Good morning, good evening. Welcome to Lenovo's earnings webcast. Thanks to everyone for joining us. This is Jenny Lai, Vice President of Investor Relations. Before we start, let me introduce our management team joining the call today.
We have Lenovo's Chairman and CEO, Mr. Yang Yuanqing Corporate President and COO, Mr. Gianfranco Lenci Group CFO, Mr. Wang Wei Min President of Data Center Group, Mr. Chris Gaojun.
We will begin with a presentation shortly. And after that, we will open the call for questions. Without further ado, let me turn the call over to Yuanqing. Yuanqing, please.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to discuss yet another record breaking quarter. Our innovative product portfolio and operational excellence drove growth across all businesses, and our transformation investments are paying off. For the second straight quarter, we achieved hyper growth in both revenue and profit.
Our group revenue grew over 22% year on year, reaching US17.2 billion dollars This new record is US2.7 billion dollars higher than the previous one we achieved just last quarter. In fact, profit achieved even stronger growth, with pretax income and net income both up over 50% year on year, reaching new records. Pretax income reached million dollars and net income reached US395 million dollars All of our core businesses delivered both top line and bottom line year on year growth. Our record performance starts in our Intelligent Device growth, where PC and Smart Devices business delivered another historic quarter. Our innovative product portfolio adapted quickly to meet customers' new needs in work, learn and play from home and captured the strong demand.
Our revenue grew over 26%, while pretax income improved 35% year on year. And the industry leading profitability further improved to 6.6, all achieved new records. We extended our number one position in PCs, growing PC volume to historical market share of 25.3%. Our focus in high growth and the premier segments continued to drive double, even triple digital growth in both revenue and volume. We saw strong performance across all geographies.
In North America, we achieved almost 60% volume growth year on year. In EMEA, we become one in PC for the first time. In Asia Pacific, profitability reached our new record. In China, we also achieved over 30% year on year shipment growth. For several quarters, I have predicted that the total shipment will likely reach 300,000,000 units in 2021.
Many people thought it's too optimistic. But the latest IDC data has confirmed that the total PC market last year has indeed surpassed 300,000,000 units, driven by strong Q4. Obviously, this proves our view that work, study, play from home has become a new lifestyle. So the information consumption upgrade will drive one device per person trend and expand from just smartphones to also include PCs, tablets. And it will continue to drive the demand of PCs, tablets and smart devices for the long term.
So looking forward, we will continue to fulfill customers' new needs with innovative products and leverage our operational excellence to capture the strong demand. Meanwhile, our mobile business delivered double digit revenue growth year on year and not only resumed profitability since the pandemic but also achieved record profit since the Motorola acquisition. In Latin America and North America, our stronghold remains solid. Across our expansion markets in Europe and Asia, we had a strong double and triple digit growth, thanks to expanded carrier relationships and a stronger product mix. Looking forward, we will continue to drive growth with our strong five gs product portfolio.
Our Data Center Group achieved record revenue of over US1.6 billion dollars while improving profitability by almost one point year on year. Both our Cloud Service Provider and Enterprise SMB segments delivered year on year growth as a premier to the market. Enterprise SMB reached billion dollars in revenue, the highest amount in over three years. In Storage, we had record revenue and outgrew the market by 11 points. We also had record revenue in software defined infrastructure and services.
And we extended our number one position in top 500 supercomputers to 182 systems. Our true scale private cloud infrastructure as a service, combined with SAP's HANA Enterprise Cloud, has been well received and is generating a strong pipeline of demand. Lenovo is a unique player, providing a full range of IT infrastructure from on premise data center, private cloud, private cloud infrastructure as a service to public cloud infrastructure. Looking forward, with our strong in house design and manufacturing capabilities, we will capture the growing hybrid cloud and infrastructure demand and continue to outgrow the market while improving profitability. Our service led intelligent transformation continued to make strong progress as total software and services revenue grew almost 36% to a new record of billion dollars over 8% of total group revenue.
Our attached services, managed services and solution services achieved year on year growth of 26%, 7349%, respectively. Device as a Services total contract value achieved a high double digit growth of 74% year on year. In addition, our e commerce revenue grew 45% year on year and continued to set new records. Looking forward, we will further drive service led intelligent transformation through further driving growth in managed service, particularly Device as a Service, and leverage our experience and capabilities to build a solution focusing on smart manufacturing, smart education, smart healthcare and more. Clearly, 2020 was a challenging year that brought remarkable changes to our world.
Thanks to our continued innovation, excellent operation and robust resilience, Lenovo quickly responded to the changing market and delivered excellent results. As we prepare for the new fiscal year ahead, we will further align our organization with our strategy and sharpen our execution. Effective 04/01/2021, we will establish a new business group, SSG, Solutions and Services group. By integrating all the existing services and solutions teams across the company into a dedicated organization. Thus, the three business groups could be fully responsible for the execution of each S in the 3S strategy.
IDG, Intelligent Device Group, will be led by Luca Rasi, Senior Vice President and the current President of PCSD in EMEA and Latin America, to focus on Smart IoT. ISG, Infrastructure Solutions
Group, renamed from Data Center Group, will continue to
be led by Kirk Skogben, Executive Vice President and President of Data Center Group, and drive smart infrastructure. And the newly formed SSG Solutions and Service Group will be led by Keng Wang, Senior Vice President and the current President of PCSD in Asia Pacific, will be responsible for growing our business in smart vertical and services. At the same time, in order to further improve synergies among business groups and build a unified customer centric interface, we will integrate the existing geo model structure into two sales organizations: China Geo, to be led by Liu Jun, Executive Vice President and the current President of IPG in China and international sales organization to be led by Matt Zielinski, Senior Vice President and the current President of PCSD in North America, covering Asia Pacific, EMEA, North America and Latin American GEOs. The two sales organizations will assume the same sales function system and drive our integrated go to market strategy across all business groups in their respective locations. They will face our customers and partners unified as one Lenovo.
As a result, I believe we will be able to respond more quickly to customer needs and market demands and further unlock the company's true value. Here, I would also like to share another news. Mr. Gianfranco Lanci, President and Chief Operating Officer of Lenovo,
will
be retiring from the company in September 2021. Gianfranco has been instrumental in our success, growing Lenovo into the undisputed number one in global PC market in the past decade. His incredible legacy has led much of the foundation for our future growth. During the transition period to September, he will continue to fulfill his responsibilities while ensuring a smooth transition for the future. In 2021, with our planned issuing of Chinese depository receipts on Shanghai Stock Exchange.
We will also further invest in technology and innovation, driving intelligent transformation across industries and create sustainable growth for our company. Thank you. Now let me turn it over to our CFO, Wei Min. Wei Min, please.
Thank you, Yanqing. I will now take you through Lenovo's financial and operational performance in fiscal year twenty twenty one. Next chart, please. This quarter, the group again set several performing records. We delivered sales growth across geographies and businesses, robust margin, all time high group revenue and profits and strong cash flow generation.
Our service led transformation continued to accelerate, and we further enhanced our service portfolio to build new growth catalysts. Our group revenue increased 22% year on year to $17,200,000,000 PCSD and DCG achieved record sales, while MBG grew its revenue at a double digit rate. The group's gross margin improved 10 basis points year on year, and our E2R ratio was reduced by 0.5 percentage points to 12.1%, a result of our operational excellence and optimization in sales mix. Software and services and e commerce business grew their revenue strongly by 3645% year on year respectively. The high margin rates continue to support our profit trajectory.
Our net income grew 53% to an all time high of million. Record breaking PCSD profit and consistent profit improvement in MBG and DCG helped in setting this new milestone. The basic earnings per share was US0.31 dollars up 53% from the previous year. Next chart, please. In Q3, our cash flow generated from operations improved by US1.425 billion dollars year on year to US1.963 billion Our net debt level was reduced by RMB755 million year on year.
The supply dynamics remain a challenge for the sector. Our inventory days increased four days year on year as we continue to secure critical parts to fulfill strong future demand. Sequentially, inventory days lowered by five days quarter on quarter, thanks to strong demand. AR days also improved eight days year on year, thanks to improved efficiency in our factoring program. Next chart, please.
PCSD achieved all time high revenue and profits. The sector demand was strong and above expectation as supported by lifestyle changes including one PC per person trend and rising usage intensity, leveraging our operational excellence, product innovation and quick time to market capabilities to address new demand tailwinds. PCSD revenue grew by 27% year on year to US14 dollars in the quarter. Our unique hybrid manufacturing strategy allow us to have greater flexibility and more supply to fulfill strong sector demand. We boosted our share gain to capture 25.3 of global market share and expanded our market share lead to 4.2 points ahead of the number two player.
We also became number one in EMEA for the first time. PCSD further scaled up its higher margin and high growth segments to drive expansion of pretax margin by more than 40 basis points to a record high of 6.6%. The Theme and Light, Gaming PC, e commerce and Software and Services business saw double digit growth and market share gain. Pretax profit increased by 35% year on year to million. Next chart, please.
MBG revenue grew 10% year on year, thanks to the team's continued effort in expanding portfolio and carrier ranging. With launch of new five gs models and gaming phones, the group has improved its average selling price by 19% year on year and such product mix improvement helped the business to resume profitability. Its PTI dollar reached US10 million dollars and could have improved further if it wasn't for the higher freight cost and industry wide component shortages. The revenue contribution from five gs models now represent more than 10% of MBG revenue, significantly growing from the previous quarter. The business will continue to execute its five gs for all strategy to make five gs more accessible in all prices spectrum while continue to make important carrier penetration to drive profitable growth.
Next chart, please. In the third quarter, our DCG achieved record revenue driven by solid growth across both CSP and ESMB segments. The CSP business continued to capitalize on cloud demand and achieved double digit revenue growth across regions except for China where orders with better profitability were given higher regional priority. The SMB business delivered in the highest revenue in three years, thanks to its record performance in software defined infrastructure, storage, high performance computing and services. These high margin products with higher revenue mix resulted in a better profitability profile.
The DCG business improved its operation result by 14,000,000 year on year to a pretax loss of RMB33 million. The growth efforts in product diversification and development of alternative platforms, the availability of highland system as well as storage solution have started to pay off. Given our recent design wins for profitable projects and advanced configuration, DCG is on track to drive long term top line growth and profitability expansion. Next chart, please. Our teams are executing well on the software and services led transformation, accelerating our pace further to transitioning into a service model and expanding our service scope.
The software and services business, which carries the highest margin profile among all products, reported invoice revenue and deferred revenue growth of 3630% year on year, respectively, representing to around 8.1% of the group's revenue. Among the three key business elements, managed service, including device as service, a company called DaaS, enjoyed 73% growth because of strong progress in contract wins globally. Complex Solutions also remained strong and posted 49% growth from all verticals. Our test service continued to grow steadily, up 26%. Next chart, please.
Looking forward, the group will continue to leverage its core competence in driving earning growth and business transformation by taking advantage of tailwind opportunities, including e learning, work from home, play from home, cloud infrastructure and five gs. We remain optimistic that these long term structural trends can expand the addressable market for PCSD and cloud infrastructure as well as accelerate development of five gs services. Our PC SD business will leverage our operational excellence and global franchise to increase supply to meet strong segment demand and drive consistent premium to market revenue growth through investment in the high growth and premium segments. We will continue to build capability to drive sales growth in software and services business and expand e commerce based on our well established infrastructure. For MBG business, the group will further push product innovation and accelerate five gs smartphone launches to strengthen its stronghold markets.
MBG will strengthen its competitiveness in target market, grow at a premium to the sector and improve long term profitability. For the ECG business, the group aims to deliver premium to market growth and enhance profitability. Through our cloud service provider business, the group recent design wins will attract new customers and expand its share with existing accounts by leveraging its unique strength in the global supply chain and worldwide reach and expanding its portfolio with advanced configuration and storage platforms. Lastly, in the enterprise and SMB segment, the group will grow its high margin service attach rate, upsell premium service and expand its hybrid cloud solutions to drive profit improvement. On January 20, Lenovo announced a proposal to list on Shanghai Stock Exchange by way issuance of Chinese depository receipts.
The company plans to use the proceeds for R and D in new technologies and products to address the high growth new IT infrastructure opportunities in one of the fast growing economies in the world in the future. Together with the new organization structure in the new fiscal year, which enable us to further focus on our strategy execution and respond quicker to customer needs, we are confident in our ability to drive sustainable and higher growth in our business and expand profitability and to deliver better return to our shareholders. Thank you. Now we can take your questions.
Thank you, Wanning. Now we will open the line for questions and this session will be in English only. Please be reminded to limit yourself to two questions at a time. Operator, please now I will turn it over to you. Please give us your
us Please note, there will be a short pause while we collate these questions. Your first question comes from Sebastian Hou from CLSA. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. First one is on the PCSD business. So congratulations on the continued improve on the PTI margin in PCSD business.
And I wonder how much of it was due to the rising service contribution? And also how do we see the margin trend going to first half this year considering there's a lot of the components are have a price hike due to supply shortage and DRAM prices to further increase in the first half this year? And how would the margin be affected? And my second question will be on data center business that the margin also improved nicely. If I simply compare the margin you have compared to the for example, two quarters ago or four quarters ago that you have a similar revenue scale, the margin has improved.
So can we view it as a structural improvements on the overall data center business? And how would you project the margin improvement direction going forward? Thank you.
Thank you, Sebastian. So for the first question, I would like to ask my great partner and friend Gianfranco to ask this question. Although I want to congratulate him on his retirement this coming September. Unfortunately, he cannot start his retirement life yet. He will still be with us for two more earnings cycles as our COO and ensure smooth transition.
So Gianfranco, could you answer the first question, then Kirk will answer the second question.
No, yes, we're right. Thanks. Talking about the margin contribution, for sure, the service growth. I think there are two elements when I look at the margin improvement. And one is for sure coming from the service growth.
The other one, if you look at our numbers, is also coming from a better In the sense that despite the growth of Chromebook, despite we have seen AUR going up in consumer and also in SMB and a little bit in e commercial. Due to, I would say, a different profile of the demand from customer, because we have seen a very strong growth on gaming, a very strong growth on thin and light. We are back to grow on workstation, because we got very good premium to market in all these growing segments. So I think it's service, we have been growing service 30 to 40% during the last, I don't remember how many quarters, but many quarters. And of course, there is a good contribution for service, but I would say the major contribution is really coming from a different profile of the business and a better average selling price.
Coming to components, I think that it is true, there are some components going up DRAM, but on the other side, the SSD, which is a big portion of our product cost is still going down, right? So I really don't see for the next six to nine months any major impact coming from components going up. In my opinion, when I look at the PC industry today, the only limitation, but it's not really a margin limitation, it's a growth limitation, can only come or is coming only from supply shortage between IC and display. Our last quarter result without this limitation could be, and I'm not dreaming, could be even better. So we have been able to manage the supply issue very, very well, if we look at the results, but we can say that it could be even better without any limitation on the supply.
Thank you.
So Kirk, could you please answer the second question?
Sure. Thanks, Sebastian. Yes, I think you're correct. We're seeing sustained improved margins in the business. And I think it's driven by a number of factors consistent with our strategy that remain strong.
The first is in the cloud service provider market. We're diversifying from servers into storage and winning multiple multi $100,000,000 deals in storage. We're expanding beyond Intel architecture into AMD solutions, and we're now bringing our motherboard development on these new designs in house. So we're getting the profit not just on the system integration, but also on the motherboard design and manufacturing. And we've also talked about significantly expanding our own in house manufacturing with new factories coming online in Monterrey and Hungary to support our customer base.
So that's making the CSPE, the cloud service provider business, more profitable. On the enterprise SMB, we said we just had our highest quarter in three years despite being in the middle of COVID. That's really being driven by not just the efficiencies across the company, but by our 4S strategy where we talked about higher profitability. So in storage, IDC just published their latest storage numbers. We were at 11 premium to market.
We became number two now in entry storage up from number five. So we crossed the number three and number four player, and we're just three points away from being number one in entry storage worldwide. In software, we have higher attach rates. In software defined, IDC just showed in hybrid cloud, we grew 58% year on year, which was 45% premium to market. And then lastly, on services, we're tracking a double digit growth year on year in our point of sale attach rates.
We're expanding our truScale as a service offerings, and we're delivering more professional services. For example, almost every HPC install where we had a record, we do data center design around our Neptune warm water cooling. And we also do data center design for some of the largest cloud players in the world, not just providing them servers and storage, but actually designing the whole data center for them. So those are things just some of the examples. Hopefully, give you confidence that this is a sustained growth driven by in house design and manufacturing as well as 4S focus that's improving our profitability.
And I don't see that changing in the future. I think these trends, we feel confident for the future. Thank you.
Thank you, Kirk. Next question please.
Thank you. Operator, we are ready for the next question please.
Your next question is from Albert Hong from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, management team. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the fantastic results. My first question is regarding PC. Given the very tight supply demand dynamics, would you consider raising the retail price to reflect the undersupply? And could we expect for your PCSD margin improvement in the coming quarters?
And could you also give some updates on the channel inventory level? My second question would be, you mentioned some further investment in the service segment using the proceeds from CDR. Could you give us some great example of how are you going to use that? And any milestone of service segment? For example, when would you expect the service revenue to reach like 15% of total group revenue?
Thank you.
So Jean Francois, the first question is for you.
This is for me. Yes, Jorge. No, coming to let's say, I answered first on the channel inventory, because this is probably a very interesting question. I think when I look at around the world, frankly speaking, I don't think from U. S.
To Europe to China to Asia Pacific, I think our channel inventory has never been so low. And in some cases, during the last quarter, we were down to two to three weeks. Usually, the timing and not much on the inventory is running around the six weeks, right, between so we were really down to very, very low level. And it's still more or less at that level. So the channel inventory unfortunately is too low.
As I said, with no limitation on supply, the result of last quarter could be even better than what you see in terms of reporting. Are we going to as I said, demand is still very, very good. I would say, we have not seen any decline in demand. There is probably even building up even stronger considering that Q1 is always much lower than Q4. It's even stronger than in Q4.
And we are doing some adjustment on the price, but I think it's really not rising price because shortage or because of tight supply. It's mainly because, as I said before, we see in terms of demand a very different profile than in the past. With gaming, graphic card, better memory, better SSD, bigger SSD. And in terms of margin trend, I see very stable margin trend for this quarter and also for the next couple of quarters. So I think it's if we will continue to see a very good growth in terms of CA revenue and with the stable or slightly better margin.
Thank you. So
I want to echo to Gianfranco. The PC tablet demand will be still strong for this coming year. As I always said to you, so this pandemic is driving the people's behavior change now work from home, study from employment from home have become the new normal. It drives information consumption upgrade from one phone per unit to one PC or and tablet per person. So definitely it will drive the strong demand for PC and tablet.
Also today, the people spend more time on their PC and the tablet. So probably that will drive the faster replacement cycle in the future. So that we believe the demand for PC and tablet be stable. So actually I have predicted that the PC TAM would reach 300,000,000 this year, but actually so last year we have already reached 300,000,000. So we believe this year the demand will continue to grow by 5% to 10%.
So that's our focus. So actually today's supply shortage is driven by the strong demand. So don't misunderstand. So supply shortage will not stop us to further grow. So second question, we answer the second question regarding of the CDR?
I'm on mute.
Sorry, I think the CDR yes, sorry.
I think we obviously, I think, announced the CDR proposal. I think next thing will happen is tomorrow, we'll have a shareholders meeting. I think we'll approve the application. And from then onwards, I think we will get our prospectus, I think, ready and then going through the necessary process, the application process. And hopefully, that it will, I think, happen within, I think, the next few months.
So the question is about how we invest, right?
On the investment side, I forgot that. Yes, think the investment, we are actually working primarily investing in technology related, I think, projects and investments. I think at the moment, we are actually working out the details. And as we will actually put in more details of where we invest, I think, in this new technology, I think that I think in particularly in China, I think the new IT infrastructure that offers a lot growth opportunity. We will have that disclosed I think much more detail I think in the prospectus.
I think while we are actually in the process of preparing the document and waiting review the document by the regulators, I think it will be better just to give you a high level description of where we invest. But we will actually have those in more detail as and when we publish the prospectus.
Thank you. Thank you, Wei Ming. Next question?
Operator, we are ready for the next question please.
Your next question is from Howard Gao from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Congratulations on a record quarter. So I have two questions. The first question is a follow on the PCSD operating profit margin. I understand you guys during the quarter saw higher logistics costs.
I was just wondering how much did that impact your margins? And when can we expect these higher logistics costs to normalize? And the second question is on inventory. I noticed you guys had higher finished good inventory both sequentially as well as year on year in the December. I guess my understanding or I thought because of the strong end demand, you guys would actually have lower finished good inventory.
I was just wondering what why was it finished good inventory up during the December?
Gianfranco, could you please?
Yes.
Coming to logistic cost, when we see the impact is probably in the range of in terms of impact, this is the decimal, it is not a big impact, maybe 0.1%, 0.2% because on such a big but for sure, we have seen logistic costs going up. But this is not in Q4. This is already after, I would say, Q1 last year. So we have seen logistic costs going up in Q2, going up in Q3, stabilizing in Q4 because we have not seen an increase compared to the previous two quarters. And we expect that slowly they will go down as soon as we are back to normal in terms of pandemic and with back to normal in terms of travel and so on.
But when I look at the impact, I think because we have also been able to manage very, very well the increase in terms of charter, in terms of when you ship 20,000,000, 21,000,000, 23,000,000 units per quarter, despite the cost increase, you can still manage to get discount, I would say. It's really how you manage logistics in terms of both either charter, sea shipment, train shipment and so But we are talking about a very low number in terms of decimal. Inventory, the channel inventory is extremely low in terms of three to four weeks today. We have been building on the other side, this situation, when there is any opportunity to buy ahead, we buy ahead. We buy ahead any kind of things, but it's a display IC, because we wanted to make sure that one, we can satisfy demand.
And second, we can keep the factory up and running. So when I look at the inventory, I think it's mainly coming from parts components, not only. But with this kind of situation, when components, it's very difficult to forecast in terms of delivery. So you usually try to build up the other components in order to make sure that as soon as you get the parts that are usually short search, you don't have problem on the normal supply. So we have been building up more inventory just to make sure that we have enough components in the factory or in our ODM supplier.
As soon as we get what is in shortage, we can produce and ship. Finished goods, there is also the other consideration is that we have when we look at our finished goods inventory, a lot of this is in transit, is on the boat. It's in the boat reaching our customer for Q1 for this quarter demand. And we are we also built up some we have some additional finished goods because mainly for retail in U. S.
And in some cases also in Europe, you need to deliver within January and February. And in February, we should not forget there is Chinese New Year. So production will be a little bit impacted, not too much, maybe two, three, four days, but with this kind of situation in terms of demand and supply, even two or three days of factory shutdown for Chinese New Year can be a problem. So this is also the other reason you see some finished goods. Probably today, there is nothing left already in terms of finished goods because they are either on the boat or on the plane reaching our customers.
Thanks.
Thank you, Jean Francois. So next question, please.
Your next question is from Lei Peng Goh from Fullerton. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon management. Thanks for the presentation. Questions on the bridge, the street,
how how
should let your wife is broken.
So she's not good.
Could you please could you please repeat your your your question?
Is it better?
Yes.
Right. Okay. I just have
a question on the restructuring to the three new groups. How different should we think about these three versus the current structure in terms of the performance indicators or would it still be focusing on PPI margin? And just how how different should we look at it? Yeah. This is the current structure.
Thanks.
Okay. So we will do this restructuring. The first reason is Gianfranco, we are retired in September. So we need to make some change on our organization and leadership. The second reason is definitely we want to drive our organization to be aligned with our strategy.
So you know we have a service led 3S strategy. 3S means the smarter IoT, smarter infrastructure and the smart vertical. So with the new organization, so our IDG, Intelligent Device Group, will address the Smart IoT direction. Then our new named infrastructure solution group partly is the DCG, will drive the smart infrastructure. And definitely, so the newly established smart newly established solution and the service group, SSG will drive the solution and the service direction.
So that's very crucial part for our intelligence transformation. So this has been the growth. We are integrating all the service oriented teams in our growth to drive attached service, manage the service, device as a service, solutions and smart vertical, etcetera, etcetera. So definitely, smart vertical, we will be focusing on smart manufacturing, smart retail, smart city, smart education, etcetera, etcetera. So you know, in the past couple of quarters, we have seen very good progress in our service led transformation.
So last quarter, our software and service business grew by 36% year on year. So with the new organization, so we definitely believe we will keep the strong growth in the service area. So definitely our service business has much better margin than the average in our company. So that's why we think this is the caution for the novel transformation for our future strategy or strategy execution.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Your next question is from Chris Yim from BoCom International. Congrats
again on the strong results. I have a question on PC. Two questions, Polo. But first question is on PC. I would like to know what is the enterprise segment?
How is the enterprise segment looking this year versus consumer? Historically, we see enterprise margin on the PC side higher than consumer. And now it seems like it may be changing. So my question my first question is through enterprise demand and also, like, enterprise versus consumer PC margin. My second question is on your CVR and more on the longer term outlook.
As we invest more new technologies and innovation, how would that impact our operating expense? And how would that impact our ICT profit margin? Thank you.
Okay. So still, Gianfranco,
you have to answer the first question.
Enterprise segment, when we look at the trend, for sure, during pandemic with the pandemic, when I look at talking about calendar year, Q2 and Q3, we have seen a slowdown, right? Really a slowdown on demand when but a big increase on consumer and partially SMB. So it's not only consumer with a very strong demand, it's also it was also SMB when I look at Q2 and Q3 calendar year. Q4, we start to see some signal of demand coming back much better than the previous six months. And when I look at this quarter, I think demand is really back on enterprise, notebook, desktop, workstation and I would say all the key segment or product segment in the enterprise.
And again, I think even on enterprise during the last quarter and this quarter, the major concern in terms of is supply. And it's really how we can satisfy demand. So enterprise, I think we see rebound during the last, let me say, three to four months between November, December and also now January and February and back order is really building up nicely. The margin, when we're talking about margin, I think and when you look at our three segments, margin on enterprise and also margin on SMB, They continue to be very, very strong. The real difference is that also margin on consumer is becoming very good, but it's still not at the same level as SMB and commercial.
But before there was a big gap and I would say the margin of consumer is reducing the gap against SMB and enterprise. But it's still we still run enterprise with better margin than consumer, more or less at the same level as SMB. Thanks.
So I want to emphasize John Fang would just say. So for the first time, we see the enterprise or commercial demand increase, so last quarter. So actually the commercial PC increased by 20% in the market. So definitely now we'll have around six points of premium to the market. So that's a very good symptom.
The economy, the global economy is recovering. So that has less impact than previous quarters. Meanwhile, the consumer demand is still strong. So that's the the the split landscape for you to to to consider.
Next question.
CDR, CDR, yes. So, Wei Ming, could you please answer the CDR question?
Okay. Yes, I think on the CDL, while I said in the earlier, I think question, I won't be able to, I think, tell you exactly, I think, which project or we are investing. But generally, I think we are raising I think the proceeds investing in technology would obviously either I think when completed, we'll either improve our operating efficiency or we'll form part of the our services or solutions that we offer to our customers. As you know, I think if you look at the profile of our business, I think solution and services normally combine a much higher gross margin, I think, than our existing devices business. So net net, I think after we actually raised the capital to invest, I think in areas we are very, very confident that not only will help us to expand further our top line of business, but at the same time, we'll be able to improve, I think, the margin profile of our business.
Next question, please.
Your next question comes from Kwai Jian from Orient Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, management. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions regarding SSG Group. Marino, how do you see the growth driver, the biggest growth driver for the SSG Group in the next few years? And also, can you give us maybe the employee number and the breakdown of these employees by functions of this group such as how many employees are from the R and D function and marketing function, etcetera?
Thank you. That's my first question.
Yes. Even I myself don't have that number so far. So we yes, so we will integrate all the service oriented teams together. So but yes, so by the April 1, so it will become more clear. But the content or the scope of the business is very clear.
So there will drive attached the service, manage the service including device as a service and solution service. For the solution service, so we are particularly
focusing on
the smarter vertical solutions like smart manufacturing, smart education, smart retail, smart city. So
I
definitely believe so in all these areas, we can drive the hyper growth. So for the attached survey, so although it's close to the box survey, but now number of attached rate is still much lower than the industry average. So we still have a lot
of room to improve in the
daily. Definitely, manager service that will be the trend. So in the past quarter, this business grow by more than 70% year on year. So that will be our strong growth focus there. So that's definitely, as I said, smart vertical.
So will be the third area we will drive the growth.
Okay, thanks. Thank you. My second question is regarding the mobile business. We can see this business can profit in the quarter And I want to know how do we see the profitability in the next few quarter? And with more Chinese brands are going overseas, how do you see the competition in the overseas market like in the Latin America or Europe and other markets?
Thank you.
So, John Hanford, would you like to answer the question?
No, yes. But first of all, mobile business, I think, is back to profitability already since a few quarters, right? I think we have seen some impact on the profitability just during the last two or three quarters due to the pandemic and due to the demand coming from the impact with the impact that are coming from COVID-nineteen. But if you look at the last six quarters, I would say, we were already back to profitability before pandemic. And then of course, we have seen some impact during the pandemic.
Now we are back to profit. And I think that even if I look at the next few quarters, I think we will continue to deliver a good profitability. Because the business is back to growth, is back to growth in The U. S, is back to growth, a very almost 80%, 85% in Europe, where we see really very, very good opportunity to further develop Europe with good connection and good relationship with most of the operators in Europe, but it's also back to grow in Asia Pacific, talking about India or other countries in Asia Pacific. So I think we will see growth in terms of revenue, but also we will continue to deliver good profitability like this quarter.
The only question, Marco, also on mobile, it's again supply with the same more or less the same profile that we see on PC, IC and display. What was the other question? One, was the Chinese competition. But frankly speaking, we have seen Chinese brand competition in Europe, but despite the Chinese brand competition in Europe, as I said, we continue to see we have 85% revenue growth and we continue to see a big opportunity. In Latin America, we continue to be number two.
And I would say, to one, two, three, four, five quarters ago, in terms of competition landscape, we really don't see a major, major difference or a big difference. Some of the Chinese brand coming, some other less aggressive than before, but I would say the overall landscape is the same. There are also some other brands that are they just announced to leave the market and it's going to be another very good opportunity in both U. S. And Europe in terms of growing potential.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jean Francois. And thank you, Yanqing. We are running out of time to take more questions. Thank you very much for joining today's call. If you have further questions, feel free to contact the IR team or they know us directly.
The replay of this webcast will be available in the next couple of hours on our Investor Relations website. Thank you again for joining us. Thank you, everyone. Bye bye now.
Thank you. Bye bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.