Especially with 5G upgrades in North America. Margin targets confirmed by the Finnish group.
The network equipment supplier Nokia is suffering from a waning demand. For the new year, boss Pekka Lundmark expects only stable revenue at best, because the demand for upgrading cellular networks to faster 5G data transmission is likely to decline, especially in North America, as the company announced in Espoo on Thursday.
The Finnish group is assuming sales of 20.6 to 21.8 billion euros – which could mean a decrease of up to almost 6 percent. The company confirmed the margin targets for the operating result with 7 to 10 percent on a comparable basis.
In the fourth quarter, exchange rate effects in particular slowed the network specialist down. At 6.6 billion euros, sales were 5 percent below the previous year's figure; at constant exchange rates they would have grown by one percent.
Adjusted operating profit fell by 4 percent to 1.1 billion euros, the corresponding margin rose slightly by 0.2 percentage points to 16.6 percent.
The bottom line, however, was a loss of 2.6 billion euros after a profit of 563 million euros a year ago. Nokia wrote off tax loss carryforwards in the billions because the company no longer expects to be able to claim them in full from the Finnish tax authorities in the future.
