Helsinki: After selling its ailing handset unit, Nokia has turned a fourth-quarter net profit of 443 million euros ($502 million) with sales increasing nearly 10 per cent, partly buoyed by strong growth in North America.
The Finland-based company said Thursday that revenue grew to 3.8 billion euros ($4.3 billion) in the period, from 3.48 billion euros a year earlier when it reported a net loss of 26 million euros.
CEO Rajeev Suri noted excellent network profitability in the period with strong growth in all operations, after selling its loss-making devices and services to Microsoft last year.
Suri said that last year had been “a time of significant change ... and reinvention” while 2015 will be a year of “execution.”
“We will not shy away from investing where we need to invest,” he said. “But, we plan to always combine that with disciplined cost control and a focus on delivering ongoing productivity and quality improvements across the company.”
Nokia said it expects annual sales to grow in 2015 in all three remain sectors” networks, mapping services and technologies and patents.
“Nokia seems to be progressing very steadily in the right direction now,” said Mikael Rautanen, analyst at Independent Equity Research. “No doubt the company will make investments and purchases for services that supplement its existing operations.”
The company’s core networks business that accounts for nearly 90 per cent of total sales grew 8 per cent in the period with broadband sales increasing 13 per cent. Sales in North America jumped 95 per cent to 514 million euros. Growth in Europe, Africa and the Middle East was up 4 per cent.
Nokia, with a large portfolio of patents, also saw strong growth, of 15 per cent in mapping services and 23 per cent in technologies, mainly from payments by licensees, including Microsoft, which bought the devices and services unit for $7.5 billion, including a license to some patents.
Nokia’s share price was down more than 1 per cent at 7.01 euros when markets opened in Helsinki.
