Nokia shares slide after posting weak quarterly net sales figure

Shares of Finnish telecom firm Nokia tumbled on Thursday after the company reported a 32% drop in second-quarter operating profit on the back of weak demand for its 5G equipment.

The firm’s Helsinki-listed stock was down 8% at 9 a.m. London time, shortly after the market open.

Earlier in the day, Nokia said its comparable operating profit declined to 423 million euros ($462 million) in the second quarter, down by nearly a third from the 619 million euros posted in the same period of last year.

Citing “ongoing market weakness,” the company said net sales also eased by 18% to 4.47 billion euros – the lowest level achieved since the fourth quarter of 2015, according to LSEG data.

“The most significant impact was the challenging year-ago comparison period which saw the peak of India’s rapid 5G deployment with India accounting for three quarters of the decline,” Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark said in the earnings release.

The landscape likewise remains “challenging as operators continue to be cautious” in the mobile networks sector, he warned.

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 order intake experienced in recent quarter.

“While the dynamic is improving, the net sales recovery is happening somewhat later than we previously expected, impacting our business group net sales assumptions for 2024,” Lundmark said. “Despite this, we remain solidly on track to achieve our full year outlook supported by our quick action on cost.”

The firm continues to target a performance toward or just 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 huge blow from the loss of a major North American contract late last year, when U.S. telecoms juggernaut AT&T selected Ericsson as a supplier to build a telecom network that uses only so-called ORAN technology.

The Finnish firm and Swedish rival Ericsson have embarked on steep cost-cutting programs amid an industry-wide battle against a slowing economy and infrastructure spending trims from mobile operators. Back in October, Nokia announced it would eliminate 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 firm on Thursday said it had made “significant progress” on its cost savings program and actioned measures aimed to reduce costs by 400 million euros to date.

 — CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.