Nokia Corp. sprung a surprise Thursday by saying its fourth-quarter financials aren't as bad as expected, with both its handset and network infrastructure businesses contributing sales and margins better than Nokia's forecasts.
The news gave its share price a near 14 percent lift on the Helsinki exchange to €3.45 (US$4.54).
You can see all the details in this extensive press release but the main points are:
Better than expected sales of mobile devices, including Lumia smartphones, resulted in fourth-quarter net sales of €3.9 billion (US$5.14 billion) and the possibility of a small adjusted operating profit (after one-time costs) for the Devices & Services division. Nokia had been expecting the division to report an adjusted operating loss. The company says it shipped 86.3 million devices, including 4.4 million Lumia smartphones.
Better than expected sales of high-margin products and lower costs helped Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) hit fourth-quarter revenues of €4 billion ($5.27 billion) and achieve an adjusted operating margin (excluding one-time costs) of between 13 percent and 15 percent, compared with the 8 percent (plus or minus 4 percent) that had been forecast.
But the company also warned that the first quarter of 2013 is already looking tough for the business, so the fourth-quarter fillip is not the start of a trend of increasingly profitable quarters.
— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading