(Yicai Global) May 20 -- Lenovo is looking to benefit from a “new normal” characterized by people working and studying remotely after the world’s largest personal computer maker reported its best annual profit.

"We must grasp the growth opportunities of the new normal and new infrastructure such as working at home and distance education," Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing said in an earnings statement released today.

As governments around the world react to the coronavirus pandemic with national lockdowns, million of workers have taken to the internet to carry on business. That has spurred demand for PCs made by manufacturers such as China’s Huawei Technologies and Lenovo, though factory closures temporarily hampered production in the first quarter.

The coronavirus pandemic is driving a long-term structural shift online that can stoke demand for PCs, smart devices and cloud infrastructure while hastening the development of fifth-generation network services, the Beijing-based company said.

Many of China’s local governments have also recently made public new infrastructure construction plans such as for 5G, artificial intelligence, data centers and the industrial internet. Lenovo will seize hold of these opportunities to provide new infrastructure with core technologies and empower industrial smart reform, it added.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, Lenovo’s pretax profit jumped 19 percent to CNY7.1 billion (USD1 billion) from a year earlier to reach a new record for the company. Revenue dipped 0.6 percent to CNY353.1 billion, while net profit came in 12 percent higher at CNY4.6 billion.

Operating revenue from its PC and smart devices businesses rose 3.6 percent to CNY277.5 billion, and pretax profit from the two divisions rose over 18 percent to just over CNY16 billion. Operating income at its e-commerce business surged 31 percent and its PC market share continued to top the globe at 24.5 percent.

For the three months through March, net profit slumped 64 percent to USD43 million mainly due to the disruption to business caused by the coronavirus. Revenue fell 9.7 percent to USD10.6 billion.

Lenovo’s production in Wuhan, the city once at the heart of China’s coronavirus outbreak, and in other places came to a standstill, but output had resumed by the end of March, the firm said.

Shares of Lenovo [HKG:0992] fell 0.7 percent in Hong Kong today to close at HKD4.35 (56 US cents) each, after trading as much as 8.2 percent higher and 1.4 percent lower. The benchmark Hang Seng Index was little changed.

Editor: Ben Armour