China s ZTE says contract sales rose by half in 2003

Chinese vendor reported sales of US$3.04bn.

Telecommunications gear maker ZTE Corp, China s second-largest networking company, posted a rise in contracted sales of 49.96 percent to 25.193 billion yuan ($3.04 billion) in 2003, the firm said on Thursday.

Of that, overseas contracts totalled 5.02 billion yuan, while mobile networking sales came to 4.82 billion yuan, ZTE said in a statement published on the Shenzhen stock exchange s Web site, www.cninfo.com.cn.

Those included a 334.33 million yuan contract to supply CDMA equipment to the Yunnan branch of China United Telecommunications Corp, parent of Hong Kong-listed China Unicom Ltd and Shanghai-listed China Unicom Corp Ltd, it said.

They also covered a similar contract worth 266.36 million yuan signed with the Guizhou branch of China Unicom, the smaller of the country s two cellular carriers.

"But the sales are not equivalent to our company s turnover, which will be disclosed in our 2003 annual report," ZTE said without giving details.

ZTE, once slated to list shares in Hong Kong before weak market conditions forced it to call off its plan, is scheduled to report full-year results on March 2.

The firm reported in October its net profit was up 72 percent year-on-year to 295.49 million yuan as turnover jumped nearly 60 percent to 9.8 billion yuan in the first nine months of 2003.

That strong performance was supported by a surge in sales of ZTE s products such as telecommunications switches, fibre transmission and digital data equipment amid a boom in domestic telecommunications industry, it said in a quarterly report.

Analysts have said ZTE is better placed to take advantage of an industry recovery this year on the back of the booming economy because it is one of the largest homegrown players.

ZTE was one of the first four companies to attract foreign investment under a landmark scheme - known as Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) - when Swiss bank UBS AG bought an undisclosed amount of its stock in July.

Its Shenzhen-listed yuan-denominated A shares - open to Chinese and select foreign investors - have surged 86 percent since the start of 2003, outperforming a 17 percent rise for the market during the same period.

They closed at 19.90 yuan on Wednesday.