Nokia Oyj (NYSE:NOK) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Richard Kramer: Pekka, you clearly had visibility of the mix shift in mobile towards India and what that has done to the gross margin. But one thing we haven’t heard you talk about is the extent to which the new product portfolio you announced will bake in cost reductions that support a return or a resumption of the kind of gross margins we saw last year. In other words, is the gross margin recovery in mobile dependent on regional mix? Or is there a product element to it with the new portfolio that you announced? And then I’ve got a quick follow-up on it.

Pekka Lundmark: Yes, there is absolutely also a product in this. There is procurement cost and procurement actions, obviously, there is fundamental R&D actions. And of course, the new product generations that we have launched, they will continue to improve our cost position. But I don’t think that this regional differences in margin profiles will go away. So the geographical component will also be there but it’s definitely not the only component.

Richard Kramer: Okay. And then my follow-up is on — you’ve talked before about the book-to-bill. Can you talk about where that stands in the enterprise side, given that you’re still growing but lapping good growth numbers from a year ago and you’re increasing customer numbers? I’m just conscious that maybe these private wireless customers that you’re announcing are much smaller deals but maybe the book-to-bill extends much further into the future.

Pekka Lundmark: We have a healthy pipeline of opportunities and a good backlog. Of course, like in any business, there can be some swings up and down. We saw really, really strong, as you remember, Q1 in terms of enterprise. Now we saw some normalization. But this is the business that we expect to continue to grow and our goal is to see continued double-digit growth in Enterprise to reach at least double-digit percent of our sales. And as you saw the rolling — in the rolling 12-month graph that we had, we are pretty close already to that. And that’s what we announced as a short-term target last January. And then I think the way I put it in the presentation in January was that, first, we wanted to go to 10% and then to 20% and then to 30%. So this actual growth is definitely expected to continue going forward.

David Mulholland: We’ll take our last question from Sami Sarkamies from Danske Bank.

Sami Sarkamies: Just wanted to get some color on the product segments for Network Infrastructure. We are now estimating 100% market growth and sales growth below the group average. Do you expect sales growth in any of the segments on a full year basis? And at which segments should we expect a material decline relative to last year? I think you mentioned, for example, that you have become more positive on Optical Networks.

Pekka Lundmark: Yes. I mean, we don’t really give a detailed guidance for the full year on the subsegment level. But what I can say is that, if we look at how our expectations have changed during this year and also from Q1, our expectations for Optical have increased while the macro environment has led to a deterioration in the outlook for IP and fixed. So there is a structural change in our expectations within the NI business.

David Mulholland: Did you have a quick follow-up, Sami?

Sami Sarkamies: Yes. Maybe regarding the new IPR deals that were recorded in Q2. How come this didn’t sort of impact the IPO run rate?

Marco Wiren: Yes. Thank you, Sami. We signed a number of deals during the quarter and different deals has a difference starting point as well. And that’s why we are now saying that the annual run rate would be €1.1 billion, considering the deals that we have signed during the quarter instead of the €1 billion that we had in the end of quarter one. And that’s how we — of course, this is not considering additional deals that we haven’t signed yet.