Ahead of IPO launch, Xiaomi posts $1 billion loss in Jan-March

Last month, Xiaomi hogged the limelight with the announcement of filing an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in Hong Kong. The most notable factor is that it is supposed to be the world’s biggest IPO after Alibaba. The company is expected to raise around $10 billion as compared to Alibaba's $25 billion raise in the 2014 IPO filing.

The Chinese phone maker is back in the news again with $1 billion loss it reported in the first three months of 2018. It also clocked a revenue of $5.37 billion during the quarter.

The company, however, seems to have embarked on a path of reducing the losses compared to the previous year when it showed losses of $6.9 billion, reversing from a profit a year earlier. In 2017, Xiaomi clocked a revenue of $17.9 billion.

Experts believe that the company shows an overall positive progress with losses shrinking and revenue rising as projected in the first quarter report of this year.

The Beijing-based company also saw rising sales of lucrative smart-home devices and internet services. Roughly 31.8 percent of Xiaomi’s revenue in 2018’s first three months came from products such as air purifiers and scooters and online services such as mobile apps.

The company’s quick growth outside China, especially in a market like India, has helped the company to expand.

After China, India has become the next largest market for Xiaomi. In less than three years of its launch in India, it turned profitable in the country in the fiscal ended March 2017.

Xiaomi registered the maximum growth during FY17 with sales surging 696 per cent to Rs 8,379.3 crore. It made a profit of Rs 163.9 crore. A year ago, it had revenues of Rs 1,046.2 crore with net loss of Rs 46.9 crore.

It also set a target to hit $2 billion revenue mark in 2017, twice the amount from 2016.

Besides, the company plans to enter or consolidate positions in Southeast Asian and European markets in 2018. It opened its first store in Paris last month, while Senior Vice President Wang Xiang has said multiple times the company is looking to sell smartphones in the U.S. and compete against Apple Inc.

The development was forst reported by Bloomberg.