HTC has been struggling with its finances over the past couple of years and the latest quarterly report from the company will do absolutely nothing to soothe the nerves of its investors. According to the company’s latest earnings call, the company posted its fourth successive loss-making quarter in Q1, 2016, having generated revenues of just NT$14.8 billion ($45.62 million) during the first three months of this year, which is about a third of what the company generated during the corresponding period last year. While the company’s revenues and profits have been on a freefall over the past few quarters, the last quarter represented a 64% YoY drop in revenues and resulted in a loss of $148 million during the period.
One important thing to note is that the HTC 10 has only just started to hit shelves, so those numbers will not reflect in the Q1 balance sheet, and neither do the preorder figures for the HTC Vive VR headset, which is believed to have garnered quite a decent fan-following ever since pre-orders were opened back in late February. While HTC has had a couple of really tough years with the One M9 from last year and the One M8 from 2014 failing to recreate the success of the One M7, the company will be hoping that its latest flagship smartphone, the HTC 10, will be able to regain market share in an admittedly difficult market with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge already sitting at the top of the sales charts, not to mention the LG G5.
Meanwhile, HTC’s Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Chia-Lin Chang, said that the company will look to cut costs going forward, in an effort to get back in the black. The company has already sold off some of its assets, and is expected to cut jobs to further reduce costs. Mr. Chang also said that he expects virtual reality to be “an integral part of profitability” for the company in the future. While HTC didn’t officially provide a revenue guidance for the rest of the year, Mr. Chang did make it a point to mention that the company’s management is aiming to break even on its smartphone business by the third quarter of this year.