Lenovo Sells Another Property Asset as Smartphone Sales Tank

Lenovo Group Ltd. will pick up about HK$1.7 billion ($219 million) from selling out of a developer of property and parking lots in central China, striking the latest real estate deal to shore up earnings battered by shrinking smartphone sales. The world’s largest PC maker struck an agreement to sell a 49 percent stake in the joint venture to a unit of Sunac China Holdings Ltd., the company that’s investing $2.2 billion in another struggling Chinese tech company called LeEco. As part of the deal, Lenovo also gets its hands on 264 million yuan ($38 million) of the venture’s undistributed profits. Lenovo’s pretax gain was calculated from a sale price of 1.6 billion yuan, net of transaction and other costs. Shares in the company rose as much as 1.7 percent to HK$4.75 in Hong Kong.