Yesterday, Lenovo announced its Q4 and full-year earnings, and our mobile business unit contributed to the company’s impressive results with a record-breaking performance in the fourth quarter. This performance demonstrates the success of our transformation journey since 2018 and positions us for continued momentum as we leverage go-to-market synergies as “One Lenovo.”
As we close out the fiscal year, Sergio Buniac, Motorola’s President, reflects on the key highlights of our performance, lessons learned and what’s to come in the year ahead.
#1: What are the highlights from Motorola’s business performance in the past fiscal year?
This past year has been a rollercoaster year with the uncertainty brought on by the global pandemic. However, it brought out the best in our organization by forcing us to focus on our strengths and recover from a tough situation. As a result of our resilience, we succeeded in four key areas:
Accelerating our trajectory:We recovered from initial market slowdowns to achieve Q/Q revenue growth in each quarter while also improving our profitability. We ended with a record FQ4, achieving our highest quarterly profit since the Lenovo acquisition and our highest Y/Y revenue growth in the past 8 quarters. As a result of our strong performance throughout the year, we grew +9% YTY and outgrew the market by +5 pts premium-to-market Y/Y unit growth.
Driving growth in our geos: We also drove broad-based growth with premium-to-market volume and revenue growth across all our markets. In our stronghold markets, we achieved our best market position with a record 20.9% share in LA, and 4 consecutive quarters of PTM growth in NA. In other markets, we continued our hypergrowth trajectory with double-digit premium-to-market volume and revenue growth in Europe, APMEA and India.
Growing profitability: We managed to drive growth across our geos while achieving record profitability for 2 quarters in a row. On top of that, all of our geos were operationally profitable 4 quarters in a row - the first time this has ever happened since Motorola’s acquisition by Lenovo!
Expanding our strategic initiatives: Finally, we continued to drive strategic initiatives. We continued making 5G more accessible than ever with the launch of moto g 5G plus (1st to 5G in mid-tier) and moto g⁵º (bringing 5G to $250 price tier), we focused on innovation that matters and introduced new experiences like “ready for” to amplify our smartphone’s capability beyond the small screen, and we launched ThinkShield for mobile to satisfy the needs of our B2B customers and to drive synergies with the broader Lenovo go-to-market.
#2: What are some of the most unexpected lessons you’ve learned over the past year?
This past fiscal year has tested our resilience, patience and adaptability. And I could not be more proud of how our team has handled this uncharted territory together. We worked in entirely new ways to address the novel challenges of the past year while protecting our employees.
One of the key aspects that we had to adapt to is the fact that the strong industry recovery created industry-wide shortages. As a result, we have had to get creative to gain access to critical components and drive innovation.
We accomplished that by leveraging the broader Lenovo strength to negotiate strategically with our suppliers and to be nimble and innovative in the way we bring our products to market.
This agility also involved taking a unique approach with our product development and roadmap, but it is a testament to our ability to innovate.
#3: What are the key opportunities you see in the year ahead and how will your business group leverage Lenovo’s new service-led strategy to drive success?
Going into FY21, we have tremendous momentum in our business with the highest demand for our products and continued improvement in our NPS scores. In addition, we have a wide customer footprint with our 5G products being sold in 80+ partners across 35+ countries. All of these factors have strengthened our reputation as a trusted global brand.
Given our strong performance, and our momentum, we expect to continue our strategy of profitable growth in FY21. On top of these opportunities, we are also excited about the strategy of broader “One Lenovo” and believe we are well positioned to capitalize on leveraging the synergies across the business groups.
To hear from leaders of all Lenovo’s business units please visit the Lenovo Story Hub.