HTC’s February revenue drops to new low

With over ten years of monthly revenue numbers posted on its site, HTC’s revenue for February is the lowest on record. The company managed to pull in NT$4.20 billion (roughly $129 million USD) during the second month of 2016. The dramatic drop in revenue came in at 35.16% lower than January’s numbers and 54.48% lower than February of 2015. To put that into perspective, if every phone HTC sold was listed at $400, only 322,500 HTC phones were sold in February.

The good news is that things can only go up from here, as long as HTC can make it through March. As you may have heard, more than 15,000 units of the HTC Vive were scooped up in 10 minutes when pre-orders went live on February 29. We do not know how many Vive units have been pre-ordered so far, but those initial 10 minutes pulled in more than $12 million in revenue for the company – nearly 10% of the total revenue that HTC reported for the month of February. Since customer credit cards will not be charged until the HTC Vive pre-orders ship in April, we will not see what the impact of Vive sales on HTC’s books until April revenue numbers are released in May.

HTC has also reported that the initial production run of the UA Health Box has sold out. The new product category doesn’t appear to have helped HTC’s February revenue, but that’s likely due to a small initial production run to gauge user interest in the product. The last thing HTC needs to excess inventory sitting in warehouses. Since demand for the UA HealthBox appears to be strong, the second production run should be larger which should lead to increased revenue for HTC.

With the launch of the HTC 10 expected in mid-April, HTC will be ramping up production of its 2016 flagship smartphone for a May retail launch. This means that service providers across the globe will be purchasing inventory for the phone in April. This is reflected by HTC’s historical revenue numbers which show increased revenue the month prior to its spring flagship smartphone retail debut.

Since HTC’s February revenue numbers were posted after the market closed on Friday, we’re not sure how HTC’s stock will fare. Trading on HTC’s stock is Taiwan was suspended early on Friday after its price rose nearly 10% on news that the company had sold through its initial production run of the UA HealthBox. Yes, HTC’s revenue for February was lower than it’s been in more than 10 years, but hopefully investors will see that there is some light at the end of the tunnel.