Revenue from mainland China, possibly the closest proxy available for underlying organic growth rose by 8.9 per cent year-on-year. Revenue from territories outside of mainland China including the newly acquired subsidiaries rose by 115 per cent and accounted for 60 per cent of Hytera’s total revenue.
As might be expected, given the transition that many users are making from analogue to digital radio communications, revenues from analogue products were down 7.9 per cent, while revenue from Hytera’s digital products saw a 66 per cent year-on-year increase.
The revenue contribution from the company's systems portfolio increased significantly, accounting for 37 per cent of total revenue with 90 per cent year-on-year growth.
Hytera’s purchase of Sepura has enhanced the former’s TETRA portfolio through through the integration of Sepura’s TETRA terminals and infrastructure product lines, and significantly enhanced the Group’s technical capabilities in TETRA. The purchase of Canada-based Norsat has enabled Hytera to enter the field of satellite communications, allowing it to provide PMR users with more integrated solutions.
Products from both acquisitions have been integrated into both the upstream and downstream of Hytera’s value chain, and the company claims that this has enhanced Hytera’s overall competitiveness and maximised its manufacturing and logistical resources.
Hytera has more than 90 branches and offices worldwide, along with more than 4,000 dealers, integrators and business partners, and these are supported by sales and service networks covering more than 120 countries and regions.
The Hytera PMR-LTE innovative convergent product family was launched in May 2017 and a number of commercial deployments have taken place across the globe. In the Chinese market, Hytera has deployed broadband demo systems in a number of cities.
R&D investment increased by 58 per cent year-on-year to CNY 915 million representing 17 per cent of revenues, slightly up from the 16.84 per cent reported for 2016.
In 2017 Hytera continued to upgrade its manufacturing capabilities through “advanced IT and data technologies”, aligned with the “Intelligent Hytera Production System” (iHPS)” strategy, deploying more high-end manufacturing lines and quickly improving automation. The strategy also implements Quality 4.0, which the company claims is improving the product quality and customer experience across the Hytera family of products.
“Hytera will continue to focus on the public safety market, expand our business into more industrial sectors, and always grow together with our business partners. While we are successfully supporting our customers in China, we will also penetrate the overseas high-end industrial markets through our great products, services, and the superior value that we can deliver to end users,” said Qingzhou Chen, president and CEO of Hytera. “We believe that with our better connected, more intelligent PMR technologies, delivered by a global team of professionals, we can help our customers to increase their situational awareness, collaboration and response rate.”
Looking ahead to 2018, Yelin Jiang, senior vice president of Hytera, said “We will, on the one hand, continue to focus on developing ‘Application, System and Terminal’ innovations to create world-leading products which include convergent terminals, convergent systems, and convergent intelligent command and control centres, providing customisable and comprehensive industry solutions based on specific customer needs. On the other hand, we will implement our product ecosystem and customer ecosystem strategy, for the purpose of driving technological innovation and global business development. We believe that together with our ecosystem, we can make the world safer."
