annual ranking measures the business revenue of the top businesses across industries. The companies generated revenues totalling more than one-third of the world’s GDP and employ 69.7 million people worldwide, however, their total revenue shrank over the past year.

After a record high of US$33.3 trillion was reached in the 2020 edition, total revenue for the world’s biggest 500 companies fell 4.8 per cent to US$31.7 trillion this year. This was said to be the first decline in half a decade. The culprit was the global COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted the global economy as countries went into lockdown, but which benefited technology companies; a sector that not only proved its importance to society but also managed to continue to grow during 2020.

During the recent announcement of Huawei’s first-half results for 2021, during which Huawei’s net margin increased from 9.2 per cent to 9.8 per cent compared to the same period last year.

Eric Xu, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said: “We’ve set our strategic goals for the next five years. We are confident that our carrier and enterprise businesses will continue to grow steadily.”

The company has profited from its diverse business, operating in all regions in the world along with operating in different markets from telecommunications to IT and energy, and from the increase in businesses digitising across many different industries.

Huawei also benefitted from its large patent portfolio with the head of Huawei’s intellectual property department, Jason Ding, saying earlier this year that Huawei expects to make around US$1.2 billion to US$1.3 billion in patent and licensing fees between the years 2019 and 2021.

Huawei has one of the largest patent portfolios in the world and invested over 15 per cent of its sales revenue
into R&D last year in technologies such as 5G and Cloud.