ZTE swung to a 2.36 billion yuan ($342.6 million) loss for 2016 after agreeing to pay an $829.3 million fine to settle a US investigation over the vendor's alleged violation of trade sanctions against Iran.
Without the provision to pay for the settlement, ZTE would have posted a 19.2% increase in net profit to 3.83 billion yuan.
Operating profit increased to 1.17 billion yuan, with revenue growing 1% to 101.2 billion yuan. Revenue from carrier networks grew 2.9% to 58.88 billion yuan, with ZTE attributing the gains to strong traction for its Pre5G, Big Video and NFV product lines.
To date, ZTE's Pre5G solutions including Massive MIMO have been deployed in more than 40 networks across over 30 countries worldwide.
Consumer revenue meanwhile rose 3.2% to 33.49 billion yuan, but enterprise and government revenue declined 15.1% to 8.9 billion yuan.
ZTE was also recently ranked first in the international patent rankings recently published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), after filing 4,123 applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty during 2016.
The US Department of Commerce had been investigating ZTE over allegations that the company used US components in equipment exported to Iran, in violation of US trade sanctions. ZTE's agreement to pay the fine will settle the matter.