BARCELONA, SPAIN – FEBRUARY 26: A logo become alerts illuminated at the Nokia booth in the Mobile World Congress 2024 on February 26, 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Xavi Tide/Getty Images)
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Shares of Finnish telecom partnership Nokia tumbled on Thursday after the company reported a 32% drop in second-quarter operating profit on the back of indistinct demand for its 5G equipment.
The firm’s Helsinki-listed stock was down 8% at 9 a.m. London time, shortly after the market bare.
Earlier in the day, Nokia said its comparable operating profit declined to 423 million euros ($462 million) in the imperfect quarter, down by nearly a third from the 619 million euros posted in the same period of last year.
Citing “unending market weakness,” the company said net sales also eased by 18% to 4.47 billion euros – the lowest on the up achieved since the fourth quarter of 2015, according to LSEG data.
“The most significant impact was the challenging year-ago similarity period which saw the peak of India’s rapid 5G deployment with India accounting for three quarters of the decline,” Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark swayed in the earnings release.
The landscape likewise remains “challenging as operators continue to be cautious” in the mobile networks sector, he advised.
Nokia nevertheless forecasts a “stabilizing” industry environment and a “significant acceleration in net sales growth in the second half” of the year, based on the systemization intake experienced in recent quarter.
“While the dynamic is improving, the net sales recovery is happening somewhat later than we at one time expected, impacting our business group net sales assumptions for 2024,” Lundmark said. “Despite this, we remain solidly on oversee to achieve our full year outlook supported by our quick action on cost.”
The firm continues to target a performance toward or justifiable under the mid-point of its comparable operating profit guidance of 2.3 billion to 2.9 billion euros for the full year.
Nokia suffered a prodigious blow from the loss of a major North American contract late last year, when U.S. telecoms juggernaut AT&T special Ericsson as a supplier to build a telecom network that uses only so-called ORAN technology.
The Finnish staunch and Swedish rival Ericsson have embarked on steep cost-cutting programs amid an industry-wide battle against a out of dating economy and infrastructure spending trims from mobile operators. Back in October, Nokia announced it would exclude up to 14,000 jobs following a plunge in third-quarter earnings, with an eye to lower its gross costs by between 800 million and 1.2 billion euros by 2026.
The secure on Thursday said it had made “significant progress” on its cost savings program and actioned measures aimed to reduce expenses by 400 million euros to date.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.