Huawei boss in leaked letter: no-go for IPO

huawei-liveHuawei CEO Ren Zhengfei has said in an internal note sent Sunday, and seen by Reuters, that the company will not go public in the next decade – and the incumbent CEO will not be related to Ren.

The boss of the humongous equipment manufacturer said that Huawei will not be going public in the next five to ten years, and plans to avoid entering capital markets. “We have not studied the issue of an IPO because we feel that listing is not conducive for our development,” he wrote.

In the letter, Ren also noted that his family won’t be taking his place when he steps down: “Huawei’s successor should not only have vision, character and ambition, like what we’ve said before, but also a good global perspective and the acumen to drive the business. My family members do not possess these qualities. Thus, we will never be in the running of the successor race.”

Both Ren’s son and and daughter have jobs at Huawei, however, they are not part of the CEO system that was created for when the chief exec steps down. Three big wigs at the company – deputy chairs Ken Hu and Guo Ping, plus veep Eric Xu – act as CEO for six months each. None of the three are related, Reuters reports.

On the same day as the leak, Huawei Enterprise published a statement outlining its five year plan for the enterprise, first given at the Huawei Global Analyst Summit, 23 April 2013.

According to the statement, Huawei plans to chase customers by bringing them increased total cost of ownership, or TCO. Huawei Enterprise Business Group’s William Xu boasted in a statement that the firm has the “industry’s most comprehensive product line”, and with continued investment in enterprise, expects Huawei Enterprise’s sales to meet $2.7 billion in 2013, and $10 billion by 2017.

Huawei keenly pointed out that in 2012, Huawei had over 3,500 channel partners worldwide – and expects this to swell to 5,400 by the end of this year.