“[W]w see that our strong execution has returned our business to growth. – Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing

MORRISVILLE – Yang Yuanqing touted Lenovo’s resurgence to profitability as another sign that the tech giant is “passed the turning point” of its recent troubles in a conference call with analysts early Thursday.

After Lenovo reported a profit of $77 million, which surprised analysts, Yang delivered a monologue to open the earnings call that cites numerous reasons he believes the worst is behind the company. The global tech giant, which operates dual headquarters in Morrisville and Beijing, rebounded from a loss the previous quarter despite a double-digit revenue gain.

He described the quarter as “strong” and noted a list of accomplishments, from an improved performance by the Triangle-based data center business  to growth in what he has called Lenovo’s “bread and butter” – its PC business.

Here are his remarks as provided by business news website SeekingAlpha:

“We definitely had a strong quarter, demonstrating our progress in executing our three wave [Yang’s term for his strategic plan] strategy. And as I mentioned in the previous quarters, Lenovo has now passed the turning point and entered a new phase of growth.

“Last quarter, our revenue was over $10.6 billion, up more than 11% year-on-year. We resumed our double-digit growth journey. We also improved the profitability in all three key businesses, core businesses, year-on-year. And the pretax operational performance, excluding onetime nonoperational items, improved $255 million year-on-year.

“Our PC & Tablet revenue grew almost 16% year-on-year. That is the highest growth in the past four years. …

“In Data Center, we showed even stronger growth momentum than last quarter. Our revenue grew almost 44% year-on-year, and we saw growth in all segments and all geographies. Overall profitability improved by over 11 points year-on-year, narrowing our loss for the fourth consecutive quarter.

“Our Mobile business overall is definitely not as good as we expected. We are refining our branding strategy and the business model in emerging markets. …

“In our 3rd Wave business, we delivered a concrete progress. Our non-device revenue driven by software and services increased almost 30% year-on-year. In new smart devices, we are already the worldwide number one AR [augmented reality] device player with Mirage. And the last quarter, we launched the Mirage Solo VR headset, VR camera, Smart Office, ThinkSmart Hub and many other new smart devices.

“Now as we move into the Smart IoT era, more smart devices are emerging, generating huge amount of data, fueling intelligence. To adapt to the change in the world, we combined our PC, Mobile and the Smart Devices into Intelligent Devices Group, or IDG. This new group will enable us to leverage shared platforms like global supply chain and services for lower costs and higher efficiency; accelerate the technology convergence between computing and communication; even more importantly, this group will drive a new UDS platform to connect our users, devices and cloud services.

“Looking forward, the new Intelligent Devices Group, or IDG, will strengthen our leading profitability and the market position in PCs and Tablets, reshape and improve profitability in our Mobile business and then return it to financial health. At the same time, we will focus more on high-growth smart IoT segments, building UDS platform and then increasing our service penetration rate. Our rapidly growing Data Center business will become a profitable, sustainable growth engine. …

“We remain committed to significantly improving profitability year-on-year. And to pioneer in the intelligence era, we will build our capability in Vertical Intelligent Solutions using IoT, big data and AI technology. Lastly, we see that our strong execution has returned our business to growth. …”

Read the full transcript of the call online.