Foxconn reports ~$11.51B in March revenue, down 7.7% YoY, as January to March revenue dropped 12% YoY to ~$30.74B amid the COVID-19 pandemic
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Sales at Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, a key supplier of Apple Inc's products known by its trade name Foxconn, were down by 7.7% in March.
Context & Ripple Effects
March marks a partial rebound from the depths of the shutdown: February revenue had collapsed 18.13% year-on-year and 40.35% month-over-month after Foxconn cut production over coronavirus fears. The 7.7% March decline means output was recovering sequentially even as annual comparisons stayed negative.
The quarter-end number matters because Foxconn is Apple's key assembly partner — its monthly prints function as a real-time read on iPhone supply and demand. The full damage became visible weeks later, when the company reported an 89% year-on-year profit drop to $70M for Q1.
First-order effects
- Foxconn's own P&L takes the direct hit: January–March revenue of ~$30.74B, down 12% YoY, with the February trough confirming China plant stoppages, not just soft orders, drove the shortfall.
Second-order effects
- Apple's flagship supplier reporting double-digit quarterly declines signals constrained device availability and weakening end demand, pressuring Apple's own guidance and forcing both companies to weigh how quickly Zhengzhou-and-beyond capacity ramps back.
Third-order effects
- The episode exposed how concentrated Foxconn's fortunes remain in consumer electronics assembly — a vulnerability the company spent subsequent years hedging, with its cloud and networking business eventually contributing more than half of revenue and cushioning later downturns like the 2022 quarter where cloud strength offset weak smartphone demand.
- For global electronics supply chains, COVID-19 turned single-region manufacturing concentration into a board-level risk, accelerating the diversification push that shows up in Foxconn's later geographic and product-mix shifts.
The trend: Foxconn's monthly revenue prints have become a barometer of global electronics demand shocks, and each shock pushes the assembler further toward cloud and networking revenue to dilute its smartphone dependence.