SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's Lenovo Group, the world's biggest maker of personal computers, posted on Wednesday a bigger-than-expected 53% rise in third-quarter profit, helped by robust demand from people working from home as COVID-19 restrictions persisted. Net profit jumped to $395 million for the October-December quarter. That beat an average estimate of $293.7 million from eight analysts, according to Refinitiv data. Revenue increased 22% to $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 10% 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 (KS:005930) and Panasonic Corp.
According to research firm Gartner, worldwide shipments of personal computers rose 10.7% in the December quarter.
Lenovo strengthened its lead in PCs with 27.1% of the market, ahead of HP Inc (NYSE:HPQ) with 19.8% and Dell Technologies with 16.6%.