HELSINKI-Nokia Corp.’s fourth-quarter results showed a 13-percent drop in net profit, but the company is stressing the positive in its mobile-phone shipments and infrastructure performance.
The company reported a net profit of $1.31 billion or 29 cents per share, compared with the year-ago period of $1.51 billion, or 25 cents per share.
In its mobile-phones business, the company’s financial figures were not as bright as its volume shipments and market share profile. It recorded an operating profit of $1.3 billion, a 38-percent drop from the year-ago period of $2.2 billion. It also had a 6-percent net sales decrease to $7.2 billion for the quarter compared with the same quarter the previous year of $8 billion.
However, Nokia enjoyed a combined mobile device volume growth for the quarter, setting a record with 66.1 million unit sales amounting to a 19-percent leap year-on-year and 29 percent sequentially. This also led to its market share reaching an estimated 34 percent, according to the vendor.
The company cited China and Latin America as the sweet spots for its mobile sales growth.
“This was a year of record-breaking mobile device volumes for our country, which drove both the device and infrastructure markets forward,” said Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive officer of the company, adding mobile subscriptions rose sharply to 1.7 billion for 2004.
In its infrastructure business, the company had sales increase of 12 percent amounting to $2.5 billion. Its operating profit jumped to $339 million compared with a mere $53 million in the year-ago period. The company attributed the happy numbers to “robust year-end spending by operators with our shortened delivery lead times.”
The company’s sales forecasts were between $11 billion and $11.2 billion. For the first quarter, Nokia anticipates net sales of between $9.12 billion and $9.5 billion, which amounts to an increase over the same period last year. But sequentially, it will be a deficit.
For the full year, the company had net sales of $38 billion, a 1-percent drop from the previous year of $38.3 billion.
