Finland’s Nokia on Thursday reported a stronger-than-expected rise in fourth-quarter adjusted operating profit and sales, helped by higher demand for telecoms gear from mobile operators in North America and India, and was optimistic about 2025 prospects.
Shares of the telecoms gear maker were up 3 percent at 0840 GMT, outperforming a 0.4 percent rise in Europe’s STOXX 600 index.
Nokia’s quarterly net sales rose 10 percent to 5.98 billion euros ($6.2 billion), above analysts’ estimate of 5.74 billion euros in an LSEG poll.
The company said sales at its network infrastructure business rose 17 percent, led by a strong recovery in demand for communications service providers, particularly in North America.
“What we have seen before is that when markets change, the North American market changes first, both up and down,” CEO Pekka Lundmark told Reuters. He added that he expects the improving market trend to continue until 2025.
The company expects full-year profit to be between 1.9 billion euros and 2.4 billion euros, while LSEG Workspaces forecasts 2.13 billion euros.
Nokia and its Nordic rival Ericsson have seen double-digit growth in North America due to a surge in demand after several years of weakness. Demand from Indian customers, which slowed significantly in 2023 after rapid growth, is also recovering.
To take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom, Nokia agreed to buy Infinera in a $2.3 billion deal last year to benefit from billions of dollars of investment coming into data centers such as the $500 billion Stargate project backed by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle.
“We have an interest in all data centers and assuming the Stargate project succeeds, it will be an exciting market opportunity for us,” Lundmark said. He now expects the Infinera deal to be completed by the end of the first quarter rather than the end of the first half of the year. Comparative earnings before interest and tax rose to 1.14 billion euros, more than the 960 million euros expected by analysts in an LSEG poll.
